I don’t really want to have the “Oakland” and “randomness of the playoffs once you make it in” discussion again, so I’ll keep away from that. Payrolls are a fun discussion though!
The key group is the third tier (T1: NYY, LAD; T2: six or eight classic “big-market” teams): your WAS, TOR, BAL, and other mid market clubs that can raise payroll for a year or three to get that contending “window”, but they aren’t willing to keep it up indefinitely. I’d say that any changes I’d want to make - and let’s be honest, there’s very little chance of any of this ever happening - would be aimed at encouraging the third tier to spend more consistently towards their natural limits when they have that window. “Stretching” the higher end from 8-10 teams to more like 20 or 25. They wouldn’t all be spending $140m at the same time, but they could all do it if they had good teams and wanted to keep their guys.
The issues with the true “low-budget” clubs are more structural, whether it’s ownership issues, stadium issues, location issues, TV contract issues, or all of the above. The degree to which you’d have to subsidize OAK or TAM to get them sustainably spending $100m every year would cause a ridiculous number of other issues.
Back to the playoffs: the happiness that I feel from the prospect of a KC-BAL ALCS more than offsets the “blah” that I feel at whatever pair of non-WAS retreads that is going to match up in the NLCS. Yay, American League. Go for three in a row, Nats!
But the other leagues all have done it, in recognition of the fact that there are structural differences between markets but that they’re all ultimately a *single *business. No, it certainly wasn’t easy to implement for any of them, but they’re all better off for it, aren’t they?
Only the NFL has done it particularly effectively, and I’d argue that they’ve been playing by different rules revenue-wise for quite a while due to the huge national TV contract. The rest of the leagues are catching up a little with the new TV contracts over the past several years, but this almost causes more issues for MLB, since the local TV contracts are relatively much more important. Are you going to redistribute that massive Dodgers deal to support the crappy deal the Braves are locked into, or the fact that like five people watch Marlins games?
(I am really curious to see how the new NBA contract that just got announced changes how things work there. Under the current system, they’ve had a split based on whether a team was willing to spend below the cap, above the cap, or into the tax. The new contract about triples the annual national TV revenue and is going to push all of those lines up by about 25%. Between that and the influx of stinking rich owners over the past decade, it’s going to be harder and harder to justify cheaping out as several teams regularly do, never mind hanging around the salary floor.)
At one stage during the Orioles/Tigers game yesterday (around end of the 2nd or beginning of the 3rd inning) they showed a bunch of fans streaming into Comerica Park, walking from Ford Field where they had watched the NFL game.
Pretty crappy day to be a Detroit sports fan.
The Lions blew a 14-0 lead to lose 17-14 on a last-minute Bills field goal, and the Tigers lost a nail-biter on the way to being swept in the ALDS.
This will be the first postseason game that i miss this year. I’m at work, and i have to go and teach a class in a few minutes.
Rooting for the Nats, partly because i’d like to see them come back and take the series, and partly because, if they win, there will be another game tomorrow.
Should get home in time to see most of the Dodgers/Cardinals game.
Nats and Giants just refuse to score runs in this series. I like pitchers duels as much as the next guy but cmon, 3 games in a row like this? I’d like to see guys hitting bombs and scoring runs.
