I'd love to get excited about watching them play again. But I can't find anything to be hopeful about. I guess this must be how Chargers fans feel about their season every year. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
last time I seen us this distressed would be the late 70’s. That brought on Whitey and trophies. Hopefully we can repeat that. :-)
Here's the problem - the economics of the game have finally gotten too far out of whack.
I just don't know how anybody but maybe 4-6 teams can keep a genuine star these days.
If Walker is Pujols, we lose him in 4 years.
Shit, we'll struggle to keep Winn.
And I'm a big fan of shitting on DeWitt (especially his dipshit son) but look at what the Twins are going through. That team hasn't exactly spent lavishly but now they're sitting on $400 million in debt and in trying to sell the team they're struggling to get bids above $1.5 billion.
Meanwhile the Celtics just sold for 4 times that.
And the reason the Twins can't get that isn't baseball writ large -- it's baseball in small and mid-markets.
Until the Dodgers and Mets just blew the top off the landscape, any team could keep its best player if they really wanted to. Now that's just not the case unless they decide to sign early (like Witt) and even those deals are massively risky anymore.
It's going to be really REALLY tough to build a long-term contender for about 2/3 of the teams in the league going forward. [Reply]
Deferred contracts need to be hit with a tax escalator of 1000 percent of AAV so teams can't just invest the savings of the actual outlay. Institute a hard cap and floor of a total percentage of revenue in exchange for trimming two years off of service requirements for FA. That would stop this shit really quickly. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiefsCountry:
8 different World Series champions in the last 10 years.
6 different Super Bowl champions in last 10 years.
MLB playoff structure will always lead to more parity.
Sure - but things are getting worse.
When the Yankees were "The Evil Empire" they won 4 WS in 5 years and played in 6 WS over 8 years. That wasn't parity. And that was the same thing we're seeing now -- one team just using financial might to blow everyone else away.
The luxury tax was stiffened in 2002 and since 2004 the Yankees have been to 2 WS in 20 seasons.
Now teams like the Dodgers are finding ways around the Tax, the Mets simply don't give a shit about it and things are trending back towards the nastiness of that Yankees era. It's not a great thing for the game. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiefsCountry:
8 different World Series champions in the last 10 years.
6 different Super Bowl champions in last 10 years.
MLB playoff structure will always lead to more parity.
I'd like to revaluate this in a decade or so when the fruits of LA's labor are finally available for all to see. I think baseball is going down a dark path atm. [Reply]
