the wages of wins (above replacement): a thread for baseball finances

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apologies in advance for the title

, Tuesday, 6 May 2025 20:22 (four months ago)

first up, interesting article about the nats https://www.talknats.com/2025/04/30/the-nats-are-sinking-in-debt-per-reports/

Per Michael Ozanian of CNBC, the Washington Nationals have the second highest debt load as a percentage of team value in the MLB, second only to the Miami Marlins who sit at 38 percent.

Going with Ozanian’s numbers, the Nationals are carrying approximately $550 million in debt. Ozanian also has the Nationals at the 4th lowest revenue of any team in baseball.

, Tuesday, 6 May 2025 20:25 (four months ago)

the article links to CNBC's baseball valuations, which CNBC calls "official MLB team valuations":

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/cnbcs-official-mlb-team-valuations-2025.html

but when you look at the methodology, it doesn't seem like these are really 'official', still just a best guess by CNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/methodology-cnbcs-official-mlb-team-valuations-2025.html

, Tuesday, 6 May 2025 20:27 (four months ago)

i guess i really just wanted a thread to talk about finally understanding why the marlins fired everybody last year. they have a lot of debt!

, Tuesday, 6 May 2025 20:27 (four months ago)

four weeks pass...

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/article/white-sox-owner-jerry-reinsdorf-reaches-agreement-with-justin-ishbia-for-controlling-stake-171235577.html

The Chicago White Sox are looking at an ownership change in the near future: The team announced in a press release on Thursday that owner Jerry Reinsdorf has reached an agreement with billionaire investor Justin Ishbia to potentially sell his majority stake five years from now.

According to a press release, the "long-term investment agreement" gives Reinsdorf the "option" to sell his controlling stake to Ishbia between 2029 and 2033. Ishbia currently holds a minority stake in the team.

, Thursday, 5 June 2025 17:45 (three months ago)

one month passes...
one month passes...

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/101203/in-graphical-detail-forget-expansion-think-relegation/

Non-paywalled: https://archive.ph/atCqr

What does an ILBer think about this? I find it kind of persuasive and tantalizing on first glance, and I haven't given it a second glance yet.

Noob Layman (WmC), Friday, 5 September 2025 02:21 (two weeks ago)

still paywall'd for me unfortch

, Friday, 5 September 2025 15:30 (two weeks ago)

Ah crap. I could c/p the text but there are a bunch of charts too.

Noob Layman (WmC), Friday, 5 September 2025 16:40 (two weeks ago)

(xpost) Ditto--would like to read that.

clemenza, Friday, 5 September 2025 16:46 (two weeks ago)

i’m sure this is addressed in the piece but i just don’t see american owners in any sport ever agreeing to potentially remove themselves from the league

slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Friday, 5 September 2025 17:00 (two weeks ago)

Forget Expansion; Think Relegation
Bradley Woodrum
September 4, 2025

The concept of promotion and relegation has haunted MLB circles for many years. And lately, that haunting has been shaking the furniture, rattling the windows, and writing on foggy bathroom mirrors:

It’s coming.

In 2018, Russell Carlton floated it as an anti-tanking solution. Earlier this year, Michael Baumann said the only acceptable concession for a salary cap would be a pyramid system with relegation and promotion. In June, Steve Drumwright of Pitcher List proposed a feeder league to kickstart promotion and relegation and encourage greater competition. With the pervasive issues of under-spending owners and tanking strategies, the ever-looming threat of spending limits and stadium relocations, and the pre-existing presence of so many minor league and independent teams throughout North America, it’s no wonder fans and commentators are wondering if the European soccer league structure makes more sense for the sport.

If the Athletics or Pirates could be threatened with relegation to Triple-A, would their free agency habits improve? If Charlotte or Indianapolis could spend a season or two in MLB, what would that do for baseball popularity nationally? If suddenly minor-league games mattered, would that resuscitate flagging attendance?

Yes. A system of relegation and promotion would be good. It is the best future for the sport. And the process to make it happen has already begun.

I would like to offer a proposal, perhaps a sketch, that shows how relegation and promotion is good for everyone—the owners, the players, the fans, and thus the sport itself.

Why the Owners Need Relegation
Smaller guaranteed financial commitments
Ending the barter economy for talent
More ownership opportunities
Greater interest in the sport overall

If the owners are truly committed to the accusation that MLB needs a salary cap, then I have an even better idea for reducing their payroll, an idea that aligns with many owner’s preexisting business sensibilities. Instead of snipping from the top, cut from the bottom.

