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Post by The Aztec Panther on Jan 16, 2012 21:36:20 GMT -8
How can you be a fan of Major League Baseball the way the league is now?
When some teams have payrolls that are 5 times larger than some of the other teams, how can there be ANY kind of competitive balance in the league? Answer - there can't be.
Sure, the sisters of the poor can win on occasion IF their young players actually pan out, but they won't do so with any consistency. It's actually considered to be surprising when one of those teams has a really good season. It's shocking, and gets a lot of attention in the media.
On the other hand, a Top 10 salary team having a winning season isn't news at all. It's expected. It's only news when they have a losing record (which rarely happens to the Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies, etc). Those teams are in the playoff mix almost every year, while the little guys are lucky to get anywhere near the playoffs once or twice a decade.
There is no competitive balance. No parity. There are the have's and have-nots. Going to a baseball game should be fun, but it's no fun when you KNOW that your team is going to lose because more often than not they do. The outcome is almost pre-determined.
MLB is just one step up from pro wrestling. Yeah, they're competing and no game is scripted, but we know that the Padres and Royals and a number of other teams are, essentially, the Washington Generals to the Red Sox, Yankees, and Phillies Globetrotters.
The bottom 10 revenue teams in the league are basically farm teams for the top 10 teams. WTF is that??? Could you imagine that being true in the NFL? Hell no! But in MLB? Of course! That's just the way it is, and we're just lucky to have baseball at all in San Diego. We shouldn't expect to have the same chance of winning as those other guys! We're a small to mid market team and the league doesn't give a rat's ass about competition.
Which is why ratings for baseball have plummeted over the last 30 years while football has maintained their audience and widened the popularity gap between the NFL and MLB. In the 50's MLB crushed the NFL in ratings and popularity. In the 70's it was close competition. Now? It's a joke. No contest at all.
Will MLB do anything substantive about it? No. Their new deal put a band aid on a badly bleeding wound. The top 10 teams and the players union like the set up the way it is.
So given all that, how could anyone outside of a top market team be a fan of MLB??
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Jan 16, 2012 21:40:22 GMT -8
And I should make it clear - I used to be a big Padres fan. Back when it was just the GM's incompetence that kept the Padres from contending, not a huge disparity in salary.
Look at the 1984 Padres. Could that kind of a roster happen now? No. The Padres couldn't afford that collection of talent today. Or so they say...
I'd rather see the Padres fold or just go back to being a AAA team. At least the competition is more honest at that level. Minor league baseball is fun. MLB isn't.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2012 8:19:55 GMT -8
The most popular sport in the world (soccer) has been doing it this way forever.
Baseball is the most accurate depiction of real business. It sucks but it's the nature of the beast and it's not going to change unless MLB is willing to sit through around 5 years of a lockout because the players union is so strong.
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Jan 17, 2012 8:55:08 GMT -8
The most popular sport in the world (soccer) has been doing it this way forever. Baseball is the most accurate depiction of real business. It sucks but it's the nature of the beast and it's not going to change unless MLB is willing to sit through around 5 years of a lockout because the players union is so strong. But sports are supposed to be about fair competetion, not business. Yes, business plays in, but the competition on the field should be fair, not as wildly unbalanced as it is in MLB. Seriously, what's the difference between the Padres or Royals and the Washington Generals? Both teams are designed to lose by the business in charge. From all that I've ever read the guys on the Washington Generals really do play their best, but the team is put together with substandard talent so that they pose no threat to the Globetrotters. The Padres are put together with substandard talent and are no threat to the big boys. That's not competition, and sports are supposed to be all about competition. Fair competition on a level playing field where only better talent and coaching/management makes the difference. See, this is why I am no longer a fan of MLB. I love baseball, but hate MLB. It's a joke. |
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Post by podpeople on Jan 17, 2012 9:05:42 GMT -8
The most popular sport in the world (soccer) has been doing it this way forever. Baseball is the most accurate depiction of real business. It sucks but it's the nature of the beast and it's not going to change unless MLB is willing to sit through around 5 years of a lockout because the players union is so strong. But sports are supposed to be about fair competetion, not business. Yes, business plays in, but the competition on the field should be fair, not as wildly unbalanced as it is in MLB. Seriously, what's the difference between the Padres or Royals and the Washington Generals? Both teams are designed to lose by the business in charge. From all that I've ever read the guys on the Washington Generals really do play their best, but the team is put together with substandard talent so that they pose no threat to the Globetrotters. The Padres are put together with substandard talent and are no threat to the big boys. That's not competition, and sports are supposed to be all about competition. Fair competition on a level playing field where only better talent and coaching/management makes the difference. See, this is why I am no longer a fan of MLB. I love baseball, but hate MLB. It's a joke. you said it. I can no longer be a fan of something that is created to lose. How people even buy a ticket to watch their home team lose is sick. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2012 9:17:55 GMT -8
