RS Review Time!

[Bronx Bombers]

As the Angels GM, I would love to see revenue sharing... even if that means I pony up some dough!

[Colby]

The formula is quite extensive and relies on revenue numbers that we cannot accurately use in a fantasy league (as we only have payroll)...

Through the end of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (2011 season), all 30 teams pay 31 percent of their local revenues into a pot each season. This pot is then evenly distributed among the 30 teams. A team in New York or Chicago will pay more into this pot than a team in Tampa Bay or Kansas City. MLB distributes a portion of their Central Fund, which is comprised from sources like the television contract with the various networks, among the 30 teams with the teams that have the lowest revenues getting the most money. There is also a 'luxary tax' where a team must pay into a pot a percentage on the portion of their payroll that exceeds a pre-set limit. The Yankees usually have to put money into this pot due to exceeding the pre-set limit on payrolls ... in the 2008 season, the Yankees contributed $21.6 million into this pot. This money is distributed to teams with lower payrolls.

But what we can do is create the 31%+ pot (where + is an arbitrary number added in from "MLB"), distribute, apply luxury tax, and distribute the tax to the lower market teams.  I applied this formula to our salary caps (which are now influenced by winning, and already have the market factored in based on past numbers)...

The 31% pot causes some big changes in cap numbers.  Once again, it's probably not appropriate to correlate revenue 100% with payroll.  Well, this article does some handy work on that and comes out with an average of 45% of payroll to revenue.  This causes some swings on top of the caps...

Yankees -$43.8m
D'Backs $8.9m
Blue Jays: $2.7m
Mets: -$28.3m
Padres: $15.1m
A's: $12m

I'm not pleased... there could be some heavy damages on the big market franchises... This leads me to rethink the idea of having revenue sharing at all.  Why should we have it if we don't even have revenue allocated for in this league?  Our new cap system bases all numbers off of real MLB payrolls (inflated by $20m).  Don't the real MLB payrolls already take into account what franchises are doing with their revenue and the amounts shared with the league?

The answer is of course YES... we probably don't even need revenue sharing.  Sure, the caps are disproportionate, but that is the nature of MLB.  The small market teams are collecting the money for the most part and not putting it into payroll.  Once this changes, the numbers being fed to this league will change... either that or things change after the CBA expires after 2011.

[bridgestone]

That's a lot of information, but I trust the league founder with this one.

[Colby]

 

thoughts from the RC?

[Canada8999]

I'd be ok with getting rid of RS... having pick compensation for lost RFA's is a decent replacement.

[Colby]

The only other thing we could do is allocate additional money for small market teams to be used exclusively on the draft.  Ultimately, this is what is happening with the Pirates and Marlins of MLB today.

I just wanted to throw that last thought out there before we conclude this discussion.

[lp815]

Removing RS would be extremely disadvantageous to very small market teams, in my opinion.  Extra draft picks, in my mind, correlate to simply more question marks for the future, since many draft picks don't reward a whole lot.  Allowing these small teams to acquire quality players already in the majors is needed for these teams to compete year to year.

I saw no issue with how RS was performed this last season, the only caveat being there simply weren't a lot of active small market teams at the time.  This will obviously change next season, now that Franchis is firmly established with many active members.

[Colby]

The thing about RS is that there is no way to really do it appropriately so that it matches MLB.  As I just mentioned, perhaps we could allocate additional money to be used on funding prospects' contracts and the draft.

[lp815]

The thing about RS is that there is no way to really do it appropriately so that it matches MLB.  As I just mentioned, perhaps we could allocate additional money to be used on funding prospects' contracts and the draft.

So we are wanting to change RS for the sole reason being that it doesn't match the MLB structure?

[Colby]

So we are wanting to change RS for the sole reason being that it doesn't match the MLB structure?

and that it was a bit confusing and messed with the player structure.  Most of the revenue sharing money goes into the farm anyways.  I think an extra allocation solely for prospects and the draft would work well... especially since many small market teams don't finish well and have high draft picks.