Owners proposing exchanging current arbitration process to base salaries on WAR

[InsaneinthBrame]

Imagine if this system was in place this year and the Reds skipped some of Castillo and Mahles start late in the year so that they would pay them less in arbitration.

[Bob Sheed]

I wonder how many regular folks would be ok with tying their salary to one performance metric.

Get hurt? Don't care about your 20 years experience, you don't get paid next year.

What would be more fair is to have the means of establishing salaries stay the same, but have a WAR salary and WAR floor for each team.

- If you are a team owner and your team had a tough season full of injuries, your own incompetence, whatever... Team WAR might drop below the floor and you better go out and sign some WAR or risk losing draft picks. This forces team owners who are just milking the franchise for annual appreciation to have to actually try. Coughreds... Coughreds... Sorry, I must of had something go down the wrong pipe there I guess. This does even things out though.

- On the other hand, if your team was very successful, you may need to unload some players to get below the WAR cap. This also evens things out.

That being said, players would never go for it because it's just a roundabout way of potentially lowering salaries and the amount of control they have. Owners won't like it because it exposes that a good portion of MLB owners aren't really interested in winning, just franchise appreciation.

Imagine Pirates ownership pooping a brick if something like this were to pass. Or Reds ownership. They'd have to sell, or be run out out town. Darn.

[RedsManRick]

The issues I have with an econoic system based on WAR would be the same issues I hold with WAR itself:

1. For both bWAR and fWAR, defensive metrics are poor at best and misleading at worst.

As bad as defensive metrics are (I remain unconvinced that they're as bad as some assert), the same argument applies -- compared to what? I'll take UZR or DRS all day over A) ignoring defense entirely or B) relying on older, worse measures of defensive performance such as fielding percentage and errors.

[QUOTE]2. WAR doesn't provide enough value for closers/ elite bullpen arms.

Relative to the FA market for those guys, I don't know about that. 10 RP had at least 2.0 fWAR last year; another 37 had at least 1.0 fWAR. How many RP sign for 20M per year? How many for $10M? Do you think Lucas Sims would get ~$13M/yr in FA? How much do we think Jonathan Loasigia is going to get in arbitration this year on the heels of his 2.4 WAR season (Fangraphs has him projected at $1.7M)?

In any event, my personal bias is that players deserve to be paid for their performance itself, not a premium for the leverage of the situations in which they are used -- unless of course you also propose paying lower leverage guys LESS than they might otherwise have earned.

I'm fine with a metric tying arbitration salaries to an analytical value system, but it shouldn't be WAR. Though it's the best public number available, it's still flawed.

Again. What analytical value system? Does MLB itself have a meaningfully better analytical model than the publicly available WAR models? Do you think some team is going to offer up their in-house model? If MLB was to hire somebody to build them a custom one, do you think they would do better than current MLB employee Tom Tango, godfather of WAR? If the answer to those is no, do you think the current system arrives at fairer values than a WAR-based model?

The argument is not that WAR is perfect or even great. The argument is that it's A) readily available, B) transparent, C) a meaningful improvement over the current methods used. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

[Bourgeois Zee]

As bad as defensive metrics are (I remain unconvinced that they're as bad as some assert), the same argument applies -- compared to what?

Statcast does a far better job providing defensive value-- but I'm guessing teams have even better means of assessing that value. Agree on a specific criteria that's not woefully out of date, as is WAR.

2. WAR doesn't provide enough value for closers/ elite bullpen arms.

Again. What analytical value system? Does MLB itself have a meaningfully better analytical model than the publicly available WAR models?

WPA obviously shows a clearer correlation between the value placed on relief arms and reliever salaries, but I'm guessing teams have models they use to estimate value that they should share. Will they? Probably not.

[REDREAD]

Why would they bribe them when they could just buy them?

Excellent point, I underestimated the owner's greed

[Z-Fly]

I'm genuinely curious as to why you don't think they would.

I'll just use A-Rod for an easy example. Huge prospect and #1 overall pick IIFC. After 3 years in the league, he looked like a sure fire HOF. In your system, the Yankees could offer a 1 year $50 million contract.

At that point Seattle could have;
- Simply matched it and killed their payroll
- Signed him to the $200+ million contract that he eventually got anyways.
- Let him go for nothing.


All Ls for Seattle. All Ws for the Yankees. Worst case for the Yankees, they caused a competitor to spend much more than they were planning on spending.

[WrongVerb]

I'll just use A-Rod for an easy example. Huge prospect and #1 overall pick IIFC. After 3 years in the league, he looked like a sure fire HOF. In your system, the Yankees could offer a 1 year $50 million contract.

At that point Seattle could have;
- Simply matched it and killed their payroll
- Signed him to the $200+ million contract that he eventually got anyways.
- Let him go for nothing.


All Ls for Seattle. All Ws for the Yankees. Worst case for the Yankees, they caused a competitor to spend much more than they were planning on spending.

