LA Angels Monday News Crash: Get Paid

Tootie’s dream takes shape before his very face! Farhan Zaidi! To the Doyers! If only Joc Pederson and Avasail Garcia would throw on plumbers costumes and throw a knock at the door the script would be complete!

I really wish that I could get someone to sneak a recorder into the owners meetings when next they happen. Because, apparently, what the Dodgers are doing isn’t really a problem and the other 29 owners are all just sitting around giggling and counting their billions while not paying players to win.

Some may recall I FKIN HATE the “Owner” has 4 billion dollars and can spend it blah blah complaint. Yes. In the case of the Mets and Doyers they can. But if 3.2 Billion of those dollars are tied up in the thing that made you a billionaire, such as land and the team itself, then really you have 800M you’re working with. Usually it’s actually less. Just like a stock that has cash flow issues. The team and it’s owner aren’t that “rich” unless things get liquidated.

So the idea Manfred’s putting out there that the other owners are cool with the Dodgers, or should shut up and be cool, is silly. Even if the owners were just swimming in unspent money, then apparently that’s how baseball works. Demanding the sky be red instead of blue doesn’t do much.

I think that most players would be happy to have fewer giant pay days past age 30 if they make more from age 24-30. In broad terms, and I don’t know how exactly it will happen, if the owners want to have the players not strike, and they also don’t want to avoid bad contracts with older players, then they are gonna have to start ceding control over players and what they earn early over to the players more. If a career starts at age 22-24 and you have control over what they get paid till they are 29 or 30 and THEN you don’t want to pay them past age 30…. well, I think owners can see why a change is gonna come and how only the DoyKees type teams will benefit if they don’t change.

I still wish they would just create a system where a value is set for something like WAR at a position, say on scale, so that guys like catchers and relievers get valued compared to each other, and players get paid accordingly.

Maybe a player enters “the scale” after two seasons. Then gets some cut of some number, like 9 million per war for outfielders for example. Or 12 million per WAR for catchers, at the end of the season. So a 5 WAR OF gets 45M a year even if he’s a third year player. But guys who have a blip season, like catchers Kyle Higashioka this last year, also get paid 18M for last year…. but will also make about 3M a year for their 0.2 WAR normal back up catcher seasons. Make league minimum 2M or something. If a team doesn’t want to continue paying a player for production after his 2nd season, then he’s a FA.

That’s very very oversimplified. But it gives role players a lot more money. It also gets older players paid well if they perform even without a huge contract. But most importantly it gives all the players more control over where they go and how much they get paid sooner in their careers. And, of course, teams can feel free to sign players to contracts as early as they want to… but arbitration doesn’t happen any more. If you’re a relief pitcher with 1 WAR at the end of your third season you are getting 8M, nothing to figure out.

You’re also a free agent.

This sets a salary floor automatically and spreads that salary around a roster.

THEN maybe we can get a salary cap.

I know this idea’s a total mess…. but I’m trying to get some sort of system that will give players control sooner but gives the owners a salary cap and hopefully creates a lot more rosters full of players like Luis Rengifo making 12-20M a year but fewer Rendons making 35M a year and has even league minimum guys (even all 40 man roster guys?) making 2M a year. There’d a be a lot more player movement too….

But the Doyers are emblematic of a problem and it’s not just gonna get solved by capping the Doyer type teams, or somehow magically forcing the Twins to pay more FAs, unless you make it so a ALOT more players are getting paid more and far fewer Jon Grays are making big money. I think that if they find a way to pay Tarik Skubal more than Aaron Nola last season it will go a long way…. I mean, just look at pitcher WAR last year, basically almost all the wrong pitchers are getting paid the big money. BAh.