Addressing Tanking Through Revenue Sharing
The title of this post suggests that tanking is a problem in major league baseball, and one that needs addressing. It’s worth noting that “tanking” might be a bit of a misnomer. While definitions may vary slightly, if we consider tanking to be intentionally losing for a period of time in order to save money and horde talent for a later run of success, there aren’t actually a lot of examples. There are several issues with that model, but one of the most significant, both in perception and in reality, is waning competition. There is less parity in baseball as more teams head to the extremes and fewer occupy the middle. It’s so bad in the American League that a good team like the Cleveland Indians can actively try to get worse and still be favored to win their division because of the state of the rest of the AL Central. With the Yankees, Red Sox, and Astros all so good, the rest of the AL looks up and sees few avenues to a playoff spot and one that almost assuredly only buys a team one game. The motivation to get a few wins better is lacking at the top, with so few contending teams, and at the bottom, where a few extra wins likely won’t meaningfully change a team’s playoff odds. These aren’t “tanking” issues, but problems with the current landscape’s competitive level.
These issues are exacerbated by the recent windfall from BAMTech sales, which have netted every team more than $50 million, national television deals that have continued to go up in value, and local cable television deals that provide higher guarantees. Ticket sales are still important to a team’s bottom line, but they are slightly less important to turning a profit, which serves to make winning slightly less important. Revenue sharing might provide an avenue to placing a greater emphasis on winning.
Revenue sharing is a fairly simple process, in which every team takes 48% of their net local revenue (revenue minus stadium operating expenses), then puts it in a big pile and divides it evenly among the league’s 30 teams. Clubs like the Yankees and Red Sox put more in than they get out while teams like the Marlins and Pirates get a lot more back than they put in. The teams on the lower end of the revenue spectrum are supposed to spend the funds they receive on the field. Last year, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance alleging that the A’s, Marlins, Pirates, and Rays were not doing so. The players aren’t the only group that have been upset about revenue sharing; the Yankees have complained about the system for years.
To some extent, the Yankees got their way in the last CBA. In previous years, the overall revenue sharing pool was still 48% of net local revenue, but the Yankees had to pay an even greater share, with 34% of revenue being split just like it is today, but with the other 14% of revenue being covered disproportionately by the Yankees and the other high-revenue teams, and sent to smaller-market teams under a pre-determined split. It’s time to bring back that split, but instead base payments and receipts on winning and losing.
Here’s how it might work.
Teams would be separated into three tiers. At the top, you would have the five biggest clubs in the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, and Giants. These are the teams worth the most, according to Forbes, with revenues that dwarf most other clubs. In the middle tier, you would have the next set of teams in terms of value and revenue, including the Mets, Phillies, Cardinals, Angels, Nationals, Astros, Braves, White Sox, Mariners, and Blue Jays. In the last tier, you have the other 14 teams: the Padres, Pirates, Tigers, Diamondbacks, Orioles, Twins, Rockies, Indians, Brewers, A’s, Royals, Reds, Marlins, and Rays. The top two tiers would still ended up sending money to the the teams in the bottom tier, but instead of basing the amount solely on revenues, as is the case in the current CBA, or based on market and performance, as in previous agreements, the amounts sent and received in the supplemental plan would be based on wins.
As an example, let’s say that of the 48% of revenue that is shared, 10% goes into a supplemental plan. That means that 38% of net local revenue is shared evenly, but the rest of revenue sharing is based on win totals relative to the other teams in the tier. If that 10% amounted to $200 million, we would need to figure out how to transfer that $200 million from the haves to the have-nots.
