MLB Proposes $180MM First Luxury Tax Threshold

[chop2chip]

Best solution I've seen is to order the draft by best record of non-playoff teams, followed by the order of finish of the playoff teams. This gives incentive to finish as high as possible even if you don't make the playoffs.

Couple that with a $1M minimum salary that scales up like Russ' idea, and I think that largely solves the salary issue.

What I'd hate to see is tanking teams' rosters becoming some wasteland where bad contracts go because they have salary room to spend, and they must spend it by taking on bad contracts in exchange for prospect capital. I want all teams trying to compete, not awful teams with bloated payrolls.

I think the fear with that draft proposal is it would incentivize teams in the wild card hunt to tank (this sort of behavior happens in the NBA with the lottery and pick protections in trades).

But given the financial benefits from making the playoffs and the randomness in baseball, I think the tanking risk is very low.

I would support this for sure.

 

[Russ2dollas]

If the union cares about top end salaries and wants to keep them from being depressed, they need to agree to some sort of safety valve to allow teams a way out of truly bad long term deals. It would be kind of complicated to implement, but a suggestion would be to give teams the option to buy out players for 1/2 the remaining contract value if the player's performance falls below some established, neutral metric. If the player finishes in the bottom five percent of his position group in WAR (metric to be agreed upon by both sides), the team could buy its way out of the bad deal for half price. In the event that this happens, the player would become a free agent and could sign with another team for whatever deal they could get in addition to the 1/2 price pay from their previous team. Many if not most teams would be more willing to shell out big deals to older players if they had a bit of a safety net to keep them from ending up with the next Chris Davis.

That is creative.

The teams are going to look at shorter deals. If the Union wants longer term deals then they are going to have to try and get people to free agency before 30 and consider something like you wrote.

Same thing with the hector oliveras of the world. They may need to find a mechanism to get those guys out cheaper.

Contracts are about risk and reward. If the players can lower the risk there is likely more reward.

 

[Enscheff]

I think he's saying by the best-to-worst record for the non-playoff teams that flips to the traditional worst-to-best record for the playoff teams at the break point. In a similar vein, MLB could refigure the Competitive Balance rounds moving more toward W/L by rewarding the non-playoff teams with the best records an extra pick. There are a lot of options going forward.

Exactly. My explanation was probably terrible.

 

[50PoundHead]

If the union cares about top end salaries and wants to keep them from being depressed, they need to agree to some sort of safety valve to allow teams a way out of truly bad long term deals. It would be kind of complicated to implement, but a suggestion would be to give teams the option to buy out players for 1/2 the remaining contract value if the player's performance falls below some established, neutral metric. If the player finishes in the bottom five percent of his position group in WAR (metric to be agreed upon by both sides), the team could buy its way out of the bad deal for half price. In the event that this happens, the player would become a free agent and could sign with another team for whatever deal they could get in addition to the 1/2 price pay from their previous team. Many if not most teams would be more willing to shell out big deals to older players if they had a bit of a safety net to keep them from ending up with the next Chris Davis.

I get what you're saying, but teams will simply stop playing guys with bad contracts so they can't generate the stats. It's been done with innings-pitched clauses in the past.

I'm trying to make my way through what a higher minimum might mean. Would it keep borderline prospects in the minors longer or would it push down the salaries for the middle-class player?

 

[Slippyjms]

I’m curious as to when the salary floor would be calculated. Constantly, each year, or over an average period of years? It would be hard to do mid season tear downs and keep payroll above 100m.

 

[DirkPiggler]

I get what you're saying, but teams will simply stop playing guys with bad contracts so they can't generate the stats. It's been done with innings-pitched clauses in the past.

I'm trying to make my way through what a higher minimum might mean. Would it keep borderline prospects in the minors longer or would it push down the salaries for the middle-class player?

That’s one of the challenges, along with how to handle injuries.

Maybe prorating the players’ production would be the solution.

 

[Russ2dollas]

I’m curious as to when the salary floor would be calculated. Constantly, each year, or over an average period of years? It would be hard to do mid season tear downs and keep payroll above 100m.

Good question. I had not thought about that.

I would think it would be opening day. That would help the players b/c you have to get to 100 million plus incentives plus injuries, etc.

The externalities of these decisions are always different than what we think. Plan is for the Pirates to sign more vets and to be competitive. What if they are at 90 million and they decide to give a 10 million dollar signing bonus to a rookie to buy our a year or two of FA? What if the Pirates overpay for all of the relief pitchers for one year to try and corner the market and sell at the deadline?

 

[Southcack77]

I'm not 100% sure tanking is a problem that needs to be addressed.

It seems a pretty fair way of giving teams upward mobility. Giving teams that just miss playoffs top 5 picks is probably going to tend to favor status quo.

But I find tanking as interesting as the games.