Says Howard Bryant
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Says Howard Bryant
Discuss.
on one hand, no they didn't, no amount of spending can guarantee a victory in any one game let alone enough to win a championship.
On the other hand, yes they did, and all other sports fans should be envious of a team willing an able to spend money in any manner available to them in order to improve thier team.
The Yankees most definitely purchased an increased chance at a title. Is that bad? Use what your mama gave you.
I don't really care that the Yankees payroll is $200 gazillion. What irks me are the Yankee fans that don't realize that the Yankees have this built in advantage over other teams. Or, maybe, it is the Yankee fans that are Yankee fans because they realize it...
Anyways, this has little to do with the article.
Baseball is a business. I like baseball, the sport. I put up with all the power/money struggles, city-financed stadiums and Washington Nationalsness.Quote:
Owners across the league this offseason will promote the creation of a salary cap, ostensibly for "competitive balance" -- a way to take money from the players and take down the Yankees simultaneously
It must really suck to be a fan of a team that MLB doesn't want to succeed.Quote:
Sooner or later, the game will crash into a doomsday scenario: a Twins-Rockies World Series in blizzard conditions around Election Day.
I hate the Yankees as any Red Sox fan is supposed to, but really...what do you want them to do with the money? Any successful business puts money back into the business to maintain that success.
The other model is the Boston Bruins...the owner is from Buffelo, he owns the building and the consession company. All he wants is for the team to just make the playoffs to get the extra consession sales. In the NHL most teams clinch a spot by mid-season. I doubt Jacobs could name 5 players on the team, but he knows the consession take of every game.
The way I look at it, almost every team's goal is to win the World Series (besides teams that are in the first stages of rebuilding). So each team pays players that they think will help the team win a World Series. The Yankees on the other hand have a history allure and money, that attracts a lot of good players. They have had a business model over the years that is superior to some teams and have the ability to go out and get some great players. BUT I do not believe that "they buy championships". There have been seasons where they have went out and bought the best players on the market, but came up sort of a championship. Teams with lower total salaries have been able to beat the Yankees in Championship situation (Marlins, Diamondbacks). If the Yankees had the best possible players at the time and looked to buy their way to win a championship, they shouldn't have lost those two World Series in particular. Yankees have done some great business moves, so they have deserved to win as many World Series as they have.
Yankees and New York still suck
Agreed. Jacobs sucks and I can't wait for the day he is out as owner, whenever the hell that is.Quote:
Originally Posted by acetoolguy
The obvious answer is the Yankees use their money to succeed and then use the success to generate more money. Works out pretty well for all concerned.
The real question is why the other "Big Market" Teams don't win nearly as often as the Yankees? The Mets and the Dodgers have every opportunity the Yanks do. Houston is a huge market and the Astros have no compitition. The Cubs?
The Yankees have had down periods. Most notably '65 to '76 and '82 to '95, The certainly spent money in that second period, they spent it badly. The Mets, and the other teams with cash, just spend badly most of the time.
The problem isn't the Yankees by themselves.
The financial structure that control Major League Baseball is horrible. Guaranteed contracts were the worst thing that could ever happen to a sport. If a guy making guaranteed money tells you "I quit and refuse to try unless you trade me" (see Manny Ramirez), you eat his salary or make someone else pay him.
Baseball's financial structure changed with the strike of 1994. The team that benifited from that the most is the New York Yankees. No one can deny that. From 1994 until today, the Yankees have missed the playoffs once.
No, they don't win the championship every year. But, the Yankees never rebuild. They don't have to. They have the money to avoid ever having to rebuild again. That is the financial advantage the Yankees have over everyone else in the post-strike era of baseball.
To think otherwise is to live in denial.
Pretty much the same teams make the playoffs every year. I think its bad for the sport, having said that the Yankees have put the money to use better than others. They also have way more then the other top teams, basically a couple of all stars worth. It IS an unfair advantage and that is just fact.
Like others said, its Yankee fans that don't understand they have an advantage that gets to me. Considering many of them are front runner fans to begin with, particularly Yanks fans not from the tri-state area.
