Question of the week: do you care more about a floor or a cap?

[Brock Beauchamp]

This is the first DiamondCentric-wide poll, click into the link to vote. Do you care more about the next CBA having a salary cap or a salary floor? I know many of you want to hammer "both!", but ya gotta choose one.

Do you care more about MLB mandating a salary floor or a salary cap? - DiamondCentric

DIAMONDCENTRIC.NET

[MadScientist]

Cap.  The unlimited payroll of the Dodgers is why small market teams like the Brewers fall short, no matter how well they are run.  The floor is just something to make a cap more palatable to the players.

[folly412]

Cap for reasons stated above. 

Other CBA wants:

• Balance around the posting process for Japanese/Korean players.  May be part of the cap or revenue-sharing calculation.  Another area where large market teams (especially the Dodgers) dominate given the fees, and have an incentive to keep going to shut other teams out of the international revenue.
• Service-time manipulation / Super 2 deterrents.  Also related to the floor.  This very likely has factored into our calculations the past couple of years.  Fans want to see exciting young players promoted, and small-market teams in particular have reason to keep them down longer to save money and gain more control.

[wntrtxn21]

A cap is desperately needed, but for anything to work you can't have one without the other.  

[wiguy94]

Brock I'm not sure what you were expecting asking this on a Brewers forum but I'd be shocked if a single person said they would rather have a floor than a ceiling.

[Brock Beauchamp]

12 minutes ago, wiguy94 said:

Brock I'm not sure what you were expecting asking this on a Brewers forum but I'd be shocked if a single person said they would rather have a floor than a ceiling.

It's going out to all our sites, and I expect each fanbase to vote in one direction or the other. I'm mostly curious to see where it lands overall.

[Brewcrew82]

I'd say local TV revenue sharing is just as important, if not moreso than any cap. 

The Dodgers are able to spend more not only because they've got a massive TV deal due to their market size, but because they are also EXEMPT from having to pay out the standard share of that pie on account of a bankruptcy settlement under their previous owner. 

That needs to be dealt with first and foremost because how the heck is a market like Milwaukee supposed to compete with that? To Manfred's credit, his idea of combining MLB TV rights like the NFL is a logical solution toward reducing those disparities. 

 

[BarremlensTSSC]

Shouldn't have one without the other, whether it's in tax or hard cap/floor form.

[markedman5]

Obviously these are just starting points in negotiations……..171 salary floor sounds pretty reasonable to.me………especially as a first proposal 

 

[igor67]

I'm curious since it specifically mentioned including benefits if that is normally included in other salary figures? I'm also not sure if benefits for athletes is as significant as it is for other employees.

[markedman5]

This is encouraging 

 

[Samurai Bucky]

34 minutes ago, markedman5 said:

This is encouraging 

 

I think the players' union has a filter -- anything that has the word "cap" in it is automatically dismissed.

I don't recall the union ever stating or endorsing anything involving a cap.

[Team Canada]

2 hours ago, Brewcrew82 said:

I'd say local TV revenue sharing is just as important, if not moreso than any cap.

Agreed. A cap and floor doesn't necessarily fix the problem. It limits the range of options, but a more balanced local revenue share would provide a more level playing field. 

With a cap/floor, you're still going to have smaller markets sitting at the floor and the big markets at the cap. For NFL where basically everyone is operating right around the cap, is it just a function of it all being national broadcast arrangements so you can't have local TV deals, and thus every club has a similar amount of money?

[markedman5]

Teams have agreed to share local revenue as part of their proposal…….likely need to get a cap of some sort to get the shared local tv revenue 

players won’t like it but the old argument was before you ask us for anything you have to share revenue like the other sports………well they are willing to do that now.

 

[wiguy94]

3 minutes ago, markedman5 said:

Teams have agreed to share local revenue as part of their proposal…….likely need to get a cap of some sort to get the shared local tv revenue 

players won’t like it but the old argument was before you ask us for anything you have to share revenue like the other sports………well they are willing to do that now.

