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This is what blows about MLB. As much as the Twin fans would want to keep Mauer, the reality is the Twins cannot guarantee him 20 million a year, guarantee he plays with all-star players (at the other 8 positions), catch for some of the best arms in MLB and always play on a contender.Heck, if I were still a Twins fans, I would actually pitty Mauer if he opted to sign a new contract with the Twins.
I agree, but when one of those teams hits on a pick, it can turn things around in a hurry. The fact that all 32 teams can be almost equal players in free agency due to the cap makes the league more competitive from top to bottom.The Twins will never be able to keep Morneau, Mauer, Liriano (if healthy) and Santana together. 2 of those 4 guys will end up in L.A., Boston, or New York. If it were the Vikings, they'd probably be able to keep all three. Of course, they'd have to trim fat at other positions, but that would release decent players into the free agent pool, where weaker teams could snap them up, keeping the competitive balance intact and rotating good and bad teams. In baseball, a team like the Royals has no chance to be successful unless they guess right on tons of young players and manage to cobble together a competitive team from these youngsters. even then, they'll be good for a couple of years until all those players demand 8 figure contracts, in which case, they'll almost all walk to other teams, leaving the Royals in the doldrums again.In football, if a front office sucks, they can be replaced. An inherent financial handicap is much harder to overcome.
You can use the Braves from 1992-2005 as another example.
You know, that noble disposition does not have the same ring to it when spoken by a Kansas City Royals fan:
I think that's pretty obvious.
Point to an MLB team that has won it all three times in the last 5 years.
you are missing the point, but thanks for playing. this is not about one team building a great team over a short period of time. it is about the league as a whole and what teams can buy their way to a good winning %. playoff formats are different between leagues so it is not apples to apples when comparing championships won. therefore, you need to look at the regular season and see what teams spend more and what is the result of that spending.you are either fishing or have a pre-conceived notion that will not change despite any facts brought to the table. 
You really warp the facts to create a certain paradigm, and I understand what you are saying and I can agree with you but you are missing the big picture. The Patriots have the luxury to pick and choose who they want to keep (Brady, Seymour et al). The Twins don't have that luxury. The Twins can only keep the players the Yankees (or other markets larger than the Twins) don't want.
Just for giggles, the 2000 season records of these teams:
Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
If he was using arbitrary cutoffs, I thought I could too.Detroit went from losing 119 games to having the best record in baseball most of this season. The As are always contenders despite a low payroll. It's obvious that you can compete without a big payroll, you just have to be better at scouting and be more creative with your restraints.Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
I am confused why you never pick an example from the American League East? That is the division with the two clubs with the biggest payroll, so any argument you can make in the AL East Division would carry more weight. But for whatever reason, you like to pull examples from the AL Central and AL West which are predominantly made up of small market \ payroll teams.If he was using arbitrary cutoffs, I thought I could too.Detroit went from losing 119 games to having the best record in baseball most of this season. The As are always contenders despite a low payroll. It's obvious that you can compete without a big payroll, you just have to be better at scouting and be more creative with your restraints.Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
I understand. I'm not taking shots or calling this a fishing trip, there's an argument to be made on both sides. I agree with your statements above too. My contention, though, is that besides the A's, who have some really incredible baseball minds in their front office, how many other teams are perennially cometitive with such a low payroll? The Tigers made huge strides this year, as did Florida, but typically, at least half the playoff teams are a foregone conclusion before the season starts. You can take a pool of the high-salary teams and more or less guarantee that several of them will be in the mix (case in point : Yankees, Mets, Dodgers all made the playoffs this year, and Boston was in it until the last month, when they collapsed.) In the NFL, more than half the teams that make the playoffs in year n don't make it in year n+1. In the NFL, there are very few teams that you can count out before the season starts, while in ML,< if you picked 10 teams before the season that wouldn't make the playoffs, you'd usually hit on 9, maybe all 10.If he was using arbitrary cutoffs, I thought I could too.Detroit went from losing 119 games to having the best record in baseball most of this season. The As are always contenders despite a low payroll. It's obvious that you can compete without a big payroll, you just have to be better at scouting and be more creative with your restraints.Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
