A Fair Ball League

BravesSince66 · 11-11-2004, 08:02 AM

I have been toying with the idea of starting a "Fair Ball" League based upon some of the recommendations/insights/contentions of the Bob Costas book by that name. I was wondering if anyone else has read the book and if they have considered applying anything it says to an OOTP league. If so, how did you go about doing it?

The league would start in 1993 - the year baseball should have adopted some serious financial changes according to Costas. It would include revenue sharing, primarily of media-related income and ticket sales. Each team would keep 50% of their media revenues, the other 50% would be pooled and divided equally among all teams. Teams would split ticket sales: keeping 70% and placing 30% in a pool to be divided equally among all teams. Of course, this would all create a bit of work but I think it is do-able in OOTP. Isn't it? What problems do the veterans of the financial engine out there see in this?

Next, salary caps. That's easy enough I suppose. IIRC, the Yankees have the largest salary in 1993 - just under $90 million. So, that would be the cap - $90 million.

Costas also recommends that there be a "floor" on salary spending so that players are assured of getting a fair share of total revenues (no teams allowed to hoard money). So, I would limit cash on hand for each team between $2.5 and $5 million, a variable based on total revenues shared.

There's other things like no DH and no wildcards, but that doesn't really factor in for the purposes of this discussion. I'm just trying to get any comments/ suggestions/ ideas from anyone on the best ways to implement such a system in OOTP. Or, if someone has already attempted this - what were the results?

Thanks.

cubsfan1515 · 11-11-2004, 03:55 PM

I've read Fair Ball and I liked it alot. His suggestions would make baseball better.

When I start a league I am Making teams spend 40 million and they can't go over 115 million. I am starting in 2004 so that is why the cap is so high. I will be giving they Yankees til the end of 2005 to get their salary down. I would also like to have revenue sharing but I dont know how that will be done. Do you know how to make it happen?

JDOldSchool · 11-11-2004, 04:32 PM

The salary cap has ruined the NFL (more than 1/3 of the teams have 3 wins right now) and it would ruin Major League Baseball. I used to respect Costas, but if he's advocating a cap I don't have much respect for him anymore.

alinkens · 11-11-2004, 06:36 PM

I have a revenue sharing spreadsheet that may help you guys out. Follow the tools link in my signature.

rudel.dietrich · 11-11-2004, 06:49 PM

I don't like the salary cap because it does not reward fans for being loyal to a team and spending their money on that team.
Thats what it comes down to for me.
As much as I hate the Yankees, their fans should be rewarded for being good fans and filling up the stadium and buying the merchandise.

BravesSince66 · 11-11-2004, 07:19 PM

Thanks alinkens. You have a lot of nice stuff on that page of yours. Nice work. As to the merits of a salary cap or not I think there are plenty of strong arguments that MLB is already ruined because we don't have one. More than half the teams have no real hope of making the play-offs in 2005 RIGHT NOW. The league is elitist in terms of legitimate competition. Period. But, that's not the intent of this thread.

I plan to manually redistribute the media and ticket revenues within the financial model along the percentages indicated in my pervious post. I don't know of another way to do this. The question is one of timing. Is it better to do this at the beginning of the season or at the end?

Toddzilla · 11-11-2004, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

I don't like the salary cap because it does not reward fans for being loyal to a team and spending their money on that team.

I disagree 100% because fan loyalty has absolutely nothing to do with the inequity of the Big Market / Small Market franchises.

The Yankees (and to a lesser extent the Mets) have the advantage of playing in the largest market in the world. The Yankees get almost $100 Million a year in TV rights fees alone. How in the world can the Kansas City's, Oakland's, or Pittsburghs of the world compete with that? Those fans are as loyal as Yankee fans - more so I'd say since they still support teams that don't win as often. Even if Pittsburgh doubled their ticket prices, tripled their merchandising revenue, and sold out every single game, they still wouldn't have enough revenue to support a payroll even half of what the Yankees spend. All this clearly has nothing to fan loyalty.

