STLtoday.com

Bubble4427 wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 21:55 pm

CCard wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 21:07 pm

Bubble4427 wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 10:32 am

CCard wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 09:18 am

BrummerStealsHome wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 08:57 am The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

All of the other sports use some sort of a hard salary cap. Baseball is losing ground yearly because they refuse to do what’s best for the sport and ALL of the fans…not just big market ones.

Baseball is broken. It has been and unless the players and owners come together to do what’s best for the sport long term….it will continue to spiral. Baseball is the worst managed sport (by commissioner) of the 4 big sports….and being worse than NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is next to impossible….yet baseball seems to have achieved that.

Again, you can't fault the players for getting what they can. People come to see them not some old fat owner. The players union has said before that they're willing to talk but owners have to open the books which is something the owners steadfastly refuse to do. You can't cry poor without showing some proof. If the owners want to lock out the players it'll be bad for everyone involved. It took a long time and a homerun chase to bring fans back last time. Something does have to be done though. Stop the deferred money spigot. Make teams have to pay as they go. Increase revenue sharing so small markets can at least have a chance. Increase the luxury tax. But a cap? I don't know about that. Sure football and basketball have caps but I bet that gets renegotiated when their contract expires.

All 3 of the other sports have hard caps…and players are not complaining.
When Covid hit the NHL the 2 sides agreed to reopen the agreement and put a halt to increasing the salary cap for 3 years. Again, it’s what is best for the sport.
Baseball needs a hard cap.
Baseball needs a hard floor. By forcing the 10 smaller market teams to spend at least 100-125 million dollars instead of 60 then that should help alleviate the hard cap ceiling. When one teams TV contract is 10 million a year and another team’s is 400 million….who do you think has the better chance to be competitive year in and year out?

The players don’t need the books opened….The Atlanta Braves books are open because of who owns the team. Those records are public. The fact that Atlanta is a mid market team….people/players should be able to figure out how much money is out there.

Hard cap
Hard floor
All players are signed to 3-4 year entry level deals….after those deals are over you can become a free agent or at least an RFA.
If everyone hits free agency earlier (instead of the current 6 years) ALL of the players benefit.

Baseball is broken.

CCard wrote: ↑16 Nov 2025 08:53 am

Bubble4427 wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 21:55 pm

CCard wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 21:07 pm

Bubble4427 wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 10:32 am

CCard wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 09:18 am

BrummerStealsHome wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 08:57 am The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

All of the other sports use some sort of a hard salary cap. Baseball is losing ground yearly because they refuse to do what’s best for the sport and ALL of the fans…not just big market ones.

Baseball is broken. It has been and unless the players and owners come together to do what’s best for the sport long term….it will continue to spiral. Baseball is the worst managed sport (by commissioner) of the 4 big sports….and being worse than NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is next to impossible….yet baseball seems to have achieved that.

Again, you can't fault the players for getting what they can. People come to see them not some old fat owner. The players union has said before that they're willing to talk but owners have to open the books which is something the owners steadfastly refuse to do. You can't cry poor without showing some proof. If the owners want to lock out the players it'll be bad for everyone involved. It took a long time and a homerun chase to bring fans back last time. Something does have to be done though. Stop the deferred money spigot. Make teams have to pay as they go. Increase revenue sharing so small markets can at least have a chance. Increase the luxury tax. But a cap? I don't know about that. Sure football and basketball have caps but I bet that gets renegotiated when their contract expires.

All 3 of the other sports have hard caps…and players are not complaining.
When Covid hit the NHL the 2 sides agreed to reopen the agreement and put a halt to increasing the salary cap for 3 years. Again, it’s what is best for the sport.
Baseball needs a hard cap.
Baseball needs a hard floor. By forcing the 10 smaller market teams to spend at least 100-125 million dollars instead of 60 then that should help alleviate the hard cap ceiling. When one teams TV contract is 10 million a year and another team’s is 400 million….who do you think has the better chance to be competitive year in and year out?

The players don’t need the books opened….The Atlanta Braves books are open because of who owns the team. Those records are public. The fact that Atlanta is a mid market team….people/players should be able to figure out how much money is out there.

Hard cap
Hard floor
All players are signed to 3-4 year entry level deals….after those deals are over you can become a free agent or at least an RFA.
If everyone hits free agency earlier (instead of the current 6 years) ALL of the players benefit.

Baseball is broken.

