First, I never wanted to add myself to the clutter of talking heads spouting off with their opinion. However, if someone is willing to pay me this minimal fee to do this, then I guess being at a young age without much money I am going to sellout. Not to mention when your life has become something even you yourself have to laugh at, and you don’t have much going on during a week night, blogging doesn’t seem too bad.
To start I just have to state what simply is wrong with baseball, and in order to do so I must tell you what the NFL has done correctly. The NFL has parity; at the beginning of every season each NFL team has at least a chance of making the playoffs. Every team’s fans have hope. The same cannot be said for baseball. Every year many teams enter spring training without even a prayer of making the playoffs.
Since 1998 every team in the NFL has made the playoffs once, except for the Houston Texans who didn’t enter the league until 2002. In Major League Baseball, 9 teams have not made the playoffs since 1998. The Royals have not made the playoffs since 1985; the Nationals/Expos have not made the playoffs since 1981. How can fans of these two teams have any hope?
What makes the NFL the king of sports is that every year, a team that had a horrendous record the previous year, makes the playoffs (i.e. Tampa Bay this past season). This type of turn around in a span of one season almost never happens in baseball. Entering spring training of every season the Royals (just one small market example) come in with no chance of making the playoffs. How can a Royals fan enjoy baseball when before the first game of the season, they know their team has no chance. They might get lucky one season and field a competitive team (i.e. the ‘03 Marlins), but they have no chance of sustaining a winning team over an extended period of time. (And yes, I know that some teams who spend a lot of money suck too, i.e. the Orioles, but if they had competent people in charge they would field a much better team. They at least have the ability to spend money on the wrong players, where as small market teams don’t even have the hope of spending money on the wrong players.)
So what is a simple factor in the NFL creating parity?
A major reason for the competitive parity in the NFL is that the NFL does not punish a team for being located in a less populated area (small market) versus a team located in a heavily populated area (large market). The Green Bay Packers (population 100,000) are able to compete with the New York Giants (population 8 million), unlike the Tampa Bay Rays (population 330,000) who can’t compete with the New York Yankees. The NFL’s TV contract gives a clear example of the previously mentioned fact. A television contract is based on ratings (number of viewers), so obviously in a heavily populated city there are going to be more people watching a game than in a less populated city. So a large market team would generate sizably larger revenue from their TV contract than a small market team.
The television contracts the NFL has with CBS, NBC, FOX, and ESPN are negotiated through the league, not the individual teams. So the NFL combines all their markets when they come up with a price to sell their broadcast rights. Thus the revenue generated from all the TV contracts is pooled together and split evenly between the 32 teams.
In Major League Baseball the league office only negotiates deals with ESPN to show a mid-week game nationally, with Fox for Fox’s Saturday baseball, and with ESPN for the Sunday night game of the week. MLB negotiates TV contracts with TBS and FOX to air the playoff games. The revenue from these TV contracts is split between the 30 teams.
However, almost every baseball game is broadcast on TV, not just the previously mentioned nationally broadcast games. This is because each individual team negotiates the rights for a local affiliate to broadcast their games in their local market. But clearly not all local markets are created equal. The basic measurement for how much a team can command in dollars from a broadcaster is the size of a local market. A team in New York has a substantially larger local market than a team in Pittsburg. The franchise in Pittsburg can’t do anything about the smaller size of their local market. They cannot import people to grow the size of their market; they can’t move to New York, they have to take what they are given.
So a small market team is at a sizable disadvantage when it comes to creating revenue from a television contract over an issue they have no control over. In the NFL this is a non-factor. A team from New York and Pittsburg are on a level playing field when it comes to TV revenue, since neither has any control of their market size. So where the Yankees are said to take in $100 million a year from their TV contact, the Pirates are said to take in $5 million a year from their TV contract. This revenue discrepancy diminishes the ability to establish competitive parity in baseball.
The Tampa Bay Rays have never had a winning season in their 10 year existence, and had 70 wins just once. While the Rays have never won 71 games in their history, the division rival Yankees have been to the playoffs for 14 consecutive seasons. Is it any coincidence that Yankees have gone on this playoff run while having the most revenue of any team during that same time period?
To answer my own rhetorical question, NO! Money dictates whether a baseball team can go on a long streak of consecutively fielding a winning team or consecutively fielding a losing team. The Yankees/large market teams can afford to pay for bad players (Carl Pavano) and survive; where as if a small market team were to do this, it would ruin their franchise. Large market teams can actually afford to sign upper tier free agents. When’s the last time you heard about the Rays signing a top tier free agent.
Worse small market teams can’t afford to keep their home-grown talent. The small market teams are just a farm system for the large market teams. Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Johanna Santana, Carlos Beltran, Miguel Cabrera, and Vladimir Guerrero are just a few examples of players not with their original team due to money. These teams either let their players go in free-agency (Zito), or are forced to trade their talented players in the final year of the players contract in order to get anything in return for their players impending departure (Santana). The failure for small market teams to keep home-grown talent creates an inability for these teams to sustain an above .500 winning percentage for multiple years. (Now in the Twins situation their owner is a billionaire but refuses to drop a dime into his team, which is ridiculous. This is a reason why MLB should be able to force bad owners to sell their team, however this subject is to be discussed in future entries.)
