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[SF11704]

As 2013 starts to take shape so does the 'cost' of maintaining or building a competitive team. 137M over 6 years for David Wright. Great player, but if you put this into context he's making more than 1/6th of our annual cap. Really changes the way you have to construct your team as things move forward. How much is a team willing to spend in an effort to win.
Now for a minor rant of sorts ..... Ownership and the Integrity of the Game! We have had some interesting discussions on this board about the Integrity of the Game, but now for another look at it. For me one of the key components for 'Integrity of the Game' is a level playing filed for all the participants, or at least as level as possible. Now if we look at the Doyers agreement with FOX it will bring in 280M a year for 25 years. Without a hard cap on a team's payroll (forget the luxary tax crap) how do you control an ownership group from actually purchasing anything and everything that they think they need to win a championship. I know it doesn't guarentee anything but it sure makes the playing field rather 'unfair'. If an ownership group can operate in this manner does it affect the Integrity of the Game itself?

 

[msgkings322]

As 2013 starts to take shape so does the 'cost' of maintaining or building a competitive team. 137M over 6 years for David Wright. Great player, but if you put this into context he's making more than 1/6th of our annual cap. Really changes the way you have to construct your team as things move forward. How much is a team willing to spend in an effort to win.
Now for a minor rant of sorts ..... Ownership and the Integrity of the Game! We have had some interesting discussions on this board about the Integrity of the Game, but now for another look at it. For me one of the key components for 'Integrity of the Game' is a level playing filed for all the participants, or at least as level as possible. Now if we look at the Doyers agreement with FOX it will bring in 280M a year for 25 years. Without a hard cap on a team's payroll (forget the luxary tax crap) how do you control an ownership group from actually purchasing anything and everything that they think they need to win a championship. I know it doesn't guarentee anything but it sure makes the playing field rather 'unfair'. If an ownership group can operate in this manner does it affect the Integrity of the Game itself?

Well, this line of thought has been around a while, pretty much for 12-15 years due to the Yankees (and to some extent Red Sox). Did the Yankees ruin the game? Hard to say. After their big run in the late 90s they always made the playoffs but rarely won it all. I imagine the Dodgers will now always make the playoffs, and then the SSS crapshoot begins.

Anyone not a fan of the Yanks or Dodgers will have an obvious beef with this situation, where before the season starts one NL team and one AL team are guaranteed playoff spots. But it's been like this a while and thanks to the rich teams' owners and the players union there's not much likely to be done about it.

We've discussed ways to fix the situation here, and others have ad infinitum elsewhere. The most promising to me is the salary cap but with a salary floor so small market teams can't just do what KC and now Miami and others do, just profit off revenue sharing. And the cap and floor if done right should keep the same $$ flowing to the players, it would just be more evenly spaced.

But as mentioned before it won't happen. And maybe what will is now some deep pockets will buy the other teams and the gap will only get wider. I hope our owners step up or if they can't, sell to ones who can.

 

[MarcoPolo]

As 2013 starts to take shape so does the 'cost' of maintaining or building a competitive team. 137M over 6 years for David Wright. Great player, but if you put this into context he's making more than 1/6th of our annual cap.

Today it's being reported as 8 years & 138 million, so averaging $17.5M/annum.

Source: David Wright, Mets agree to new deal

Mets, David Wright agree to $138 million extension