Quote:
Originally Posted by guccilvr
I think there's plenty of proof in the Marlins and the Rays that money can't buy playoffs or a championship.
The Yankees have yet to understand this. Let them spend the money on players. They have totally destroyed their farm team. Even die hard fans are concerned about the state of the farm team and they have been for a long, long time. When the yankees lock up these players with long year contracts and huge money, this doesn't destroy baseball. It simply helps kids who are wanting to get to the majors get in because other teams are forced to draft and develop well. Look at Boston, they have arguably one of the best farm systems in the bigs.. Tampa Bay has a great farm system. Boston didn't spend huge amounts of money in the winter meetings and they don't need to because they have done a good job of spending but also developing young players. We have the two best corner infield prospects in the minors as it is, as well as some great pitching prospects.
The skanks can keep doing what they are doing.. because in the end they may win a championship or two but it's not going to matter in the long run. The game has completely changed.
Boston is in talks with Youk about a long term deal but supposedly it's stalled. They want to at least get him a one year contract to avoid arbitration. It would be nice to lock him up for a similar length as Pedroia.
Talk about developing players  |
But the problem is when the team can barely make payroll and they are losing fans and interest because of this bullshit, they can't sign high draft picks and they can't put the money they need into the farm system. Thus, even developing players becomes an issue and the team is forever in a downward spiral. Unless it finds an owner that doesn't care about losing money. There are very few of them.
If you have a payroll of 100 million and 50,000 seats, you have to sell every seat in all 81 home games for an average of 25 dollars (not including tax and so on) just to break even. Then you have to find the millions for the farm team, the GM, trainers, stadium rent, taxes, medical staff, scouts, and so on.
Let's say that's a 25 million dollar hit. Then you are looking at having to sell out EVERY SINGLE GAME for an average of 31 dollar tickets. Then the owners make zilch.
But if your team is spiraling and very few cities have fans that can afford to buy 31 dollar tickets and an extremely very few sell out EVERY game and very few have 50,000 seat stadiums most are in the low 40,000 seats. You're looking at having to raise tickets that much more.
If you rely on broadcast rights (local radio and TV) the less you win the less you can make there. Advertising and corporate sales start to stagnate in these economies so you don't get much revenue there especially if you are a small to mid market team.
Then you figure by the time you do spend money on a future star, by the time he becomes truly productive he's arbitration or free agent eligible and gone to the Yankees, or Bosox or LA so they can keep raiding the developed stars and not have to worry about putting money into their farm systems.
IF you do have a team that gels before they start getting split up because of salary it's for 1 maybe 2 years before their salaries become unaffordable and you have to start over hoping you can retain the fan interest.
MLB is killing itself. If they do not do something fast, it'll soon be the same 6 teams in the playoffs with maybe 1 or 2 surprise teams, that again for that 1 year maybe 2, do well.
They need some form of cap and revenue sharing so that it's not about how a team can outspend but how well the GM can develop and make trades.
If baseball doesn't change something fast, they'll kill themselves.