Baseball Musings: Posting MLB Players?

December 17, 2006

Posting MLB Players?

Sam Mellinger in the Kansas City Star discusses the major leagues adopting the posting system:

Williams' wish was made in jest, but former A's owner Charlie Finley effectively posted some of his best players after losing Catfish Hunter to free-agency in 1976.
Finley put his guys up for auction, and was set to sell Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox and Vida Blue to the Yankees. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn invoked the best-interests-of-the-game clause and blocked the sales.

Since then, cash has often been involved in trades, but no big-league team has tried to sell or "post" one of its players. Even if it would be interesting.

"I thought that was a funny quote from Kenny Williams," says Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro. "But I don't spend the energy on things like that. That'd be pretty inefficient on my end."

Kuhn did not have the best interests of the game at heart when he voided Finley's sales. He was just out to screw Finley. One way small market owners kept afloat during the first 100 years of the major leagues was selling their good players. Connie Mack would build a great team, win, then sell off the players because he couldn't afford to pay them once they were great. He'd then use the money to try to build another great team.

But Kuhn put a stop to that, to the detriment of the game. Now, any sale over $1 million dollars must be approved by the commissioner. But, teams like Florida are allowed to destroy their team to rebuild, exactly what Finley tried to do in the mid 1970's. That rule should be gone. Let teams sell players for what they can get on the baseball market. It's a much better form of revenue sharing.

Posted by David Pinto at 09:59 AM | Transactions | TrackBack (0)

Comments

That seems like a good idea for lesser revenue teams, but what about the bigger market teams that would like to use that to their advantage to dump salaries or get rid of an aging player that is under contract in a no-trade clause? It worked back in the day, but nowadays, it would be exploited.

Posted by: Jesse R at December 17, 2006 11:16 AM

I don't know.... the Pirates would just sell everybody and pocket the money.

Posted by: calig23 at December 17, 2006 10:58 PM

I'm not sure I understand how selling players would allow big market teams to 'dump salary' or to 'get rid of aging players'. The big market teams would have less financial constraints in terms of purchasing players but there are already rules in place that restrict the number of MLB contracts a team can have. Typically where a player would be sold the purchasing team becomes responsible for the contract. Players like this would not be targeted by smaller market teams who were salary conscious.
Secondly, the concept of player sales to fund the rest of the 'franchise' is an excellent idea that would actually promote better smaller market teams. By allowing a team like the Marlins to 'sell' a player like Josh Beckett to the Red Sox (say for $51.1M) the Marlins would be able to afford Willis and Cabrera after their arbitration years. This would promote stability in the franchise, create better teams and allow teams to be kept together where front offices are currently financially constrained. Think about the current Indians or Twins where selling a single player could effectively allow the rest of the 25 man roster to stay together for 2 or 3 years. This would certainly promote competition; ultimately the league would be allowing teams to keep their own MLB ready players instead of constantly trying to 'move' soon to be free agents for Minor league talent or lesser MLB players.

Posted by: Cooper at December 17, 2006 11:18 PM

I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but isn't this how the European (and other) soccer leagues work, with big-money clubs buying the rights to up and coming stars on other teams?

I'd be curious to see a comparison of (1) how this affects competition (i.e. it seems like the top of the EPL league tables are the same teams with money year after year - then again, so is the AL East and (2) how this affects player compensation (which we saw with the effect of the posting fee on Daisuke's annual salary).

My sense of it is that money correlates better with success in an EPL style title format, where the league winner is based on regular season results, than with the Champions League knockout style (which may loosely correspond to how we see a lot of the same teams year after year in the playoffs, but good luck picking the WS winner in any given year). To me, though, that still leaves the question of player compensation. In the MLB, players get their payday after their arb years as a free agent. But do Euro soccer players get similar rights? It seems like even for guys in their late 20s/early 30s (like Shevchenko this year) they still see part of their pay day taken by their former club as a posting fee. Not that I'll cry over it for him, but in terms of making efficient markets, I'm not sure posting does it.

Posted by: Jim at December 18, 2006 05:10 AM

Jim,
This is how World soccer/football does work. It is rare that a player exchange is seen, although players will sometimes be included with transfer fees. There have been a number of problems since the Bosman decision (which allowed players under the age of 24 to leave a club at the end of their contract 'on a free' or 'without compensation to their previous employer') with players forcing sales by threatening to see out their contracts and then leave for free. This is generally done to either a) force the move, b) generate a better wage or c) when a player moves clubs w/out his new club having to pay that fee the player generally earns a better contract.
Typically this system helps smaller clubs in the same way as sharing television revenue (which most European soccer leagues also do) where clubs are able to then re-invest that money by keeping other players or pursuing new blood in the transfer market.
While it may not be an 'ideal' system (and there are many many allegations of tampering, agents taking bribes, back-room dealings and the like) it does facilitate a global game. It would seem that MLB wants to globalize baseball, and ultimately we will see club teams from different nations playing each other (as opposed to just National teams, in the WBC). If this is to occur you could not see a system like the one we have in place. Imagine the look on Jeter's face to hear he's been traded to the Yamiuri Giants, or a team in Venezuela. Players will always move teams, and in order to maintain an equitable exchange, as well as facilitate growth in smaller market (and not just US market) the move to a transfer system will ultimately make the most sense for baseball.

Posted by: Cooper at December 18, 2006 11:44 AM

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