Roger Clemens is a Yankee again. He signed what amounts to a $28 million contract to make about 25 starts. Thus will begin the annual whine-fest about how baseball needs a salary cap, so here is my semi-annual explanation as to why baseball does not need a salary cap and how the NFL has been responsible for one of the most amazing snow-jobs in professional sports history.
It’s no secret that the NFL and its fans are in an abusive relationship. The NFL is very much like the RIAA with better PR. The NFL unleashes its lawyers at a hint of provocation, as proved this past year when a church was going to throw a Super Bowl party on a television larger than the allowed 55 inches (source). The NFL blacks out games that don’t sell out in a local market. The NFL refuses to have any sort of legal online distribution of their games in the United States, so if you’re a Giants’ fan who happens to be living in Los Angeles, you’re just out of luck. The NFL created a network and decided to get into a fight with cable companies by demanding they raise everyone’s rates for a network that less than a tenth of their customers will watch, then having the abject gall to charge an additional fee if cable companies carrying their worthless network wanted to air NFL Network exclusive games (source). This is after they continually slap the cable companies in the mouth by keeping their Sunday Ticket package exclusively on DirecTV. The NFL routinely holds cities hostage for new stadiums and tax breaks while they don’t have one single franchise valued at less than half-a-billion dollars (source).
All the while, the NFL will point to the other leagues as non-fan friendly. The saddest part is their fans buy it. As I said, the NFL spends their days punching their fans in the face, and their fans keep insisting that they bumped into the door. None of these anti-fan practices are more disgusting than the salary cap. Not just because of what it’s done to football, but because fans insist it’s what keeps the league fun. Never mind the team that people point to as the ultimate salary cap success story (the Patriots) became good only when they installed a Parcells-disciple at head coach and they lucked in to a franchise quarterback to replace Shakes Bledsoe.
But Daniels, you may say, the salary cap made the NFL better. Look at how competitive the NFL is! And I respond with a simple fact; since the NFL instituted the salary cap in 1994 there have been 10 different Super Bowl Champions in 13 years. In the same period, the NBA (salary cap) has featured 6 champions in 13 years with Rockets, Lakers, Spurs, and Bulls combining for 11 of the 13. Meanwhile, in the uncapped major league baseball, there have been 8 different champions in 12 World Series with only the Yankees and Marlins having more than one; and not a single repeat champion since the years started beginning with a 2. Not a huge difference there.
Meanwhile, the salary cap hasn’t made the Cardinals any better nor has it made the Cowboys any worse because, simply, a salary cap doesn’t cure crappy management.
But, as I do from time to time, I’m off topic. The point of this column was to tell people to keep their salary cap from my baseball and to present a few reasons why it’s unnecessary and why it doesn’t work in a sport with 162 games in a season.
The first question I always ask people when they say baseball needs a salary cap, because the Yankees have a horrifically unfair advantage and blah blah blah, is simply this: why do you need a salary cap? Their response is, obviously, to remove the financial advantage large market teams (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) have over small market teams (Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland). The next logical question after this is simple: pick a number. The NFL’s salary cap number for 2006 was right in the ballpark of $100 million. Currently, there are only seven teams in the major league that spend nine figures. So, obviously, setting the cap number at $100 million is still unfair to small market teams. After all, the Yankees and the Red Sox can spend to the $100 million number, but the Pirates still spend less than $40 million, so that number isn’t fair.
The Braves feature the 15th highest payroll in the Major League at $87 million, so maybe the correct number is $80 million; yet just under half the league (14 teams) started 2007 with a payroll over this number, so there’s still a financial advantage. In fact, the San Diego Padres won their division last season with a payroll of around $60 million. So, the only legitimate cap number you can fairly institute is about $60 million dollars or less because the bottom quarter of the league (Padres, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Pirates, Nationals, Marlins, Devil Rays) spend even less than that, which makes your average MLB player’s salary $2.4 million.
Should go over well with Donald Fehr.
Now, as the conversation continues, it usually becomes necessary to remind people of the NFL’s salary floor, which requires ownership to spend a hard number on salary. The Pirates, Nationals, Devil Rays, and Marlins all spend less than $40 million per season. If a floor is applied, these teams have to start spending more money. Now, assuming that the Devil Rays, Pirates, and Marlins aren’t lying about their income and profits, it would quickly become obvious that the very fans who complain about a lack of salary cap would be the first fans to lose their franchises to Portland, Brooklyn, San Antonio, or Las Vegas if a salary floor is applied. Assuming these franchises aren’t lying, it wouldn’t be long before the team either folded due to operating loss or moved to a place where they could afford the required $50 million per season.
Assuming I haven’t lost Johnny Salary Cap by this point in the conversation, we then move on to various salary cap logistics. The simplest question being: do American League teams get a bigger cap number than National League teams? After all, the American League stocks a 10th every day position, so how is it fair that they should have the same cap value as a team that doesn’t?
Secondly, what counts against the salary cap in baseball? You’re talking about an organization that has two separate rosters (25-man and 40-man) and network of 246 minor-league affiliate teams. Which salaries count? If you draft a player, then don’t see him again in the major leagues for four years; does his signing bonus count against the cap? If you take a guy off the 40-man roster, does he have to be replaced with someone with the same cap number?
And the saddest part of the whole thing would be the complete devastation of trading. Gone would be the days of restocking a farm system by trading off an older guy with a contract and in would be the NBA style trades that you need a Trade Calculator to validate. Only players with similar cap numbers, or combination of players with similar cap numbers, would ever happen. Things like the Bobby Abreu deal last season, which was undoubtedly in the best interest of both teams, would never happen. Why? Because the Yankees would have had to send back $16 million worth of players to the Phillies. Entire minor league rosters don’t make $16 million per year. There would be no buyers and sellers at the trade deadline because no team would ever have any incentive to trade anyone. It’s not the NBA where draft picks can be included as part of a deal because draft picks in baseball are essentially meaningless. Teams take a guy out of college and then he’s vapor for three years. It doesn’t work.
My favorite part about this discussion is that it can’t happen in baseball at the moment. The MLBPA is still one of the strongest unions in the country. Baseball isn’t falling on hard times and the owners can’t claim poverty. Thankfully, they’ll leave the game alone for a little while longer.
