I’m hearing that MLS (that’s “Major League Soccer” for the uninitiated) players are digging their heels in while seeking free agency and that there’s a REAL possibility that the 20th MLS season will NOT start on time (it’s supposed to open this Friday). Anybody with any “feel” for the situation? While I can see the players wanting free agency (I almost cannot believe that there was once a time when players weren’t allowed to move at all in professional sports even when their contracts had expired) it seems like it would be a shame to have a players’ strike tarnish MLS’s 20th season (which means it’s already lasted longer - at least 2 years longer, I think - than the NASL did).
Does MLS have a team salary cap? If it does, and it’s reasonably low (and it keeps the minimum salary where it is, if not raising it), then I don’t see that much harm in free agency.
The MLS bigwigs are probably just afraid that unrestricted free agency would result in teams in Los Angeles and New York pricing, say, Columbus out of the league.
It seems like its heading for strike, which would be DISASTEROUS! This is not only the 20th season (which has been hyped by MLS), but the first year of their lucrative new ESPN deal. Which is likely the reason the Players Union is thinking this is a great year to try to force through Free Agency (I’m with the players, FWIW).
And yes, the MLS does have a salary cap and it’s really low (like $3mil a team, IIRC, not counting the full salary of Designated Players).
There’s an MLS?
(98.6% serious.)
And a modern “Major League Anything” is pre-1975 in its player rights? You’re kidding.
“At midnight, all our players will cease rolling on the grass in mock agony, and walk off the field…”
Soccer reporters on Twitter are reporting the league basically is completely digging in their heels. The league’s only offer was Free Agency can be a possibility for players who are over 32 years old and have spent 10 years with the same MLS club. It’s a slap in the face.
If I were an owner, I’d do what Charlie FInley told his fellow MLB owners to do back in 1975- the idea that Marvin Miller admitted completely terrified him:
“You want a free market? Fine- you’re ALL free agents EVERY year.”
The other owners were too “smart” to follow Finley’s advice.
You mean, aside from the fact that the owners would absolutely hate that? Imagine having to negotiate every year for your star player? Adding more years to a deal allow you not to have to pay a ridiculous amount of money per year.
But it also ties you into long term deals with aging players (see: almost every super star pitcher in baseball, A-Rod, etc.). I agree it would be logistically problematically, but the NFL basically has 1-year contracts (functionally speaking), and coupled with a salary cap, it doesn’t seem too bad. I think owners would save money in the long run.
If the owners thought it would have saved money, they’d have done it already ;). Long term deals with aging players generally work out better for the team - as they get more production than what they are paying for in the front end which balances out lower production in the back end. It allows teams to spread out the risk as well. A player gets injured for a year, you lose all your investment. If you have a long term deal, you can get a productive year later to make up for injury year.
It tends to be the teams that add years to contracts. Players generally want shorter contracts and higher per year payouts.
That SOUNDS so logical and hard-headed and realistic- but it isn’t.
Owners are very cliquish and factional, and they have a long record of cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
As I noted earlier, Marvin Miller knew what a brilliant idea Finley had, and he was terrified that Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and the other owners would listen to him.
But they didn’t, because they hated Finley PERSONALLY (not without good reasons). That’s why Bowie Kuhn vetoed Finley’s attempts to sell off players he was about to lose. They hated Finley so much, they drove him out of baseball. Finley just wanted to get SOMETHING for players he was losing, but Kuhn and the other owners wouldn’t let him.
As pointed out, in MLB it’s the teams that add years to contracts, not players. The owners aren’t some monolithic branch. The rich teams are perfectly fine with long term, big money contracts. It’s something that smaller teams can’t offer.
And as brickbacon pointed out, the NFL already has functional 1 year contracts. Then richer owners started using bigger and bigger guaranteed money as a way to entice free agents (esp after the institution of the salary cap - it was a way to entice free agents after being unable to offer the massive, relative to average player, deals of the past).
It appears the owners have buckled some more. Rumor is the new free agency proposal is 28 years old and 8 years in MLS (not one specific club). However any free agent can only make a maximum of 10% above his previous salary.
Things are still being discussed, but this is a great step to ending a potential strike!
Maybe. I think it’s less an issue of money and more stability. Owners see what a guy like Lebron leaving your teams does, and want to avoid that as much a possible. That’s in addition to the logistical problems of singing multiple players every year. But I don’t think it would cost them more money in a sport with a strong salary cap. It’s usually when there isn’t a salary cap to temper owners bad habits that salaries get out of control.
That said, if long term contract made sense from a cost-benefit perspective for the employer, you would see them more in the private sector. Ever heard of a Harvard MBA getting a 8-year 4 million dollar contract to work at McKinsey?