The typical MLB franchise does not employ just the 26 players on their MLB roster. They don’t employ even just the 40 men on their reserve roster. Depending on injuries and how many DSL teams the franchise controls, it’s common for MLB franchises to employ anywhere from 180 to 270 players at a time. And for each affiliate, they’re also responsible for coaches’ and support staff’s salaries. They pay for 30 rounds of signing bonuses, plus bonuses for international free agents from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba, and the like. And, as of recently, MLB franchises pay for housing for their minor leaguers too. They pay $31 per diem per player, which at 270 players comes to $58K per week.

Want to cut payroll? Why not adopt a system that takes those pesky underpaid employees off your hands?

We’ve already been moving towards this solution. After 2020, the MLB unilaterally contracted the minor-league system, reducing the 162 team system to just 120 teams, eliminating the Short-A level entirely. MLB has also been trimming the Amateur Draft from basically the first year of inception, from a high point of 72 rounds in 1965 to just 20 rounds plus compensation rounds.

Imagine a universe where the MLB Rule 4 Draft is not 20 rounds, not 10 rounds, but three rounds. Or imagine no draft at all. Imagine instead of paying 200+ players, MLB paid only its reserve roster. It makes sense that teams would still need enough prospects and players to fill in gaps during the season, but a 70-man roster—which takes the 40-man roster and adds 30 prospects—is a feasible solution.

In 2024, there were 1,480 players who either completed 1 IP or 5 PA. That works out to 49.3 players per team. So a 70-man reserve roster—with no limits on options and no waiver wire (because there’s nowhere to waive or option players to)—should be more than sufficient for covering a typical MLB season.

Moreover, a 70-man system would save MLB clubs millions in payroll:

Minimum Annual Salary	2025	Current Rosters	Salary Commitment	New Rosters	New Salary
DSL $20,430 35 $715,050 0 $0
US Rookie $20,430 35 $715,050 0 $0
Low-A $26,840 30 $805,200 0 $0
High-A $27,940 30 $838,200 0 $0
Double-A $30,905 28 $865,340 0 $0
Triple-A $36,590 28 $1,024,520 44 $1,609,960
$4,963,360 $1,609,960

This adjustment saves MLB owners $3.4 million annually. Reducing the MLB Rule 4 Draft to three rounds without changing the bonus pools would mean saving about $7 million per team per year in bonuses. We have saved owners a cool $10 million per year without even firing all the hard-working minor league coaches, trainers, and clubhouse staff (yet).

On top of salary cuts, the pyramid would be adding over 100 new baseball clubs, each paying an entry fee commensurate with their intended level. That’s the kind of enormous injection of cash that normally requires a gray-haired uncle to choke on a filet mignon.

This is it. This is the expansion you’ve been looking for. Not only do you get the league fees of all these new teams, you shed payroll like a wet dog shaking itself dry in the garden; not a drop wasted. The minor-league coaches and staff you fired will immediately have job options in the cities they were just stationed, with someone else signing the checks. It’s the closest you’ll come to guilt-free firing, if guilt is a thing that concerns you.

Still worried about your pool of gold coins getting too low insolvency? Well there’s another neat trick that international sports can teach us.

How Trades Work in the World of Soccer

I’ve witnessed the eBIS logs of minor trades that involve “cash considerations.” Far more of those than you would ever expect are trades for exactly $1. For the player’s self respect, I’m glad that information isn’t public. But the reality exists that meaningful quantities of money rarely change hands in trades. At most, teams will offset salary from an overpaid player, but I cannot recall any instance where the league has approved a trade involving cash beyond what a player is owed in their current contract.

What if, instead, teams would pay for the right to negotiate a new contract? This is essentially how the financial system in soccer works. Have your eye on a $20 million surplus value prospect in, say, the Cardinals system? Instead of trying to piece together the equivalent amount of surplus value and projected WARP value, instead of trying to find a set of players that both teams agree is worth about $20 million, how about a system where you just offer the Cardinals $20 million?

This changes the market for baseball talent from a barter economy into a money economy. Barter economies are notoriously inefficient. And money economies offer clubs a way to balance their finances that MLB teams can’t currently do. It gives them an option to cash out, literally, on deadline relievers and late-career scenery changes.

Premier League (PL) teams, in the top league of English soccer, on net spend more than they gain via transfers. Over the last five years, the median non-relegated PL team has spent a net $72 million per year in transfers. On the high end, Manchester United has spent an eye-watering $183 million more per year than they’ve taken in from transfers. On the low end, several up-and-down clubs have made considerable money on net from transfers, as has Brighton, a football club which has risen up through promotion and managed to stay in the Premier League since 2017.

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image2-1.png

MLB owners are at no risk of needing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for trades anytime soon. Unless a large contingent of Saudi oil magnates and international private equity firms catch baseball fever, the competition for baseball talent simply is not aggressive, not global enough to merit such massive outlays of cash. As Brighton and several other clubs have shown, the option to stay near cash-neutral is not a guaranteed relegation, even in a big-spending league like the Premier League.