 

MLB owners are not willing to share revenue like other leagues until they open up their books and share it with the MLBPA. Until that happens it's not a serious offer from MLB.

[Jopal78]

4 minutes ago, markedman5 said:

Teams have agreed to share local revenue as part of their proposal…….likely need to get a cap of some sort to get the shared local tv revenue 

players won’t like it but the old argument was before you ask us for anything you have to share revenue like the other sports………well they are willing to do that now.

 

The Union is never going to agree to a hard cap on their members’ earnings. Maybe some sort of lower soft cap/competitive balance tax and altering how it’s calculated so teams cannot manipulate it with deferments, and real penalties for going over. Those coupled with increased revenue sharing and the revenue sharing money being spent on baseball operations is probably the best either side is going to get. Maybe a watered down floor for revenue sharing recipients. 

[markedman5]

44 minutes ago, wiguy94 said:

MLB owners are not willing to share revenue like other leagues until they open up their books and share it with the MLBPA. Until that happens it's not a serious offer from MLB.

They’ve agreed to share local tv revenue equally which is easily verified. That has never been offered before……huge for the small market teams which would allow them to meet those floor numbers .

as far as the 50-50 split……yes union would have to be able to verify the revenue that goes into that……..obviously that would be part of any deal.

I don’t expect the the union to like it but from.my fan perspective……this is the kind of starting point I wanted to see……not just the owners demanding a cap……but recognizing that the the revenue advantage of the large market teams also had to be part of the solution.

Going to take a long time to hash it out…….labor disputes are always ugly.

[tmwiese55]

I was pleasantly surprised by the local TV being agreed upon by the teams.   Trying to think it through, is there any reason the MLBPA would be opposed to that specifically?   In that it leads or starts the walk towards a more true 'cap' is the only reason I'm quickly coming up with.  Or that, if NY/LAD have to give an extra 70 mil each per year to a 'cheap' owner that won't spend it (or is barred from spending it by the cap).

But at least, the owners are fine with it. That's one battle I expected that doesn't seem to be there 

[wibadgers23]

3 hours ago, markedman5 said:

Obviously these are just starting points in negotiations……..171 salary floor sounds pretty reasonable to.me………especially as a first proposal 

 

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

[markedman5]

4 minutes ago, wibadgers23 said:

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

No they aren’t admitting that…… .they are going to get to share equally the local tv revenue of the larger market teams……..that makes the floors feasible…….

The Dodgers, Yankees, etc will no longer have massive local tv revenue advantage with this proposal……..they obviously still have other advantages…….but this is what we should all want as Brewers fans.

[wiguy94]

7 minutes ago, wibadgers23 said:

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

That's CBT payroll. The Brewers CBT payroll this year is around $140M so nowhere near $50M below that floor. That proposal also included sharing of all media including local media. The Brewers would be getting a sizeable increase in revenue if local media was evenly shared like much larger than $30M 

[wiguy94]

9 minutes ago, tmwiese55 said:

I was pleasantly surprised by the local TV being agreed upon by the teams.   Trying to think it through, is there any reason the MLBPA would be opposed to that specifically?   In that it leads or starts the walk towards a more true 'cap' is the only reason I'm quickly coming up with.  Or that, if NY/LAD have to give an extra 70 mil each per year to a 'cheap' owner that won't spend it (or is barred from spending it by the cap).

But at least, the owners are fine with it. That's one battle I expected that doesn't seem to be there 

MLBPA's offer included a much stronger share of local media money. There wasn't a number specified so I doubt it's an even split but it would be bigger than it currently is. They also had the competitive integrity tax as well if teams were below $150M in payroll.

[wibadgers23]

Makes more sense - thanks!

[cragi]

7 minutes ago, wibadgers23 said:

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

Dodgers annual media contract is $334m. Brewers netted like $16m after taking it in house, i think.

[cragi]

if this holds, brewers are going to make out like crazy. they already have the best FO in baseball, and now they get to add enough cash to compete with the Dodgers. Payroll diference would drop from 3x to 2x. Golden years of Brewers baseball about to take off like a rocket.