Yankees & Entertainment Sports Network on both Instagram and Twitter. Take it for what it's worth but doesn't sound like something he would do if he wasn't joining the Yankees. He doesn't even follow the Orioles..
Hal already senses those winds before the next CBA.
Could be. In a 32 team league by definition 8 owners made bad investments and 16 made below average investments and 90% of all humans blame others as the reason they dont make more money.
Doubt owners like the Wilpons, as one example, are very self reflective.
is so easy to get past the first players association as some are insinuating. In fact I would guess they have zero chance of getting it. They wouldn’t have universal owner support and the players would always be against it big time. I don’t care what the Yankees spend but I also don’t think they have to spend some percentage or as I fan I will be mad.
I said fans should not over rotate on their ability to spend. imo, it's fun to play amateur GM, but being concerned about contract "mistakes" ( post Ellsbury) without understanding both their ability to spend and the evidence of hard lining value on guys like Corbin
Granted its a bounded capability. As most financial assets are bounded by market realities and stakeholder interests.
Lastly, in terms of forest for trees, you would have to see way in excess for several years before a cap that was more Yankee punitive. in particular you would have to see market price busting per position and ability contracts before there would be action.
Why?
The top teams draw the most attendance. By a huge margin. As long as teams dont see one team setting much higher FA price/value marks and some percentage within the next five teams it's not likely to turn into a problem. no one can complain about the payroll of home grown talent second contracts.
so for example, while I dont advocate it, if they moved Ellsbury and someday Stanton, that's demonstrated cost containment.
it's a deep forest
I wasn't specifically pointing at you, I just used your post to be the link point. The real culprit in my mind is the group at RAB, who really should know better. They have recognized that punitive measures the last several CBAs have placed on the Yanks and how in some cases, the Yanks were the specific target of the punitive measures.
In light of that, they should recognize the consequences of the position they are taking. If they are going to criticize the Yanks for only spending something like 30$ of revenue on the payroll, they should also acknowledge the consequences of the Yanks fully using their financial resources- namely, a hard spending cap AND full revenue sharing (i.e. the NFL and NBA).
Neither of those outcomes are in the Yanks short or long term interests. Thus, if the Yanks are being run as a business, it should (and does appear to be) their plan to use their financial strength only in specific cases and to take steps to minimize the impact elsewhere. This is both for PR and sound business reasons.
While I have no hard evidence to point to to support the belief, I strongly suspect that the move to play near the luxury tax line is a public strategy by the Yanks to signal to the small market teams that the Yanks are at least trying to play by the rules imposed by those teams. This gives the Yanks the high ground if and when the small markets come back hat in hand during the next CBA negotiations.
Furthermore, something to payroll numbers do NOT account for is the spending that the Yanks put into the rest of the product, such as minor league facilities, paying the best coaches, analytics, physical trainers, and other side spending that improves the minor and major league outcomes.
The Yanks spending in these areas has lead to an outcome where they can improve a pitcher's velocity and results- which in turn has produced a number of relievers and several SP in recent years. The hitters have been a little harder to develop, but they have had success in developing ML ready hitters in Judge, Sanchez, and Andujar. They also "fixed" Didi's bat- he was all glove, no hit when the Yanks traded for him. Same story with Hicks- who couldn't do much of anything in Minnesota with the bat.
These are hidden figures that do not show up in the payroll numbers, but are costs that the team invests in the product, with BIG impacts in the on-field results.
With that said, if the Yanks went "all in" on payroll, and the small market clubs (who are a majority of the owners) decided to curb the Yanks and force revenue sharing, the Yanks would have to cut back on these investments to focus on ML payroll simply because the unseen numbers that have been invested before would instead be shared with the other 29 teams and not be there anymore.
The bottom line, when you criticize the Yanks for spending a low percentage of their revenues on payroll, stop for a minute and think through the logical consequences of the Yanks spending the equivalent percentage of their revenues that other clubs spend- and how those clubs would react. Short sighted thinking often leads to negative outcomes- and the short sighted calls for the Yanks to maximize their payroll spending will lead directly to a hard cap and full revenue sharing.
RAB should know better than to fighting this strawman and should be ashamed of their posts on this subject.
is so easy to get past the first players association as some are insinuating. In fact I would guess they have zero chance of getting it. They wouldn’t have universal owner support and the players would always be against it big time. I don’t care what the Yankees spend but I also don’t think they have to spend some percentage or as I fan I will be mad.
I fully agree with the last sentence in your post and wonder why some fans get themselves so tied up in knots over this.
However, as to the hard cap and revenue sharing, this is much easier than people realize. The next CBA negotiations are going to be MUCH more contentious than many realize. The union now sees that it negotiated a VERY bad deal in the last CBA.
Veteran players are getting less and less money, fewer long term guaranteed deals, and the average that players get went down for the first time in years. The stars will always get paid, but the majority of the vets are being hurt.
