Which simply shows that Top draft picks get a lot less money than they would have gotten if the top payroll teams could participate in the bidding. I think Dicek is a decent comp. See how much teams were willing to bid just for the rights of a guy who has never thrown a major league pitch. If you want other examples look at any draftee who ws able to opt out of the draft. Look at foreign prospects for that matter who often times teams are just guessing at their true age. These people get a lot more money than they would if subject to the mlb draft.
Huh? Strasburg got less money for in total then Burnett gets in a year. And I’m not convinced I’d rather have the next 5 years of Burnett over Strasburg.
Sure not all top prospects work out. But teams are getting better and scouting and they are getting better at developing them. So some of these examples of players not working out were clubs drafting guys way higher than they should have because they say threw the ball really hard and didn’t know where it was going. The top prospects today are top prospects for a reason. They do tend to work out. Oh it isn’t like free agents are without risk. They sometimes get hurt, they sometimes deteriate quickly, and sometimes they just stop playing well for no discernable reason. I certainly rather risk 40 million on Strasberg then Oliver Perez
Well, it isn’t like you have a hole on your roster if you don’t want to give a 5th outfielder a million dollars. You just pay someone the minimum. For teams that aren’t going anywhere it makes all the sense in the world to forgo spending an extra 10 million on the major league roster and put it into their system instead. Besides if your system is good enough you will develop a perfectly good fifth outfielder for league minimium.
The Japanese and Cuban players get that kind of money because they’re playing against competition that’s close to major league level. They almost always start immediately on major league active rosters without teams feeling like they need a minor league training period. Not so with college players nor with international players signed from other countries.
Strasburg got that money right now, as a signing bonus. He’ll still get paid for every day he plays as a professional, on top of that. Granted what he’ll get paid for playing over the next 6 years is less than he’ll get if and when he makes it to free agency as a pitcher that teams wish to employ, but the point is, the money we’re actually talking about, he got right now. Right now, without proving that he is capable of throwing a ball in the strike zone past a major league hitter, he got almost as much money as A. J. Burnett will this year for actually doing that, repeatedly.
I don’t think any of the 30 major league GMs would agree with you on that. Anyone with a track record is inherently less risky than anyone without. Mind you, there’s still SOME risk no matter what, but when there’s no past performance at any professional level to go on, the risk is much, much higher.
That’s true, and it’s in fact true that no teams do pay a million dollars for someone to be their “5th outfielder.” On those occasions where you find someone being paid that much to be roster filler, they were usually hired with much more substantial duties in mind, and then failed to live up them, so they were demoted.
I don’t see how you can make the argument that the draft does anything but lower the amount a first-round draft pick makes in both bonus and salary. Whenever you artificially lower the number of teams that a player can sign with you will lower the amount he will be paid.
There are multiple examples of players from Cuba, the Dominican, Korea, and Japan that make more money than draft picks from the same year.
One current example: the Cardinals (not a huge payroll team, but not small either) just signed a 16-year old Dominican (Wagner Mateo) for a $3.1 million signing bonus. They just signed their first-round pick (Shelby Miller) with a $2.7 million signing bonus. There is no question that Miller is a more developed player who is closer to big-league action. But the fact that other teams were competing for Mateo earned him more money.
Because you’re also artificially lowering the number of players that the team can negotiate with. Washington had to pick one, and only one, of the best 30 amateur players available (OK, they had their make-up pick from the prior year too, I’m talking at the moment about the institution of the draft in general and its effect on the market for players, not the specific circumstance), and if they didn’t sign him, the next-best player they had a possibility of getting would be much much worse.
I understand what you’re saying but I don’t think it has the effect you are claiming. There are specific cases that seem to contradict your claim (the Mateo/Miller one I posted, for example). And Washington knew full well the cost when they claimed him with their pick. Allowing them to trade that pick would have given them the option of turning one valuable property into multiples, but that is not allowed because it is likely that the team trading for the rights to Strasburg would have paid him more than the Nats did.
I believe that if the first-year player draft was replaced with a free and open market for amateur talent two things would have happened: Strasburg would have signed for more than what he did and the Nationals would have used their “amateur signing budget” to increase the depth of their minor league system rather than put all of their eggs in one basket.
The current system does not effectively encourage parity (because signing demands often drive better players to more successful teams) and is not equitable to the players (because they are locked into whichever team signs them for a minimum of the first 6 years of their professional career).
Of course, it is likely that the next CBA will be even more unfair because a rigid slotting system will be included. The claim will be that it will increase parity but really it will just drive down the amount of money amateurs can make for the first few years of their careers. Another case of those that made it (current MLB players) selling the next generation down the river.
Some go straight to the majors but some do spent a fair amount amount in the minors like Morales. How bout international free agents that aren’t subject to the draft who are teenagers. How bout players who were able to opt out of the draft. They get a lot more money than their drafted counterparts. The evidence simply doens’t fit your conclusions.
Well, I don’t think signing bonus’s are paid in one lump sum. More importantly you don’t just get one year of Strasburg. you get 6 plus any time in the minors. You think Burnett would take a contract of 20 million for the first year and then whatever you feel like paying me for the next 3? Yes Strasburg is going to get additional salary, but it isn’t going to amount to anything until he hits arbitration, and even then it is likely to be significantly less then his market value. If Strasburg gets hurt the Nats only have to pay the initial salary. Burnett gets 82 million no matter what happens to him.
That is not always true. A 38 year old with a proven history of success is much riskier then a 23 year old top prospect.
