Re: Salary Cap

[Kim Malo <kmalo19@idt.net>]

At 12:35 PM 3/25/98 -0500, gandahlf@capecod.net wrote:
>The only way I can see controlling salaries is to make the cap a hard cap.
>Make it where you can only spend a certain amount and that is it. If you
>pay so much that you can only pay 8 players then so be it, and if you lose
>someone to injury then you are sol. Put the cap at maybe 36 million, this
>is an average of 3 mil per player for a 12 man roster. more than enough to
>live off!!

Hardly the only way to control salaries and one that there is no way in hell
the players association will agree to. And the 'only pay 8 players' is
nonsense -you can't practice properly, you'll run into forfeits or worse
idiocies as guys get injured or foul out.

There are valid alternatives. The simplest and leasty likely to occur is for
the owners to refuse to pay out the more outrageous salaries, with the
possible exception of guys like MJ that actually generate enough revenue to
be worth it. Ain't gonna happen, anyway, because of fear of PR damage from
losing a popular star and mutual fear that someone else will pay if you
won't. In other words, greater fear of looking a fool than paying up.

More realistic are proposals that are already out there to limit the
exceptionsm rather than eliminate them -things such as any one player can
only make a set % of the total team cap, or the net of all Bird
Exeemption/rookie re-sign contracts on your team can only put you a certain
% over the cap. The owners want to extend the mandatory rookie contracts to
5 years to stop the extortion by relatively unproven talent and better
stabilize rosters. THAT is where the real problem is, BTW. It's not MJ
making 30 some odd million at this stage in his career, it's unproven or
midlevel talent being able to extort huge contracts on a basis of a
potential they may never reach, leaving little money available to pay proven
talent and/or to fill necessary holes.

Sone other options might incolve things like only allowing a team to go over
the cap with one player on their entire roster -a franchise player sort of
designation. Or limiting the amount that can be offered any player, even
under a Bird Exemption, to something like 30% over the league average for
his position. The big question is whether negotiations will turn into a
search for creative solutions giving both sides with something they want or
turn into the sort of power play  pissing contests that have dominated
baseball for so long. 

-Kim
Kim Malo
kmalo19@idt.net