Are Baseball Players Paid Too Much?

It would be easy for someone to agree that Major League Baseball players are paid too much. Most people in North American are not paid anything close to what the average player makes and jealousy can set in. I am going to say that Major League Baseball players are not paid too much. Would you rather see the owners keep all the revenue or see the players, who do all the work, get a large payday?

The ticket prices for baseball games are pretty expensive, but people compare them to prices twenty years ago. Comparing today's prices to prices in the later 70's or early 80's doesn't make much sense, everything has went up in prices since the Reagen administration. Owners say the prices are going up because of the cost of player's salaries and the player's say it is due to the greed of the owners. I'm sure that there is truth to each side, but I think a lot of it is due to the lucrative price that new ballparks come with. I know cities usually throw in some money for a new ballpark, but the upkeep and the maintenance is pretty high on newly constructed stadiums.

Most major league baseball players do not have a huge signing bonus and a hefty contract when they first sign with a team out of high school or college. Many players wait for three or four years even before they get the chance to compete in spring training. Minor league players get paid a blue collar wage and usually have to play in winter ball to helps pay the bills. These players ride on buses from small city to smaller city and are away from their families just as much as major league players, if not more. I think the pay days that Major League players get once they make it, it well deserved.

Does Baseball Need A Salary Cap?

A salary cap system makes fiscal sense, any normal business, except in professional sports, does a person's salary multiply 15 times their previous amount. Their performance might increase 10 percent from the previous year, and by the way, the word "year" is loosely used, since their "year" ranges from 5 months to 9 months.

Someone who is doing their job and they do that they are supposed to 30 perfect of the time, can be rewarded handsomely. I am describing someone who batted .300 and is due to for a new contract.

Baseball needs a salary cap before all this over-spending will affect the fan, even more than it already has. Baseball is an event just 10 years ago, you could get tickets, a hot dog, and popcorn for a family of four and spend around $80 dollars. You're lucky if you don't spend that amount of money on two people going to a game and sit behind a support beam.

Luxury taxes that are paid by teams who spent well over the league average has to pay huge dividends to the league and then that money is given to the smaller market teams such as Tampa Bay and Kansas City. The shared revenue has even cut into merchandise and national television contracts, there were talks with the league that they were thinking about also taking a percentage of the local revenue, which is a large portion of the extra money a team acquires and basically all revenue the team makes would go to the league and then separated back, accordingly.

I would like to see the salary cap at around 130 million. It is still large and only a few teams were affected. I think it is essential. I do not believe MLB can afford to have another free-spending of an off-season as they did this year. I cannot see a rational person, in a salary cap system, giving a middle-relief pitcher 10 million a year.

This would even things out and maybe help out the common fan that just wants to share the experience the joy and fanfare of a professional baseball game. This game basis itself on history so strongly, MLB is able to do so 'cause going to a baseball game in the summer is as common as going to picnic or the community pool...sadly, I think the youth of America is missing out on watching an MLB game due to over-inflated prices as well as over-inflated egos of team owners and MLB Player's Association.

The Greatest Baseball Players Of All-Time

When judging the greatest baseball players of all-time, different criteria is met to determine who makes a list. My list is of players who left everything on the field each game. The players that compile my list have always ran-out a groundball and were methodical with their approach to the game.

Pete Rose - Charlie Hustle had over 4,000 hits and was a part of World Series teams with the Cincinnati Reds. He was the face of their organization until his passion for the game led to a gambling addiction. He was one of the greatest to play the game for his productivity and his approach to the game as a player.

Sandy Koufax - People argue that to be considered the best, he would have had to play longer, like Nolan Ryan. Well, I don't consider Nolan Ryan great for that reason, a lot of his records are due to him playing for over 20 years. Koufax was the most dominant pitcher during his short time in the league and was their ace in the World Series. Koufax retired at the age of 30 with the highest career winning percentage of any pitcher to play this game.