Moreover, the Premier League is a bit of an oddity in that space. The majority of clubs in Bundesliga (Germany’s top league), LaLiga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), and Ligue 1 (France) all make money from transfers (largely from Premier League clubs).

“I pay zero dollars for my trades right now,” you might say, Mr. Owner. “Why would I ever choose to start paying for something I currently get for free?”

But you do pay for them! You send and receive players and their contracts, and they’re exquisitely imperfect solutions for your needs.

From the 2018 trade deadline through the 2019 offseason, the Marlins attempted to trade J.T. Realmuto, then the best catcher in baseball, amidst clouds of wild speculation and inexhaustible accusations of fire-selling. By a stroke of dumb luck upon the cogs of fate, I was in the rooms where many of the trade discussions occurred. You would blush if you heard what teams offered us. You would be appalled at what the openers of GMs were. If any one of them dangled a deal half as lucrative as the ones floating around the internet at the time, we would have taken it in a heartbeat.

At one point, Alex Anthopoulos called to say he would give us 7 prospects from his Top 30 list.

“Well that sounds promising,” said a surprised President of Baseball Operations Michael Hill. An incredulous, doubting smile crept onto his face. “We’ll see where he actually lands.”

And sure enough, five manic phone calls with Anthopoulos later, the Braves GM had talked himself down to three guys from the back end of his 40-man roster—guys they would go on to DFA mere days later. “He wants us to clean up his roster,” Mr. Hill said, frustrated as he mashed the red telephone icon on his phone.

Everyone wanted J.T. Realmuto, but nobody knew exactly what he cost. Not even us. And definitely not the Braves.

Imperfect information always exists in marketplaces; it’s one of the greatest obstacles of any market economy. You buy a car, but do not know for sure if it will drive well in the snow because you bought it in the summer. You’re shopping for fruit, but can’t tell by looking at the raspberries and blueberries which ones will go bad first. You subscribe to a streaming service, but can you really trust your sister that Andor is the best Star Wars thing ever. (Yes, trust your sisters.)

But the saving grace of the money economy is that at least one side of the exchange is close to certain: the cash. Imagine trying to buy blueberries with, say, a bucket of chestnuts. What’s the value of chestnuts, and how do they compare to blueberries? Should the bucket itself carry even more value than the chestnuts themselves?

That’s how MLB trades work. Every analytics department is building complex chestnut, blueberry, and bucket models to try to not get hoodwinked, and still the Rays are trading away Trea Turner and the Dodgers sending away Yordan Alvarez. A money economy for baseball talent not only sews up that inefficiency, it creates an escape route for clubs that have gotten over their skis on payroll commitments or simply want to cash out on an overhyped prospect so they can reinvest the funds into more productive areas, like analytics, player development, or scouting.

A Message to Minority Owners

Are you tired of how poorly your team is run? Aren’t you ready to get Your Guys™ into the executive suite, calling the shots? You don’t need the Big Man’s money to buy a minor-league team. And in a system of relegation and promotion, you can enjoy the sweetest reckoning of all—waving goodbye to the Big Man’s club as they get relegated and you get promoted.

Are you worried about the ROI of your minority stake? Is the Big Man stepping back from promises of growing your share of control? Do you, like me, crave the authority to design baseball uniforms?

Go to the Big Man and whisper in his left ear, “Maybe a pyramid system would make us even richer.” Then appear at his other ear and hiss, “Imagine if the Astros got relegated.”

A Message to Majority Owners

You’re not getting relegated. Don’t be ridiculous.

Step One of this system is to add in Portland or Montreal or some other city you’ve been stringing along for a decade, dangling before them an MLB franchise like a porterhouse steak in front of your underfed shih tzu. Bring the league up to 32 teams, maybe 34. They’re your relegation fodder. They’re the bridgemen, whose job it is to soak up Parshendi arrows before the nobles charge into the melee.

You sell too many jerseys and jersey patches to lose. Like the top half of the Premier League, your money makes you immune to any real threat. The new entrants to the system are the District 12 tributes. Promotion gives the riff raff a taste of the good life before they return to their slums. And this sad lottery, much like the real lottery, preserves a lie of fairness, teaches a fairytale hope that preserves the status quo and greases the wheels of entertainment so necessary to pass the next beautiful tax break.

Is Chelsea worried about relegation? Is Man United under any real threat? Will FC Barcelona or Bayern Munich taste the foul sting of normalcy? No. They will not.

And neither will you. The system is designed to preserve the elites. It’s a European system, after all. And a salary cap is your worst enemy here. As long as you can bully the Triple-A franchises with $10 million-plus contracts, tempt them with $2 million transfer fees, you can forever stave off relegation.