Here's the thing people forget about a salary cap vis-a-vis the Yankees. They can't spend their largesse on payroll, so where will they put it? They'll scout out the best scouts and player development people and make them offers they would be foolish to refuse. They can make their scouting department really big, so that they don't have to cover as much territory individually and can thus focus in on the guys they've targeted with laser-like precision. They can hire the best minor league coaches, create the best system, giving their developing studs the best nutrition, training etc their money can buy. Nutrition is so grossly undervalued by big league teams trying to develop players. The crappy per diem forces the players to eat crappy food and that can't help their development. Then they can pour a bunch more into international scouting and signings. They're not going away: salary cap or not. It's up to the other teams to get creative and figure out how to allot their finances more efficiently. Salary Cap or not the teams with less money than the Yankees have to stop crippling themselves with poorly thought out free agent/extension decisions: see Matthews Jr., Gary, Pierre, Juan, Ryan, B.J., Thomas, Frank, Wells, Vernon etc etc. This is where other teams are shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of bitching and kvetching about everything the Yankees are doing, other teams would be better off busting their tails to reduce/eliminate the waste and make more efficient decisions. All that being said: obnoxious Yankee fans still suck. :p ;) :)
This is the thing Yankees fans don't understand. They never have to rebuild. I'm also tired of hearing Yankees fans scream about Homegrown talent. Being the Yankees you never have to worry about your young players leaving after arbitration is up. You can afford to pay them whatever they want. Nobody can ever match what you can pay them. You never have to choose which ones to keep and which ones to let go. You'll never see the Yankees trade off one of their good home grown players for prospects because their due for free agency and they can't afford to keep them. Young teams like the Marlins, Brewers, Rays, etc. With good young talent have to start making tough decisions on their homegrown talent as they are approaching FA and big pay raises.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
These instances are so few and far in between that they can really be ignored in the grand scope of things. Every points to Manny Ramirez, but they fail to account for the fact that when he supposedly "quit on his team", he was still hitting the cover off the ball for them and playing basically every day.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
I said this when that whole thing was happening - if Manny Ramirez pre-trade 2008 is what a player looks like when he's quitting on his team, I want every player on my team to quit.
And we have a winner.Quote:
Originally Posted by actionjackson
Yes, the Yankees money advantage is an advantage. It is not an unbeatable advantage, though, and there are multitudes of examples of teams with money failing (even repeatedly) and teams without money being successful (repeatedly).
Having a smart front office is also an advantage over other teams. Should we install some sort of "intelligence cap"? Some teams have advantages over others. It's a fact of life. The Yankees are in an enviable position with their history and market. They make the best of it. Shame on them, I guess, for doing all they can to win.
My real problem with the way this is structured is: If you have an advantage over the competition and use that advantage to emerge victorious, then how much should you bask in your accolades?Quote:
Originally Posted by HoustonGM
Or, let me put it another way....
If Michael Phelps went down to the Charlotte YMCA and raced all the swimmers there and won, should he brag? Should his fans?
For all their advantages, they've still only one once in the last 10 years. I think they're allowed to bask in their victory - just like any other team.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
Again, there's advantages besides just monetary ones. Should the Red Sox not bask in their two World Series titles this decade because of their advantage of having an excellent front office?
I don't think that's at all a valid analogy. The Yankees are still a team of MLB players playing against every other MLB team.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
I'm not saying that there aren't douchey Yankee fans that brag too much...but every team has that. All throughout this decade, the Yankees were continually bragged AGAINST for not winning with their huge payroll. Seems kinda hypocritical to make fun of the Yankees for years of not winning despite a huge payroll while then turning around and whining about their unfair advantage after they do win (not directed at you).
I do give the organization credit. In alot of ways they have earned many of their advantages just by being the Yankees. Yankee merchandise outsells all others. Television wants the Yankees so will pay money for them.
It just sucks that some teams will spend years prepping a player, teaching him the game and fine tuning his skills and then some other team who has the capital to basically triple what this guy's best offer can realistically be from the team that taught him the game gets all the benefits of this guy's newly developed skills.
That has being going on for too long and some way to put a halt to that type of poaching is something I would like for MLB to consider.