One way to do that is to have the top-tier pay two-thirds ($134 million) and the middle tier pay one-third ($66 million), with the bottom tier splitting the proceeds. Because the Yankees are the Yankees, I will propose that they have to pay $14 million off the top, leaving $120 million for the top-five clubs. Here’s how the top tier might have looked last season.
| Team | 2018 Wins | % of Tier | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Sox | 108 | 10% | $12 M |
| Yankees | 100 | 14% | $16.8 M |
| Cubs | 95 | 18% | $21.6 M |
| Dodgers | 92 | 25% | $30 M |
| Giants | 73 | 33% | $39.6 M |
Consider the above your anti-tanking incentive. We could structure the percentages a little differently, but having a fairly significant difference from the bottom to even the middle provides a strong disincentive to go through a prolonged rebuild. Here’s how we might structure the next tier.
| Team | 2018 Wins | % of Tier to Pay | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astros | 103 | 1% | $660 K |
| Braves | 90 | 3% | $1.98 M |
| Mariners | 89 | 4% | $2.64 M |
| Cardinals | 88 | 5% | $3.3 M |
| Nationals | 82 | 6% | $3.96 M |
| Phillies | 80 | 10% | $6.6 M |
| Angels | 80 | 11% | $7.26 M |
| Mets | 77 | 12% | $7.92 M |
| Blue Jays | 73 | 15% | $9.9 M |
| Rangers | 67 | 16% | $10.56 M |
| White Sox | 62 | 17% | $11.22 M |
None of the payments in this tier are all that high, but it does provide a slight financial disincentive for a huge rebuild. As to how the payments might be distributed, here’s one suggestion.
| Team | 2018 Wins | % of Tier to Receive | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Athletics | 97 | 16.0% | $32 M |
| Brewers | 96 | 13.0% | $26 M |
| Indians | 91 | 12.0% | $24 M |
| Rockies | 91 | 11.0% | $22 M |
| Rays | 90 | 10.0% | $20 M |
| Diamondbacks | 82 | 7.0% | $14 M |
| Pirates | 82 | 6.5% | $13 M |
| Twins | 78 | 6.0% | $12 M |
| Reds | 67 | 5.5% | $11 M |
| Padres | 66 | 5.0% | $10 M |
| Tigers | 64 | 3.0% | $6 M |
| Marlins | 63 | 2.5% | $5 M |
| Royals | 58 | 1.5% | $3 M |
| Orioles | 47 | 1.0% | $2 M |
This isn’t the total amount teams would receive from revenue sharing, as the base plan of 38% would still be distributed. The figures above would be in addition to what teams have already received, and only funds that are already earmarked to be distributed under the current plan would be used. Most of the numbers above could be easily tweaked, and the $200 million figure is just a rough estimate of how money could be shared. We wouldn’t necessarily need to use just single-season wins; a multi-year average might be fairer.
Teams wouldn’t be forced to spend any more money on payroll (though that is certainly a good way to put together a winning roster), but they would be encouraged financially to win. This plan might not directly transfer money from the owners to the players, as these are funds being transferred between owners, but it might prove to be a more beneficial ask than the universal designated hitter and might be met with more public support. Getting owner buy-in would take a consensus unlikely to materialize quickly, but tying wins directly to money should give teams the proper incentive to try to put their best possible product on the field, and help to alleviate concerns of tanking and anti-competitive behavior.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
I do like the idea of dividing some portion of revenue sharing based on winning%. I also think a simple way to give teams incentive to build and maintain competitive rosters all season would be to award an extra draft pick directly after the first round to every team that wins a certain number of games (something like 73-75 perhaps).
Not a bad idea. Here’s a simpler, but more radical idea – the team with the worst record forfeits their first round pick. Painful, but that would encourage even the worst teams to try to improve.
Forfeit might be strong, but I kind of like the idea. If you reduce the ability of bad teams to get better, you discourage deliberately going from 4th in the division to 5th, which is a good thing, but you also hurt a team that is legitimately trying to win but is snakebit.
The Expos/Nats were run by Loria then MLB for some time, and started winning reasonably quickly once they had more normal ownership, but without the consecutive #1 picks that became Strasburg and Harper, I’m not sure the Nats would have been a winning team by 2012, even though they had rich owners and a new stadium. You’ve got to let teams that are bad by accident become better.