That's largely because 4 more teams make the playoffs in the NFL than in MLB. I'm convinced that all the anti-competitive talk would go away if baseball expanded their playoffs to 12 or 16 teams.I understand. I'm not taking shots or calling this a fishing trip, there's an argument to be made on both sides. I agree with your statements above too. My contention, though, is that besides the A's, who have some really incredible baseball minds in their front office, how many other teams are perennially cometitive with such a low payroll? The Tigers made huge strides this year, as did Florida, but typically, at least half the playoff teams are a foregone conclusion before the season starts. You can take a pool of the high-salary teams and more or less guarantee that several of them will be in the mix (case in point : Yankees, Mets, Dodgers all made the playoffs this year, and Boston was in it until the last month, when they collapsed.) In the NFL, more than half the teams that make the playoffs in year n don't make it in year n+1. In the NFL, there are very few teams that you can count out before the season starts, while in ML,< if you picked 10 teams before the season that wouldn't make the playoffs, you'd usually hit on 9, maybe all 10.If he was using arbitrary cutoffs, I thought I could too.Detroit went from losing 119 games to having the best record in baseball most of this season. The As are always contenders despite a low payroll. It's obvious that you can compete without a big payroll, you just have to be better at scouting and be more creative with your restraints.Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
Why? So baseball could be like hockey?That's largely because 4 more teams make the playoffs in the NFL than in MLB. I'm convinced that all the anti-competitive talk would go away if baseball expanded their playoffs to 12 or 16 teams.I understand. I'm not taking shots or calling this a fishing trip, there's an argument to be made on both sides. I agree with your statements above too. My contention, though, is that besides the A's, who have some really incredible baseball minds in their front office, how many other teams are perennially cometitive with such a low payroll? The Tigers made huge strides this year, as did Florida, but typically, at least half the playoff teams are a foregone conclusion before the season starts. You can take a pool of the high-salary teams and more or less guarantee that several of them will be in the mix (case in point : Yankees, Mets, Dodgers all made the playoffs this year, and Boston was in it until the last month, when they collapsed.) In the NFL, more than half the teams that make the playoffs in year n don't make it in year n+1. In the NFL, there are very few teams that you can count out before the season starts, while in ML,< if you picked 10 teams before the season that wouldn't make the playoffs, you'd usually hit on 9, maybe all 10.If he was using arbitrary cutoffs, I thought I could too.Detroit went from losing 119 games to having the best record in baseball most of this season. The As are always contenders despite a low payroll. It's obvious that you can compete without a big payroll, you just have to be better at scouting and be more creative with your restraints.Yankees won 4 in 5 years from 1996-2000, including 3 in a row from 1998-2000. Not exactly ancient history.
Chase was not saying the format would be ideal or even 'good' for MLB. His point was simply if there was more post-season pie (playoff spots) to go around, there would be less complaining about teams not getting their fair share.
Team from NFC not making the playoffs in last 5 years:- Detroit- New Orleans- ArizonaTeam from AFC not making the playoffs in last 5 years:- Buffalo- Houston- Cleveland18.75% of the 32 teams.
I've been saying the same thing, with more and deeper stats and facts, for the past 2 years and have been summarily dismissed by many on this board who fail to see truth and our blinded by the payrolls of a few teams.Hope you have your raincoat, because you just walked into a sh**storm.' said:
Look at MLB and the NFL since 1995 if you are truly interested in real facts and truths.TinHat said:
You are so right about writing teams off. Teams like the Marlins and Angels were talked about as contraction candidates because they couldn't compete and..... huh? Each won a title? Oh, well, the Tigers have sucked forever and never have a shot either you know.Evilgrin 72 said:
Y23Fan makes a good argument. I would recommend searching for some of his post, I have found them insightful.
If you only consider winning percentage as the be all and end all, then you might be right. However, most people that ##### about payroll in baseball allow their arguments to revolve around playoff appearances and titles. And over the past decade or so, MLB is right there with the NFL when you account for the fact that the NFL allows more teams int he playoffs every year.
One could make an argument that winning percentage should play a stronger role with MLB than in the NFL (in this argument) because fewer teams make the playoffs in MLB; the regular season is that much more important.
