In 2013, the mets are committed to 54 mil

In 2014, the mets are committed to 13 mil

I have been bringing this fact up on Metsblog for 3 years when i mentioned the fact that they should start locking up Wright and Reyes.

Met fans were saying that Reyes would be an albatross

well Reyes in 2014, would bump up our payroll to 26 mil. Add Wright’s 18 mil salary and you got a whopping 54 mil salary…

We could’ve had 2 franchise type players stay in the org for the bulk of their careers together and STILL had a payroll WELL under 90 mil

The teams like KC etc want a salary cap but teams like NYY respond with “if you tell us what to spend then you need to spend X”

It’s never gonna happen.

What is the Marlins payroll down to 30 something million. I do not understand why they don’t have a minimum baseball payroll amount or a floor. Lets for illustration purposes isay the floor is 70 M. The hard cap should be 2 1/2 the minimum or 175 M. The owners who can’t afford the minimum would have to sell. In addtion the problem of leverage should be addressed. Current Assets minus Current Liab must be 1.5 to 1. All long term bonds must be funded in a bond sinking fund. Total Assets minus Total Liabilities (debt ratio) must be a maximumd .5 to total assets or lower. All multiplayer transactions that can be construed as a “fire sale” must be submitted to the Commissioners office in advance for approval. Tax payers who approve a stadium funding should be able to publically submit a lawsuit to block any kind of the salary dump or sue the owner for his personal assets. The owner can try to justify the accusation by presenting the return player/prospects he recived. If the commisioner feels not enough he can select a list of players such as in PTBNL that the team with the undue advantage has to relinguish.

Any owner who can’t meet these ratios and minimum payroll as I suggest be mandated should be forced to sell regardless what the commisioner wants to do. Its like a mandatory jail sentence out of the judges hands.

This is called leveling the playing field figuratively and literally.

Problem is, Selig lacks a backbone. Immediate thinking and action with Selig? Don’t make me laugh.

Today we see these type of transactions done all the time.

Regarding the Marlin-Blue Jay trade, there is little Selig can do, especially since it involves players from both teams. It would also create a very bad predicent for this would enable any commissioner to use his own judgement on who could be traded for who. For example, could have Oakland traded their ace Geo Gonzalez for prospects last winter been voided, considering Billy Beane had been sending off good players for prospects for many a winter due to upcoming arbitration eligibility?

It just opens up a can of worms, then putting pressure on the commissiner to make such move again when such a deal causes public uproar.

And even if he could, it would be hypocritical for him to say he was doing it for “the best interest in baseball:” when he allowed his friends in New York whose team was in a post-season race got rid of their best players due to the Madoff scandal.

Then, we’ll have even more back room dealing and politicking than we do now and trades will be less and less about benefiting the teams involved and more about TV ratings and such.

Florida has always been a Football State and due to high proportion of the transplants that live there it is difficult for any team to draw due to the lack of a HOMETOWN identity there.

Even the Miami Dolphins have problems selling out thier games and it’s typical to see as many opposing team jerseys as Home team in the stands.

Because all the folks who moved there were already fans of some other team and won’t switch thier loyalties based on where thier house is currently located.

The only mistake was giving Florida a baseball franchise in the first place!

Then they gave them another who has drawn 2.5 Mil only in the first year of thier existence and once the novelty was over has never drawn more than 1.87M since and they had to make it to the WS just to get that!

Marlins drew 2.2 Mil last year thanks to the novelty of a new park.
Thats a lot for Florida but when you realize that WE drew 2.24M in a year everyone was says is down for attendance you get the picture of just how wrong it was to award them a baseball franchise down in Florida.

Then teams would not be able to ust sell off and get some quick share cash and would have to struggle for a year or two until the average falls back to low spender levels.

If that was the rule the Marlins wouldn’t be able to collect on revenue sharing until after next season.