MLB Proposes $180MM First Luxury Tax Threshold

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bravesfanforlife88

Well-known member
To entice the players to accept that, MLB would raise the salary floor to $100m. There would be 4 tax brackets

That'd definitely be interesting to see teams like the Marlins, Rays, A's etc have to go spend
 
Anything that gives baseball next year vs labor dispute I'd prefer.

I'd rather they raise the minimum wage vs a salary floor. It gets more money to young guys and acts as a defacto floor. Now the floor is theoretically 500K x 26 man roster.

If the first year was 1 million, second year 2 million and third year 4 million before arb, then you've raised the floor and given the young people more money. Plus it makes it more possible for young vets to carve our a role in that 2-5 million per year category so they can have a longer career, get a pension, etc.
 
Russ2dollas said:
Anything that gives baseball next year vs labor dispute I'd prefer.

I'd rather they raise the minimum wage vs a salary floor. It gets more money to young guys and acts as a defacto floor. Now the floor is theoretically 500K x 26 man roster.

If the first year was 1 million, second year 2 million and third year 4 million before arb, then you've raised the floor and given the young people more money. Plus it makes it more possible for young vets to carve our a role in that 2-5 million per year category so they can have a longer career, get a pension, etc.
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Those are good ideas, but a floor is still necessary. Maybe a hybrid formula, where there is no floor per se but a certain percentage or amount of payroll has to be used on players earning over $10MM per year.

The game would be much more competitive if the crap franchises were forced to spend more on talent. If a market won't support the higher wage rates, move their team to an area that will.
 
Russ2dollas said:
Anything that gives baseball next year vs labor dispute I'd prefer.

I'd rather they raise the minimum wage vs a salary floor. It gets more money to young guys and acts as a defacto floor. Now the floor is theoretically 500K x 26 man roster.

If the first year was 1 million, second year 2 million and third year 4 million before arb, then you've raised the floor and given the young people more money. Plus it makes it more possible for young vets to carve our a role in that 2-5 million per year category so they can have a longer career, get a pension, etc.
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You likely will see a bump from league min but I think the MLBPA would rather see a salary floor. Just like with minor leaguers they are going to want the vets to get more of the pie instead of new players to the league.
 
thewupk said:
You likely will see a bump from league min but I think the MLBPA would rather see a salary floor. Just like with minor leaguers they are going to want the vets to get more of the pie instead of new players to the league.
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Salary floor would be a huge boon for the Adam Duvall class of player (i.e., not quite good enough for a contender to spend real money on and doesn’t offer enough upside for a rebuilding team to justify signing).

Players will balk at anything that resembles a salary cap, but I have a tough time not supporting this system as a fan.
 
chop2chip said:
Salary floor would be a huge boon for the Adam Duvall class of player (i.e., not quite good enough for a contender to spend real money on and doesn’t offer enough upside for a rebuilding team to justify signing).

Players will balk at anything that resembles a salary cap, but I have a tough time not supporting this system as a fan.
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Agree. Current system puts the "middle-class" player on roller skates year-after-year.
 
Best solution I've seen is to order the draft by best record of non-playoff teams, followed by the order of finish of the playoff teams. This gives incentive to finish as high as possible even if you don't make the playoffs.

Couple that with a $1M minimum salary that scales up like Russ' idea, and I think that largely solves the salary issue.

What I'd hate to see is tanking teams' rosters becoming some wasteland where bad contracts go because they have salary room to spend, and they must spend it by taking on bad contracts in exchange for prospect capital. I want all teams trying to compete, not awful teams with bloated payrolls.
 
Enscheff said:
Best solution I've seen is to order the draft by best record of non-playoff teams, followed by the order of finish of the playoff teams. This gives incentive to finish as high as possible even if you don't make the playoffs.

Couple that with a $1M minimum salary that scales up like Russ' idea, and I think that largely solves the salary issue.

What I'd hate to see is tanking teams' rosters becoming some wasteland where bad contracts go because they have salary room to spend, and they must spend it by taking on bad contracts in exchange for prospect capital. I want all teams trying to compete, not awful teams with bloated payrolls.
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How would that give incentive to finish with a better record? You’re still getting a higher draft pick with a worse record.

Or are you saying that you would get a higher pick if you finish with a better record? Your wording is a little confusing. I don’t think teams will agree to that idea.
 
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CyYoung31 said:
How would that give incentive to finish with a better record? You’re still getting a higher draft pick with a worse record.

Or are you saying that you would get a higher pick if you finish with a better record? Your wording is a little confusing. I don’t think teams will agree to that idea.
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I think he's saying by the best-to-worst record for the non-playoff teams that flips to the traditional worst-to-best record for the playoff teams at the break point. In a similar vein, MLB could refigure the Competitive Balance rounds moving more toward W/L by rewarding the non-playoff teams with the best records an extra pick. There are a lot of options going forward.
 
I think it is better for the union to raise the minimum young player than to have a salary minimum.
A salary minimum is a gateway to a maximum.
Raising the minimum pay is a default way to raise the maximum.
Young players are drastically underpaid now.
Cheap young players push out the middle class of current MLB players. If a guy is worth 2 WAR and wants 5 million as lot of teams will take a rookie and pay the 500 K for 1 WAR.
Current system makes rosters younger and younger. Rosters have a couple of big time guys and people in ARB control, not good for the majority of the union.

If young players get more money earlier they will be less likely to take cheap extensions. Or the extensions will cost more.

I'm not sure draft incentives help as much in baseball given how weird the draft is and how far away most prospects are.

With a minimum roster spend you'll see a lot of one year deals and the pirates taking on bad contracts for prospects. Pirates will be full of domestic abusers.

For competition the owners just need to make rules for themselves. You don't get any revenue sharing unless you spend X% of revenue or revenue sharing on players. IIRC revenue sharing between clubs is north of 100 million. The clubs can just say you have to spend the that money on players. But they don't want to b/c it's money in the cheap people's pockets and the Yankees don't want to pay for more competition. They don't need the players union for this.
 
The other idea I like is allow for contracts to have performance bonuses based on production.

One way to manifest that is you could say there is a pool of X million. Every player under team control that out performs their contract based on Y million/WAR gets money from the pool.

I think the most important thing is to get young players more money. Important for young players. Important for middle class of players. Important for overall raising salaries (less Ozzie extensions). Maybe even attracts more athletes to the game.

They also need to pay minor leaguers more. 40K for A, 50 K A+, 60K AA, 75K AAA.
 
Russ2dollas said:
The other idea I like is allow for contracts to have performance bonuses based on production.

One way to manifest that is you could say there is a pool of X million. Every player under team control that out performs their contract based on Y million/WAR gets money from the pool.

I think the most important thing is to get young players more money. Important for young players. Important for middle class of players. Important for overall raising salaries (less Ozzie extensions). Maybe even attracts more athletes to the game.

They also need to pay minor leaguers more. 40K for A, 50 K A+, 60K AA, 75K AAA.
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If the union cares about top end salaries and wants to keep them from being depressed, they need to agree to some sort of safety valve to allow teams a way out of truly bad long term deals. It would be kind of complicated to implement, but a suggestion would be to give teams the option to buy out players for 1/2 the remaining contract value if the player's performance falls below some established, neutral metric. If the player finishes in the bottom five percent of his position group in WAR (metric to be agreed upon by both sides), the team could buy its way out of the bad deal for half price. In the event that this happens, the player would become a free agent and could sign with another team for whatever deal they could get in addition to the 1/2 price pay from their previous team. Many if not most teams would be more willing to shell out big deals to older players if they had a bit of a safety net to keep them from ending up with the next Chris Davis.
 
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