Not sure how fair something like that would be. Baltimore had the worst record last year but they actually did try to compete – holding onto Machado, signing Alex Cobb and Andrew Cashner. They actually chose not to tank even though many experts thought they´d be better off blowing the team up. They ended up with the worst record because bascially eveything that could go wrong, did go wrong for them last year. And their “reward” for all that is you want to take away the #1 overall pick in the draft from them?
On top of that, there are some really weird incentives that are created. Do you trade Machado in the middle of the season or not? If you don’t trade him, you lose out on some prospects that can help you rebuild. If you do trade him, you might end up with the worst record and therefore lose the #1 overall pick. (of course, you could also end up with both happening…you don’t trade Machado and you still end up with the worst record).
I could see some sort of NBA style draft lottery among the 10 worst teams. But stripping the #1 draft pick seems overly harsh.
The MLB Draft is enough of a lottery in its own regard. Inbound talent is so hard to evaluate and project compared to the NBA.
Looking at the best everyday players in terms of fWAR in 2018 who were drafted, 4/5 were first rounders, but none went first overall. Bregman went 2nd, Lindor went 8th, Trout and Yelich were both in the 20s. Oh, and Mookie Betts was a 5th round pick.
I recognize that this is a small sample of players, but we all know that it’s fairly representative of the league body. Most good players go in rounds 1-3, but plenty of 1s bust inside and outside of the top 5-10 picks. So what value is there really in making sure that you lose 60 games rather than 65? Do we think that teams actually can actively control that level of deviation over 162 games?
It’s also worth noting that tanking is nowhere near as prevalent as the union and its proponents like to pretend, especially when compared to the NBA. Here are the Wins totals for the four teams noted that the MLBPA filed a grievance against:
97, 90, 82 and 63
Even the Marlins and their 63 wins were actually trending to push 70 wins after going 26-27 in June and July, before a disastrous 7-19 August.
As much as conspiracy theorists (and union representatives) like to pretend that we know exactly who is and is not trying, or who is purportedly “actively try(ing) to get worse”, such as the Cleveland Indians, we really don’t.
To recommend that teams who finish poorly be penalized because we assume that they aren’t trying is beyond presumptuous. It’s self-righteous.
Sure the draft is a bit of a crapshoot but there’s still value to be had in having the highest pick possible. Using Baseball Reference, here’s how much WAR the top 10 picks in the draft have produced so far:
#1: 1047.9
#2: 688.3
#3: 580.6
#4: 573.0
#5: 406.2
#6: 567.4 (Bonds effect)
#7: 383.8
#8: 282.1
#9: 269.3
#10: 484.6
So other than the #6 pick (which is greatly influenced by Bonds) and the #10 pick (which is a combo of players led by McGwire), you basically have a straight line between pick position and overall WAR.
Definitely a fair point. While I still don’t think player performance / development for those picked at the top of the draft is nearly as guaranteed in baseball as the NBA, you’re correct that, objectively, the earlier a player is picked, the safer they are, especially when you’re picking in that area over a sustained period.
I do maintain that assumptions regarding who is and is not trying are dangerous.
Specifically on the Indians, to say that they are actively trying to get worse is plain snarky and, I think, unfair. They lost Brantley and Allen, who was underwhelming in 2018, in FA, and haven’t necessarily sought out any of the more high profile (aka expensive) replacements available. They did add Bauers as a 1B/OF option, and replaced EE with Carlos Santana (and HanRam) at 1B/DH.
Otherwise, as far as their shopping of Corey Kluber, while it’s unconventional for a contending team to trade a top SP, especially in this environment, perhaps they see something (which a lot of us do) in his peripherals that indicate a decline is coming (or is already underway) and they were trying to cash in while his value was still such that he might return multiple top prospects. Obviously the return offers weren’t sufficient enough for them to sacrifice short-term win potential for the long-term.
But I think those are important, honest conversations that all teams should have regarding aging players without being typecast as “cheap”.
