Baseball Salary Cap

Taking a page out of Jay Destratis's book, Jay Caton suggested that I throw this convo up here for discussion. Might as well...I haven't posted anything else on here in a couple months. Plus, I love a good sports argument and the baseball salary cap (or lack thereof) is always a good hot topic in MA.

Jay and I have been talking about some of the Sox potential offseason moves. Namely, Jason Bay. Like us Sox fans like to do every year that the Yankees advance further in the playoffs, Jay brought up New York's increasingly insane payroll. Here's a quick rundown of our convo via BlackBerry messenger (punctuation the same because it's cooler that way):

Jay: In 2009 the yanks spent 63 mil MORE than the next closest team (the mets) so they can absorb [Bay and Holliday's] salaries just in that margin alone.
Jeff: It's insane, but equally funny that we weren't talking about salaries and salary caps in 04 and 07.
Jay: Yes, but in 04 and 07 we were still 40 to 60 mil behind the yanks. What is there to say.
Jeff: But I'm just saying the only time we complain about baseball salaries is when new york finished better than we do.
Jay: Well, it is the only time it really comes into play. When ur salary is 63 mil more than the next guy that is something to talk about. There are 6 teams who's entire payroll is less than that 63 million dollar gap. It is a topic of discussion simply because of the shear magnitude of the disparity. I mean think about how much money they have spent over the last decade since they last won. There were teams with a fraction of the payroll of the yankees winning it all. It just goes to show the sort of game the yankees play. And the disgust we all feel when they win that way it totally justified by the huge salary gap they create. Even when we have the second highest payroll (as we did in 04 and 07) we were not way higher than everyone else. The mets, cubs, and several others were all within 5 to 10 mil of us. Tha yanks always are at least 30 mil more than everyone else and at 63 mil, that is news worthy.


With Jay's last response, we passed the point where texting back and forth makes sense. This one had to go to email. Here's my response to Jay:

So yes, baseball salaries are out of control. And yes, the Yankees probably have an obvious advantage over a good chunk of the teams because they can actually go out and get the Sabathias and Texeiras, whose combined salaries is close to that of the entire Marlins or Padres team. So why doesn't baseball have a salary cap? Because it doesn't need one. I know, I know...you're probably shocked to hear me say that, but hear me out...

There's enough parity in baseball to justify letting this keep going the way it has. And, actually, there's no less parity in baseball than there is in the other major sports leagues, which all have salary caps in place. In the last 15 years, the NFL has had 11 different Super Bowl winners, the NBA 6 different champions, the NHL 8 different Stanley Cup winners (including 1 season that was cancelled), and baseball has had 9 different World Series Winners. It just kind of self-regulates.

So the next logical argument is something along the lines of, "teams like Florida and San Diego can't possibly compete with big market teams like the Sox, Cubs, Yanks, Mets, etc." This is true. But just like there are crappy teams in baseball who are perennial losers, football has the Browns and Raiders, basketball has the Clippers and Wizards, and hockey has...well honestly I have no clue. The teams are crappy every year for different reasons, but all have to do with flaws in the way the league is run or, in the Clippers case, the way the team is run (or run into the ground, courtesy of Elgin Baylor).

(small tangent: a major flaw in the NFL is that the top draft picks demand these insanely large contracts with tons of guaranteed money. Perennial losers like Oakland get themselves completely invested in one or two players and have no money left under the cap to go out and get good, quality free agent veterans that they can build their team around. Know who had the highest payroll in the NFL last year? Yep...Oakland. The Colts and Patriots were 3rd and 4th from the bottom, respectively. That's saying something. The NBA has the right idea by putting a cap on rookie contracts.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, crappy teams remaining crappy. In baseball, it's different. Crappy teams remain crappy because they groom their prospects until they're legit stars in the league, then they can't afford them. Oakland made a business off of that for about 10 years by grooming starting pitchers and closers and starting pitchers then selling them off before they demanded big money. They could put together an all-star team just with players they had to dump.

A salary cap isn't something that baseball will consider anytime soon just because it's maintaining a certain level of parity that's keeping it on par with other leagues. Not every team competes every year, but you do have teams towards the bottom like the Twins, Rays, and Rockies who can put together good teams and make a run for a few years.

