2023 MLB Draft

I think the idea is to promote some balance in the competitiveness across organizations by helping the weak performers. In that case, it would not matter if poor performance were due to lack of market size/revenue potential or lack of organizational competence.

I suggested previously that MLB should have placed the playoff teams into the lottery, with at least one playoff team receiving a high pick (say, #5) and maybe another team receiving #10. That would be a nice way to incentivize winning.

I also like KylMss’ idea to institute a salary floor. Teams like Oakland, Pittsburgh and Tampa regularly game the system and drive down player costs without any regard for the good of their fans. A few of those teams compete occasionally, but most flounder 3/4 of the seasons.

Yes. MLB needs to wake up to the fact that teams that cry poor actually hurt the overall revenue of MLB.

In general, I am against salary floors, but MLB teams make over $100 million per year from the MLB contract before they factor in their own local TV contracts and gate revenues. They should have to spend at least what they make from MLB, yet we see teams running out there with payrolls for $40-60 million.

“Moneyball” wasn’t genius. The Oakland A’s pioneered welfare for billionaires.

Tampa is a unique case. They are more anomaly than model to me. I think many organizations make the mistake of thinking they can function like the Rays and it hurts them. I think a similar thing happens when teams try to copy the Astros and Theo’s approach of a teardown and build up. There is a certain process and organization-wide commitment to those methods for it to work and most don’t have that. In fact, if you look at all the guys who have left Tampa for other executive jobs, none of them really function like the Rays. Friedman in particular no longer operates like a Rays executive. He spends big and makes big moves because it is a model the Dodgers can support. The Rays are a top-down commitment to efficiency and cost-cutting and that does not seem to wane at any level. To make that work, you have to have a really dedicated owner with very dedicated executives following suit. Most do not have that and will only be able to succeed if they spend some money.

The current Cardinal ownership asked for outside help and threatened to build a venue across the river in Illinois if help wasn’t forthcoming.

League minimums vary based on experience. The league minimum for a player outside the arbitration process is much different than the salary of a player just starting off. That is how a franchise like Oakland can function on a $40 million payroll that is nearly identical the what Max Scherzer was set to make in a single season.

In terms of putting money into the players pockets, I don’t think that is really a concern. The owners would much rather see their shared revenues going into the product rather than into another owners pocket. In fact, I believe the owners tried to push for a salary floor during the last CBA, but that was quickly swatted away by the players. Why they didn’t want that is confusing to me outside of them just being too focused on other issues. Part of the the reason the middle class players are being squeezed out in baseball is because most teams take an all or nothing approach. They either want to pay stars to compete or they want to pay pre-arbitration salaries to keep costs down and hope they can flip the asset before he gets too expensive. If you force teams to start spending money on payroll, you will see more of a baseball middle class where proven veteran players get paid a fair rate.

Owners are not fans of given money to other owners, which is exactly what the revenue sharing process does. Many of these small market clubs are subsidized by the big clubs. This is good for the league overall, because you don’t want a structure of 5-8 wealthy teams just smashing the rest of the league on an annual basis. That creates a boring product. Unfortunately, that is what is kind of happening because these big market teams like the Yankees are sending millions of dollars to these other clubs, who just bank it keep being terrible. I think the Yankees ownership group would much prefer covering a portion of the payroll for teams like the Pirates and Rays rather than dumping money into their profit shares.

I was thinking the same thing Christopher. Even if all three accepted it wouldn’t be the end of the world because our rotation would be set and one year deals aren’t that burdensome but most likely they wouldn’t accept and we would get extra picks.

I may be Wrong but pretty sure the Cards are excluded from competitive balance picks during this CBA

Yep, they “tweaked” the formula to exclude St Louis (and San Diego I believe) because they included winning percentage in the formula, but the poor little small town Tigers snag picks every year.

Only 6 pitchers in the top 20 of this list.