I can't answer that. I'd assume that they would (maybe not as much) and would just field a AAA roster.
Yankees/Dodgers
- Thread starter TheWerewolfFromTwilight
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Of course not. Just pointing out that the salary cap hasn’t quite fixed all of the problems with cheap ownership.
If you are just talking about pure revenue sharing, then yeah, they probably would, and certainly could, turn a profit without that. If you are talking about all the shared MLB revenue, which includes all the national television money and stuff like that that is split equally among all owners then no, not even close. But the Pirates wouldn't be the only team in that boat.'
Nine of the last 23 super bowls have been won by either the chiefs or patriots. That’s 6% of the teams accounting for 39% of the champions. Great example of parity
Quarterback heavy league. And unless you are Brady or Mahomes, you better be winning that SB with a HOF QB on their rookie contract before they start sucking up too much of the cap.
I won't pretend to understand exactly how the NFL salary cap works, but the disparity of the MLB team salaries is huge in comparison.
Teams also seem to go from worst to first, vice versa, and everything in between pretty regularly in the NFL. A lot more so than baseball anyway. Yeah, a good QB - or a Lebron James, Michael Jordan, etc. - is going to have a lot of success in their respective league. But it's one thing for a player to monopolize that success and another for a team to do it.
Within reason, anybody could beat anybody in a playoff game/series that is a fraction of the overall season. So I would measure parity, or lack thereof, by postseason appearances more than who ultimately wins it all. I mean, there really isn't even a discussion to be had. It's obviously advantageous to have a payroll that is 3x that of other teams in the league. There are rookie contracts and whatnot that might yield some aberrations from a micro viewpoint, but from a macro standpoint it's just common sense: that's a pretty screwed up system if equal opportunity is the goal. And I do realize that it isn't the goal.
im not an expert on MLB revenue but the disparity is so great between local and national tv deals compared to the NFL where it all comes from fox, CBS and espn. all pretty much under one account and evenly distributed where as in baseball, national TV deals are growing but still such a small part of the revenue pie.
its just an apples to oranges comparison and i dont know how you fix it, or if it needs fixed.. sucks to be a pirate fan but really, if yoiu look at what has hurt this franchise over the last 20 years, we are our own worst enemy. It's not us having enough money, it's just ridiculously bad draft picks and zero development, awful trades, salary dumps that yield zero results. GMs that just make terrible "Baseball" decisions.
It is but the point is that it doesn't fix a cheap owner. That's just a myth and it won't change because the cheap owners love the revenue they get for being cheap and existing in places like Pittsburgh.
Partially as a result of the relatively short schedules. The fewer games teams play the more variance there is in their performance.
It shouldn't be too difficult to fix, but they probably don't want to. Just implement a salary cap and require all team to have a minimum total salary determined before each season. The luxury tax should be able to distribute the revenue so all smaller market teams can achieve more parity.
Require a minimum amount of salary per team. If the don't do it, they lose the team. Watch how fast Nutsack increases the total team salary.
They kind of have that now with MLB. The union files a grievance every time Nutting's payroll gets too low. I believe there is a floor in the NFL but it is pretty low. Bottom line is that the other owners aren't about to go there. They love the way things are and nobody is in a rush to change anything.
I think they've only ever officially filed against the Pirates one time. They have filed them against Tampa and someone else that I can't remember off the top of my head more than once.
Fun fact, they have never had one of those grievances upheld. They have agreed to tweak the rules around revenue sharing because of them, but the MLBPA has never won a grievance that a team was not spending enough money on payroll.
And by the way, I just turned the game on in the 10th inning because I was at the volleyball game, so I only saw three, or really two, batters. Ohtani making an out on the great catch by Verdugo falling into the stands, then an intentional walk, and then Freddie Freeman hitting a ball that may not have landed yet.
Well.......Game 1 delivered exactly what MLB (and baseball fans) wanted.
I'm just happy the Dodgers won so that good but overrated catch didn't become the story of the game. Reminded me of when Derek Jeter make a good catch and then proceeded to run 40 yards and dive into the stands like Iggy Pop.
It does make me laugh when the announcers say something like "he ran full speed into the seats to make the catch!" while showing the replay that shows him slowing down as he gets to the wall to not actually slam into the wall at full speed.
Especially given the moment, I think it's fair to call that a great catch (certainly better than the Jeter one you are referring to), but it wasn't the greatest catch ever or anything like that.
Greatest catch....over the shoulder....center field Willie Mays....not sure there is one better....also back in the day when outfielder's gloves weren't the size of manhole covers!
Yeah, that's the thing. That Mays catch is a great catch, no doubt about it. But it is only considered the "greatest catch" because it happened in the World Series. By a player from a New York team. Who happened to be Willie Mays.
Guys make catches like that in random, regular season games every season. But they are random regular season games, so no one really cares.
BTW, intentionally putting a hill in play in center field, dumbest baseball idea ever, or dumbest idea ever?
Weren't the Polo Grounds like 480 feet to center field? Nobody makes a catch like that anymore because stadiums are completely different. Mays probably had to run 100+ feet to run underneath that ball to be in position to catch it, which makes it pretty impressive in my book.
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It was absolutely impressive. It was absolutely a great catch. But it's considered the greatest because of the moment and the guy who made it.
And the Berkman catch kind of proves the point. That Berkman catch was at least as good. He didn't run near as far, but he had to run up a damned hill! And yet pretty much no one ever remembers the Berkman catch. Because it happened in a random game in May against the Pirates and Rob Mackowiak. If he did that in the World Series against the Yankees that catch would be recognized as the greatest catch ever.
Brian Giles' catch was better than Willie Mays'. And I'm sure there have been quite a few better than both.
I don't believe anyone on the Pirates has hit a ball 480 feet in the past 10 years. In all of MLB, for 2023, it looks like there were 6 balls hit 480 or more feet. In fact, that hit might be the most powerful hit in World Series history, at least in terms of farthest hit (although it's technically not even a hit but an out). And Mays was able to run to a ball hit that far and caught it. It's pretty unbelievable.
Also, for comparison purposes to show how well hit that ball was that Mays caught, Freeman's ball traveled 409 feet last night.
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Well again, it was a great catch. But people don't make catches on balls hit that far because to do that now they'd have to buy a ticket and sit up in the stands. If there were parks like that today there absolutely are players who could run that far to make a catch.
And now that I think about it, it would probably make baseball really interesting if they moved the fences back at all parks like 100 feet. Almost impossible to hit the ball over the fence, but balls in the gap getting behind outfielders rolling forever would be run to watch.
According to this article about a great Dalton Varsho catch from earlier this season, he ran 124 feet to catch this ball. And that was only the third longest run to catch a ball in his career.
Dalton Varsho Catch
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