Pete Grassi · 11-12-2004, 09:16 AM

Fair Ball is a completely fictional book written by Bob Costas. He wrote that book as a way to hurt two or three teams in baseball who know how to spend their money wisely. The is no reason why lower teams cannot spend money on their franchises....they get to share over $150 mil of the Yankees money every year....where does it go?

ctorg · 11-12-2004, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BravesSince66

Each team would keep 50% of their media revenues, the other 50% would be pooled and divided equally among all teams. Teams would split ticket sales: keeping 70% and placing 30% in a pool to be divided equally among all teams. Of course, this would all create a bit of work but I think it is do-able in OOTP. Isn't it? What problems do the veterans of the financial engine out there see in this?

I read something by Bill James advocating the same thing. It's a good idea, and I think that if they did this, the salary cap becomes a non-issue because it would be enough.

abailey3313 · 11-12-2004, 12:21 PM

The idea of a salary cap isn't a bad one, but I think you have to keep certain teams at "market level".

For example, if you have a franchise located in a big city such as New York or Los Angeles, it would only be realistic (for the most part) for those teams to be closer to the cap than most others. This is the same in reverse: If you have a Rhode Island or a New Hampshire squad, you likely don't want these teams pushing the cap every year.

I think salary caps are a great idea as long as a salary cap doesn't become a salary "target".

If you have teams in markets that can't afford to spend the amount of the cap, they shouldn't be obligated to do so.

Personally, I like the idea of having small market teams and large market teams, while also having a controlled cap. This prevents one or two teams from signing all of the best available free agents, yet doesn't compromise the reality that they are in a big market area.

Example:

If I have a salary cap of, say, $90M, it would be my preference to see the New York and Los Angeles franchises spending upward of $80M, pushing the cap and using their market to their advantage. Meanwhile, I'd like to see Rhode Island and New Hampshire scrapping around the $60-65M mark.

If you want to keep it like this, you have to make sure to control the fan loyalty and market levels.

If every team in your league is meeting or coming close to meeting the amount of your cap, then you should probably adjust accordingly. A salary cap is meant to keep the ball in play, not pull in the fences. (It's a compromise. A big market team should never give up their financial advantages just to accomodate a small market team. There has to be some middle ground that restricts the big teams, while still giving them more flexibility than the small teams)

Vezna31 · 11-17-2004, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDOldSchool

The salary cap has ruined the NFL (more than 1/3 of the teams have 3 wins right now) and it would ruin Major League Baseball. I used to respect Costas, but if he's advocating a cap I don't have much respect for him anymore.

I disagree. I think the NFL is better and exciting as ever. You literally never know who is going to win. Back in the days, you knew certain teams (49ers, Steelers, Cowboys, Redskins) were always going to be top teams. There aren't dynasties any more. Teams are forced to have great scouts to scout the talent and gamble on them rather than just buying the big free agents like the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Dodgers, and Braves do.

redmachine · 11-17-2004, 04:19 PM

I agree totally and think that if baseball would try the method outlined in Costas's book, it would be the best of both worlds.

seth70liz76 · 11-17-2004, 04:42 PM

Yeah, Bob Costas wants to move from now, when the Yankees dominate every year and Kansas City has no chance to win to baseball like when he was a kid . . . when the Yankees dominated every year and Kansas City had no chance to win.

Bonedwarf · 11-17-2004, 06:24 PM

I'm for a salary cap in all sports I'm a fan of. None of my friends watch baseball. Aside from finding it dull, it's the fact that they know the Yankees, Sox etc... Will always be up there.