Build in a tax floor in addition to the ceiling and require teams below that floor to pay into the pool in the same manner as the teams above the ceiling, with increasing penalties the further below the floor a team goes.
This creates all kinds of weird issues that would be interesting, and not necessarily in a good way. While I’m worried that the incentive isn’t big enough to make a major difference and would reinforce how much more cost-effective it is to avoid free agency entirely, the worse outcome would be low-revenue teams getting stuck in a vicious cycle, where poor wins means teams lose access to revenue, leading them to cut back on expenditures. There are some pretty serious issues with the economics of poorer/richer teams and how it impacts competitiveness, and this not only doesn’t solve them, it could exacerbate them.
I am really skeptical that this is a problem at all. Most of the teams who struggled last year were either trying to be respectable and just failed (Rangers, Giants, Orioles) or are trying to compete for a championship in a couple of years instead of just winning 75 games every year (Reds, Padres, White Sox, Royals, Tigers). The latter of which is a totally reasonable adaptation for low-income teams to take on in the face of richer superteams. The exceptions are the Marlins, who don’t give a damn about winning one way or the other, and the Tigers, who tried to spend their way to a championship and failed, leaving them with lots of payroll and little talent.
I agree. I don’t think tanking is a problem and if it was, I’d rather they institute an expansion or larger Rule 5 draft, where teams could protect say 10 or 12 players and after a bad team chooses one gets to protect 3 or so more.
One thing I have thought about that would help competitive balance and which may also discourage selling too hard would be making players eligible for the Rule 5 draft one year earlier, but giving another year of options. This makes it harder to stockpile massive amounts of prospects after selling, and also would give rebuilding teams more chances to grab guys who are on the cusp.
I do wonder if that would have all the same problems as what I proposed earlier, but I think changes like that–which are more universal, but which even out the extreme situations–are better solutions.
Interesting idea. I think Craig is trying to shoehorn/disguise a “get all the FA’s signed” solution into a parity solution. I just don’t think forcing the White Sox to give Craig Kimbrel a 6yr, $100M deal does a whole lot for competitive parity. If you want the White Sox to be more capable for more than 1 year, then you want them to have access to players like Jeff McNeil who might be superfluous on a fairly loaded Mets’ infield.
How about getting rid of (or modifying, in some way) the requirement that Rule 5 draftees stay on their big league club the whole year? That has a number of negative consequences, including hurting the draftee’s development and incentivizing PED use. Even awful teams find it difficult to keep a player who really should be in A-ball on their 25-man roster all year. If they didn’t have to, it would be another way to get back to respectability and build up their farm system.
I like this idea in combination with some form of ST’s suggestion.
sad how half the teams are not trying their hardest to win. It’s killing the fan attendance in those cities and not growing the sport.
Imagine being the Giants and having to send $32M to the A’s even though you were trying your hardest to win in your fading window.
Imagine being the A’s in a very-beholden-to-the-giants media market, where the A’s can win 24 games more, but the giants writers come out with ‘opinions’ that the teams should just trade rosters, because the giants FO is sooo much better.
(Would this happen if the giants had a 97 win season and the A’s a 73 win season? HELL NO, they wouldn’t even bother to mention “some other local baseball team”.)
Imagine this literally happened this week, with Scott Ostler and his seemingly-paid-for-by-the-giants-homer-goggles ignoring the Larry Baer issue to go after his favorite boogeyman, John Fisher, for not spending enough. Because that’s TOTALLY worse than what Larry Baer did.
Perhaps the giants should worry more about having handed out huge contracts with no-trade clauses to been-to-the-top-now-over-the-hill declining veterans.
BTW, this is the last year the A’s get any rev share (only 25%), and haven’t received full rev share since 2015.