The most popular sport in the world (soccer) has been doing it this way forever. Baseball is the most accurate depiction of real business. It sucks but it's the nature of the beast and it's not going to change unless MLB is willing to sit through around 5 years of a lockout because the players union is so strong. But sports are supposed to be about fair competetion, not business. Yes, business plays in, but the competition on the field should be fair, not as wildly unbalanced as it is in MLB. Seriously, what's the difference between the Padres or Royals and the Washington Generals? Both teams are designed to lose by the business in charge. From all that I've ever read the guys on the Washington Generals really do play their best, but the team is put together with substandard talent so that they pose no threat to the Globetrotters. The Padres are put together with substandard talent and are no threat to the big boys. That's not competition, and sports are supposed to be all about competition. Fair competition on a level playing field where only better talent and coaching/management makes the difference. See, this is why I am no longer a fan of MLB. I love baseball, but hate MLB. It's a joke. It's far more entertainment business than it is athletic competition. |
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Post by aztecron on Jan 17, 2012 10:20:41 GMT -8
The most popular sport in the world (soccer) has been doing it this way forever. Baseball is the most accurate depiction of real business. It sucks but it's the nature of the beast and it's not going to change unless MLB is willing to sit through around 5 years of a lockout because the players union is so strong. But sports are supposed to be about fair competetion, not business. Yes, business plays in, but the competition on the field should be fair, not as wildly unbalanced as it is in MLB. Seriously, what's the difference between the Padres or Royals and the Washington Generals? Both teams are designed to lose by the business in charge. From all that I've ever read the guys on the Washington Generals really do play their best, but the team is put together with substandard talent so that they pose no threat to the Globetrotters. The Padres are put together with substandard talent and are no threat to the big boys. That's not competition, and sports are supposed to be all about competition. Fair competition on a level playing field where only better talent and coaching/management makes the difference. See, this is why I am no longer a fan of MLB. I love baseball, but hate MLB. It's a joke. Where in the world does it say "professional sports" is supposed to be fair? Was it fair when the Celtics were winning championship after championship in the 60's? What about the Yankees in the 20's and throughout time? How about the Canadians in the 50's - 70's? The Cowboys, 49'ers and Steelers with all their championships in the 70's, 80's and early nineties? How about Edwin Moses 107 victories in a row? Jack's 18 majors? Tony Schumacher's six NHRA championships in a row? That is what makes sports what it is, in my opinion. It's about the battle to overcome overwhelming odds. Again, in my opinion, its what makes sports and winning a championship more worthwhile in achievement. Not everyone gets to win a championship. If others had your attitude as it appears to me, the world would never have seen the likes of Ernie Banks, or Dan Marino, and other elite athletes who've never won a championship or even had the opportunity to play for one, although Marino did, once. I'm no fan of the Yankees or Red Sox or the Phillies for that matter. But, money isn't the only equation in their domination, although it helps. Check the Cubs payroll and then check their record. It isn't always about fairness, it's about what you do with that money. As much as I dislike the Yankees, would I feel the same way if the Padres were doing exactly what the Yankees do now? Hell no! I'd be all over the Padres for dominating the rest of baseball. I don't want fairness, I want the Padres to dominate again, and again, and again. I happen to like the Padres model for going forward. It all comes down to investing in the minor league draft and in international signings for us. That's just how it is. If they do it right, as the Braves did in the 90's, then it'll all be good. If they don't get scouting just right, then it'll keep going in a downward spiral. That's what makes sports so fun to follow, again, in my opinion. |
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Jan 17, 2012 19:29:28 GMT -8
But the teams with the big money have winning seasons FAR more often than they do losing seasons - even factoring in the poorly run Cubs. The teams with small payrolls have losing seasons FAR more often than they do winning seasons.
Money plays a HUGE role. Yes, if you have an incompetent GM then the team is still going to stink, even with a big payroll - but mistakes can be more easily fixed by just buying another top level player to replace the guy that you just made a mistake on. There are no easy fixes if you can't or won't spend at least mid level money. If a team's payroll is consistently under $70 Million that team will lose far more often than it will win. Yes, they can spend 3 or 4 or 5 years building a contender, but then they have to turn around a year or two after that and tear the thing apart because they won't pay their own players to stay. Then it's 3 or 4 or 5 more years of losing.
