Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Bonny Prince Hank

I recently saw this article on espn.com in which Hal Steinbrenner calls revenue sharing ""Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it." And says of teams in small markets, "At some point, if you don't want to worry about teams in minor markets, don't put teams in minor markets, or don't leave teams in minor markets if they're truly minor,"

So where does he want to go? Maybe Hal is for contraction. By my quick look around the internet 4 teams fall outside of the top 30 US media markets. So what, maybe get rid of those 4 (#31 Kansas City #32 Cincinnati, #33 Milwaukee, Toronto) then get rid of the double dippers (White Sox, A's, Mets, Angels) and you're all set right?

I like his "don't put them in small markets" comment like teams just got dropped in these cities randomly last week. These teams have been in most of these towns for a very very long time. When they were established baseball still had the reserve clause. You didn't need $200M for your payroll. Now times have changed. You need a healthy league to have interest. If you don't support the Royals then you're hurting the league.

I will say there should be a salary floor. If you take revenue sharing money you should basically be a break even organization. You should be forced to put that money into development, not the owner's pocket. Of course Hank could pay less in luxury tax if say, he kept his payroll down. Like maybe not paying $35M for a set up guy.

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