Cyrus wrote:If anything i blame the Players for not asking for a Salary floor. In turn I'm sure the owners would have asked for stiffer upper limit, which is fine, LA Dodgers shouldn't be able to spend 10x more than worst team.
Salary floors should be like 60-70 mill or else you don't get revenue sharing or something along the lines.
The players? Nah, this is all about the owners.
The league generally pools all a bunch of local revenue so teams like the Dodgers and Yankees put in way more than they take out. The CBA says teams need to use that money for baseball related stuff but it's extremely vague and doesn't seem to suggest it has to be on top of any additional spending rather than at the expense of it.
So in practice, teams like the Rays and Pirates just take that money, don't really spend it as an additional on-field investment, and turn their teams into guaranteed multi-million dollar profit machines no matter how few fans actually show up for their games. I'm all for more revenue sharing but the issue here goes beyond revenue sharing and into teams actually spending the money they get.
Yes, a salary floor would achieve that to a point, but the owners are the ones selling the product to the fans. The players are just their employees. The players shouldn't be sacrificing anything in bargaining just for increased parity. It's the owners who should suffer for putting out poor products. Getting rid of revenue sharing entirely would have the same effect, putting a lot of these owners in a situation where they'd actually risk losing money if they stayed in a poor market or put out an awful product nobody wanted to watch. The owners of the Yankees and Dodgers should be rightfully passed that they're basically paying for themselves and their competition at the same time while parasites come in for free money simply for owning a team that also appreciates in value over time because, as we've established, it's guaranteed money, in a de jure monopoly. And the Yankees and Dodgers are fine with them not spending it because it makes it easier for them to always stay on top.
People wealthy enough to own MLB teams figure among the greediest few on the planet. Until fans turn on them, nothing will ever change and they'll just keep asking for more. But for some reason fans always have the crab in a bucket mentality and are inclined to blame the players, like you're doing here.
