I calculated in my article about the White Sox last year:
"The major league minimum salary is $740,000. Therefore, doing the math, a replacement team would have a payroll of $19,240,000."
Therefore, maybe a good question for some teams is not "why are they paying so little?" but "why are they paying so MUCH?" A Replacement team would be expected to attain a win percentage of .294, if memory serves. CWS was under that. The Marlins and Rays are not much above that, and are paying many multiples of $19.2 M.
Yeah - frankly, the Twins are one of those franchises that really boggles my mind.
It's not Boston, I know — but Minnesota really shouldn't be a "small market" town. And the Twins have had their share of success over the decades, too. You'd think they'd want to reinvest in the team at some point.
But the team that really makes no sense to me is the Chicago White Sox. That's got to be a "big market," right? They act like they're allergic to money.
Yeah, and it shows. The Chi-Sox are bigtime worst in the MLB right now. (Not that my Twins have much to brag about.) Many of us Twins fans believe the owners are just in it for what money they can squeeze out of the team — not because they love baseball.
The haves and the have nots is of course not new to baseball, although low payroll doesn't mean no success on the field. The Rays for example over the last 15+ years have been to the post season several times.
The Rays stadium situation there really isn't a better choice than the spring training stadiums in the area, other than leaving the city for the year. It is going to cost close to 60 million likely to get the Trop ready (undetermined how much of that insurance will cover) and ultimately have a vacant stadium by 2028, and the Rays as likely as not no longer in the area.
What would be a better, less disruptive solution than having the Rays play at Steinbrenner Field while the Trop is being repaired? What are your thoughts on Red Sox and Cubs having high revenues but being in the bottom ten of the percent going to payroll?
The Trop is a perfect example of why cities should not be in the business of building sport facilities for privately owned teams. I read the other day that Tampa Bay is going to spend around $28 million per its contractual obligations to help fix the roof. I'm not certain what money the Rays will contribute, or if they're going to contribute anything at all.
The problem is that the city shouldn't take the responsibility for repairing these kinds of damages. Ballparks should belong to the teams, and the teams should take on the risk and costs associated with their construction and maintenance. It's ridiculous to expect municipalities to do this.
This system exists because of the Gilded Age economic system central to Major League Baseball — what I call the National League System. This dates back to 1875, and has not changed. It is focused on creating territorial monopolies for owners chosen by the league. It's a centrally structured, top-down system, and its negative impact is quite literally destroying interest in the game as we speak.
Sadly, most sports fans in the United States and Canada cannot conceive of any structure outside the National League system. Alternate structures do exist, of course — in fact, most of the rest of the world uses systems that allow for competing teams to exist in the same cities, as well as promotion and relegation.
The current system creates hugely perverse incentives for owners to refuse to invest money in their own teams. Check out how the Pirates have done since the mid-1980s, for example. Success in the early 1990s didn't make the owners any more successful, and so they went for the "small market" path, artificially keeping the team payroll as low as possible while stocking up on luxury tax money and whatever other forms of profit the owners could scrounge up. PNC Park, as nice as it is, was funded largely by public money, which is a symptom of the real problem. The owners of the Pirates have basically no risk in running the franchise, and are able to consistently make large profits despite having a team that has been nothing short of disastrous on the field.
The Cubs and Red Sox are discovering what most Major League owners are discovering. The truth is that the expanded postseason takes away incentives to spend big money on star players. If you can finish a little bit above .500, you're more likely than not to make the post season in some form. And, in the end, that's likely all your fans will care about.
What you're seeing right now is a somewhat complex form of owner collusion. Instead of tacitly agreeing to not sign big name free agents like they did in the 1980s, owners have now systematically reduced the incentive to put out a competitive product. Don't let the few large salaries fool you: the median salary has dropped, and the dirty little secret is that some teams (the Athletics and White Sox come immediately to mind) are basically rotating players in and out of AA, AAA, and the Major Leagues to cut salary obligations.
The root cause is the monopolistic National League system. And, sadly, it likely will not end. In the long run, though, you'll see interest in the sport completely die off. I don't think my children even know the rules.
I calculated in my article about the White Sox last year:
"The major league minimum salary is $740,000. Therefore, doing the math, a replacement team would have a payroll of $19,240,000."