Furthermore, the gaming going on with call-ups for young players to delay their FA by a year, or hold off their arbitration eligibility in hurting the younger players. Many do not get to the majors until they are 23 or older. If their team games their call-up to have them basically play for 7 years of team control instead of 6, taken together with the growing trend of over 30 players getting few guaranteed multi-year contracts, reduces the future salary growth for these players.
In short, the union is going to have to take a hard line in the next CBA. The owners like how the new system is going, and are very likely to push for even more gains.
There is a possibility that there is another labor stoppage in the next CBA. Remember that the last time there was a major stoppage, the owners locked out the players and cancelled the season in their attempt to get a cap imposed. This time, it could be even more draconian.
The owners COULD decide to just implement their last offer to the union, who would then go on strike. The owners will likely gamble that the union will crumble- mostly for the reasons outlined above- with fewer veterans having long term guaranteed deals, they will feel a lot of financial pressure when their contracts end. Remember how the NFL players caved years ago?
Sure, the union can go to court and seek an injuction like they did years ago- but will it be in time and will it resolve the longer term issues like vet pay? Not sure.
Furthermore, the issue of revenue sharing is even easier for the owners- if they as a group, decide that is the direction they will go, I believe that they have a rule that an owners can't sue other owners to stop a policy. In other words, since the small and mid-market teams form a majority of the league owners, they could decide to make a rule that all revenue- TV, ticket sales, merchandise revenues that go to the teams (not the player percentage), etc. will be put into a pool and shared equally among the teams.
In short, that would take away a vast portion of the Yanks revenue- and if I am right that the Yanks can't stop the other owners from doing this by rule- their financial advantage goes away.
In other words, this isn't as far fetched as some might think.
stream that the NFL does. I think the NFL gets a very large percentage of their income from TV contracts. MLB does not. It is easy to have revenue sharing when a huge percentage of revenue comes from a source that is really equal to all teams.
My guess is that a downturn makes several owners think that way. For baseball, it would be part of the path to second tier American sport.
Its an expensive sport. Hopefully they acknowledge the PT Barnum rule about entertainment dollars which went something like: "People pay full circus prices to see the Elephants and the rest of the time we are holding them long enough to sell lots of peanuts and candy"
So the hedges on this risk is investment in coaching, analytics, video learning, international and minor league players
Out post Rich. I should correct myself, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t possible but I still find it very unlikely that a hard cap gets put in. Even with a hard cap small teams aren’t going to spend to the max that the bigger teams will and with hard cap wouldn’t the small market teams lose money they are getting from the revenue share? You seem more knowledgeable than me on the subject so I am asking not trying to make a point. The small market teams cant have it both ways I would think. They either get to share in the revenue or they can implement a hard cap. I just can’t see a reason that the small market teams would want an NFL style cap. The Yankees, Sox, Dodgers of the league will always make more money and also be more attractive places for players to play. Why would the small market team want to cut off money that is coming in?
A player strike of 30-90 days would kill their franchise value and their profits. It almost relegated the sport to second tier status once before.
If I was a long term ( 50 years) hold investor/operator that was interested in a sport, I would not invest in either football or baseball. Football has medical risk and baseball has the risks of the rise of the mediocre owner that come when you over extend.
The next CBA will be considerably more player-friendly. Either they scrap a luxury tax or mandate a payroll floor. Or they mandate higher minimum salaries across the board (pre-arb, arb, vet minimums). The decline of compensation last year against higher revenues does not sit well with the players at all.
Checking back in after a fun day of college football. BigBlueShock you have no idea what you're talking about. Trust me you don't even know what you don't know. But if ranting about how I view NY sports blind loyalty to fools who run it gives you some peace glad to be of service.
Could be. In a 32 team league by definition 8 owners made bad investments and 16 made below average investments and 90% of all humans blame others as the reason they dont make more money.
Doubt owners like the Wilpons, as one example, are very self reflective.
Granted its a bounded capability. As most financial assets are bounded by market realities and stakeholder interests.
Lastly, in terms of forest for trees, you would have to see way in excess for several years before a cap that was more Yankee punitive. in particular you would have to see market price busting per position and ability contracts before there would be action.
Why?
The top teams draw the most attendance. By a huge margin. As long as teams dont see one team setting much higher FA price/value marks and some percentage within the next five teams it's not likely to turn into a problem. no one can complain about the payroll of home grown talent second contracts.
so for example, while I dont advocate it, if they moved Ellsbury and someday Stanton, that's demonstrated cost containment.
it's a deep forest
I wasn't specifically pointing at you, I just used your post to be the link point. The real culprit in my mind is the group at RAB, who really should know better. They have recognized that punitive measures the last several CBAs have placed on the Yanks and how in some cases, the Yanks were the specific target of the punitive measures.
In light of that, they should recognize the consequences of the position they are taking. If they are going to criticize the Yanks for only spending something like 30$ of revenue on the payroll, they should also acknowledge the consequences of the Yanks fully using their financial resources- namely, a hard spending cap AND full revenue sharing (i.e. the NFL and NBA).
