Here's a great article about why a salary cap wouldn't help in baseball :

 Quote:
http://www.murraychass.com/?p=391

As the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers for only four years, Mark Attanasio is a mere babe in baseball. Like many players, he might not know what came before him. Baseball life, to Attanasio, began in 2005.

He could be excused, then, for not realizing the storm he might be creating when he invoked the inflammatory words “salary cap.”

Attanasio raised the incendiary issue in an e-mail interview with Bloomberg News when he was asked his reaction to the Yankees’ signing of three free agents for $423.5 million.

“At the rate the Yankees are going, I’m not sure anyone can compete with them,” Attanasio replied. “Frankly, the sport might need a salary cap.”

No one in the sport has uttered that provocative phrase in more than 10 years. It caused the most disastrous work stoppage in sports history, and no one who was around in 1994-5-6 wants to experience that terrible time again.

Before going further with this matter, let’s clarify the terminology. Everyone, including the three major professional sports that have one, calls it a salary cap. It is not a salary cap because it does not place a cap on individual salaries.

Under the rules in the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League and what was proposed in Major League Baseball, teams may pay an individual player anything they negotiate. The team, though, cannot exceed the amount of money allowed under that season’s rules for its entire team.

In other words, there is a cap on payrolls so we should be talking about a payroll cap, not a salary cap.

When Attansaio commented on the Yankees’ signings, he was talking about a payroll cap. He wasn’t suggesting that a team be restricted in what it could pay any single player but what it could pay its entire roster of players.

Actually, I can’t be certain what Attanasio was proposing. I wanted to talk to him to find out more about what he meant, but he was not available. His spokesman said he was traveling with his family and wouldn’t be available until the new year.

I wanted to ask Attanasio if he was aware of baseball’s history with the idea of a payroll cap, how the owners kept proposing it in labor negotiations, the players kept rejecting the idea and a work stoppage usually resulting.

It was interesting that it was Attanasio who raised the issue and not one of his more senior colleagues. They know better than to bring up subjects that are better left dormant.

Major League officials chose not to comment. A spokesman for Commissioner Bud Selig said he felt it would be inappropriate for him to comment on comments made by an owner.

One skeptic on the union side suggested that maybe Selig put Attanasio up to raising the cap issue, but Selig took too severe a beating in the last strike to look for more. It may be more likely that Selig called Attanasio, the steward of Selig’s former team, and asked him to forget the cap idea and leave sleeping dogs lie.

Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor executive, also declined to say anything. “I’m not going to comment about what an owner said,” Manfred said.

Donald Fehr, the leader of the union, who has led the players in their repeated rejection of a payroll cap, did comment. Refering to the Yankees’ perennially high expenditures and their inability to win a World Series championship since 2000, he said, “Other major league clubs seem not to have had any problems competing with the Yankees the last seven, eight years.”

Attanasio was most likely upset because the Yankees lured Sabathia away from the Brewers by offering $61 million more, then signed two more expensive free agents. But the Yankees didn’t overwhelm A.J, Burnett and Mark Teixeira the way they did Sabathia. The Atlanta Braves were close on Burnett, and a few teams, including the Boston Red Sox, were close on Teixeira.

If the players had their reasons for choosing the Yankees, such as the Yankees giving them the best chance to go to the World Series, that’s not going to change as long as the Yankees remain competitive.

Critics of the Yankees, on the other hand, argue that most, if not all other teams, would have been forced to stop at Sabathia. They would not have been financially able to sign Burnett and Teixeira, too. But the Yankees have the money and will have more from revenue generated by their new park.

Should they voluntarily limit themselves in what they spend? If so, where should they stop? Should they decide themselves or should someone else? If someone else, who? Bud Selig? Mark Attanasio?

That would be the role of a payroll cap, Attanasio might say. All right, where would Attanasio draw the line to create the cap?

The Yankees’ 2008 40-man payroll was $222 million, $76 million more than second-place Boston paid its players and $79 million more than the Mets’ payroll. Attanasio’s Brewers were right in the middle, 15th, with an $88 million payroll.

