Originally posted by SmasandianWell, the Rays kind of tarnish that argument, but I know what you're saying: the Red Sox and the Yankees. But the owners are willing to put money into it, even if it hurts their bottom line. The Yankee organization hasn't been making money since like 2000, but yet, they still put money into the team. Why? Because its better for them to. The YES Network is what makes the Yankees money, not the actual team.
It's true though. Why do we see the same teams in the AL East? They can afford the massive contracts.
Every league has trade deadlines where a team trades their veterans for young players. But those guys are 30-35 years old.There is something wrong with that and its called owners not being willing to spend money. Honestly. The Twins have a billionaire for an owner, but yet he's only willing to offer Joe Mauer a six year, 100 million extension when the guy makes the team much more money than that. If an owner can't afford to put a product out there that will make then contenders, then they need to sell a portion of their team and get some capital so they can.Now, teams are traded great players who are in their mid 20's for even younger players. There is something wrong with that.
More teams can pay? That's complete bullshit. A team like the Jays pay 80-100 million dollars a season and they can't even get to second place. They could pay more but they'll be out of business.They can't get to second place because they were dealt the short end of the stick in being in the same division as the Sox and the Yankees. To be fair, though, their farm system hasn't produced top-level talent: some good players, some solid players, but not star level talent that they need. They've been in a dead zone the last few years: not good enough to be a contender but not bad enough to get good picks, which is unfortunate. If they had that star talent, and they pay 85 million like they usually do, they'd have better seasons, which would create more revenue, which would....make them able to pay more. It's a circle, man, you put more money into it, you'll get more out. IF, and there is always a stipulation on everything, the team still can't afford it and revenue does not go up, then that team has to move. That market obviously can't sustain them; not saying Toronto is like that, but every time I see a Blue Jays game at Rogers, the place is half empty.
What the league should do and it will probably happen in the next 20 years is a minimum salary cap to 50-60 million dollars and salary cap to 100-120 million dollars.
Look at the NFL and NHL. Both never had salary caps. Now they do. It can happen in baseball also.
The reason why MLB is different than the NFL is because of the length of player's careers: players can literally play for 15 seasons at optimum levels; some pitchers can do it even longer. If they did have a hard salary cap, teams would be letting players go left and right. If you mean a soft salary cap, it could work, but the Union would never allow it and I don't think the owners will either because they make more money the way they do things now.
Their should be a league minimum, though, and a sliding scale of luxury tax threshold. if you go past 100 million, you pay 20 million, 150 million, 40 million, 200, 60 million, etc. You'd be surprised how many teams would have to pay that 20 million; last time I checked, it was like 9 teams.
*I left the NHL out because we have to wait a few more seasons to see if this new cap works as well as the NFL one.