Ty Cobb - The Georgia Peach was the most prolific hitter in Major League history. Just like Rose, he was adored during his career, but after his retirement, his adoration turned to resentment. Off the field antics and his overt racism, caused Cobb fans to turn into haters. You cannot compare Cobb to any player in the modern age.

Babe Ruth - The love of the longball started with the Bambino. Some would argue that the steroid problem of today is because athletes want the adoration that Ruth received due to his home-run prowess. Ruth was one of a kind, I don't see another player busting out of the gates like Ruth did. Ruth also had one heck of a fastball.

Jackie Robinson - Robinson came into the league and was the first African-American player in the majors. MLB retired his #42 all across the league in a show of respect to what Robinson accomplished for breaking the color barrier and for his feats on the field. Robinson ran circles around the competition when he debuted and he never slowed down until he hung up his cleats.

Walter Johnson - "The Big Train," could be considered as the most feared pitcher to ever play the game. He threw at a sidearm angle and his balls would come barreling at the batter at near 100mph. Johnson was the all-time leader in strikeouts for over 55 years, until Nolan Ryan surpassed him in the early 80's. Johnson was one of the first five players inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1936.

Roger Clemens - Clemens' legacy will end up being the best pitcher of the modern-day game, yet tainted. The Rocket has nearly accumulated 350 wins and has a stellar K/9 ratio. Many thought that Clemens was finished after his tenure with the Yankees, but he proved during his time on the Astros that he wasn't ready to quit. His time on the Astros showed that one pitcher can make a difference in the swagger of a team.

The Beauty Of Baseball

I recently watched the PBS documentary, Ken Burns' "Baseball," and it made me remember why baseball was so beautiful. Baseball is full of beautiful pauses in the game. It is one of the few major sports with no running clock. Unlike a sport like golf, baseball doesn't stop with the sun sets; they just turn on an elaborate structure of lights. When today's game of baseball begins to look ugly, just look at the past to make it beautiful again.

Small-ball, which is a term that most people use when discussing teams that move players around the bases, is an art-form. The lead-off hitter gets a base hit. The next batter comes up and lays down a sacrifice bunt and moves the runner to 2nd base. The runner at 2nd, steals 3rd base and the next batter hits a fly ball and the runner at 3rd base scores on a sacrifice fly. The beauty of sacrificing your at-bat and helping the team with scoring men on base, it's one of the truest forms of teamwork. The first baseball field didn't have a wall that if a player hit the ball over, it was a home-run. "Small-ball," is a return to a way the game was once played, back in Cooperstown in the 1860s.

The bases on a baseball diamond at 90 feet apart, imagine if these numbers were different. A lot of the beauty of this game wouldn't happen. If the bases were 88 feet apart, runners would get thrown out at 1st base constantly. What if the bases were 92 feet? A lot of the great double play combinations would ever have taken place. A player like Ozzie Smith probably wouldn't have had a Hall of Fame career if this was the case.

Baseball's reputation has been tarnished due to rumors of performance-enhancing drugs. All sports have been affected by these drugs, but baseball has taken the greatest damage. The beauty of baseball has faded, due to allegations of cheating, but it needs a facelift to make this sport graceful again. It may not be soon, but if baseball survived the Black Sox scandal in 1919, they should be able to get through this.

Comparing Mike Mussina To Don Sutton

There are many borderline Hall of Fame pitchers. Sometimes it takes something indescribable that puts that pitcher over the line. Don Sutton is not in the Hall, he wasn't considered a dominant pitcher during any point of his career, mostly due to pitcher at the same time as Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver. Mike Mussina is in the same boat. Other pitchers have overshadowed Mussina during his career. Pitchers like Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson has made what Mussina has accomplished seem average. Here are some of the comparisons that make Sutton and Mussina's careers parallel.