That's a joke. That should never be allowed. That's basically setting up a farm system within the MLB teams. I'm not paying to see a team designed to develop players for the big boys, unless I'm paying to watch the Lake Elsinore Storm (and I love going to Storm games).
The Padres model sucks. It's gambling SOLELY on the farm system. They need a few key veterans who are more than .240 hitters. They need a couple guys who can hit .280 with 30 HR's and 100 RBI to build a legit contender. They need to bring in top veteran talent, not let it go each and every year.
The Padres have ZERO top level talent in the field. Not one of their field players would start for a playoff team. Not one. You can't win a World Series that way. They are taking a dive.
And, AztecRon, the Padres will NEVER dominate like the Yankees or Red Sox do. Not if they keep this model. They may be competitive 2 or 3 years out of every 10, but they will never run away with the division, and they will NEVER win a World Series. And if they don't have any chance of winning the World Series what's the point of being a fan?
Might as well root for the Washington Generals...
(And, by the way, the Braves in the 90's signed a lot of name talent and re-signed their own. They didn't trade their top players after a year and a half of good stats, they kept them for years and years - and didn't let them go until they had equal or better replacements.)
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Post by aztecmusician on Jan 21, 2012 18:06:16 GMT -8
The Padre Farm System has been churning out a steady stream of failure. NOBODY comes up from the minor leagues and hits for the Padres. It has been this way for decades and when your best home grown hitting talent in the past 15 years is Khalil Greene that points to incompetence in the talent evaluation process. I guess the law of averages and probabilities must eventually even itself out, but I am not holding my breath. There is no way a "small market team" can ever hope to be successful with such a poor track record. A blindfolded chimp throwing darts at a board with random hitting prospects would have a better success rate. And don't come after me with "the Padres are rated as one of the top 5 minor league systems in the majors" dribble, until these guys actually hit in the majors those projections are meaningless.
I would challenge anyone on this board to disprove the above paragraph, but I am pretty sure my analysis is spot on.
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Post by AztecBill on Jan 24, 2012 10:37:51 GMT -8
But the teams with the big money have winning seasons FAR more often than they do losing seasons - even factoring in the poorly run Cubs. The teams with small payrolls have losing seasons FAR more often than they do winning seasons. Money plays a HUGE role. Yes, if you have an incompetent GM then the team is still going to stink, even with a big payroll - but mistakes can be more easily fixed by just buying another top level player to replace the guy that you just made a mistake on. There are no easy fixes if you can't or won't spend at least mid level money. If a team's payroll is consistently under $70 Million that team will lose far more often than it will win. Yes, they can spend 3 or 4 or 5 years building a contender, but then they have to turn around a year or two after that and tear the thing apart because they won't pay their own players to stay. Then it's 3 or 4 or 5 more years of losing. That's a joke. That should never be allowed. That's basically setting up a farm system within the MLB teams. I'm not paying to see a team designed to develop players for the big boys, unless I'm paying to watch the Lake Elsinore Storm (and I love going to Storm games). The Padres model sucks. It's gambling SOLELY on the farm system. They need a few key veterans who are more than .240 hitters. They need a couple guys who can hit .280 with 30 HR's and 100 RBI to build a legit contender. They need to bring in top veteran talent, not let it go each and every year. The Padres have ZERO top level talent in the field. Not one of their field players would start for a playoff team. Not one. You can't win a World Series that way. They are taking a dive. And, AztecRon, the Padres will NEVER dominate like the Yankees or Red Sox do. Not if they keep this model. They may be competitive 2 or 3 years out of every 10, but they will never run away with the division, and they will NEVER win a World Series. And if they don't have any chance of winning the World Series what's the point of being a fan? Might as well root for the Washington Generals... (And, by the way, the Braves in the 90's signed a lot of name talent and re-signed their own. They didn't trade their top players after a year and a half of good stats, they kept them for years and years - and didn't let them go until they had equal or better replacements.) Detroit Tigers were a playoff team. From 3B they got: .222 .286 .331 .617 The Padres got: .262 .342 .368 .710 With their main 3B, Headley, much better than that. I think you are wrong Chase would start on the Tigers.  |
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Post by AztecBill on Jan 24, 2012 10:40:59 GMT -8
The Padre Farm System has been churning out a steady stream of failure. NOBODY comes up from the minor leagues and hits for the Padres. It has been this way for decades and when your best home grown hitting talent in the past 15 years is Khalil Greene that points to incompetence in the talent evaluation process. I guess the law of averages and probabilities must eventually even itself out, but I am not holding my breath. There is no way a "small market team" can ever hope to be successful with such a poor track record. A blindfolded chimp throwing darts at a board with random hitting prospects would have a better success rate. And don't come after me with "the Padres are rated as one of the top 5 minor league systems in the majors" dribble, until these guys actually hit in the majors those projections are meaningless. I would challenge anyone on this board to disprove the above paragraph, but I am pretty sure my analysis is spot on. I think it is easy for anyone to see that things have changed in the minor leagues for the Padres. Going from the bottom 5 to the top 5 in minor leagues will make a difference in years to come. We use to have to pick up some scrub veteran to replace players who were injured. Now we can promote some scrub minor leaguer. Big Change. |
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Post by aztecmusician on Jan 24, 2012 16:49:07 GMT -8
Rizzo hitting .141 in his call up says it all. The Padre brass seemed very confident this guy was going to make an impact. Now he has been swapped for an injured power pitcher. Laughable.