Most of my friends are HUGE fans of the NFL for the fact it provides excitement, as you never know who will win. (As someone else just said.) It's all very well saying about "rewarding the fans", but the fact is it's tough being a fan of a team you know has a snowballs chance in hell of making it to the World Series. If anything THOSE fans deserve rewarding, since I guarantee a fair chunk of Yankees fans are only following them because they're successful. I always find it interesting when a successful team suffers a spectacular flameout. THAT is when you find the true fans.

In short, a salary cap for baseball would probably, over 2-3 years, draw more fans to the sport, because they know that it's a (mostly) level playing field. The NFL is the most successful league in the US. There's a reason for that, and a big part of it is the fact the teams are fairly balanced, unlike MLB, which is so ludicrously unbalanced, when it gets right down to it, it's amazing anyone bothers following it at all.

TotalEnd98 · 11-17-2004, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonedwarf

The NFL is the most successful league in the US. There's a reason for that

Most people are morons?

CHCfan · 11-17-2004, 10:46 PM

FWIW, I like seeing a great range of payroll size in OOTP. I love the stories about the team with 1/3 of the payroll as other teams makingthe playoffs.

In real life, though, Costas's changes would have been very good for baseball, IMHO.

swat-spas · 11-17-2004, 11:06 PM

If I recall, there were a large number of teams competing for the wild card slots this year. Although it was a given only a handful of even these good teams had a shot to win it all, the competitiveness (and resulting fan interest) was at least very good this year. Secondly, KC was (based on last year's run) expected to be competing for that all important Central division crown this year. The fact that their free agent signings bombed in their face has more to do with the quality of scouting, as mentioned. Good scouting and team management can overcome a good deal of salary problems. Bad scouting and poor development or management cannot.

Sinclair · 11-17-2004, 11:47 PM

Two points:

1) In any given 16 game stretch during the baseball season, any team can win lots of games. If football had a 162 game season, I guarantee you would not see the same "anyone can win!" pattern played out. You'd probably see a lot of the same patterns as in baseball, actually. The Patriots would win 100 games, the Bengals would lose 90.

2) Am I really the only one who thinks 30 teams playing .500 ball for a decade sounds boring as paint? "Hey, let's have every team be mediocre! Gee, that sounds like FUN!"

alinkens · 11-18-2004, 12:14 AM

I think Bob Costas' book IS the way MLB should be run. In terms of when to do the revenue sharing I do it right after I hit the proceed to next season that way the free agent period has teams with the right amount of money.

Brick · 11-18-2004, 09:08 AM

Revenue sharing is a good idea.

A salary floor is a bad idea. It encourages teams to pay for mediocre "proven veterans" who are not better than minimum salary rookies.

Best system would be a soccer-style promotion-relegation system. A team like the Yankees would have their revenue stream reduced by more teams in the New York area. Without a monopoly, teams can no longer blackmail cities to build them stadiums.

11-11-2004, 08:02 AM	#1
BravesSince66 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 238	A Fair Ball League I have been toying with the idea of starting a "Fair Ball" League based upon some of the recommendations/insights/contentions of the Bob Costas book by that name. I was wondering if anyone else has read the book and if they have considered applying anything it says to an OOTP league. If so, how did you go about doing it? The league would start in 1993 - the year baseball should have adopted some serious financial changes according to Costas. It would include revenue sharing, primarily of media-related income and ticket sales. Each team would keep 50% of their media revenues, the other 50% would be pooled and divided equally among all teams. Teams would split ticket sales: keeping 70% and placing 30% in a pool to be divided equally among all teams. Of course, this would all create a bit of work but I think it is do-able in OOTP. Isn't it? What problems do the veterans of the financial engine out there see in this? Next, salary caps. That's easy enough I suppose. IIRC, the Yankees have the largest salary in 1993 - just under $90 million. So, that would be the cap - $90 million. Costas also recommends that there be a "floor" on salary spending so that players are assured of getting a fair share of total revenues (no teams allowed to hoard money). So, I would limit cash on hand for each team between $2.5 and $5 million, a variable based on total revenues shared. There's other things like no DH and no wildcards, but that doesn't really factor in for the purposes of this discussion. I'm just trying to get any comments/ suggestions/ ideas from anyone on the best ways to implement such a system in OOTP. Or, if someone has already attempted this - what were the results? Thanks.