Why the Fans Need Relegation

Greater ability to influence the local team
Better coverage for all baseball markets
Competitive teams up and down the pyramid
In August, Patrick Dubuque made the case that MLB fans need to adopt the European system of booster clubs. That effort doesn’t require a system of promotion and relegation, but the two help encourage and cultivate each other.

Why? The biggest advantage of a pyramid system is not unlike the biggest advantage of actual pyramids—they have an extremely wide base.

For years, MLB has tried to offer competitive baseball to just 30 neighborhoods in North America’s sprawling, dispersed US and Canadian landscapes. It feels akin to the classic problem most foreign tourists encounter upon their first visit to the US. Europeans come to America with no sense of scale. They land in New York, thinking on day 10 of their 30-day annual vacation that they’ll drive to the Grand Canyon, only to discover that it would be shorter to drive from Paris to Moscow.

North America is enormous.

Let’s generously assume that the 29 US teams in their 26 US markets effectively, 100% covered the fans in their regions. Let’s assume everyone in New York is perfectly happy with rooting for either Queens or the Bronx (I’ve never been, but I assume they must be extremely popular, trendy neighborhoods that everyone even in distant boroughs love and respect). Let’s assume everyone in Schaumburg, IL, is happy rooting either for the Bridgeport White Sox or the Wrigleyville Cubs. Everyone in Atlanta loves rooting for their newly suburban team, and everyone in Las Vegas is psyched about their hypothetical franchise. Or, at the very least, they’re exchanging expats at a relatively even rate. Let’s assume these 26 metropolitan areas are fully covered in happy fans.

That coverage represents just 134 million of America’s 340 million residents. MLB is playing the infield with just a first baseman and a shortstop, hoping to god no one tries to steal third or drop a bunt. The league isn’t covering all the bases, or the markets:

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image3-1.png

A pyramid is wide at the bottom so it can be tall at the top. Allowing meaningful baseball to be played in Peoria and Lehigh Valley maximizes interest in all baseball. As someone who started as an Everton (PL) fan and is now rooting for four pro soccer teams, I can assure you, having a local team does not dissuade fans from still supporting a top tier team too.

And having a local team means locals can take ownership of their relationship to the club. Iowa’s blackout map vortex that prevents them from seeing baseball cannot coexist in a universe where Des Moines hosts an MLB-hopeful franchise. The Des Moines Cubs Diamond Dogs? The Des Moines Diamond Dogs will soak up the blackout. No longer would baseball fans be “in market” for a handful of franchises well beyond the bend of the horizon.

And if their presence didn’t solve the blackout issues, if the Diamond Dogs failed to bring sanity to the media market in Iowa, the citizens there have much more leverage to express their displeasure than they do with, say, the Cubs, who play as far away as, um, Paris to Geneva? But with way fewer mountains.

The wayward Cubs fan in Iowa can root for their Diamond Dogs, a team they can apply pressure upon when ticket prices get too high or the local play-by-play commentator is unfairly dismissed. They can do all this, and still root for the Cubs they can finally see on TV. They have the capacity in their hearts to root for both. Take it from an Everton-Wrexham-Fire-Quakes fan.

A pyramid city brings the charm and hometown pride of minor-league baseball, and amps up the stakes. Imagine the glory, the romance, of the Durham Bulls spending even one season in the majors. A storied, mythologized franchise putting their city on the major-league map—and not by grifting big city officials into pocket-lining stadium deals or moving to some far flung locale for better television contracts. No! They would have done it the most American way possible, competing, fighting, struggling, and winning—one hit at a time.

The King of DeLand

Imagine a universe where instead of being picked in the ninth Round of the 2010 Draft, Jacob deGrom signs a deal to play for Orlando’s minor league team the, let’s say, Florida Fire Frogs. This way, he can play close to his home in DeLand, Florida, and refine his craft under the watchful eye of top-league scouts.

What do the fans get out of this? After his initial hiccup as a professional (Tommy John surgery in 2010), deGrom cut through the minors like a hot spoon through lukewarm ice cream. For the Fire Frogs, deGrom would be a king-maker. “You don’t want to face the Fire Frogs when deGrom from DeLand is pitching,” they would say.

Who knows how long deGrom would stay in Orlando? Maybe long enough to get them promoted once, maybe twice, and cement his legacy as a Local Kid Who Made Good. And when a big club finally did come knocking for deGrom, it would net the Fire Frogs a king’s ransom to keep them in business, and scouting for the next deGrom, for many seasons to come.