Nothing has changed, we are still seeing a steady stream of .175 hitting prospect flops from the farm system. Time to try the blindfolded chimp idea, nothing else seems to be working for this organization.
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Post by aztecryan on Jan 24, 2012 18:22:28 GMT -8
The knock on Rizzo was the length of his swing. The ability for him to catch up to fastballs on the inner half of the plate was a concern in the organization. After the Latos trade, Alonso came in and it made Rizzo expendable in the eyes of the Padres brass. IMO, we gave up too soon on him. Not enough plate appearances to make a conscious decision on his future impact.
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Jan 24, 2012 21:39:52 GMT -8
Detroit Tigers were a playoff team. From 3B they got: .222 .286 .331 .617 The Padres got: .262 .342 .368 .710 With their main 3B, Headley, much better than that. I think you are wrong Chase would start on the Tigers. OK, one player could start for one playoff team. That just goes to show how bad this roster was, and how bad it still is. The Padres are light years away from being a legit World Series contender. |
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Post by Section T(urn Up) on Feb 2, 2012 0:15:08 GMT -8
Erik, it seems like your frustration is with the Padres, not how unfair MLB is. Every sport does everything it can to balance competitiveness. If you think you have a solution I'd love to hear it. There are problems with any system. At least in baseball there is a fool-proof way to make yourself into a contender and give yourself a window of opportunity (A's, Rays, Twins, D-Backs, Marlins, Rockies have all done this to some extent).
If you can't buy into what the Padres have to do as a small market team ($55 million or $70 million payroll) then I guess MLB just can't be as entertaining, and I think there's plenty of people who share your sentiment. It is what it is.
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Feb 2, 2012 7:43:27 GMT -8
Erik, it seems like your frustration is with the Padres, not how unfair MLB is. Every sport does everything it can to balance competitiveness. If you think you have a solution I'd love to hear it. There are problems with any system. At least in baseball there is a fool-proof way to make yourself into a contender and give yourself a window of opportunity (A's, Rays, Twins, D-Backs, Marlins, Rockies have all done this to some extent). If you can't buy into what the Padres have to do as a small market team ($55 million or $70 million payroll) then I guess MLB just can't be as entertaining, and I think there's plenty of people who share your sentiment. It is what it is. My solution? Lower salary cap - a hard cap, and greater revenue sharing. Follow the NFL model more closely (they can't duplicate it exactly due to the nature of how the games are sold to TV, but they can get closer). Then it's more a matter of how smart/wise your managment is in building a team rather than how much money you have. (The more money you have the easier it is to make up for player personnel mistakes, and you can buy the best players available.) And the Padres are not a small market team. They are a mid market team. They should have had a minimum $70 million payroll over the last 5 years. |
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Post by Section T(urn Up) on Feb 2, 2012 9:38:09 GMT -8
Erik, it seems like your frustration is with the Padres, not how unfair MLB is. Every sport does everything it can to balance competitiveness. If you think you have a solution I'd love to hear it. There are problems with any system. At least in baseball there is a fool-proof way to make yourself into a contender and give yourself a window of opportunity (A's, Rays, Twins, D-Backs, Marlins, Rockies have all done this to some extent). If you can't buy into what the Padres have to do as a small market team ($55 million or $70 million payroll) then I guess MLB just can't be as entertaining, and I think there's plenty of people who share your sentiment. It is what it is. My solution? Lower salary cap - a hard cap, and greater revenue sharing. Follow the NFL model more closely (they can't duplicate it exactly due to the nature of how the games are sold to TV, but they can get closer). Then it's more a matter of how smart/wise your managment is in building a team rather than how much money you have. (The more money you have the easier it is to make up for player personnel mistakes, and you can buy the best players available.) And the Padres are not a small market team. They are a mid market team. They should have had a minimum $70 million payroll over the last 5 years. The reality is that a salary cap is just not an option. Baseball developed differently than the other sports. If the Office of the Commissioner tried to push that through in the next CBA then you would just have no baseball, as TecPride pointed out, for years. And that's just assuming the owners would be in agreement that they should do that; they wouldn't be. Additionally, the salary cap is no guarantee that the most desirable locations (big markets like New York, Miami, Boston, Chicago, LA) won't