Their payroll is crazy high, yes, but I think in the last 5 years the Yankees have realized that they can go out and spend a trillion dollars on Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano (oops!), Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, etc., but if you don't have good baseball players around them, you're not gonna win. Theo figured that out a while back, and that's why we have Ellsbury, Pedroia, Lester, Delcarmen, Papelbon, Buchholz, etc. to complement our blue chip players like Beckett, Ortiz (a faded blue chip, maybe), Drew (somewhat), Bay, etc. Cashman realized where the Yankees were lacking so now they have players like Joba, Hughes, Melky, Cano, etc. (less expensive homegrown talent) that they can put around these other blue chip players. The difference between them and Oakland is that, obviously, they can afford to pay Joba when his contract comes up whereas Oakland would have to deal him for 13 rosin bags and a 6th round draft pick.

Actually, I'd be curious to see how much of NY's payroll is allotted to blue chip free agents and how much is allotted to homegrown players like Jeter, Cano, Posada, Pettite, etc.

Ok, I think I'm making this too long, but it's a good discussion. And, honestly, I don't think we'd even be having this conversation if the Phillies (with the 7th highest payroll) had won the World Series. It would be more of a joke that NY spent a cajillion dollars to win an AL pennant.

The ball is in Jay's court, but feel free to hop in...

Rounding Up Support!

My friend Kevin found this sports photography contest that ESPN the Magazine is having so I'm gonna give this a go and see what happens. Included in the six categories is People's Choice, where anyone can hop on and vote for their favorite picture. I submitted a couple, but I'm trying to garner some votes for the picture below, which I took last week at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

This is where I need to round up some support! Please head over to my photo (http://theshot.espn.com/bin/Rate?image_id=1008500145) and vote for me. The system will send you a quick confirmation email with another link to click and confirm your vote (so I don't cheat or anything).

Voting is limited to one per email address so please spread the word and/or register for as many email addresses as gmail allows and keep voting!

Thanks!

Gillette Panoramic

Thanks, Photoshop photomerge tool.

Gettin' Behind on This

My Uncle Don and Aunt Nancy, Patriots season ticket holders, were nice enough to pass along their dynamite tickets to the Pats vs. Cinci preseason game last week. I don't get to many Patriots games so it was nice to take a few pictures at Gillette. Of course, it's no Fenway Park, but I don't argue with free tickets. Here are a few of my favorites. Full gallery up @ http://jeffvalois.smugmug.com.

Next up...the Deutsche Bank Championship next Wednesday and back to Fenway for the Rays game (first time in the Monster seats...thanks Jay) on the 11th. I'm looking forward to taking a few pictures at both.

RIP, Teddy

This is one of my all-time favorite moments I've seen in person at Fenway Park. While battling serious health issues, Senator Kennedy threw out the first pitch to soon-to-be hall of famer Jim Rice at Fenway Opening Day '09.

RIP, Teddy...a true Massachusetts legend.

Diggin' through the Archives

I'm getting ready to head down to Foxboro with Sarah for tonight's Patriots preseason game vs. the Bengals. Of course, the camera's coming with me.

This is my first Pats game since I went to a couple games in '07, one of which turned out to be a preseason Super Bowl preview against the Giants (the other was the AFC Championship...great experience). That game fell in the middle of my 'sports vacation'...a week during which I went to back-to-back Sox games (including the Buchholz no-hitter) and the Deutsche Bank Championship. That week was also the first time I can remember thinking that I took some pretty kickass pictures on purpose.

I went through some of my pictures from that Pats game and forgot how much I liked a few of them. I think they're still some of my favorite pictures I've taken...not to mention some of the most time-consuming to edit.

Tom Brady and Eli Manning

The "Backerhood," as they called themselves. Junior Seau, Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, and Adalius Thomas

Adalius Thomas checking out the crowd

Stay Classy, Worcester State

I hadn't been back to Worcester State, my alma mater, since I graduated a few years ago (coincidentally, the last time I was there was the last day of Photography I with Don Bullens. Thanks Don).

I heard the college had done a ton of construction and renovation in some areas so I wanted to swing by to check it out and take a few pictures.

They did a really nice job on the Administration Building (pictured above, from the back). If the school looked this nice when I went there, I probably would have spent more time studying and less time playing Madden and Tiger Woods on Playstation. Fine...prolly not, but it would've been nice.