Will Tigers Pony up for Skubal

[ben9753]

43 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Kansas City is the perfect example of why MLB needs a salary cap. The Royals won the World Series in 2015, because they drafted and developed well, but couldn't keep the team in tact. The Kansas City Chiefs are a near dynasty because they have good coaching, draft well, and have the best player in the league. If this were MLB, Mahomes would get an Ohtani like contract from New York or Los Angeles. The Jets have the longest active playoff drought in the NFL, and Los Angeles went 20 years without a team and the league thrived. There's a whole world outside of New York and Los Angeles and the NFL is the most popular sport because a team in Green Bay Wisconsin has equal opportunity as New York City. 

Its mainly the difference between the 2 sports. In baseball you can have the best player in the world, and be terrible (Angels).

In football, if you have the best qb in the game, you are going to have a chance to win the SB every year. Thats not going to change with a salary cap

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, RedRamage said:

Answering my own question because I like to hear myself talk (or type): Probably not entirely no... telling someone they can only earn x-amount of money because you want to make other teams remain competitive is a bit anti-capitalist. So is there a way to make it more fair?

My humble suggestion (which likely has a million holes in it) would be to:

• Set a salary cap, and a salary floor.
• Pool media deals... maybe something like 75% of media revenue goes into a common pot with 25% remaining with the original team.
• Cut up and distribute the media pool:
  • 75% goes to teams, 1/30th for each team.
  • 25% goes to players, not sure how to divide this up (evenly for each? based on years in MLB? I dunno)

But this goes back to owners needing to open some of the books up.

what's fair to the players is to get a % cut of the gross revenue. That works in the NFL, but Baseball owners have never been willing to be transparent. But even that doesn't work until you have revenue equalization/sharing.

[Motown Bombers]

5 minutes ago, ben9753 said:

Its mainly the difference between the 2 sports. In baseball you can have the best player in the world, and be terrible (Angels).

In football, if you have the best qb in the game, you are going to have a chance to win the SB every year. Thats not going to change with a salary cap

Joe Burrow was statistically the best QB in the NFL and the Bengals were never a contender this year. Burrow is also among the highest paid players in the league. The Reds would never be able to sign Ohtani if he were homegrown. The thing is, it's not just Ohtani. The Dodgers have an unlimited amount of money. If it doesn't work out, they eat the contract. You can't do that in the NFL. 

[RedRamage]

7 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

what's fair to the players is to get a % cut of the gross revenue. That works in the NFL, but Baseball owners have never been willing to be transparent. But even that doesn't work until you have revenue equalization/sharing.

Agreed 100%.

[RedRamage]

3 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

The thing is, it's not just Ohtani. The Dodgers have an unlimited amount of money. If it doesn't work out, they eat the contract. You can't do that in the NFL. 

That's the part that I think people miss when comparing big vs. small markets. It's not just that you have enough money to sign the big names... it's that if you miss on them you're not handicapped for the next 5 years.

How many times over the years have we said something like: "Well, when player-X is off the books, hopefully Ilitch will be willing to spend more." Now I know this is an oversimplification, but there is truth to it.

[gehringer_2]

7 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

"Well, when player-X is off the books, hopefully Ilitch will be willing to spend more."

and again, people personalize it based on an owner's personal resources, but it doesn't really work that way. The league doesn't allow owners to subsidize their teams with outside income even if they wanted to - the team has to have the income. The owners demand of each other that they keep their teams solvent because that is what protects the market value of franchises, and every owner is vitally interested in maintaining that. And if a team's revenue falls to where it can't maintain solvent operations, it gets moved.

Edited May 15 by gehringer_2

[RandyMarsh]

The biggest difference between teams in terms of income is local TV deals, the Dodgers get nearly 250 million a year for theirs while a team like the Tigers is like a quarter of that. Even if you want to throw out the Dodgers as an anomaly the difference between some teams and others is still 50 to 100 million dollars with some cases even higher. That's 2-4 high priced free agents difference right there. 

It will never happen but if they were to pool up all the regional deals and split them evenly between teams then things would be alot different. 

Edited May 16 by RandyMarsh

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, RandyMarsh said:

The biggest difference between teams in terms of income is local TV deals, the Dodgers get nearly 250 million a year for theirs while a team like the Tigers is like a quarter of that. Even if you want to throw out the Dodgers as an anomaly the difference between some teams and others is still 50 to 100 million dollars with some cases even higher. That's 2-4 high priced free agents difference right there. 

It will never happen but if they were to pool up all the regional deals and split them evenly between teams then things would be alot different. 

exactly.