Neither of those outcomes are in the Yanks short or long term interests. Thus, if the Yanks are being run as a business, it should (and does appear to be) their plan to use their financial strength only in specific cases and to take steps to minimize the impact elsewhere. This is both for PR and sound business reasons.
While I have no hard evidence to point to to support the belief, I strongly suspect that the move to play near the luxury tax line is a public strategy by the Yanks to signal to the small market teams that the Yanks are at least trying to play by the rules imposed by those teams. This gives the Yanks the high ground if and when the small markets come back hat in hand during the next CBA negotiations.
Furthermore, something to payroll numbers do NOT account for is the spending that the Yanks put into the rest of the product, such as minor league facilities, paying the best coaches, analytics, physical trainers, and other side spending that improves the minor and major league outcomes.
The Yanks spending in these areas has lead to an outcome where they can improve a pitcher's velocity and results- which in turn has produced a number of relievers and several SP in recent years. The hitters have been a little harder to develop, but they have had success in developing ML ready hitters in Judge, Sanchez, and Andujar. They also "fixed" Didi's bat- he was all glove, no hit when the Yanks traded for him. Same story with Hicks- who couldn't do much of anything in Minnesota with the bat.
These are hidden figures that do not show up in the payroll numbers, but are costs that the team invests in the product, with BIG impacts in the on-field results.
With that said, if the Yanks went "all in" on payroll, and the small market clubs (who are a majority of the owners) decided to curb the Yanks and force revenue sharing, the Yanks would have to cut back on these investments to focus on ML payroll simply because the unseen numbers that have been invested before would instead be shared with the other 29 teams and not be there anymore.
The bottom line, when you criticize the Yanks for spending a low percentage of their revenues on payroll, stop for a minute and think through the logical consequences of the Yanks spending the equivalent percentage of their revenues that other clubs spend- and how those clubs would react. Short sighted thinking often leads to negative outcomes- and the short sighted calls for the Yanks to maximize their payroll spending will lead directly to a hard cap and full revenue sharing.
RAB should know better than to fighting this strawman and should be ashamed of their posts on this subject.
I fully agree with the last sentence in your post and wonder why some fans get themselves so tied up in knots over this.
However, as to the hard cap and revenue sharing, this is much easier than people realize. The next CBA negotiations are going to be MUCH more contentious than many realize. The union now sees that it negotiated a VERY bad deal in the last CBA.
Veteran players are getting less and less money, fewer long term guaranteed deals, and the average that players get went down for the first time in years. The stars will always get paid, but the majority of the vets are being hurt.
Furthermore, the gaming going on with call-ups for young players to delay their FA by a year, or hold off their arbitration eligibility in hurting the younger players. Many do not get to the majors until they are 23 or older. If their team games their call-up to have them basically play for 7 years of team control instead of 6, taken together with the growing trend of over 30 players getting few guaranteed multi-year contracts, reduces the future salary growth for these players.
In short, the union is going to have to take a hard line in the next CBA. The owners like how the new system is going, and are very likely to push for even more gains.
There is a possibility that there is another labor stoppage in the next CBA. Remember that the last time there was a major stoppage, the owners locked out the players and cancelled the season in their attempt to get a cap imposed. This time, it could be even more draconian.
The owners COULD decide to just implement their last offer to the union, who would then go on strike. The owners will likely gamble that the union will crumble- mostly for the reasons outlined above- with fewer veterans having long term guaranteed deals, they will feel a lot of financial pressure when their contracts end. Remember how the NFL players caved years ago?
Sure, the union can go to court and seek an injuction like they did years ago- but will it be in time and will it resolve the longer term issues like vet pay? Not sure.
Furthermore, the issue of revenue sharing is even easier for the owners- if they as a group, decide that is the direction they will go, I believe that they have a rule that an owners can't sue other owners to stop a policy. In other words, since the small and mid-market teams form a majority of the league owners, they could decide to make a rule that all revenue- TV, ticket sales, merchandise revenues that go to the teams (not the player percentage), etc. will be put into a pool and shared equally among the teams.
In short, that would take away a vast portion of the Yanks revenue- and if I am right that the Yanks can't stop the other owners from doing this by rule- their financial advantage goes away.
In other words, this isn't as far fetched as some might think.
My guess is that a downturn makes several owners think that way. For baseball, it would be part of the path to second tier American sport.
Its an expensive sport. Hopefully they acknowledge the PT Barnum rule about entertainment dollars which went something like: "People pay full circus prices to see the Elephants and the rest of the time we are holding them long enough to sell lots of peanuts and candy"
So the hedges on this risk is investment in coaching, analytics, video learning, international and minor league players
A player strike of 30-90 days would kill their franchise value and their profits. It almost relegated the sport to second tier status once before.
If I was a long term ( 50 years) hold investor/operator that was interested in a sport, I would not invest in either football or baseball. Football has medical risk and baseball has the risks of the rise of the mediocre owner that come when you over extend.