11-11-2004, 06:36 PM	#4
alinkens All Star Starter Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: CT Posts: 1,072	I have a revenue sharing spreadsheet that may help you guys out. Follow the tools link in my signature. __________________ Owner of the Coast to Coast League's Regina Pride

11-17-2004, 04:42 PM	#13
seth70liz76 All Star Starter Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 1,634	Yeah, Bob Costas wants to move from now, when the Yankees dominate every year and Kansas City has no chance to win to baseball like when he was a kid . . . when the Yankees dominated every year and Kansas City had no chance to win. __________________ It was a mistake to come back.

11-18-2004, 12:14 AM	#19
alinkens All Star Starter Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: CT Posts: 1,072	I think Bob Costas' book IS the way MLB should be run. In terms of when to do the revenue sharing I do it right after I hit the proceed to next season that way the free agent period has teams with the right amount of money. __________________ Owner of the Coast to Coast League's Regina Pride

11-11-2004, 03:55 PM	#2
cubsfan1515 Bat Boy Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2	I've read Fair Ball and I liked it alot. His suggestions would make baseball better. When I start a league I am Making teams spend 40 million and they can't go over 115 million. I am starting in 2004 so that is why the cap is so high. I will be giving they Yankees til the end of 2005 to get their salary down. I would also like to have revenue sharing but I dont know how that will be done. Do you know how to make it happen?

11-11-2004, 04:32 PM	#3
JDOldSchool Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 4,023	The salary cap has ruined the NFL (more than 1/3 of the teams have 3 wins right now) and it would ruin Major League Baseball. I used to respect Costas, but if he's advocating a cap I don't have much respect for him anymore.

11-11-2004, 06:49 PM	#5
rudel.dietrich Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Zürich, Switzerland Posts: 8,608	I don't like the salary cap because it does not reward fans for being loyal to a team and spending their money on that team. Thats what it comes down to for me. As much as I hate the Yankees, their fans should be rewarded for being good fans and filling up the stadium and buying the merchandise.

11-11-2004, 07:19 PM	#6
BravesSince66 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 238	Thanks alinkens. You have a lot of nice stuff on that page of yours. Nice work. As to the merits of a salary cap or not I think there are plenty of strong arguments that MLB is already ruined because we don't have one. More than half the teams have no real hope of making the play-offs in 2005 RIGHT NOW. The league is elitist in terms of legitimate competition. Period. But, that's not the intent of this thread. I plan to manually redistribute the media and ticket revenues within the financial model along the percentages indicated in my pervious post. I don't know of another way to do this. The question is one of timing. Is it better to do this at the beginning of the season or at the end?

11-12-2004, 09:16 AM	#8
Pete Grassi Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 386	Fair Ball is a completely fictional book written by Bob Costas. He wrote that book as a way to hurt two or three teams in baseball who know how to spend their money wisely. The is no reason why lower teams cannot spend money on their franchises....they get to share over $150 mil of the Yankees money every year....where does it go?