Imagine that.
ya that’d suck too lol
On top of this revamped revenue-sharing system (of which I’m a huge fan), there should be draft pick allocation changes. First team to miss the playoffs gets the top pick, second team gets second pick, etc. down to the worst team in the league getting the 19th pick. From there, any playoff team pick-allocation system can be debated (WS winner gets 20th down to WC loser getting 30th, or WC loser gets 20th up to WS winner getting 30th).
I think if you want to reduce tanking (which is not much of a problem, IMO) what you should do is do draft order based on record after you’ve been eliminated from the playoffs.
I like this idea, but there’s too much variance around draft picks. I think you should make it more painful. Let the team with the best record outside of the playoffs, if they so choose, trade anyone in the minors for the worst team’s top prospect/whoever they want in the minor leagues. Second best record, second worst team. I’m not saying that we should go all the way down, maybe just the best and worst five, but it would make the end of the season FAR more interesting for those teams than it is right now.
I’ve advocated this approach for other sports where tanking is a much more blatant problem and where the draft is less of a crap shoot (NBA, NHL). It does create some of its own issues though. Imagine if you are the #8 team in the west in the NBA approaching playoff time. What is better for your future? Getting squashed in 4 games by the Warriors and getting a 1st round draft pick at the 17th spot, or “oops” losing the last few regular season games, just missing the playoffs, and getting the 1st overall pick?
The formulation I’ve seen is the total number of wins after you’ve been eliminated.
This gives the worst teams an advantage – they have more opportunities to win games. But it also encourages them to try to win games.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone put forward a “most season wins” for non-playoff teams. Probably for the exact reason you stated (8 Seed v. 1st pick)
This could be very interesting if implemented consistently with a owner/player revenue share model also designed to increase competitiveness. I haven’t done at even the basic research on existing models in other sports, but had an idea come to mind. Ignoring the complexities of selecting a split (50/50?, 60/40?) and determining the revenue base (all of BAM included?, etc.). You could create a player pool model with proceeds shared across players that could also deal with the pay/risk issues for players with limited service time.
The idea is to have the owners pay into a pool, possibly controlled by the mlbpa, that would be allocated to provide additional value to players more broadly. Possibly better retirement or insurance benefits to players with lower earnings, or some kind of injury insurance policy that pays players if they get hurt before their payday. Possibly even just straight cash dividend payments that can be allocated based on criteria the players themselves set (likely through the mlbpa).
The owners would only pay in their revenue sharing portion they didn’t spend on player payroll, so teams spending all of their allotted player share on paying players and making their team better won’t have to make any “extra” payments into the fund. Essentially, teams will have to pay a certain amount to players each year based on the revenue share either in player salaries or contributions to the “general players’ fund”, so they will be highly incentivized to spend it on their own team.
Again, I’ve done no research on whether someone already has this idea or how revenue sharing works in other sports. It just seemed like an easy no-brainer idea that would probably instantly solve the current free agency malaise.
The problem with using MLB payroll as the barometer of teams spending is that it isn’t all there is to it. MiLB costs, international spending, scouting, etc… all goes into it. And every team allocates resources in varying amounts. Theoretically a team in an “honest” rebuild might pare down the MLB payroll but turn around and invest more heavily in non-MLB player acquisition and development.
Even so. A proper payroll floor accomplishes your goal. A team that misses the floor has to distribute the difference around to all of the players on the MLB roster. If you further set the league wide player salary share to some fixed percentage of MLB revenue then the same thing happens, but on a league wide scale.
But neither of those salary floors do anything to address competitiveness, which is only loosely connected to payroll anyway.
“A team that misses the floor has to distribute the difference around to all of the players on the MLB roster. ”
How about distributing the difference to the players on the other teams in that teams division?
I agree with the concept of using revenue sharing as a carrot/stick for competitiveness, and have advocated this all off-season. But I think the approach suggested here, including putting teams into tiers, is overly complicated and not necessarily fair. I think a better approach would be to set a floor (maybe at 50% of the top tier Competitive Balance Tax threshold, currently $246M?) and say that if a team doesn’t spend at least that amount AND doesn’t finish at least .500, then they forfeit some percentage (half?) of their revenue sharing money for the following year. Any forfeited funds would go into a pool for the players (pension plan, or some other fund designated by the Players Association, etc.)