True, but Seattle can offer something that the Yankees cannot: a multi-year, guaranteed contract. Further, a salary cap as I described before might limit NYY in how much they can offer. I do see your point, but I see those as exceptional circumstances, too.

[Big Klu]

True, but Seattle can offer something that the Yankees cannot: a multi-year, guaranteed contract. Further, a salary cap as I described before might limit NYY in how much they can offer. I do see your point, but I see those as exceptional circumstances, too.

If I'm 23-year-old Alex Rodriguez (or any young superstar), I'm not thinking of future security -- I'm thinking about dollar signs. I'm very confident in my abilities, and that my earning potential will continue to increase.

[Z-Fly]

True, but Seattle can offer something that the Yankees cannot: a multi-year, guaranteed contract. Further, a salary cap as I described before might limit NYY in how much they can offer. I do see your point, but I see those as exceptional circumstances, too.

If you add a salary cap, then it's all good to go. If there is no cap, then the current setup is the only shot in hell us little guys have.

You can sub in Luis Castillo, if that gets closer to home. The Yankees offer him a one year $30 million deal. The Reds would then counter with a 6 year deal $20 per? Would the Reds do that? Would he sign that? It would funnel talent to the Rich pretty quickly, and kill the small market teams.

[mth123]

If you add a salary cap, then it's all good to go. If there is no cap, then the current setup is the only shot in hell us little guys have.

You can sub in Luis Castillo, if that gets closer to home. The Yankees offer him a one year $30 million deal. The Reds would then counter with a 6 year deal $20 per? Would the Reds do that? Would he sign that? It would funnel talent to the Rich pretty quickly, and kill the small market teams.

I think I agree. This system would create a "Premier League" filled with the bigger money teams and a lower level league for the rest. Cincinnati would still have baseball, but it would be a step down from the top league in the game. Its kind of already that way, but if they do the offer and match system, unless its equal sharing of all revenue (which I wouldn't agree to if I owned a big market team and purchased it based on current conditions) or a hard cap, they would need to realign by Market size (something our boy leatherpants suggested years ago) which would effetively make the smaller markets in a league that is a step down.

[wlf WV]

Hard caps are all that matters. If you can’t limit the influence of money, nothing else matters, anywhere.

[Strikes Out Looking]

Caps aren't the answer. The answer is that the large market teams share more revenue with the smaller market teams and then a salary bottom is put into place so the smaller market teams can't just take their share of the revenue and not put a competitive team in place.

This will never happen, not because the players won't sign on, but the rich owners and the poor owners will never agree to do this in the first place. Instead, they'll try to suck the players dry (and cause the fans of smaller teams (us) to "hope" our teams can figure out how to be competitive once in a while).

[wlf WV]

Caps aren't the answer. The answer is that the large market teams share more revenue with the smaller market teams and then a salary bottom is put into place so the smaller market teams can't just take their share of the revenue and not put a competitive team in place.

This will never happen, not because the players won't sign on, but the rich owners and the poor owners will never agree to do this in the first place. Instead, they'll try to suck the players dry (and cause the fans of smaller teams (us) to "hope" our teams can figure out how to be competitive once in a while).

We agree it’s the usage of unlimited funds, however it’s worded. It always comes back to the money.

[RedsManRick]

Caps aren't the answer. The answer is that the large market teams share more revenue with the smaller market teams and then a salary bottom is put into place so the smaller market teams can't just take their share of the revenue and not put a competitive team in place.

This will never happen, not because the players won't sign on, but the rich owners and the poor owners will never agree to do this in the first place. Instead, they'll try to suck the players dry (and cause the fans of smaller teams (us) to "hope" our teams can figure out how to be competitive once in a while).

The problem with redistribution and salary floors is that money is fungible. If I gave you $1000 a month and said you HAVE to spend it on your rent/mortgage. You'd just take the $1,000 you'd otherwise be putting toward your rent/mortgage and spend it on whatever you wanted to.

What I'd like to see MLB do is something more akin to a contract matching system with a value capped by the payout formula. Hey Marlins, you want $50M to pay on players? Great, that's what you're eligible for. But you only get that $50M by spending $50 (or $70 or $100) of your own. And the payment is tied to the player. You trade him, you don't keep collecting the associated offset check. (And maybe the percentage match is higher on retaining your own players than it is on FA.)

Point being, while a floor would brute force the overall amount of money spent up to a certain minimum value, it doesn't actually incentivize spending. Every dollar is still going to be hoarded by teams who have determined that marginal spending doesn't pay for them. By contrast, a model which ties revenue sharing directly into spending gives teams the financial leverage to compete in the market and make their marginal spending become profitable.

[Bourgeois Zee]

Point being, while a floor would brute force the overall amount of money spent up to a certain minimum value, it doesn't actually incentivize spending. Every dollar is still going to be hoarded by teams who have determined that marginal spending doesn't pay for them. By contrast, a model which ties revenue sharing directly into spending gives teams the financial leverage to compete in the market and make their marginal spending become profitable.

So the Marlins, for example, would have to spend X amount on salaries before being cut a check?

How is that different than the salary floor?