Again...
1. As a player, why would you agree to limit your possible income just to line the pockets of billionaires? Increase revenue sharing, increase the luxury tax, end deferred money. I have no problem with those, but why in the world would anyone agree to limit their possible income? All of the other major sports players have agreed to it….what makes baseball so special?
2. I agree with a hard floor. Every team should be required to be competitive on average. It's a disgrace for a team to continually lose because they won't devote payroll money.
3. The thing about 6 years is that they become arbitration eligible and the player almost always wins. The average player doesn’t see free agency until they are 28-30 years old. Sure, there are the unicorns such as Soto…but the players union needs to see a benefit for 90% of its union…not just the unicorns.
4. They don't want to open the books because there's a lot of hidden profit with merchandising, advertising, food sales and other things. Also tv money. Again, the Atlanta Braves have their books open.
Baseball is broken and has always been broken. I don't know if you can ever truly level the playing field for all teams but you can at least try. Taking some common sense steps to do that will be resisted by the billionaire boys club though.

Goldfan wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 22:11 pm

WaltsSuccessor wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 19:29 pm

Goldfan wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 14:55 pm

WaltsSuccessor wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 11:28 am

Goldfan wrote: ↑13 Nov 2025 18:39 pm

The Nard wrote: ↑13 Nov 2025 18:37 pm Just the owners trying to gain a positional advantage, in advance of the upcoming labor negotiations. If it was a true loss, who in their right mind would own a MLB team? Better to own a Bananas team and barnstorm.

How much of the Dewitts salary, homes, cars, expenses are accounted for in “operating expenses”

You know you just described tax fraud, right? Yes small business owners get away with that all day. Billionaires both are under more tax scrutiny and have expensive tax advisors that keep them from doing obvious, dumb things like that.

They might have him create some super complicated tax shelter to hid millions, but they aren't going to have him deducting personal expenses through St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. That's amateur hour.

You don’t think that Chairman and CEO BDW JR and President BDWIII of the St. Louis Cardinals draw a salary from St. Louis Cardinals LLC?

Sure, but it’s going to be market based. As an LLC, it’s advantageous for employee-owners to pay themselves the bare minimum salary to save on payroll taxes in favor of making larger tax free distributions. However, the IRS requires them to pay market based salaries to employee-owners to counteract that.

There’s no scenario where an LLC owner would purposefully pay themselves excess salary, pay the 1.45% Medicare tax on it, just so they could intentionally show a loss on the books. It’s a flow through entity. Doesn’t make sense to do that.

No Scenario??? Did you see the subject title of this post?

WaltsSuccessor wrote: ↑18 Nov 2025 12:17 pm

Goldfan wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 22:11 pm

WaltsSuccessor wrote: ↑15 Nov 2025 19:29 pm

Goldfan wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 14:55 pm

WaltsSuccessor wrote: ↑14 Nov 2025 11:28 am

Goldfan wrote: ↑13 Nov 2025 18:39 pm

The Nard wrote: ↑13 Nov 2025 18:37 pm Just the owners trying to gain a positional advantage, in advance of the upcoming labor negotiations. If it was a true loss, who in their right mind would own a MLB team? Better to own a Bananas team and barnstorm.

How much of the Dewitts salary, homes, cars, expenses are accounted for in “operating expenses”

You know you just described tax fraud, right? Yes small business owners get away with that all day. Billionaires both are under more tax scrutiny and have expensive tax advisors that keep them from doing obvious, dumb things like that.

They might have him create some super complicated tax shelter to hid millions, but they aren't going to have him deducting personal expenses through St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. That's amateur hour.

You don’t think that Chairman and CEO BDW JR and President BDWIII of the St. Louis Cardinals draw a salary from St. Louis Cardinals LLC?

Sure, but it’s going to be market based. As an LLC, it’s advantageous for employee-owners to pay themselves the bare minimum salary to save on payroll taxes in favor of making larger tax free distributions. However, the IRS requires them to pay market based salaries to employee-owners to counteract that.

There’s no scenario where an LLC owner would purposefully pay themselves excess salary, pay the 1.45% Medicare tax on it, just so they could intentionally show a loss on the books. It’s a flow through entity. Doesn’t make sense to do that.

No Scenario??? Did you see the subject title of this post?

You think they did that purpose??? You think they orchestrated a massive, macro shift in cable cord cutting that turned the entire MLB media rights economic dynamics on its head intentionally? Just so they could force a lockout? That's crazy.

ilcubuffs wrote: ↑18 Nov 2025 19:30 pm Imagine losing $1.8 Billion in one year and still in business. Not a single team closed its door for business. Pretty amazing. Almost like it is unbelievable.

ilcubuffs wrote: ↑18 Nov 2025 19:30 pm Imagine losing $1.8 Billion in one year and still in business. Not a single team closed its door for business. Pretty amazing. Almost like it is unbelievable.