I think this would be more fair – because of injuries and player off-years, teams cannot always control winning, but they can control trying to win, through spending. And if they’re not spending and they’re not competing, they don’t really need, or deserve, the revenue sharing money. If they can win without spending, then they get rewarded by getting to keep the money, but if they spend the money and try to compete they shouldn’t be penalized.
Absent a proper public accounting of actual team revenues, this all just so much ideological nonsense. None of really know what the revenue:expenditure ratio is for any particular team or the league as a whole. If the MLBPA wanted to effect real change, they’d strike to see the books.
On the revenue side, the MLBPA has access to the information that you are saying they should demand. Google the MLB CBA – it’s publicly available – and read the Revenue Sharing section (pages 130 to 149).
Doesn’t reducing the money going to the worst teams serve to keep them the worst teams making it tougher for them to compete. Its a regressive tax.
do yourself and favor and learn about something called LOOSH
game over
So first of all bravo on this set-up, I love the idea of adding competitive incentives. One think about world football that I really appreciate is the strong financial incentives for teams to win promotion to the top division, and then from there to qualify for continental competitions.
However, the three tiers structure, I really don’t like. The tiers are too rigid. Why should the White Sox pay 11 million dollars and the Padres receive 10 million dollars? The Padres only won 4 more games, and according to your Forbes source, had the same revenue and the franchise is worth only like 10-15% less? That is a huge disparity, and it could be in the White Sox interest to cut revenue and/or disinvest to reduce the value of the team, or at least slow that growth so that the bottom teams catch up.
I think you’re onto something, but we need to smooth that out a bit more.
I would like the draft to operating in descending order of wins for all non-playoff teams. That would encourage all teams to compete all the time.
Or would five teams try to be the first-team-not-in instead of the road wildcard team?
I’m not sure there is a tanking problem and if there was than I’m not sure I’d go with the revenue sharing based on wins thing. This seems like a good way to kill a franchise for a generation if a team runs into bad luck/injuries. If you had to do something, keep it simple. A salary floor for revenue sharing teams in the positive and an even higher salary floor for the big market teams.
29 teams are listed, but Rangers were left out… I presume they’d be part of tier of medium-revenue teams.
Edit: Just noticed they do appear in tables with other middle-tier teams, so never mind!
I agree that the AL situation isn’t great. But at the same time, are we just overreacting to a very particular distribution of teams and talent? If it were a fundamental problem in baseball, then the NL wouldn’t have its (what seems like) hundreds of teams in postseason contention.
On top of that, I honestly don’t see tanking as a problem. I firmly believe that Astros fans are happy with the way the previous 5-6 years played out, for example. I’m a fan of a big market team so I can’t relate directly, but I think that if I was a fan of a small market team, I would prefer full blown rebuilds followed by a few seasons of reasonable hope of reaching the playoffs than constant mediocrity.
I think it’s clear that pitchers hitting leads to competitive balance. Somehow.
Any formula you use, some FO’s will figure out how to game, but I do like the idea of changing the ratio of incentive/disincentive to something that at least encourages effort and discourages fire-sales. I’d also like to add one thing–either make the playoffs 6 teams, with a bye for the top two records in the first round (and maybe a 3 game first round series) or bring it back to 4. The one game playoffs are idiotic, and, as Craig notes, certainly doesn’t seem to be drawing people to compete. You might also look at something else….docking teams a portion of the revenue sharing for pure salary dumps, especially the late waivers.