In baseball, talent pools in the majors. Very rarely do fans outside the Selected 26 metro areas get a glimpse of top-end talent, outside a rusty rehab assignment. The talent distribution looks a bit like this:

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image1-1.png

The top several MLB teams definitely have MLB-quality players—maybe not superstars, but definitely MLB-capable players—toiling away in the upper minors. But down at High-A and lower, there’s very unlikely to be MLB-ready players. Likely, there might be a reliever or two who really isn’t going to change much over the next year or two, but needs to prove himself before the team is ready to push him to the next level.

But in the pyramid system, you end up with a talent distribution that is much more similar to this:

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image4.png

Top tier talent is still very much clustered at the MLB level, but the top team in High-A might have chronic part-time masher Rob Refsnyder hitting cleanup every night, hauling behind him some MVP trophies and a whole fan section dedicated to the Rob Mob. Imagine Brent Suter, ace of a Double-A Frisco RoughRiders rotation hunting for promotion and a second consecutive Texas League ERA title. Brandon Belt could be that late-career signing, that proven veteran leader Wichita needed to stave off relegation.

If bringing MLB players to farflung towns and hamlets isn’t an attractive idea, then why is MLB playing in cornfields and speedways? There are disenfranchised fans out there, there are local superstars ripe for the making, if baseball wants it.

Why Players Need Relegation

Agency in all trades
More teams and more jobs
Competitive compensation at all levels
The pyramid system works in large part because players can shift from one level to another when playing time or needs arise. And this is enabled by the transfer system, which allows players to negotiate a new contract with every trade.

This gives players unrivaled agency in their careers. Not just a no-trade clause with a few team’s names listed, hoping you’ll land on a decent squad that can actually develop and properly use your talents. No, you’ll have the chance to ask straight up, “What will my playing time be? What positions or roles will I be expected to play? How many years, and how much money?”

Or players can flatly refuse. They can say no deal, I like Jacksonville. No deal, my wife has a job here in Salt Lake City. And the franchise will have to deal with it. Though typically most transfers represent increases in pay, playing time, or both, there are still real world considerations that would legitimately keep deGrom in Orlando or, say, Ohtani in Los Angeles even if better pay and tax rates were calling from afar.

In fact, the reason we, the Marlins, had to trade J.T. Realmuto was that he turned down our generous contract extension offer—one that was even richer than what he ultimately got with Philadelphia. I can’t fault Realmuto for taking into consideration non-financial factors in turning down the offer—maybe he didn’t love all the heat and flooding of South Florida, or have high hopes for the franchise’s direction. Whatever it was, it was ultimately his prerogative to choose.

The pyramid’s wide base means there will be more teams for players to choose from. Competitive clubs with living wages and playing time all across the country. Yes, those roster spots exist now, but would the Rocket City Trash Pandas ever offer a player a contract? No. Would they try to outbid their parent club the Angels for a player’s services? As easy as that sounds, still no! Minor-league teams don’t employ players at all. Not a single one.

But a relegation-promotion system changes that.

Moreover, when your body fails you, as it inevitably will, and you’re ready to take a scouting, analyst, or coaching job, do you want 30 potential employers or 150 teams? Which sounds more competitive to you?

The modern front office apparatus for baseball operations is centralized within the parent MLB club. No minor-league affiliate employs scouts. There is no coach or performance analyst on the Sounders payroll.

The front offices of lower-tier clubs would necessarily be smaller than their MLB counterparts. They would be operating on tighter budgets, scouting fewer systems and amateur spaces than MLB clubs would be. But just because there’s suddenly a need for baseball operations staff at every affiliate, the major-league clubs wouldn’t necessarily decrease their front office head count. They still need to scout the minors, Latin America, and Asia. They still need teams of analysts piping in data and analysis to decision makers and coaches. If anything, the pressure to avoid relegation and the smaller limits on rosters might drive owners to invest even further into these high-ROI areas.

The Life of a Reservist

From everything I’ve heard, the waiver wire and DFA limbo is an emotionally trying experience. Players go from living their dream career to being locked in a hotel room, unable to contact their once-coworkers for fear of a legal violation, unsure where their next paycheck will come from—if at all.

Instead of a system of optioning players to the minors or passing players through waivers, MLB could institute the 70-man reserve roster and travel with a bigger compliment of taxi squad players. The current handful of taxi squad relievers and position players could be expanded to 20 or so players, the taxi team. That taxi squad could then play games against opposing taxi teams when in town.

This is similar to how the reserves rosters work in soccer. The reserve team is ready and able to send players to the top-tier team at a moment’s notice, but largely they fill a shadow role, playing friendly or non-competitive games against fellow reserve teams. This means a modern Triple-A player is no longer waiting for a horrific injury to open a 40-man spot and finally make their dreams come true (“Thank you, God, for breaking the first baseman’s index finger in two places so that I may finally play in the majors”). Rather, players performing well in the reserves go straight to the majors whenever performance merits it, or need arises through trade or injury. Service-time manipulation would be a thing of the past, because each contract is specifically negotiated upon entrance to the roster. Free agency is coming precisely when the player and team agree upon it.