Maybe, but in a sport like baseball, almost all the risk lies with the team. The maximum output is just not usually that great to justify the downside risk of a huge contract. I cannot think of too many long term high-end baseball contracts with players over 25 that have been worth it in total. I don’t know if there have been studies that are public on this, but I would bet one year contracts would work out to less money.
Not really. Those contracts are insured. You lose far more when the guy just sucks.
I think it really depends on the sport. That said, adding years is usually a matter of circumventing the salary cap, not an actual desire to have that person x years out at y salary.
Agreement in principle reached per ESPN.
http://www.sbisoccer.com/2015/03/players-season-schedule.html
The players appear to have won BIG! And no strike! 
No, but you ever heard of a baseball player allowed to leave his team at any point to work for another team? 
There is a saying: money today is worth more than money tomorrow. Long term contracts lock in the going rate in today’s money over a long period of time and tend to pay players less than they may be worth now in exchange for paying them more than they are worth later.
This fangraphs article explains it well (in the context of a Robinson Cano contract last offseason): Accepting Dead Money in Free Agent Contracts | FanGraphs Baseball
The short, short analysis:
Yes, they are called trades ;). But more seriously, they also loan players in soccer all the time.
I get they use net present value equations to figure out the value of a contract, but I still think they are usually bad anecdotally speaking. Even after accounting for the discount rate and having to spend more upfront, I think most deals I read about are bad. I mean, is A-Rod at $22mm/year from 2015-2017 justifiable even if you had to pay him more upfront?
I agree that it’s not just a matter of lamenting a guy like Pujos getting paid a bunch of dead money, but I think the reality is that a he was still overpaid in total. I think if you saw 1-year contracts, the salaries would more closely reflect the market value of these players on a year to year basis, and that such a system would mean players would make less in the long run. That’s why the closest approximation of this system (the NFL) routinely sees more players being cut or taking less money than people holding out for more money. Additionally, in sports with a salary cap and max salary, a player like Lebron James has his upside artificially limited by the max/cap, so the length of his contract largely serves to reward him in his less productive years.
However, I can also see how in baseball, with no salary cap, the bidding wars might end up inflating salaries on a yearly basis. Additionally, I suspect no sports players union would agree to across the board yearly contracts when there is a max salary or a salary cap.
You can get traded or loaned by your own desires in the middle of a contract? The MBA can leave his job any time he desires for a new one. I doubt, say, Albert Pujols can just all of a sudden in the middle of last season say he’s going to play the Red Sox.
A-Rod original deal however was a fantastic value for Texas, for instance. His WAR outperformed $25mil every year for the Rangers (each WAR being worth $4-$5mil during his time there, I believe). There will always be bad contracts for some reason or another, but that’s not necessarily the average experience.
Put it this way, I think in today’s market each WAR is worth $6-7mil (roughly - The Cost of a Win in the 2014 Off-Season | FanGraphs Baseball ). Mike Trout has been 10.1, 10.5, and 7.8 WAR (by Fangraph’s calculations) for the last three years. That means Trout has been worth (on the low side at $6mil a WAR) $60.6mil, $63mil, and $46.8mil over the last three years.
As you said, in the NFL there is a salary cap. Prior to the salary cap, you did have very large salaries - the cap was put in place to prevent teams like the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys from stockpiling talent on top of talent, and paying them extremely high salaries.
As can a baseball player. The issue is that no other team in a given sports league will hire him absent permission. However, A-Rod can leave the Yankees tomorrow to go play baseball for any team that wants to hire him. Nobody can force you or him to work. Typically, if a player raises enough of a stink (including bad performance), they will be traded.
And I can’t quit my job tomorrow and say I’m going to work for the White House unless the administration agreed to hire me. The analogous situation would be the numerous players who have left contracts in totalitarian countries (eg. Yao Ming, Livan Hernandez). Their contracts there generally aren’t respected by the teams and courts here and intra-league contracts would be.
Probably, but I think the math isn’t that simple.
But that is a very facile calculation as $/WAR cannot be a linear metric. Six extra wins for the Diamondbacks last year aren’t as valuable as they would have been for the Yankees? Not only because they former was not close to contention, but also because a win for them cannot make them as much money.
Again, I don’t know that there are public studies on this, but I suspect that they are worse on average than they would be if there weren’t long term.
Yeah, but do you honestly think ANYONE would have paid Trout or anyone else $65mm in one year? Even if you think that is his calculated value, those numbers bump into the hard reality that few teams have that kind of money to spend on one player, and even fewer would take that risk. My point being that that is not his ACTUAL value in the marketplace because no one pays for expected WAR in that fashion, and because one baseball players rarely makes a bad team good.
True, but the modern mechanism for this in the NFL is revenue sharing as well.