No, playoff games won does matter. A helluva lot more then winning percentage during the regular season. The entire argument surrounding parity breaks down to who has a shot at winning the whole thing, not who has the best shot of having a .661 winning percentage for the next decade.
MLB is not better then the NFL. Even I never argued that. But the difference between the two isn't that great and as a result the perennial attacks on MLB are misguided.
I did this about 2 years ago and I think it got purged. But I basically took every playoff team from the 4 major sports from 1994 - 2004 to see how many different teams made the playoffs, and how many different teams won titles.Obviously the NBA and NHL had more teams in the playoffs because everyone makes the playoffs in those leagues. But when you break down the NLF and MLB - and give MLB the extra fictional playoff spots to match up the same amount of teams making it every year, the NFL is only better by roughly 1 or 2 teams, maybe 3.In the end, the NFL had better numbers, but it wasn't a great difference, and that told the story - the leagues aren't that much different in terms of playoff appearances for different teams.
Cleveland has made the playoffs in the last 5 years.
This is good enough for me - I'm not looking it all up.
I went back and verified your statement. Even after reading it, I still could not believe it, but you are correct.
I remember this and it was well thought out. I hope it didn't get purged because you had a lot of work wrapped up in it.However, when we review the bold part I wonder if the number would have been different if we changed this approach. Instead of giving MLB two extra fictional playoff spots per league, we just disregarded the 2 teams that lost in the wild-card round of each conference?
Division winners play in the wild card games as well, so you have the disadvantage of removing those division winners from the chart. I don't know if that is a wise thing to do given the nature of winning a division, in any sport.
There would be disadvantages to either model, I was just curious what it would look like. It was speculated earlier that if MLB added two additional playoff spots, would the competitive balance argument disappear? The statement really made me think.
I honestly don't know the answers. I choose to add teams because that's usually what we do. Have we ever shrunk the playoffs in any sport?
It's still a small sample size, but I think having 36% more different teams make it to the NFL final (15) than the MLB final (11) and having 25% more different teams make the playoffs (30 vs 24), is pretty significant. Especially when you consider a big reason for that difference is likely the salary-cap issue.
Point to the shirt, buddy
It's the best sample size you can use because it starts when the NFL began it's salary cap.As for your 36% and 24 % numbers, I never claimed equality. What I said was that the disparity isn't that large, or in other terms, it's not so bad that we need to have this debate all the time just because the Yankees payroll is huge and the Royals owners' won't spend any money.Over the course of the 10 period from the institution of the NFL salary cap, the NFL had 4 extra different teams make the finals (and they have more teams in the playoffs to begin with, so we can even extrapolate that the "real" number could be 2 or 3). A difference of 4 teams over 10 years in leagues with 30 teams and at least 8 playoff spots. I don't see that as a huge number.Similarly, the 30 vs 24 represents a difference of 6 teams out of a pool of 60 teams over the span of 10 years. I just don't see that as a significant number. Averaged out, it's less then 1 team per year that has a playoff appearance in the NFL that they don't in MLB.Give the various differences between the leagues, I don't see how anyone can claim that the NFL is so much better and that MLB is a joke because of the salary cap in one, and the payroll discrepancies in the other. The difference just isn't that big.
plus the NFL doesn't have an equivalent for the Royals, Pirates, Nationals, yankees, or Red Sox
You forgot the Rangers.
though Rangers = Redskins to some extent.
Wrong. Ineptitude and an inability to win? Don't we attack the Cardinals for that? Didn't we beat the snot out of the Bengals ownership for years for that? We did. The Saints have made the playoffs what, 3 times in their HISTORY? The Royals were a powerhouse for the 70's and much of the 80's. In that regard they are better then a few teams in the NFL, not worse.And the sample size was based on the beginning of the NFL salary cap. If you want to have a discussion about parity in the NFL prior to free agency, then let's do it. Because I'm sure you hate the NFL and it's history from the early 90's going back when only a few teams were dominate and the rest muddled in mediocrity, right?
This point is often lost. When we were in teh early 90s and the NFC playoffs were basically some warm-up matches for the 49ers and Cowboys, the NFL was getting predictable and boring; almost like the Yankees-Red Sox of MLB today.