11-12-2004, 12:21 PM	#10
abailey3313 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,718	The idea of a salary cap isn't a bad one, but I think you have to keep certain teams at "market level". For example, if you have a franchise located in a big city such as New York or Los Angeles, it would only be realistic (for the most part) for those teams to be closer to the cap than most others. This is the same in reverse: If you have a Rhode Island or a New Hampshire squad, you likely don't want these teams pushing the cap every year. I think salary caps are a great idea as long as a salary cap doesn't become a salary "target". If you have teams in markets that can't afford to spend the amount of the cap, they shouldn't be obligated to do so. Personally, I like the idea of having small market teams and large market teams, while also having a controlled cap. This prevents one or two teams from signing all of the best available free agents, yet doesn't compromise the reality that they are in a big market area. Example: If I have a salary cap of, say, $90M, it would be my preference to see the New York and Los Angeles franchises spending upward of $80M, pushing the cap and using their market to their advantage. Meanwhile, I'd like to see Rhode Island and New Hampshire scrapping around the $60-65M mark. If you want to keep it like this, you have to make sure to control the fan loyalty and market levels. If every team in your league is meeting or coming close to meeting the amount of your cap, then you should probably adjust accordingly. A salary cap is meant to keep the ball in play, not pull in the fences. (It's a compromise. A big market team should never give up their financial advantages just to accomodate a small market team. There has to be some middle ground that restricts the big teams, while still giving them more flexibility than the small teams)

11-17-2004, 04:19 PM	#12
redmachine Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Billings, MT Posts: 145	I agree totally and think that if baseball would try the method outlined in Costas's book, it would be the best of both worlds.

11-17-2004, 06:24 PM	#14
Bonedwarf All Star Starter Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 1,339	I'm for a salary cap in all sports I'm a fan of. None of my friends watch baseball. Aside from finding it dull, it's the fact that they know the Yankees, Sox etc... Will always be up there. Most of my friends are HUGE fans of the NFL for the fact it provides excitement, as you never know who will win. (As someone else just said.) It's all very well saying about "rewarding the fans", but the fact is it's tough being a fan of a team you know has a snowballs chance in hell of making it to the World Series. If anything THOSE fans deserve rewarding, since I guarantee a fair chunk of Yankees fans are only following them because they're successful. I always find it interesting when a successful team suffers a spectacular flameout. THAT is when you find the true fans. In short, a salary cap for baseball would probably, over 2-3 years, draw more fans to the sport, because they know that it's a (mostly) level playing field. The NFL is the most successful league in the US. There's a reason for that, and a big part of it is the fact the teams are fairly balanced, unlike MLB, which is so ludicrously unbalanced, when it gets right down to it, it's amazing anyone bothers following it at all.

11-17-2004, 10:46 PM	#16
CHCfan All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Grand Island, NE Posts: 1,117	FWIW, I like seeing a great range of payroll size in OOTP. I love the stories about the team with 1/3 of the payroll as other teams makingthe playoffs. In real life, though, Costas's changes would have been very good for baseball, IMHO.

11-17-2004, 11:06 PM	#17
swat-spas Minors (Single A) Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 53	If I recall, there were a large number of teams competing for the wild card slots this year. Although it was a given only a handful of even these good teams had a shot to win it all, the competitiveness (and resulting fan interest) was at least very good this year. Secondly, KC was (based on last year's run) expected to be competing for that all important Central division crown this year. The fact that their free agent signings bombed in their face has more to do with the quality of scouting, as mentioned. Good scouting and team management can overcome a good deal of salary problems. Bad scouting and poor development or management cannot.

11-17-2004, 11:47 PM	#18
Sinclair Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 202	Two points: 1) In any given 16 game stretch during the baseball season, any team can win lots of games. If football had a 162 game season, I guarantee you would not see the same "anyone can win!" pattern played out. You'd probably see a lot of the same patterns as in baseball, actually. The Patriots would win 100 games, the Bengals would lose 90. 2) Am I really the only one who thinks 30 teams playing .500 ball for a decade sounds boring as paint? "Hey, let's have every team be mediocre! Gee, that sounds like FUN!"

11-18-2004, 09:08 AM	#20
Brick Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: A legend in my own mind Posts: 289	Revenue sharing is a good idea. A salary floor is a bad idea. It encourages teams to pay for mediocre "proven veterans" who are not better than minimum salary rookies. Best system would be a soccer-style promotion-relegation system. A team like the Yankees would have their revenue stream reduced by more teams in the New York area. Without a monopoly, teams can no longer blackmail cities to build them stadiums.