It won't happen but it would be nice if it did.
but why does MLB need the welfare of a salary cap - (beacuse the only way to do it would be to take money from the rich and hand it to the poor -- or just line the pockets of rich owners) - when it already has the socialism of the draft?
It's a very old sport and the Yankees just happen to have a lot of history and what I call "passed down fans". The team is also located in a major booming city, so there is a lot working for them over a small market team like the Marlins or Rays. There is real no allure for fans to get excited and spend money on a product like that, plus its a poor location for both teams because there are a lot of Yankee and Red Sox transplants down there. All the retired people go to Florida and continue to support their original home teams.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
The Yankees already give money to every other team in the form of revenue sharing and luxury tax.
There are other teams that just simply don't invest the money they make back into the team. Take a look at the chart here. The figures may not be 100% accurate as there's a lot of off-the-books stuff and such, but they give the jist of it. I also don't know if the revenue numbers include money teams receive via revenue sharing and luxury tax.
aj and schu said what i was thinking already in this thread
That is also part of the problem no doubt. Some teams do have lousy ownership. No one need look any further than the difference between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoustonGM
That's part of why I say this isn't just a Yankee problem. Several factors, including disinterested ownership in some cities, disinterested fan bases in another and also includes disinterested media outlets in some cases..see the demise of the Montreal Expos as an example of a last one.
Then again, which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Does knowing you have no real shot of competing financially with another team make you disinterested or does the disinterest cause the shift in financial competitive balance?
Considering there are plenty of examples of teams succeeding despite the financial disadvantage, I'm more inclined to say that the disinterest/bad ownership/bad decision-making is a bigger problem than one team having a huge financial advantage.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
Please. Let's not use the word socialism about sports. It's not socialism. The business is MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL. The teams are franchisees. Does a business use profits from one arm to help out another? Yeah. Do some franchises in a business like McDonalds/Starbucks/Tim Hortons make more than others? Yeah. Would anyone accuse these businesses of being socialists for engaging in "socialist" practices within their own business. Nope, what they do within their companies, provided it's within the law, is their business, and as long as they make money, the shareholders are happy. They are examples of extremely successful businesses thriving in a capitalist system.Quote:
Originally Posted by gRYFYN1
Same thing with MLB. It is in MLB's best interest as a business to be as successful as it can be in as many markets as possible. The players have benefitted greatly from expansion and would be dead-set against any form of contraction, as it would shrink the job pool. So, what do you do to help the struggling teams? Everything you can, stopping short of a salary cap, which as many have pointed out puts more money in the owners pockets and no baseball fan pays to watch the owners. I think MLB has probably reached the saturation point as far as expansion goes and contraction ain't happening, so they've got to do what they can to keep these franchises healthy. Maybe you could move some teams, but that can harm the business overall if it engenders enough discontent among baseball fans.
If the same teams make the playoffs over and over, as seems to be starting to happen, fans in the non-playoff markets will begin to see Bud the Slug's: "Everyone has hope on Opening Day" for what it really is: a crock of s**t. They'll begin to lose interest and that's bad for baseball, except if Toronto fans lose interest, because they can't make a dime of TV money off us anyway. ;) So you see, it is in professional sport's best interest to be a bunch of "raving", "rabid" socialists, within reason of course, in order to grow/thrive within our capitalist system. :D
I look at that chart and let us count the number of teams whom, if they invested 100% of revenue into salary would still not be able to equal what the Yankees at 54% invested in salary:
Detroit, Houston, Seattle, Atlanta, Kansas City, Toronto, White Sox, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Colorado, San Francisco, Arizona, Minnesota, St Louis, Tampa Bay, Oakland, Texas, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Washington, Florida and San Diego.
23 of the 30 teams in MLB had a total revenue (according to this chart) that is smaller than what the Yankees spent on payroll.
So, even if they put 100% back into payroll, the Yankees can still out bid them at only 54% return of revenue into payroll.
23 teams!