[TigerNation]

On 5/15/2025 at 3:09 PM, ben9753 said:

Its mainly the difference between the 2 sports. In baseball you can have the best player in the world, and be terrible (Angels).

In football, if you have the best qb in the game, you are going to have a chance to win the SB every year. Thats not going to change with a salary cap

The biggest difference is equal revenue sharing. There is nothing you can do to overcome the fact that teams generate $300 mill+ more in revenue than others. 

[chasfh]

On 5/15/2025 at 12:05 PM, RedRamage said:

Answering my own question because I like to hear myself talk (or type): Probably not entirely no... telling someone they can only earn x-amount of money because you want to make other teams remain competitive is a bit anti-capitalist. So is there a way to make it more fair?

My humble suggestion (which likely has a million holes in it) would be to:

• Set a salary cap, and a salary floor.
• Pool media deals... maybe something like 75% of media revenue goes into a common pot with 25% remaining with the original team.
• Cut up and distribute the media pool:
  • 75% goes to teams, 1/30th for each team.
  • 25% goes to players, not sure how to divide this up (evenly for each? based on years in MLB? I dunno)

But this goes back to owners needing to open some of the books up.

I don’t think there should be salary caps or floors without the audited books of all 30 organizations being completely open to both sides. Only this will enable the possibility of a fair distribution of the money, especially in an industry whose monopoly status is protected by legal precedent. But as long as only one side—meaning Owners—has the ability to see the books, salary restrictions are always going to be favorable only to Owners. Otherwise, Players are going to be negotiating in the dark, and I don’t believe that’s fair.

[chasfh]

14 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

The biggest difference between teams in terms of income is local TV deals, the Dodgers get nearly 250 million a year for theirs while a team like the Tigers is like a quarter of that. Even if you want to throw out the Dodgers as an anomaly the difference between some teams and others is still 50 to 100 million dollars with some cases even higher. That's 2-4 high priced free agents difference right there. 

It will never happen but if they were to pool up all the regional deals and split them evenly between teams then things would be alot different. 

That’s another reason against the salary cap/floors without idea: the amount of revenue generated by organizations is vastly different among one another. More than NBA basketball and certainly NFL football, MLB baseball is an intensely local sport with very little national or even regional appeal. Maybe that’s because of the everydayness of the enterprise: to be really tuned in to your team or the league, you have to follow it every day, because the landscape is always changing. Contrast this with football, which stays static and is subject to analysis (over, more likely, overanalysis) for an entire week in between games. So an NFL fan has the luxury of contemplating a lot more teams and players and the league while it is essentially in stasis. I think that might lend itself to maintaining more national profile than baseball.

And, of course, the NFL pools its money to a nearly complete degree, and the Players have a lot more access to how much money is flowing through it, making them far more able to negotiate a fair share of the proceeds in a negotiation of salary caps.

[GalagaGuy]

In this age of starters going 6 innings, I just can't see any pitcher being worth 40 million a year and I certainly don't see the Tigers paying Skubal that kind of money.  I think he ends up In New York, Boston or Chicago. 

[papalawrence]

4 minutes ago, GalagaGuy said:

In this age of starters going 6 innings, I just can't see any pitcher being worth 40 million a year and I certainly don't see the Tigers paying Skubal that kind of money.  I think he ends up In New York, Boston or Chicago. 

I can see Harris going as hi as 6/270 (45 per) and that's if he stays on his current track. But yeah, Yankees, Mets, maybe SF, LAD.....some team will pony up 400

[chasfh]

9 hours ago, GalagaGuy said:

In this age of starters going 6 innings, I just can't see any pitcher being worth 40 million a year and I certainly don't see the Tigers paying Skubal that kind of money.  I think he ends up In New York, Boston or Chicago. 

Skubal will be worth whatever someone will pay him. That will be the market price.

[RedRamage]

On 5/17/2025 at 8:22 AM, chasfh said:

That’s another reason against the salary cap/floors without idea: the amount of revenue generated by organizations is vastly different among one another.

I 100% agree that this (and the rest of your post) are true, but I don't think it's precludes the idea of a cap/floor. Rather it further highlights the needs for a cap/floor along with better revenue sharing... at least in my humble opinion.

One one hand the Yankees and Dodgers (to pick on the usual suspects) should be lauded for building the following that they have. Granted, they've had the benefit of playing a large market, but so have the Mets and Angels, and they don't have have quite the following the first two teams do, so it's not just the large market that have made them successful. So yeah, again, on one hand it's hard to argue that they've been TOO successful and therefore should be punished by having to give some of their money to other teams.