There’s another price to tanking or stripping your roster at the trade deadline–it hits at the integrity of the results of the teams who are competing for playoff spots. There’s a big difference between playing a team with a 78 win roster, as opposed who’s sold everything not nailed down and is now a 60 win roster
Make the top 7 draft picks a lottery so the worst team isn’t guaranteed the number 1 selection.
the problem with MLB is it’s in the “middle of the road”….to me they must go one way or another, either they are separate businesses of they are franchises. To me they are franchises, and those they need to share the revenue evenly, keep the draft, keep the territorial restrictions, etc. That is not to say you can’t get a salary cap with a floor, which the players turned down in the 1990’s and they also turned down a salary floor with no cap, because they felt it would lead to a cap…..but let’s say they are separate businesses, they get rid of the draft, don’t share the revenue and here is the big one, let teams move wherever they want. To me the big teams want it both ways, they don’t want to share the revenue evenly, but if Tampa can not generate the money needed to compete, why should they have to pay a territorial fees if they want to move to Brooklyn. I mean the big teams want it both ways….
Baseball History tells us there used to be 3 teams in New York, 2 teams in Boston (red sox and braves), 2 teams in St. Louis (Browns and Cardinals), 2 teams in Philadelphia (athletics and phillies)
My point is that it’s easy for the NYs and LAs in the world and the players association to complain when the small markets don’t spend, but then again they are in a box and not allowed to move.
I for one still dream of equity and think the players should consider a salary cap at the right price, which would be higher percent of the gross, shorter season, in season furlough days (6-12) like what Roger Clemens would have, of course salary cap floor, expansion. Who would be hurt is the Bryce Harpers and Mike Trout’s but each team would have to spend so much and I think the players as a whole would make out so much better.
When I watch NFL we seldom hear the word “small market team”, hope that in my lifetime that would become possible in MLB
The problem with proposing a salary cap is that effectively that’s what the luxury tax is supposed to do. The mainstream baseball media has spent the last two years bashing the large market teams for not exceeding the tax threshold. Basically we’ve seen the effect of a cap and folks have spent the last two seasons complaining about it. The teams at the top have found ways to remain competitive and under the tax which should increase parity as they arent simply attempting to buy their way to a World Series. A floor is a much more effective approach to me. I’m fine with revenue sharing to a point to help pseudo level the playing field and define the floor, but a cap clearly does nothing to increase parity or level the field. That’s just based on the evidence in front of us.
I like this plan, I think that it has a lot of potential. Another way to discourage tanking is to eliminate the draft bonus pools. Teams with the worst record get the most money to spend in draft. This means that an extra win or two can hurt your chance of future success. Before draft pools, teams could spend whatever they wanted so it didn’t matter where they drafted because they could get a player to fall to their slot by offering a huge bonus.
I fail to see the evidence that MLB teams tank and really wish that we’d stop discussing it here as though it absolutely exists…
how about the top 10 draft picks are decided by offseason spend? as in, the worst 10 teams draft order is based on how much they spend. and if a team spends less than $10MM, they get 0 draft picks.
The problem with all this is that people want to social engineer a predetermined outcome, namely greater parity. That flies in the face of metadata trends at work in our country. Why should the thriving cities/teams prop up the losing ones? This is not economic redistribution like social security, this is plain old capitalism, with teams competing against each other. The only difference is that the bigger teams require opponents, and thus have some financial incentive for keeping feeble franchises afloat.
Why shouldn’t the bigger markets have an advantage? Why should Cubs fans be expected to subsidize the Pirates?
A case in point about larger economic forces is the continued attendance decline in Cleveland even though they keep winning. This is because of reasons far beyond revenue sharing to shape.
You can’t force teams to compete if they don’t wish to. But revenue sharing removes a lot of leverage over competing.
A more laissez-faire approach is required.
1) End all revenue sharing and let a teams’s income be determined by attendance and viewership. That will incentivize performance.
2) Accept reality and start relocating some of these franchises. Having Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cleveland all with franchises is being rooted in the past. This area is in long term, probably permanent decline. Relocate these teams to Nashville, Portland, Sacramento, Austin. Same with Tampa. Some areas just don’t want a team. And remember, the Dodgers and the Giants both moved out of NYC because of attendance issues, and now they’re 2 of the richest teams.