I’m sure the Players Union will likely have myriad thoughts on how to make the reserve roster more equitable and moral-hazard free, so I won’t try to pencil out the details of how often or quickly can and should players (specifically pitchers) be flung back and forth from the reserve to the game-day roster. But I’m guessing, dear reader, you’re already sensing one of the big problems with the reserve roster.

What about prospects?

In 2020, prospects and Triple-A reinforcements had to gather at spring training complexes and try their best to mimic game environments in the faint hopes they could be sharp enough to contribute to a major-league squad. It was not an excellent environment for player development. Maintaining skills or refining a pitch or two? Sure. But when every sixth batter you face is a hitting coach, there are some diminishing returns.

So principally, the taxi team would be for MLB-ready fill-ins. This is where loans come in. In the soccer world, players can be loaned to a lower-level club, often with the lower-level club taking on a portion or all of the player’s salary, in order to ensure maximum playing time and an appropriate difficulty for their development.

Max Clark isn’t ready for the Majors yet? Great! Loan him to the Erie Sea Wolves and let them pay his salary. Better yet, charge the Sea Wolves a few thousand dollars for the privilege.

In this scenario, Max Clark gets paid his reserve roster salary even while playing in Double-A. He is still very much a member of the Detroit Tigers system, and heck, may even make a few more Tigers fans in western Pennsylvania during his loan, but he’ll have the ability to reach his full potential.

Or he can say no. Players have to agree to loans. And if the Sea Wolves don’t want to play him in CF or start him against lefties, or if he doesn’t like crunch coat and Presque Isle, then he can say no thanks, I’ll go play in Pensacola instead.

For all the players not taken in the first three rounds or not transferred to an MLB club, they’ll have the opportunity to take the deGrom path. Sign with a local team or the highest bidder. Perhaps there’s room for a draft that extends to the lower levels (maybe three rounds are allocated to each level of the pyramid?), but in reality, with such constrained reserve rosters, clubs can’t take in many players. This means the big-pocket teams won’t be able to hoard talent and bully the edges of the market like they currently do, where no player in their right mind would choose an indy-ball contract offer over a MiLB deal.

But in a universe where minor leaguers are meaningful contributors to possible explosive financial growth for their minor-league owners, where each trade nets you a chance to up your pay, you better believe the player pay is better. The average League Two player in the English Football League (i.e. the 4th tier of the EFL, so think High-A) makes £145,000 per year (or about $190,000 if they chose to spend it in America). The average salary in Italy’s Serie B (their Triple-A level) is €358,000 ($419,000 in Freedom Credits).

Yes, there is more money in soccer. It’s a global sport. But compare the minimum payscale between these levels:

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image5.png

Does it feel like there’s some improvement possible here?

The current minor-league system is designed to give players a big burst of cash initially (their signing bonus from the draft or international free agency), and then stay financially afloat from that money through their minor-league career until they reach the majors, or fizzle out. But many players sign for less than $50,000, well beneath the salary of a League Two player. And many players take years to reach the majors, and even then, only for a brief, less-than-one-year stint.

What makes capitalism at all redeemable is not that people can profit off of it. No, far from that. The “killer app” of capitalism is supposed to be its ability to cultivate competition. When companies compete against each other—for customers, for employees, for money itself—they tend to make a better product, pay a better wage, and do what’s right by their owners/investors all at once.

In the current iteration of the minor-league system, teams aren’t competing for player contracts. Those are sealed in once the player signs their first minor-league contract. In a sport otherwise a meritocracy, where good play leads to promotions and better salaries, the teams themselves coast off of a system of collusion. The lack of player agency, and thus the lack of competition for players, breeds complacency, low wages, and discontent.

Keep in mind, these salaries we’re looking at in the above chart are from 2025. What did this same chart look like as recently as 2021?

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image6.png

This is a disgraceful graphic, and it would be folly to think the problem is solved. The frustration that boiled over, leading to the bump in minor-league pay, is also directly connected to the contraction of the minor leagues. The shrinking pool of minor-league affiliates, the sudden gaps in pro baseball coverage, also plays a role in flagging interest in the sport. These items are all related, they are all circling each other, tilting in one direction.

Soon, there will be a new round of CBA negotiations, and everyone will be back to fighting over their share of the pie. But the pie could be so much bigger, and taste so much better. For the good of players, for the benefit of the fans, and for the owners themselves, baseball needs relegation.

