Major League Baseball Case Study

1496 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Baseball's effect on america

“Take me out to the ballgame” is a song well known among baseball fans. Unfortunately, when it comes to money Major League Baseball is unfair. Rich teams can afford any player they desire, while poor teams have to invest in their rookies and young stars. Studies show that most stars go where the big money is. Money plays a large behind-the-scenes part in regards to the sport of baseball. So rich organizations have the upper hand. Certain star players command such high salaries that teams must alter their payroll distribution in order to sign them. The MLB needs a payroll cap because the money differential between MLB teams makes affording and keeping players an unfair system.
A big contributor of how organizations earn money is the attendance …show more content…

The way they can make money, is if fans come out to watch games, buy drinks, food, memorabilia, etc. There are a lot of “bandwagon” fans in all sports. In baseball the biggest bandwagon team is the New York Yankees. That is huge for the Yankees, because fans are how teams can earn money. Which also might be why the Yankees are the richest team in the game. Teams can sign star players and still earn money from it. For example, right after the Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to a long term deal, ticket sales started to go up. “The organization sold 400 season ticket packages. By comparison, it had sold only 74 ticket packages by January of the previous year” (Deschiver). There is a positive relationship between star players and attendance, regardless of how the team is doing.“This is because some spectators may be attracted to the celebrity quality of a team’s players rather than the team’s reputation of a playoff contender” (Deschiver). The small market teams could have a good run at a World Series title, then they could bring in more fans, which leads to more money. “A close pennant race …show more content…

“There are rich teams on one side of the fence, and poor teams on the other” (Rymer). Majority of the teams that have won a World Series title have been a rich team. For Example, the New York Yankees have won 27 and the Boston Red Sox have won 8. Alone the Yankees have won 24% of the World Series ever played. They easily did this because they could afford the players. Being a rich team makes it easier to make the postseason, but small-market teams sometimes make it too. For instance, “Tampa bay, Oakland, and Pittsburgh all made the postseason in 2013 with bottom-five payrolls” (Simons). There is a way for small market teams to win, but money makes it a lot easier. The St. Louis Cardinals are a team that is in the middle of being rich or poor and they have won 11 World Series titles. For the most part money is how large market teams are good. But small market teams can do other ways to become good without spending the

Show More
Related

  • Salary to Winning Correlation for Baseball Teams

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Do Major League Baseball teams with higher salaries win more frequently than other teams? Although many people believe that the larger payroll budgets win games, which point does vary, depending on the situation. "performances by individual players vary quite a bit from year to year, preventing owners from guaranteeing success on the field. Team spending is certainly a component in winning, but no team can buy a championship." (Bradbury). For some, it’s hard not to root for the lower paid teams. If the big money teams, like Goliath, are always supposed to win, it’s hard not cheer for David. This paper will discuss the effects of payroll budgets on the percentage of wins for the 30 Major League Baseball teams of 2007.

    Read More

  • MLB Salary Cap Is Needed

    1758 Words  | 4 Pages

    Anyone who has been involved in an organized sport, whether it is backyard football or a high school sports team, knows that these sports all have organizations that are responsible for setting rules, determining conditions of play, and penalizing individuals who infringe the rules. Some of the organizations like the National Football league and the MLB are familiar to most people, the rules they follow are not generally understood by anyone who is not closely associated with the sport. Most fans and sport critics assume that what is happening inside these organizations are of little concern to them. However, this is not the case. In the MLB, the New York Yankees spend an excessive amount of money every year to obtain big name players. A luxury tax was put into effect for teams that go over the spending limit. However, the Yankees are the only team that pays the tax because they are the only team that exceeds the spending limit. The players, coaches, fans, and I have argued that a salary cap would be the best possible way to allow teams in the Major Leagues an equal opportunity getting to the World Series.

    Read More

  • Salary Cap In Major League Baseball

    2307 Words  | 5 Pages

    Spendthrift, the perfect connotation of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) economy and how any one team can dominate free agency and the player market. As long as they are financially superior to the rest of the league, they will remain on the upper edge of talent. Unlike the other three major sports leagues (NFL, NHL, NBA,) the MLB presents one key underlying feature…the lack of a salary cap. A salary cap, or lack of salary cap in any sport, can do one of two important things: create parity, or create Darwinism amongst small market teams. If a salary cap is to exist in baseball, a sense of parity may arise leaving all teams with equal chances of landing big name free agents.

    Read More

  • A Procative Approach To Improving Minor League Baseball Compensation

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    Under the protection of Major League Baseball’s (“MLB”) longtime antitrust exemption, Minor League Baseball (“MiLB”) has continuously redefined and reshaped itself according to Baseball’s overall needs. But while MLB salaries have increased dramatically since the MLB reserve clause was broken in 1975, the salaries of minor league players have not followed suit.

    Read More

  • Labor Market Theory: Inefficiencies In Professional Sports

    614 Words  | 2 Pages

    As previously mentioned, Paul DePodesta, an analyst from the Oakland Athletics, was on the foreground of this type of analysis in the MLB. His discovery of the correlation between winning percentage and team revenues was just the starting point. His methodology of model building was briefly touched on before, but it started with running regression analysis on a series of different typical baseball statistics, and continued with his finding of On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage being the stats that correlated closest to winning percentage, and the implementation of the AVM systems models outputting a player’s expected run values. MLB’s regression analysis on a player’s MRP for a team is some of the most sophisticated in professional sports, with other leagues and teams starting to catch on and attempting to create their own models of MRP for their respective leagues. By taking the labor market theory and MRP of players and analyzing how they interact with wage determination and competitive balance mechanisms, we can make an economic analysis of the labor market inefficiencies.

