Baseball And The Masters Today

             A friend who is a sporadic reader of these rants happened to read yesterday’s offering and called me to ask why I had left Max Scherzer off my list of recognizable players in new uniforms.  He wondered if I “have something against Scherzer”.  I assured him that I did not and that I left Scherzer off the list because his situation seems to me to be different.  Granted everyone on that list signed with teams that offered top dollar for their services, but Scherzer’s contract is outsized even by those standards.  Scherzer’s deal is 3 years and $130M.  He will make – on average – $43.3M per year to make what the Mets hope is 30-35 starts per season.  I should not need to do math for anyone here…

Max Scherzer won the Cy Young Award 3 times in his career and will be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame down the road.  But he will be 37 years old in mid-season and last year he had to miss playoff time with a “dead arm” followed by a hamstring tweak this Spring.  I fear that Scherzer’s contract is one that the Mets are going to regret instead of celebrating.

While that may also be the case with the four players I listed yesterday, I think it is more probable in Scherzer’s case; so, I left him off the list.  I will be happy to be wrong about that…

Sticking with baseball as a subject, there was a report in the Washington Post yesterday that the “spending gap” between MLB’s big spending teams and MLB’s frugal teams is increasing.  Obviously, that gap works against creating parity in MLB and it was – reportedly – one of the important areas for change in the new CBA from the union’s point of view.  A preliminary glance says that the union did not get much of a change here.

• In 2017 the median payroll for the top 8 spenders in MLB was 2.3 times the median payroll of the bottom 8 spenders in MLB.
• In 2021, that ratio was 3 to 1.
• For 2022, that ratio is projected to be 4 to 1.

The reason is not that the big-spending teams have gone wild – – notwithstanding Max Scherzer’s $43.3M per year deal with the Mets.  The reason is that there are more frugal teams, and they are being even more frugal than before.

• In 2017 the lowest spending team (Brewers) had a total payroll of $68.9M and only 5 other teams spent below $100M on player salaries.
• In 2022, the lowest spending team (Orioles) will spend about $33M in salaries and there should be 10 teams that will spend less than $100 M.

The upshot here is not good for the game nor is it good for the players in the long run.  However, the two sides just emerged from a CBA battle that included a lockout and a delayed start to the regular season with this imbalance in place and with no progress being made to address it.  Let me repeat something I have advocated here before:

• Competitive balance – parity in the parlance of the NFL – is enhanced when there are comparable payrolls on all teams in the league.
• MLB owners have found that they can make a profit without spending a lot of money on salaries, so they are motivated to do just that.  Max Scherzer did not have a competing contract offer close to his final number from teams like the Pirates, Orioles or Royals.  I am not saying anyone here is either “right” or “wrong”, I am just saying there are teams that were not interested in spending that kind of money on a single player.
• The system that has shown itself to work to achieve competitive balance is what I call “Cap and Floor”.  There needs to be a salary cap in MLB (the union hates that) AND there needs to be a salary floor in MLB (about a dozen owners hate that).

The Cap and Floor model works for the NFL and the NBA and the NHL.  That does not mean it would certainly work in MLB – – but the odds are that it can be made to work to the benefit of owners and the majority of players who are not ever going to make more than $40M per year to play baseball.

According to Spotrac.com, the Cubs have the 15^th highest payroll for 2022 at $141.8M and the Rockies are 16^th highest at $137.9M.  For the sake of argument – and to simplify the math – let me assume that the median payroll in $140M.  If every team spent $140MK, the total payroll cost for MLB owners would be $4.2B.  There is plenty of money to go around here but instead of having the Dodgers support a payroll north of $270M while the Orioles would have to open their wallets to spend $35M, a cap and floor would force both teams to compete on a much more level playing field.  Whatever…

There was one other interesting piece in yesterday’s Washington Post addressing an issue related to The Masters.  Chuck Culpepper is an excellent reporter and writer for the Post and yesterday’s article had this headline:

“Walking Augusta National, Woods faces an uphill battle”

The piece dealt with the challenge to Tiger Woods’ surgically repaired leg posed by the “undulating terrain” of Augusta National.  What a great irony here:

• If only there were some technological invention that would allow Tiger Woods to get from place to place on the golf course without having to walk up and down those hills that could threaten his game.
• Perhaps Tiger Woods should get in touch with his former teammate at Stanford, Casey Martin, to see if Martin knows of any such magical device…

Finally, I will close today with some dating advice for young singles:

“If you think it’s hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………