This is why I couldn’t be mad at Zach Greinke for bailing on the Dodgers to play for Arizona. He was totally upfront about the cash.
I will still allow myself a little smile about his performance since leaving LA. 
Naive sorts may wonder how “market value” came to be defined as “what I think I should be paid” instead of “what the market is willing to pay me”.
I’m not sure I understand the point. Of course the player will attempt to find a suitor willing to pay an exorbitant amount. Often, they are successful.
Well, that gets in to somewhat tricky areas like “how much is an employee worth to an organization”? The pure capitalistic answer is “what the market will bear” - but that doesn’t really apply to MLB where a CBA determines and tremendously limits what players make in the early part of their career. In a truly free market Kris Bryant (to name just one example) would not have played for the Cubs in 2017 for like $1M.
Another way to go about it is to define a percentage of revenue that goes to the players, and then divide that money between the players in whatever way the owners/GMs see fit. Of course then the question becomes “what percentage of revenue is appropriate?”. I think NFL players are guaranteed 47%. NBA is over 50% I think, and NHL right at 50%. Of course all of those leagues have salary caps (and floors?) as well as sometimes maximum individual salaries.
The MLB system punishes the young players which has in the past allowed teams to lavish riches on the older players. Now that teams aren’t giving those riches to older players, they (the older players - typically the ones filling union representative roles) are started to gripe.
Which could be said for lots of union contracts (teachers, for example).
If they feel they’re being “punished” (remember Kris Bryant’s $10.9 mil in 2018), they can certainly push for changes in the CBA. I’m just not sure why sports reports/commentators in general take up the cry of “unfair!” automatically.
Part of it may be the desire to suck up to players in order to get interviews and juicy tidbits, and another factor (in common with fans) may be wanting their favorite teams to sign top talent, whatever the cost (which they of course are not paying, but have an excellent idea how the money should be spent).
Woe…the poor players!!! Those same MLB players who don’t give a rats ass about their hamstrung brothers they left behind in the minors.
And, of course, it’s equally weird at the other end, where top players is subject to winner’s curse, whereby the team that gets the player has usually paid more than the market felt the player was worth.
I really don’t think the current system - which, for all that they make small changes to the CBA, has been fundamentally the same for decades - is going to be sustainable. Pro sports interest is flattening and revenues will flatten soon. The expectations of the players in terms of the upper limits on their salaries is, based on history, heavily in the direction of assuming that
- The salaries will keep going up, and
- It’ll largely keep going up the way it always has - rewarding veterans with exorbitant deals.
Not only will flattening revenues end this, but simple analytics is biting into the willingness of teams to hand out giant deals, as they’re looking at the facts and seeing they’re probably going to get bit in the ass.
I do agree with this, but given that the owners ARE making tons of money, the obvious solution is for early-career salaries to go up (and probably way up) or for the lock-in period to be 2 MLB years, then free agency.
This is something the owners will fight tooth and nail and unfortunately, I’m afraid the MLBPA is not structured to properly resist the owners on this. The owners will throw a bone to the +6 players and keep the “bad” early deals in place.
Unfortunately, I don’t really see any way to get the Association to look at the dynamics top-to-bottom (including MiLB players, Dale) and cut the best deal for the most people.
ESPN reported yesterday that the Dodgers are signing AJ Pollock. I think that puts the Harper rumors to rest, thankfully.
Dombrowski said the other day that the largest salary ever given to a player in terms of fraction of the teams payroll is 1/6th. So when considering whether players will get 30 or 40 million a year…well multiply that by six and see how many teams can afford that. NO team right now seems to have a $240 million payroll. 5 have 180 million.
Overall the salaries in baseball continue to rise. This failure of teams to pony up stupidly large contracts to a few elite players is mostly a red herring coming from the likes of Boris.
That is just false, and a really odd thing for him to say. You’d think he’d know better.
I tend to agree with this though the problems run deeper. For various reasons, (better depth, younger peaks, smarter teams) players are no longer getting overpaid in free agency to make up for being underpaid after. So as part of any agreement, free agency likely will have to be moved up.
That isn’t Harper and Machado’s problem though. Those are players on hall of fame trajectory’s in the prime of their career. The fact that they aren’t getting offers anywhere near where you would expect them to is a major problem for the players and wouldn’t be fixed by an extra year of free agency. Now we don’t know exactly what they will get paid, but you would expect a lot more teams to be in on them.
The problem is that large market teams are treating to luxury tax as a hard cap, small market teams are content to take revenue sharing as guaranteed profit, and bad teams are not even trying to win. If teams aren’t spending money, it doesn’t matter if everyone is a free agent. To fix this you will need giant changes (salary floor, change/eliminate draft, expansion…) that I’m not sure either side is willing to make.
By the way, if you take Arod’s first contract, which he did earn his money (it was the extension that the yankees gave him that was awful) it would be worth over $700 million with today’s revenue. Now Machado/Harper aren’t quite Arod, they are perhaps the best free agents since then. $175 million is a lot of money, it is also way below what players of that caliper and youth would expect to receive. Long term contracts are risky, but hitting stars in their prime don’t tend to lose their value quickly. Salaries have historically trickled down, so if stars aren’t getting paid, everyone else is taking a cut too.
Anyone have any thoughts on the Reds signing Sonny Gray?
It is probably a good trade for the Reds, they really didn’t give up much and Gray will probably be much better out of the AL East.
Who was higher?
(Little research) ARod was 23% of the Rangers. 1/6 is 16%
Hmmm…and not such an odd thing to say if he’s giving excuses or trying to keep league-wide salaries down
Edit: Maybe i missed him say a time frame.
Is that 23% of the 25 man roster with the 1/6 perhaps referring to the 40 man roster?
22/95 with $95 million being the listed player payroll for the Rangers 2001 season
It’s bonkers that A-Rod averaged $25 million per for the final seventeen years of his career. Even Giancarlo Stanton with his massive contract will probably fall $100 million short in total earnings.
Last year Jake Arrieta was well over 25% of team payroll. Zack Grienke, Jason Heyward, Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, and Joe Mauer were all over 20% of team payroll; Yoenis Cespedes just missed. A few other players were over one sixth.
I am not sure if this is more or less common now. There have been many examples before (Babe Ruth was around a quarter of Yankee payroll most of his career, but he’s an extreme case) but maybe not as many as there are now, I’m not sure.