If only I ran the world

Every once in a while I get these ideas that I just know are great. But I am nearly always powerless to enact them. During the past offseason I knew that Orlando Hudson would be a perfect fit for the Twins and could be had for below market value. But I had no means to contact Bill Smith, the Twins GM and, as far as I know, no one had handed over the reins of baseball’s finest franchise to me. Well, Hudson ended up signing late in the free agency period for a base salary of $3.4 million. And the Twins ended up getting the worst offensive production out of their second baseman – and number two hitters – out of any team in the league. The Twins could have had a Gold Glove second baseman and a professional hitter for less than Nick Punto and his AAA talent will make per year for the next two years!

I’ve had some other brilliant ideas as well, but since we don’t have the time or space to print them here, I’ll just share one.

It’s tough to compare the collective bargaining agreements in different sports. They all have strong points and they all have weak points. But there’s something we have to acknowledge: the NFL has it figured out in regards to competition. I know there are still owners who have complaints, namely Ralph Wilson, but it’s apparent that teams from any NFL market can compete for a title with two things: a good personnel guy, and a good coach.

Let’s contrast that model with the one in Major League Baseball. MLB has very soft cappish mechanism that imposes luxury tax at a certain level. This level is completely ignored by teams that play in New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston. In fact, the New York Yankees ignore it to such a degree that over the past offseason they signed not the single best free agent, not the top two, but three of the top deals done over the offseason - CC Sabathia (7 years, $161 mil), A.J. Burnett (5 years, $82.5 mil), and Mark Teixiera (8 years, $180 mil). Any other team would see any one of these contracts as a once in a generation deal.

But this is business as usual for the Yankees who are responsible for the highest single-season salary: the prorated $28 mil Roger Clemens received for his performance-enhanced 2007 effort. This was just one offseason after they signed Alex Rodriguez to a contract that entitled him to $275 million over 10 years, ownership of the Statue of Liberty, and the first right of refusal of the virginity of most of the females in the greater New York City area.

And they don’t have to make the tough decisions other big market teams have to make. A few years back the Phillies felt that they couldn’t handle Bob Abreu’s contract so they unloaded him to - who else - the Yankees. Although I could continue for several pages about the massive contracts they’ve thrown at free agents both failed and successful, I don’t want to turn this into a diatribe about the failure of Brian Cashman, the appropriately named Yankees General Manager. The point is that, for a host of reasons, the Yankees not only able to hang onto their own free agents whenever they want, they’re nearly always able to sign whomever they like during the offseason.

Let me stop here and acknowledge that a competitive Yankees team is good for baseball. The resurgence of the Yankees in the mid 90s coincides with the rise of baseball in general (some might attribute the rise to the rise in the use of PEDs, but that’s not the whole story). But I don’t believe that baseball is only well-served when we see matchups like Yanks-Red Sox, Dodgers-Phillies, or Mets-Cubs. Baseball is better served and more fun to watch when teams from any market have a chance at a championship at least once a decade. Of course front office ineptitude, and yes I’m talking about the Lions and the Raiders, can keep a team out of contention for a long time.

What I’m suggesting is that baseball needs to look to the NFL for guidance in how to achieve this. Fans in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati need to know that they’re a good GM away from the playoffs. And once they make the playoffs, they shouldn’t have to sell off their best players for prospects and hope to compete again in ten years.

So, besides my lack of power and influence, what is the biggest impediment to this sort of reform? The union ,of course. The idea of setting a maximum amount of money for a team to spend is anathema to union types. It’s just not part of the way they do business. Unions don’t like compromise – especially when money continues to roll in as it is now. Their inability to make concessions contributed to the fall of the American steel industry and they’re seemingly hell-bent on doing the same to the American auto industry. It’s not a criticism of the unions. It’s just not what they do. They’re out for their workers, not the industry in general.

This is where the utterly brilliant part comes in. They need not make concessions. What makes the NFL’s CBA work is that although they have a salary cap, they also have a floor of what teams must spend. This keeps small market teams from accepting tens of millions in revenue sharing while spending next to nothing on players.

So what I’m suggesting is a soft cap that allows big market teams to spend whatever they choose to spend, but penalizes them in the form of a luxury tax that goes to small market teams in the form of revenue sharing. But the small market teams should be required to spend a minimum that’s much higher than what they’re currently spending. If they choose not to, they should forfeit the revenue sharing money that would come their way. This way the total amount of money spent on players actually goes up. What changes is the wide differential between what small market teams spend and what big market teams spend. The Yankees are currently spending roughly 5.5 times what the team with the smallest payroll is spending. No one can look at this number and say there isn’t something seriously wrong with this. Even a 2:1 proportion would be far healthier than what we have going on right now.

Under this plan, everyone wins. The players win (more $$), the union wins (more $$, stronger game), the fans win (hope). Well, I guess not everyone. Although spending on players has gone up steadily, the dirty secret is that the owners are now making more than ever. This plan would force tight-fisted, small market owners to spend more by mandate. And middle market, tight-fisted owners would spend more because they would know that they’re oh-so-close to contention and would make an extra signing if it would mean a championship.

So wouldn’t it be easy to get the union on board with a plan that would wrench more money away from the owners? One would think. But who knows. I don’t have any more time to think about this right now. I have to feed the unicorn and have a few drinks with my leprechaun before bed.