Major League Baseball takes over operation of the Dodgers

[Schad]

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/04/m ... tions.html

Commissioner Bud Selig has announced that MLB will take over the Dodgers' financial operations from Frank McCourt, reports Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times. Shaikin's colleague Dylan Hernandez adds that Selig "will appoint a representative to oversee all aspects of the business and the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers." Shaikin has the official statement from Selig here. ESPN's Buster Olney calls Selig's takeover "a two-handed shove out the door," and awaits McCourt's legal response.

Interesting development...doubly so when another major franchise -- the Mets -- are struggling to make payroll. There's some speculation as to the representative...would love for it to be Kim Ng, the former assistant GM in LA and current Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations for MLB.

[baulderdash77]

I hope they make them shed some salary.

MLB has a bunch of teams that have real debt problems too. There's several teams that could be in trouble in the next 2 years.

There's really not many teams that can afford to have >120 million payrolls.

[LittleOzzy]

MLB needs a salary cap to make all teams profitable.

[raptorforlife88]

MLB needs a salary cap to make all teams profitable.

You can't just implement a salary cap. What people fail to realize is that if there is a salary cap there needs to be a salary floor because the players union is going to demand a percentage of MLB revenues to be guaranteed as salary. For reference the NHL agreement states that 57% of league revenue must be paid out to the players (this was a reduction from the estimated 75% of revenue teams were paying in salaries prior to the institution of the cap). The floor of the NHL cap is accepted to be 16 million dollars below the salary cap.

MLB revenues for anyone unaware are huge. According to Forbes 2010 report that number was 5.9 billion dollars.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/06/most-v ... alues.html

Now we all know that the MLB union is powerful. Let's say they get the number of 55% of salaries, that means the league would need to pay out over 3 billion dollars in salary figures, or about 110 million dollars for each team.

There are as I'm sure you are aware a number of teams who will not be hitting that number or anywhere near that number this year. So you're talking about needing to set the floor at 65 or 70 million dollars, a number that some teams still don't hit or want to hit (because they have some greedy owners). Meaning the ceilings going to be pretty damn high anyways. Something like 150 million.

The actual total salary number is something like 2.8 billion currently so your also talking about a salary increase, so even if it was successfully negotiated to 50 or even 45% of revenues, you're still talking about the same overall salaries, and still high cap, with a low floor to accommodate teams. I just don't see a great way to implement a salary cap in baseball. Revenues are too high, the league is on the whole doing well.

[WpgPage]

I cant see the MLB ever having a cap the players would easily strike for over a year to prevent it.