Therefore, maybe a good question for some teams is not "why are they paying so little?" but "why are they paying so MUCH?" A Replacement team would be expected to attain a win percentage of .294, if memory serves. CWS was under that. The Marlins and Rays are not much above that, and are paying many multiples of $19.2 M.
Fascinating, and it goes towards explaining my Twins.
Yeah - frankly, the Twins are one of those franchises that really boggles my mind.
It's not Boston, I know — but Minnesota really shouldn't be a "small market" town. And the Twins have had their share of success over the decades, too. You'd think they'd want to reinvest in the team at some point.
But the team that really makes no sense to me is the Chicago White Sox. That's got to be a "big market," right? They act like they're allergic to money.
Yeah, and it shows. The Chi-Sox are bigtime worst in the MLB right now. (Not that my Twins have much to brag about.) Many of us Twins fans believe the owners are just in it for what money they can squeeze out of the team — not because they love baseball.
The haves and the have nots is of course not new to baseball, although low payroll doesn't mean no success on the field. The Rays for example over the last 15+ years have been to the post season several times.
The Rays stadium situation there really isn't a better choice than the spring training stadiums in the area, other than leaving the city for the year. It is going to cost close to 60 million likely to get the Trop ready (undetermined how much of that insurance will cover) and ultimately have a vacant stadium by 2028, and the Rays as likely as not no longer in the area.
Is John Fisher the worst baseball owner in the MLB.
I’m surprised how low of these payroll to revenue ratios are.
What would be a better, less disruptive solution than having the Rays play at Steinbrenner Field while the Trop is being repaired? What are your thoughts on Red Sox and Cubs having high revenues but being in the bottom ten of the percent going to payroll?
I think you're missing my general point.
The Trop is a perfect example of why cities should not be in the business of building sport facilities for privately owned teams. I read the other day that Tampa Bay is going to spend around $28 million per its contractual obligations to help fix the roof. I'm not certain what money the Rays will contribute, or if they're going to contribute anything at all.
The problem is that the city shouldn't take the responsibility for repairing these kinds of damages. Ballparks should belong to the teams, and the teams should take on the risk and costs associated with their construction and maintenance. It's ridiculous to expect municipalities to do this.
This system exists because of the Gilded Age economic system central to Major League Baseball — what I call the National League System. This dates back to 1875, and has not changed. It is focused on creating territorial monopolies for owners chosen by the league. It's a centrally structured, top-down system, and its negative impact is quite literally destroying interest in the game as we speak.
Sadly, most sports fans in the United States and Canada cannot conceive of any structure outside the National League system. Alternate structures do exist, of course — in fact, most of the rest of the world uses systems that allow for competing teams to exist in the same cities, as well as promotion and relegation.
The current system creates hugely perverse incentives for owners to refuse to invest money in their own teams. Check out how the Pirates have done since the mid-1980s, for example. Success in the early 1990s didn't make the owners any more successful, and so they went for the "small market" path, artificially keeping the team payroll as low as possible while stocking up on luxury tax money and whatever other forms of profit the owners could scrounge up. PNC Park, as nice as it is, was funded largely by public money, which is a symptom of the real problem. The owners of the Pirates have basically no risk in running the franchise, and are able to consistently make large profits despite having a team that has been nothing short of disastrous on the field.
The Cubs and Red Sox are discovering what most Major League owners are discovering. The truth is that the expanded postseason takes away incentives to spend big money on star players. If you can finish a little bit above .500, you're more likely than not to make the post season in some form. And, in the end, that's likely all your fans will care about.
What you're seeing right now is a somewhat complex form of owner collusion. Instead of tacitly agreeing to not sign big name free agents like they did in the 1980s, owners have now systematically reduced the incentive to put out a competitive product. Don't let the few large salaries fool you: the median salary has dropped, and the dirty little secret is that some teams (the Athletics and White Sox come immediately to mind) are basically rotating players in and out of AA, AAA, and the Major Leagues to cut salary obligations.
The root cause is the monopolistic National League system. And, sadly, it likely will not end. In the long run, though, you'll see interest in the sport completely die off. I don't think my children even know the rules.