Noob Layman (WmC), Friday, 5 September 2025 17:06 (two weeks ago)

Couldn't get that table up top to format correctly, maybe I'll screenshot it and post it later.

Noob Layman (WmC), Friday, 5 September 2025 17:09 (two weeks ago)

thank you!

, Friday, 5 September 2025 17:21 (two weeks ago)

i’m sure this is addressed in the piece but i just don’t see american owners in any sport ever agreeing to potentially remove themselves from the league

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Friday, September 5, 2025 1:00 PM (twenty-one minutes ago)

iirc the pohlers famously agreed to relegate the twins in the early 2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Major_League_Baseball_contraction_plan

, Friday, 5 September 2025 17:22 (two weeks ago)

hmm okay the twins voted against it but some bad quotes came out of the process from the pohlads which made twins fans hate them. i can't remember where i read that the pohlads were seriously considering the MLB offer of $250 million, because the twins were in debt at that time

But also in MN, Jim Souhan wrote, "People with knowledge of Pohlad say he believes efforts to gain a new stadium are doomed, he's fearful of paying an ever-rising payroll simply to keep his current team together, and he's not sure he wants the team to be a future burden to his family"

, Friday, 5 September 2025 17:31 (two weeks ago)

oh yeah here's some bad stuff https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/2001/1207/1291450.html

Pohlad said he didn't know how soon contraction -- baseball owners' term for eliminating franchises -- would happen, if it does.

Pohlad repeated earlier statements that his family doesn't want to get out of baseball. But he can't justify spending his family's money to prop up the Twins any longer, he told MPR.

In September, Fortune Magazine estimated his net worth at $1.8 billion. That was before the recent sale of most of his banking assets to Wells Fargo. Some estimates now put his worth at close to $3 billion.

Pohlad rejected the idea that he should pay for a stadium simply because he's wealthy.

"How much shall I pay for a legacy? Shall I pay a couple of hundred million dollars just for the privilege of showing baseball in the state of Minnesota? No," Pohlad said. "You wouldn't do it and neither would anybody else."

, Friday, 5 September 2025 17:32 (two weeks ago)

"How much shall I pay for a legacy?"

well, your legacy is that you inherited all your wealth, so nobody really cares about you anyway, my dude.

imperial frfr (Steve Shasta), Friday, 5 September 2025 19:18 (two weeks ago)

Thanks for that; will do my best to read and understand.

clemenza, Friday, 5 September 2025 19:25 (two weeks ago)

...esp when their dad probably said to them at some point: "do not, under any circumstances, sell the team"

imperial frfr (Steve Shasta), Friday, 5 September 2025 19:27 (two weeks ago)

agreeing to have your team contracted in order to receive $250 million is not the same as a system of relegation where you're keeping your team but having its value reduced severely, at least for a period of time, by dropping out of the main league. this piece doesn't really provide an explanation for why the majority of owners would risk their franchises in this way except to say that it would incentivize them to be "better run," but poorly run teams still generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year simply by existing. there's no way a bunch of owners are going to risk dropping down to AAA and relinquishing all that money

slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Friday, 5 September 2025 19:53 (two weeks ago)

ah i didn't know that's how relegation works. i don't follow european football

, Saturday, 6 September 2025 13:37 (two weeks ago)

This adjustment saves MLB owners $3.4 million annually. Reducing the MLB Rule 4 Draft to three rounds without changing the bonus pools would mean saving about $7 million per team per year in bonuses. We have saved owners a cool $10 million per year without even firing all the hard-working minor league coaches, trainers, and clubhouse staff (yet).

On top of salary cuts, the pyramid would be adding over 100 new baseball clubs, each paying an entry fee commensurate with their intended level. That’s the kind of enormous injection of cash that normally requires a gray-haired uncle to choke on a filet mignon.

On top of salary cuts, the pyramid would be adding over 100 new baseball clubs, each paying an entry fee commensurate with their intended level. That’s the kind of enormous injection of cash that normally requires a gray-haired uncle to choke on a filet mignon.

this is a little incredulous to me. who's going to be funding these 100 new baseball clubs?

also, $3.4 million saved annually across 30 baseball teams - that's a rounding error

, Saturday, 6 September 2025 13:39 (two weeks ago)

have a hard time following this article, probably because i don't understand how relegation works, but also because i don't think this guy has done a lot of traveling in america? i think all i can do is try to group this into what i like and what i don't like/understand:

what i liked and think i understand
-concept that teams would just pay other teams $$$ to buy players and the right to negotiate their contracts. wealth redistribution seems to be the central problem to me of MLB and this seems like one more form of revenue share. can't imagine the players union agreeing to this because it feels like top teams would be taking the money they'd be offering during free agency and giving it directly to the small market teams instead. seems like that shrinks the pie for players.