Due to the discrepancy in revenue between these large and small market teams there is no parity in baseball. These small market teams rely on cultivating talent through their farm systems. So at least building a farm system should level the playing field for all teams. Unfortunately, small market teams are at a disadvantage even when it comes to developing a farm system due to their substantially lower revenues compared to those of the large market teams.
A team’s farm system is supposed to be built through the draft. The drafts design is to bring parity by allowing the worst team to select the best players. The draft doesn’t work the way it is intended to because small market teams drafting early can’t afford the best talent. So small market teams, picking early in the draft, don’t pick the most talented players since they cannot afford them. Thus the most talented players slide down the draft to the large market teams. So the rich end up getting richer.
A perfect example of this, which hits close to home for me, is the Padres wasting the first pick of the 2004 draft on Matt Bush. Bush was maybe a first round pick, but definitely not a top 10 pick. But he was selected by the Padres because they could afford him. The Padres passed on players who have become proven major leaguers such as Justin Verlander (2nd overall pick), Jared Weaver (12th overall), and Stephen Drew (15th overall) all because of the dollars these prospects were commanding. So Weaver, the 2004 college baseball player of the year, was intended to be a top 3 pick based on the draft’s design. Yet, he was able to slip all the way down to the larger market Angels at 12 because they could afford him.
I am not saying that money guarantees success, but the lack of money guarantees the inability to sustain success. Small market teams can make the playoffs for a couple of consecutive seasons; but they have no chance of putting together a streak of 4 seasons consecutively in the playoffs, let alone a streak of 14 seasons.
I propose that the revenue generated from each team’s TV contract would be pooled together and split evenly between the 30 teams. Why should small market teams be put at such a disadvantage just because of their location? Now, I am not advocating all revenue be shared, winning leads to more revenue and deservedly so. I just want the television contracts to be shared in addition to the current revenue sharing MLB has in place. To appease the big market owners, each team should be able to keep revenue from their radio contract and all their other individual team contracts.
I understand there is a slight issue with this because some teams also own the TV network which broadcast their games (i.e. NESN with the Red Sox, YES with Yankees). However, the team and the network are separate entities so I believe MLB could find a fair market value for their television contract and make sure that their revenue is pooled with all the other teams TV revenue for equal distribution.
The game will never truly have a level playing field, but I am not suggesting that it has to. Baseball just needs to narrow the gap between the small and large market teams. Baseball needs to try and create parity. A simple way to do so would be to split all the television revenue between all 30 teams. This would allow the small market teams to keep at least one of their talented players once they become a free agent. This would also allow a team to have the money to sign the best player in the draft, as the draft was intended. As stated earlier a team’s individual television contract is mainly based of the local population, so why is the MLB the only league putting their small market teams at such a competitive disadvantage over something they have no control over.
Future Entry Subjects: The fraudulent MLB luxury tax, a salary cap (and the lack of ones effect on steroids in baseball), a salary floor, bad owners, and the decline of the small market fan.
Takes of the Week
Aggravation of the week: Raider fans in Los Angeles. You are the only people who root for a team that left your city. I don't want to call you stupid, but honestly you leave me no choice. People in Baltimore hate the Colts, people in Cleveland hate the Ravens, and people in Houston hate the Titans. That is how it is suppose to work, so why do you still support the Raiders?
Thought of the week: Shawn Kemp has 8 kids with 7 women. Travis Henry out did him by having 9 kids with 9 women. And now we might have new contender to possibly set the mark for most kids out of wedlock. Darren Mcfadden allegedly has 3 kids with 3 women. He has not even played a down of professional football yet and he is averaging 3 kids every 5 years. Darren is on pace to tie Travis Henry in 10 year. I believe Mcfadden has a very strong candidacy to eventually lay claim solely to the title of athlete with the most children out of wedlock. As a side note I did enjoy watching Mcfadden run the ball for Arkansas the past couple seasons.
Monthly Addition to the list of things to do in my lifetime: After work on Halloween, change into my costume and board a flight to Vegas. Rage all night without booking a hotel room and catch the first flight back home in the morning. Get back to the office by noon, thus only taking a half day off work. It can be done, and has been done.Word of the week (aka to squeeze into conversation): caesious
Surf Report: It’s worth paddling out. Honesty doesn’t it matter what the exact conditions are? All that matters is whether or not it’s worth going out.
Mammoth Report: No new snow, but I still would like to be up there right now.
Link of the week: www.collineire.com
Quote of the week: “She’s guaranteed an STD the way a hockey player is guaranteed to lose a tooth.” – Nick Scurich on spring break
Song of the week: DayGlo by Iglu & Hartley Quandary of the week (aka joke so lame it's almost funny): Is a hippopotamus really a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus? Please send me your suggestions for takes of the week
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