Should the Yankees have to come down to the Brewers’ level? If a payroll cap were set above the Brewers’ level, would they have to increase their payroll to reach the cap?

But for me to go on about a payroll cap is irrelevant because baseball will never have a payroll cap. What baseball will have, however, is unpredictability in which a team with a $222 million payroll doesn’t even make the post-season.

In addition, with the payroll cap issue out of the picture, the owners and the players have negotiated a record two consecutive labor agreements without a strike or a lockout. The existing agreement runs through Dec. 11, 2011. That’s at least three more years of labor peace.

Owners stopped pushing for a payroll cap because baseball’s revenues took off. They reached $6.5 billion this year, providing enough money for owners and players both, not to mention the commissioner, whose salary one club official said he was told exceeded $20 million.

Information Bank Redux?

In 1987 and 88, the owners ran a bank that took deposits from all of the teams. The teams, though, didn’t deposit money. They reported offers they made to free agents, and the information was shared with other clubs. The union discovered the existence of the information bank in 1988 during a hearing on its grievance against the clubs charging collusion against free agents.

I personally thought the information bank was a great idea. It was the easiest time I ever had getting information on offers made to free agents. The only problem was the bank violated the labor agreement.

Faced with an arbitrator’s ruling against them, the owners closed the bank. Now, however, some agents suspect that clubs are sharing information again, letting everyone know what they offer free agents.

“There are a lot of rumblings that all the teams know exactly what everyone is doing with free agents,” one prominent agent said.

But a union lawyer said the union didn’t have any evidence of information sharing, and Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor executive, denied the existence of any sharing operation.

“I don’t know how an agent would have any information about that,” Manfred said. “There is no formal notification about information. Given all the information that’s out there publicly, it would be difficult not to know what teams have offered.”

Whether or not the clubs are sharing offers, there’s no question that the market is moving slower than usual and except for some of the big contracts, free agents are signing for or being offered less than in past years.

But agents acknowledge that the clubs have a ready-made excuse, or cover, for not acting as they have in previous years: the economy.

“There’s continuing pressure for teams to cut their budgets,” an agent said. “Teams that intended to be aggressive had to cut back because budgets have been lowered.”

Commissioner Bud Selig has warned clubs about watching what they spend because of the depressed state of the economy. Most teams seem to be heeding the warning. The Yankees aren’t in that group.

Capping off a Record

If Chris Capuano can make it back next season from his second Tommy John surgery (elbow ligament transplant), he will have a chance to end the 16-start losing streak with which he finished the 2007 season. On the other hand, he could break the record Walt Dickson set with the Boston Braves in 1912 when the Braves lost 18 successive Dickson starts.

Capuano, a 30-year-old left-hander, underwent elbow surgery last May 15 and missed all of the 2008 season. The Brewers didn’t tender him a contract this month, making him a free agent, but signed him to a minor league contract. They would welcome his return considering that they have lost CC Sabathia and could also lose Ben Sheets.

The Brewers lost Capuano’s last 16 starts in 2007, giving him the third longest such streak behind Dickson and Jack Nabors, whose team, the Philadelphia Athletics, lost 17 of his starts in a row in 1916. But Capuano added an extra twist to his streak.

After the Brewers removed him from the starting rotation and put him in the bullpen, Capuano was the losing pitcher in his first two relief appearances, giving the Brewers losses in 18 consecutive games in which Capuano pitched.

Big Contracts Don’t Produce Rings

Before anyone sizes the fingers of CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira for World Series rings, pause and think about Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez. Mussina and Giambi signed with the Yankees thinking they offered the best chance to get a World Series ring. Rodriguez greeted his trade to the Yankees with the same thought.

But Mussina played eight years with the Yankees without winning a ring and has now retired. Giambi played seven years without getting a ring and has left as a free agent. Rodriguez is still with the Yankees but has already played five years without a ring.

In other words, glamorous, high-paid players don’t guarantee a World Series championship.