Mussina and Sutton both spent about half of their careers on dominant teams. Mussina has been a N.Y. Yankee for nearly half of his career; the other half was spent on the lowly Orioles, where he was second-banana to Cal Ripken Jr. Sutton spent half of his career on the L.A. Dodgers and the other half bouncing around non-contenders. Most of the time, Sutton and Mussina wasn't even the best pitcher on their own team. Sutton played with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, while Mussina pitched with Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera. Most of their careers they were not considered the ace of the staff.

There are many stats that make Sutton and Mussina sound like clones. Their win-loss percentage is close, as well as their strikeouts per 9 innings. Both pitchers are not strikeout pitchers; they are very methodical with their approach. Durability has been a common thread with both Sutton and Mussina, they have regularly pitched over 200 innings each season.

Sutton and Mussina have played in All-Star games and World Series. Many consider them to have had great careers, but they will always be overshadowed by their own teammates. It is a shame, they both deserve to be remembered as one of the reasons their teams were successful.

The Case For Burt Blyleven Making Hall Of Fame

Blyleven played during a time where multi-channel ESPNs and regional Fox Sports Net channels were not in existence. MLB Extra Innings packages on DirecTV wasn't even invented, unless you caught the highlights on Sportscenter where Chris Berman uses a nickname of Burt "Be Home" Blyleven, you would just think that he was an average pitcher. His career ERA was 3.90, but his early career was his peak, but he kept a roster spot on small-market teams. His record was 287-250, just 37 games over .500, but from 1982 until the end of his career in '92, his ERA was over 4.00. If a pitcher wins nearly 300 games, it nearly negates this feat once a pitcher reaches his 250th loss, like Blyleven.

An arguments that Blyleven has for his induction is that his numbers are measurable to Nolan Ryan's. Blyleven does not have Ryan's no-hitters or his dominance of one-hit games either. Blyleven's win-loss record has a lot to do with Blyleven's teams not scoring many runs, thus having him lose many one-run games. He pitched in a different era than what today's pitchers will be held up to. Middle-relief pitching was approached as need-based, rather than a necessity, Blyleven pitched in almost 300 career complete games. Let's crunch some numbers, in his 22-year career, Blyleven pitched a complete game in over 40% of the games in which he has started. Blyleven has never ranked higher than third in the Cy Young voting and has only played in two All-Star games in his 22-year career.

Bert Blyleven will not be immortalized into the Hall of Fame. Sometimes players start racking up statistics just cause longevity and not exactly superb play. Blyleven's 3701 strikeouts are amazing, but his K/9 statistic of 7.4 per 9 innings isn't super spectacular, but nothing about Blyleven really is.

Why Baseball Needs More Complete Games

If Major League Baseball starting pitchers threw more complete games, injuries would be more common, but salaries would probably go down for middle relief. The starting pitcher's frequency of throwing a complete game has dropped off significantly since the early 1990s. The scientific analysis of injuries and the direct correlation of innings pitched per season has piled up over the years. Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Burt Blyleven, and Nolan Ryan thrived on pitching complete games and also pitched well into their 40s. Most of the pitchers who are into their 40s, (i.e. Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine) do not get much farther than the 7th inning.

Middle relief has almost become an art-form for a manager to use. Bringing in a lefty for a batter who doesn't hit lefties well, then come back out and yank him for a right-handed pitcher for the next three batters. The odds would favor the pitcher in these scenarios, which is positive for the manager. Middle relief and/or set-up men are getting huge contracts to come in and face one to two batters a game. Reducing the middle relief pitchers on your roster would decrease your payroll, a GM could add a few more possible starting pitchers, in case one of your rotation would have arm troubles. Injuries would happen, since they would be pitching more than 300 innings a season.

This method worked in the days of the strikeout pitcher like Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver, I don't see why this couldn't work in today's game. Although it seems easier said than done, it would only take one or two youthful pitchers to be damaged from overuse (Kerry Wood and Mark Prior) and the middle relief pitcher would, once again, be getting huge contracts.