end up with the best players anyway. The Heat, Celtics, Lakers, Bulls even the Clippers (now) have done well for themselves in the NBA. And the smaller market teams that do well are doing it by drafting and developing their own talent (OKC and San Antonio being the best examples). The NFL is its own animal and is very well balanced competitively...but its players are also the ones that were least protected by their union. If we could restart MLB then there are better ways to make sure competitive balance remains in tact, but many of them are the ways MLB uses now. MLB can't help it if the Pirates don't try to win. That's their fault. The Padres are similarly situated right now, and based on what the talking heads are saying, the Pads are doing things the right way and building their farm system up. |
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Post by 83aztec on Feb 2, 2012 19:25:23 GMT -8
Please look into the history of Baseball before you post. Nothing new today that was not happening every year in baseball from the beginning. The only difference is the dollars are larger.
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Feb 2, 2012 20:29:25 GMT -8
Please look into the history of Baseball before you post. Nothing new today that was not happening every year in baseball from the beginning. The only difference is the dollars are larger. So that makes it OK? There's a reason why MLB was overtaken by the NFL as the #1 sport in the country 4 decades ago. There's a reason why since then the NFL has flat out eclipsed MLB in popularity. In the NFL any team can go from last place to Super Bowl champs in just a year or two. Everyone has the same opportunity. It's all about how smart/wise managment of any given team is. In MLB it's about money first, and then how smart you are. Yes, a poor team can win a World Series every now and then, but the big boys are in the mix each and every year. And that's all based on money. It's not a competitive league. The small market teams have to work twice as hard to get the same results, and they cannot maintain a playoff level for more than a couple years in a row before they have to sell off their talent and start rebuilding again. The big market teams never have to sell of their players. That's why they never have to rebuild - they just reload. A game between the Red Sox and a small market team is barely more than an exhibition. The Red Sox will win 3 out of every 4 of those games, as will the Yankees and Phillies, etc. |
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Post by Section T(urn Up) on Feb 2, 2012 21:40:52 GMT -8
Please look into the history of Baseball before you post. Nothing new today that was not happening every year in baseball from the beginning. The only difference is the dollars are larger. So that makes it OK? There's a reason why MLB was overtaken by the NFL as the #1 sport in the country 4 decades ago. There's a reason why since then the NFL has flat out eclipsed MLB in popularity. In the NFL any team can go from last place to Super Bowl champs in just a year or two. Everyone has the same opportunity. It's all about how smart/wise managment of any given team is. In MLB it's about money first, and then how smart you are. Yes, a poor team can win a World Series every now and then, but the big boys are in the mix each and every year. And that's all based on money. It's not a competitive league. The small market teams have to work twice as hard to get the same results, and they cannot maintain a playoff level for more than a couple years in a row before they have to sell off their talent and start rebuilding again. The big market teams never have to sell of their players. That's why they never have to rebuild - they just reload. A game between the Red Sox and a small market team is barely more than an exhibition. The Red Sox will win 3 out of every 4 of those games, as will the Yankees and Phillies, etc. The Dodgers, Cubs and Mets would tell you that the Phillies, Yankees and Red Sox are doing something right. It's truly incredible that you could argue that in MLB it isn't about how smart you are when there are teams with seemingly endless budgets that never win because they're poorly run while other teams are well run and do nothing but win with half the payroll. Your implication that the NFL is more popular because it is more competitively balanced is a reach at best. It is more popular because baseball is boring. I love it more than any other sport and I could watch every inning of every team every year. But I understand that it is boring. It always has been, but when my Dad was a kid everyone played baseball. Nowadays, everyone doesn't play baseball. Most people can't reasonably speculate as to what pitch will be thrown on a 1-2 count, much less understand even more intricate aspects of the game. Football is fast and our attention span, as a generation, is short. If your only point is that baseball is unfair and you don't care to think within the constraints of reality as to how it could be addressed then you're just a frustrated fan. And the Padres are an extremely frustrating franchise to follow. |
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