Washington doesn’t have to sign him. There are a myriad ways that they could spent the money instead. They could sign international free agents. They could spend it on the major league roster. They could improve their scouting or upgrade their stadium. And they still could sign the #2 pick next year, who likely won’t be as good as Strasburg but still pretty good. And if if they totally screw up and miss a great players the franchise will be able to recover in the long run.
The player on the other hand has very little in the way of options. He can take whatever the team offers or perhaps play in an independent league and hope he has better luck the next year. The risk is huge for the player, he has no other available avenues to make similar cash, and if he gets hurt he won’t get a 2nd a chance.
The team has a little pressure from the draft. The player has way more pressure.
Your arguments btw are similar to the arguments of why free agency wasn’t necessary. How did that work out for the players? Nearly every time there are more buyers, players end up making way more money.
No, it isn’t a coincidence. They’re connected. But not in the way you think.
Ticket prices are going up because the demand for professional sports is up. Way, way up. (Well, it’s likely down a touch this year.) People are willing and able to spend FAR more on major sporting events than they used to.
That drives up ticket prices, since more demand = higher prices. But it also drives up player salaries, because good players are therefore more valuable. In the 1959 National League, where revenue was a fraction of what it is now (even adjusted for inflation) you wouldn’t pay any player $5 million because no player could possibly be worth it; that’s more than you could ever hope to make winning the World Series. Today, it’s a fraction of what a winning team can bring in in revenue.
The proof is, of course, college sports. Tickets to big time NCAA events are very, very expensive, much more so than they used to be… but the players are paid absolutely nothing. Well, they get scholarships and whatnot, but it’s insignificant as a total cost of a big time sports outfit. So why aren’t those tickets dirt cheap? Because demand makes them expensive.
Look, just run through a simple thought experiment; if, tomorrow, every player on any given major league team secretly agreed to play for minimum wage, would the team give the fans a break on ticket prices? Well, of course not. Why would they do something so stupid? They’d just keep all the money, because they have already set ticket prices at whatever price maximizes revenue.
Ah, you think supply and demand applies to baseball tickets? That’s quite interesting considering the supply of seats is inelastic-- supply remains the same unless they add or remove seats from the stadium, or add or remove games from the schedule. If your logic held true, teams would be able to make more money by lowering the ticket price and selling more and more tickets… except there is only a limited number of tickets per game that can possibly be sold. Demand increases and supply cannot be increased. Demand decreases and supply is not decreased, either.
One cannot reliably equate the volume of ticket sales with the pricing of the tickets, as you seem to imply. If it did, why has Boston’s paid attendance actually increased this year, despite ticket prices rising some 10%? Why is San Diego’s paid attendance down, even though ticket prices have dropped 20%? There are simply too many factors that affect how many people will buy tickets, price is merely a minor factor (if it’s a factor at all, looking at the Boston example).
Your theoretical scenario is irrelevant. Buying materials is not the same as buying labor. If you enter into a contract to buy materials and the seller defaults, you get to go buy them somewhere else. You have to pay a baseball player under contract whether he performs or not. Find me a business that pays for materials before they actually receive them. And find me a business that has to pay for materials when the supplier defaults and cannot supply them.
The comparison of professional sports contract labor costs with material “widgets” costs is amusing at best.
There is a reason that the teams with the highest payrolls charge the most for tickets. There is a reason the teams with the lowest payrolls charge the least for tickets. It’s because the cost of payroll has a distinct correlation to the price of the tickets.
That’s obviously false, or else every team with empty seats would be dramatically lowering their ticket prices. It’s senseless. Teams set thei prices at the level they think will maximize revenue - the point at which lowering them will lose money and raising them will lose money.
You have the direction of the correlation ass-backwards though. The teams with high payrolls have high demand for their products (generally because they are in large markets - Boston, New York, Chicago, LA). This high demand allows them to charge higher ticket prices. Ticket prices correlate more strongly with attendance rates than with payroll. This makes perfect economic sense - high demand and limited supply = high prices.
No, you are failing to keep the context of the discussion in view. The original assertion was that amount of payroll have nothing to do with ticket prices. Payroll has a great deal to do with ticket prices and the price of tickets is solely based on what the market will carry.
Whether I have the correlation backwards or not is irrelevant (and I don’t see how it’s backwards considering I did not go into whether the chicken or the egg came first, so to speak, just that there is a chicken and there is an egg) because a correlation does exist, which is the point I was making.
The bottom line is that salaries are the clubs #1 expense and that ticket sales are the clubs #1 revenue stream. The original claim I aimed to refute was that no relationship exists between the two. I believe I have shown that a relationship does exist and IMO now it is up to Hawkeyeop to demonstrate otherwise.
Correct. Just because a team lowers the price does not mean they will make more money, and that’s why hawkeyeop’s logic is flawed. The team needs to set the price at a level that will (A) attract sales and (B) cover expenses. And the largest expense of a baseball team just happens to be… :dubious:
You’re moving the goalposts. The original claim was that higher salaries do not lead to higher ticket prices. You haven’t done a thing to refute that, and you’ve been presented with a lot of evidence for it.
You’re putting words in my mouth. The original claim was that Player salaries have nothing to do with the cost of going to a game. I’ve presented a great deal of evidence that player salaries have a great deal to do with the cost of going to a game.
Yeah, go ahead and re-read the thread in context. The original claim was that salaries have nothing to do with ticket prices. I pointed out both salaries and ticket prices have increased in line with each other. How exactly is that not refuting that the original claim was incorrect?