There is a serious competitive imbalance here.
so you are going to hate on the yankees for that?Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
it's not their fault
There is a serious financial imbalance, yes. What are you going to do about it? A salary cap? Or, in other words, a "Screw the Yankees" cap, considering any reasonable cap would only affect them? Is one team worth screwing over for it, when they already pour money into revenue sharing and luxury tax? It's not as if the Yankees have a stranglehold on World Series championships. Yes, they seemingly don't have to go through rebuilding periods that nearly all other teams are bound to have to go through every so often, but the opportunity is easily there for other teams to win - so long as they invest their money intelligently and efficiently.
If the Yankees didn't win this year, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead, people would be making fun of the Yankees for losing despite a huge payroll, just like what's happened for the last decade.
Could we please have a discussion about this without throwing Les Expos under the bus? Talk about the perfect storm for driving away fans: ugh! The best team in the history of the franchise has the plug pulled on it by Bud the Slug and his merry band of billionaires. Did we really expect the fans to come back as if the botching that was 1994 never happened? Their case is not a good example of an apathetic fanbase. That was an angry fanbase of a team that had built itself up the right way and was torn apart when baseball returned.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
Montreal was a great baseball market and should never be forgotten for it's historic contributions to the game. The Jackie Robinson experiment began there after all. I know it would've begun somewhere else (although probably not in the U.S.) if not Montreal, but really it was the perfect place for it. Quebecers have always felt like outsiders in this country, as had Jackie Robinson in his own country. It was a perfect match. When in god's name was Miami or Tampa/St. Petersburg a good baseball market?
After reading this, I would like to see a minimum spending cap for teams. A lot of owners just hoard in cash by not expanding their payroll at all.
I'm not throwing the fan base under the bus. But the media base. What killed Montreal? Wasn't the final nail in the coffin the lack of a television contract?Quote:
Originally Posted by actionjackson
They definitely have an advantage. I wouldn't mind some tweaks to level the playing field a bit, but nothing major. No matter what, there will never be a scenario where all 30 teams have a dead even playing field....it could be better than it is now, but it's not that bad.
Could be, but the franchise was doomed after the strike. Im sure the fan base felt they got screwed out of a possible World Series berth.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
**** i hate my laptop, i had such a nice long post, **** it
I think most fans outside of the Yankee fan base would just be happy enough if Yankee fans would just come out and see the light and get a grip that ...yes, their team has an advantage and yes they take advantage of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoustonGM
What is most aggravating is when we have all the facts there and then a Yankee fan outright flatout denies it has anything to do with Yankee success.
Ill gladly take it if you dont like it. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Jeffy25
Alot of teams were doomed after the strike. Toronto. Pittsburgh. Kansas City are other examples of teams that have just been nothing more than farm clubs for teams with higher revenue.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragecage
In the case of Pittsburgh and Kansas City, I don't think the strike had much to do with it. Those are clear-cut cases of incompetent front offices.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
I came across a situation like that with a Laker fan. He actually had the nerve to say Lamar Odom was better than Kevin Garnett.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobToxin
My reply to him, "Im not talking sports with you anymore, you have no clue about anything." and I turned around and walked away. Which is precisely what to do with Yankee fans that act like that.
Surprisingly KC was only 4 games out of 1st (64-51) when the strike occurred. Now Pittsburgh, yeah horrible FO.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoustonGM
KC had a decent team in the strike year, but what's doomed them since is certainly a terrible front office. I don't know what sort of effect the strike had on them, but they've still made terrible moves all along. The only team that I believe was truly, significantly affected by the strike was the Expos.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragecage
Yep I feel the same. I think there was no real possible way to win the fans back after that happened. Its sad really, they had such a great team at the time that was only going to get better.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoustonGM
What the Yankees don't get credit for is their inovation.
The Yankees were the first team to embrace free agency, with the signing of Catfish Hunter. This was done at a time when the Yankees were not even making a profit, CBS sold the Yankees to Steinbrenner's group at a loss.
The Yankees pioneered having their own television network. Much of the income that you see comes from the very successful YES network.
The Yankees were able to make Baseball work where the Dodgers and Giants couldn't. The two national league teams abandoned New York City for the West Coast. The question still is why the Dodgers aren't more successfull than the Yankees. Pick a point say, 1981 when those two teams met in the Series. Why, from that point, couldn't the Dodgers have done better than the Yanks?