    Read More

  • Major League Baseball Needs a Salary Cap

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    Another good example of the “richest team winning” did not occur to long ago. Just back in 1997 the Florida Marlins spent over sixty million dollars for their roster.(Weiner, 1) They had all-stars like Kevin Brown, Gary Shefeild, and Bobby Bonnila on their team.

    Read More

  • Major League Baseball Salaries and the Economic Effect Competition and the Consumer

    4700 Words  | 10 Pages

    As long has there has been business, Management and Labor have warred against each other for a bigger piece of the pie. Major League Baseball is no different. In the early years of professional baseball the owners controlled the salaries of the players and decided where they could play and what they would be paid. The players were bound to their team by the Reserve Clause that stated, the services of a player will be reserved exclusively for that team for the next season. This resulted in keeping the player’s salaries artificially low because the players were not allowed to offer their services to any other team. The Reserve Clause was in effect for more than One Hundred years of baseball history. It was challenged several times but the owners had won every time, until in 1970 when the St. Louis Cardinals traded outfielder Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood refused to play for the Phillies and sued to become a free-agent. Flood’s case was in court for several years going all the way to the Supreme Court. He was never able to play in the Major League again. While he did not win his case, he laid the groundwork for a later case that involved two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally who filed a grievance against the league contending that, because they didn't sign contracts with their previous teams they were free agents. The owners and the Players Association agreed to submit to binding, impartial, arbitration in order to settle this case. On December 23, 1975 the arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in favor of the players and the Reserve Clause was broken, and the era of free agency began in the Major Leagues. In 1976 when free agency began the average player salary was only $52 thousand dollars, but it has increased steadily ever since. By 1990 the average salary for a Major League Baseball player had risen to $589 thousand dollars. This Year baseball will start the 2001 season with an average player salary of more than $2 million, about 40 times higher than the typical wage in 1976 when free agency began.

    Read More

  • The New York Yankees: Popular Sports Organization In The World

    1793 Words  | 4 Pages

    The New York Yankees are arguably the most storied and well-recognized sports organization in the world. “...they are perhaps the epitome of a large market baseball team (Emanuele, 2010). Not only do they have the most national championships in the history of North American sports, but they are valued as the highest sports franchise in the United States; being worth $2.3 billion according to Forbes.com. Their tremendous wealth, power, and influence is reflected by a fan base and awe that stretches world-wide. From the Bronx to South Korea, from Cuba to the Netherlands; the Yankee brand is known by just about everyone. The Yankees are referenced in movies and songs, and the Yankee cap has become a part of pop-culture as hollywood

    Read More

  • Los Angeles Dodgers Case Study

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Los Angeles Dodgers have almost gotten into the playoffs and looked like real contenders for the past three years. Yesterday marked the day that they would be officially in the playoffs. They beat the Giants 8 – 0 with Kershaw getting the shutout and launching their campaign into the postseason.

    Read More

  • The Salary Cap Should Be Abolished in Sports

    2015 Words  | 5 Pages

    When looking into the history of our culture, there are many subtopics that fall under the word, “history.” Topics such as arts and literature, food, and media fall into place. Among these topics reside sports. Since the beginning of time, sports have persisted as an activity intertwined with the daily life of people. Whether it is a pick-up game of football in the backyard, or catching an evening game at the local stadium, sports have become the national pastime. According to Marcus Jansen of the Sign Post, more specifically, baseball is America’s national pastime, competing with other sports (Jansen 1). Providing the entertainment that Americans pay top dollar for, live the role models, superstars, and celebrities that put on a jersey as their job. As said in an article by Lucas Reilly, Americans spend close to $25.4 billion dollars on professional sports (Reilly 4). The people that many children want to be when they grow up are not the firefighters or astronauts told about in bed time stories. These dream jobs or fantasies have become swinging a bat or tossing a football in front of millions of screaming fans. When asked why so many dream of having such job, the majority will respond with a salary related answer. In today’s day and age, the average athlete is paid more than our own president. The cold hard facts show that in professional sports, the circulation of money is endless. Certain teams in professional baseball and football are worth over millions of dollars. Consequently, the teams who are worth more are able to spend more. The issue that arises with this philosophy is virtually how much more? League managers, team owners and other sports officials have sought out a solution to the surfacing problem. Is it fair to let...

    Read More

  • The Baseball Of Baseball : America 's Pastime

    845 Words  | 2 Pages

    Its America’s pastime. Since 1869, the MLB has been the sweetheart of American sports. A requisite to be a true American is to have a conceptual understanding of baseball; the seventh inning stretch, “Take Me Out To The Ball Game,” as well as hotdogs and warm summer nights at the ball park are all favorite memories of American pastime. However, what one might not realize is the extreme physics behind the game. The velocity of the pitch, and degree of the ball exiting the bat, the exit speed, and how an outfielder throws are entailed within the physics of baseball. It is important to understand the physics involved with baseball to grow in understanding and appreciation of the sport.

    Read More

  • The History of Baseball

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime." Alexander Joy Cartwright of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball.

    Read More

  • Basketball Needs To Be Fixed

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    The problem with this is the inflation of players' salaries. When players are drafted young, they demand to be paid what they want; teams pay them millions right out of college.

    Read More

  • Willie Loman’s Corrupted View of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    do their work because of the money. A perfect example of this is pro baseball.

    Read More

  • The Role of Economics in Sports

    5002 Words  | 11 Pages

    Sports are one of the most profitable industries in the world. Everyone wants to get their hands on a piece of the action. Those individuals and industries that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these sports teams are hoping to make a profit, but it may be an indirect profit. It could be a profit for the sports club, or it could be a promotion for another organization (i.e. Rupert Murdoch, FOX). The economics involved with sports have drastically changed over the last ten years.

    Read More

More about Major League Baseball Case Study

Open Document