On the other hand if MLB consisted just of the Yankees and the Dodgers (and maybe 2 or 4 other teams) it probably won't have nearly the following it has and those teams would have the fan following that they do. The Yankees and Dodgers need the other teams to play against. The YES network isn't going to be successful showing the Yankees playing scrimmages against themselves 162 times. So on the other hand I think it's very reasonable to say that the Yankees success (in terms of media revenue) are in a significant part because of the other teams in the league and therefore it's reasonable that they should have to share that revenue.

The debate, in my mind, is not IF, but HOW MUCH should be shared.

[RedRamage]

Just now, RedRamage said:

I 100% agree that this (and the rest of your post) are true, but I don't think it's precludes the idea of a cap/floor. Rather it further highlights the needs for a cap/floor along with better revenue sharing... at least in my humble opinion.

One one hand the Yankees and Dodgers (to pick on the usual suspects) should be lauded for building the following that they have. Granted, they've had the benefit of playing a large market, but so have the Mets and Angels, and they don't have have quite the following the first two teams do, so it's not just the large market that have made them successful. So yeah, again, on one hand it's hard to argue that they've been TOO successful and therefore should be punished by having to give some of their money to other teams.

On the other hand if MLB consisted just of the Yankees and the Dodgers (and maybe 2 or 4 other teams) it probably won't have nearly the following it has and those teams would have the fan following that they do. The Yankees and Dodgers need the other teams to play against. The YES network isn't going to be successful showing the Yankees playing scrimmages against themselves 162 times. So on the other hand I think it's very reasonable to say that the Yankees success (in terms of media revenue) are in a significant part because of the other teams in the league and therefore it's reasonable that they should have to share that revenue.

The debate, in my mind, is not IF, but HOW MUCH should be shared.

Next: Cap/Floor for baseball...

Again, I can see an argument saying that there shouldn't be a cap on how much a player can make or that we should penalize a team that does good marketing and therefore has more money to spend. And I can see some value in that argument.

However, we've seen salary caps be effective in leveling the playing field in other sports and I appreciate that aspect. If we have a contest to see how many balls we can throw into a bucket with the most times getting a ball in the bucket, if I have 100 balls to throw and you only have 10... I probably going to win the contest more of than not, even if I'm not as accurate as you. I feel the same applies towards sports. If my GM has a $300M payroll to work with, more often than not my team is going to be more successful than your team, who's GM only have $90M... even if your GM is better than mine.

Now, if we're going to set a cap and we're going to require sharing of media revenue, we also need to set a floor to ensure that the teams getting the benefit of the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the extra loot. Is the floor the most effective method of ensure a club fields a competitive team? Probably not, and I'd be open to exploring other options (such as investment in player development, scouting, training camps in other countries, etc) but there has to be a clear and definable method to the other options, one that can be easily checked and verified by the league to again ensure the receivers to the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the profits and not caring about the team they put on the field. A salary floor is one easy method to do this so I'd argue for that, at least until we can find a better method.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.

 

[RedRamage]

Sorry, I know I said I was getting off the soap box, but just wanted to add some raw data because I'm sure one of the question will be: "Is there really a need to balance the playing field? How lopsided is it right now?" There's probably a million ways to answer that question but here's one. I looked back over the past 30 years for the number of teams each team has made it to the World Series. Given 60 teams played in the World Series, perfect distribution would say each team shows up twice in the past 30 years. OBVIOUSLY we're not going to see that because of MANY factors including that over just 30 series we're not going to see perfect distribution even if all other factors were equal. Still, for what it's worth, here are the numbers:

Arizona Diamondbacks	2
Atlanta Braves	4
Baltimore Orioles	0
Boston Red Sox	4
Chicago White Sox	1
Chicago Cubs	1
Cincinnati Reds	0
Cleveland Indians	3
Colorado Rockies	1
Detroit Tigers	2
Houston Astros	5
Kansas City Royals	2
Los Angeles Angels	1
Los Angeles Dodgers	4
Miami Marlins	2
Milwaukee Brewers	0
Minnesota Twins	0
New York Yankees	8
New York Mets	2
Oakland Athletics	0
Philadelphia Phillies	3
Pittsburgh Pirates	0
San Diego Padres	1
San Francisco Giants	4
Seattle Mariners	0
St. Louis Cardinals	4
Tampa Bay Rays	2
Texas Rangers	3
Toronto Blue Jays	0
Washington Nationals	1

2 teams have five or more appearances: Yankees and Astros.
8 teams have 3 or 4 appearances
6 teams have 2 appearances
6 teams have 1 appearance
8 teams have 0 appearances

33.3% have MORE appearance then average
20% have exactly average
46.6% have LOWER than average

Instead of the expected bell curve that's higher in the middle, we have a upside down bell curve that's higher on the edges.