what i didn't like and don't understand
-idea that minor league teams could support being in the majors for a full season. the writer used to work for the marlins so i'm assuming he's been to a minor league stadium before. his example is what if some team in iowa made it to the majors? how would that even work? i just looked up the stadium for an iowa milb team, the iowa cubs - seats 11,500. how's west sacramento doing?
-this point that the current MLB teams only cover 150 million out of america's 350 million population. i mean yeah, but there's a reason for that - population density. feels like this works much better in europe because europe is much more dense.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/World_Population_Density_Map_2020.png

, Saturday, 6 September 2025 14:11 (two weeks ago)

trying to figure out the relationship between mlb teams and population density and i came across this which is good https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2330266/2021/01/25/mlb-expansion-cities-data/

, Saturday, 6 September 2025 14:13 (two weeks ago)

i guess the counterpoint to population density is college football, and how places like umich can fill 100,000 seat stadiums for football, but idk anything about that

, Saturday, 6 September 2025 14:17 (two weeks ago)

i'm from an MLB desert town (no team within 5.5 hour drive)

but same town will draw close to 500k people for a college football game.

the only minor league baseball team within a 3 hour drive draws 3k people per game, and it's in a city 90 mins away.

you can't just assume any given population (dense or otherwise) is correlated to market demand.

imperial frfr (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 6 September 2025 18:30 (two weeks ago)

college football seasons are only 12 games long too, so that's 6 home games a year, it's a big party, nice excuse to drive 1-3 hours for everybody within a 200 mile radius every couple of weeks in the fall when nothing else is going on

looks like european football is 38 games (i mean 'matches') a year, or 19 home matches a year

baseball? 81 times a year, gets real expensive real fast

, Sunday, 7 September 2025 00:00 (two weeks ago)

College football will have alumni from the past 60 years flying in regularly if it’s a big enough game.

Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z), Sunday, 7 September 2025 01:16 (two weeks ago)

The major flaw in “relegation will fix American sports” is ignoring that soccer has no real competition in most places. The second tier of professional soccer in most countries draws more revenue than the second most popular sport, IIRC.

Even American football has too much competition to sustain a minor league without the advantages and history of college football.

Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z), Sunday, 7 September 2025 01:26 (two weeks ago)

what is the case for relegation exactly? from a fan perspective

brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, 7 September 2025 05:24 (two weeks ago)

Supposedly it would force bad owners (Bob Nutting, the Twins owners) to spend and aim to be competitive because if they don't they'd become minor league teams.

Not sure how people using that argument account for the many bad owners in European soccer/teams get bankrupted regularly.

Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z), Sunday, 7 September 2025 05:28 (two weeks ago)

The comparison to European football isn't taking parity into account. In those leagues, the same teams dominate every year and are rich enough to always compete and never worry about regulation. Everyone just accepts this. No American sports league functions in the same way.

Based on that model, the threat of relegation wouldn't urge the Pirates to spend more money. It would actually discourage all but the richest teams to spend money.

NoTimeBeforeTime, Sunday, 7 September 2025 10:50 (two weeks ago)

think the fan argument is also about giving people in middle america (or middle of nowhere america) teams to root for. the famous example is iowa, where six MLB teams are blacked out by broadcast restrictions (i think an mlb.tv league pass is effectively useless there) which is why i think the article uses iowa as an example

, Sunday, 7 September 2025 13:34 (two weeks ago)

there is def a large number of teams that don't have to worry about relegation just due to the demographics and city size etc – but they also still have to stay competitive to a degree. i remember growing up in the 80s in Toronto and the leafs would make money no matter what, so they'd didn't care very much about what the team looked like on the ice. you'd never get away with that in premiere league. and the relegation system is definitely great at allowing a more invested/active fan base from the smaller markets. when i was staying with my dad in Bolton, the wanderers were in the premiere league at the time and catching a match there was much easier than heading into Manchester. they've since dropped two levels since, which is a bummer, but i don't think you'd get nearly the engagement they had if they were some minor league team that might change locations on a whim or have their best player promoted away.

obviously this is all just a fun little thought experiment, as as system as entrenched as MLB would never ever in a million years consider such a thing. maybe one day when ultimate frisbee, the purest sport of them all, dominates – they will go with a tiered/relegation style approach.

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Sunday, 7 September 2025 20:38 (two weeks ago)

also back to expansion cities - i think it's a bummer since Montreal had a good case. it's a large metro area with ball fans that still follow the Nationals and Jays. but uh, recent developments in the political landscape i think might really have potential fans there souring on the idea of spending their Canadian pesos on such a literal american pastime.

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Sunday, 7 September 2025 20:42 (two weeks ago)


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