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An interesting parallel is baseball. The Yankees are infamous for using money as a tool, buying up as much talent as they could. In recent years, the Dodgers
by phamilton 11y ago
An interesting parallel is baseball.
The Yankees are infamous for using money as a tool, buying up as much talent as they could.
In recent years, the Dodgers have outspent everybody, but in an absolutely different way. 25% of the Dodgers payroll goes to players not playing for the Dodgers. Often, it's going to players playing against the Dodgers. Many commentators have described this in similar terms. They use their deep pockets a s a weapon. Instead of giving their players huge salaries, they on multiple occasions have found teams struggling with expensive contracts for underperforming players. They negotiate to take the player (and the bad contract) and then require some talented youngsters to be thrown in on the deal. They then trade away the underperforming player to another team, subsidizing the contract substantially, and keep the talented prospects. While some of these trades didn't pan out well, it was a pretty unique way to use deep pockets as a weapon.
- qihqi 11y agoI almost thought that they pay opposing players to not play with full strength when reading the first sentences. Glad you clarified.
- forgetsusername 11y ago>An interesting parallel is baseball. It's funny you choose baseball as the sporting example, as it's without a salary cap. If you look at hockey and basketball, this has been a strategy for a long time because teams have to remain below the salary cap. As such, bad contracts are traded around all the time to make room for payroll. Stars sometimes change teams for essentially nothing but cap space. I guess it interesting that a baseball team is doing it in a world where there are no spending caps.
- phamilton 11y agoTrading for cap space isn't using deep pockets as a weapon. It's just balancing the books. When a team like the Marlins has a payroll of $80M and the Dodgers are at $300M, there's a much more predatory effect at play.
- askldfhjkasfhd 11y agoBaseball implemented the luxury tax system, which operates at a soft cap. So while it's technically accurate to say no salary cap, there does exist a financial mechanism by which team payrolls (and by association, player salaries) are limited.