Arte Opposes Raising Luxury Tax

[ScottT]

These negotiations are mostly not about improving the game.

[Adam]

How many teams need to make the postseason for the Angels to get in? Maybe that is why Arte is being so gay. 

[halonatic13]

5 hours ago, Erstad Grit said:

We're getting Avolios tonight! 

Damn, I miss that food.

[Angel Oracle]

Arte is a seemingly typical advertising guy.   More interested in the big splash than long term success through building a complete franchise.

And as long as that’s the case, could be quite a while before they have a good season again.

Wells, Pujols, Hamilton, Upton, need I go on?

[UndertheHalo]

1 hour ago, Angel Oracle said:

Arte is a seemingly typical advertising guy.   More interested in the big splash than long term success through building a complete franchise.

And as long as that’s the case, could be quite a while before they have a good season again.

Wells, Pujols, Hamilton, Upton, need I go on?

Upton isn’t in the same class as the others imo. 

[floplag]

2 hours ago, ScottT said:

I answered one question, dipshit. 

The other?  It doesn't.  That should be obvious.  

So you got the point of the question and ignored it, and im the dipshit?!?!?
This place never changes.   

[tdawg87]

3 minutes ago, floplag said:

So you got the point of the question and ignored it, and im the dipshit?!?!?
This place never changes.   

You were clearly asking a rhetorical question. 

[UndertheHalo]

What if 225 million soft cap with tiered increases to the “tax” depending on how much you go over.  Do that with a hard floor of say 90 million ? 
 

i realize that what the specific penalty tiers should be is important.  I don’t have a good idea what that should be.  For me, I think the bigger thing to try and get is the floor.  

[Second Base]

I oppose raising the luxury tax number as well. In fact, I'm in favor of steeper penalties for exceeding it and a significantly high salary floor. 

I think large market teams get away with buying success in MLB, and I also believe smaller market teams have the funding available to spend if they so choose, they're simply not spending because they know they can get away with it. 

I think if you want 30 continually competitive teams, you need to stop the FA madness of spend happy larger market teams and force small market teams into trying to compete and prevent tanking. 

[Second Base]

I think Arte is committed to spending the money to create the on the field product that he would enjoy. Big boppers like Pujols and Hamilton that have name recognition and acrobatic flashy infielders like Simmons. 

Fact is he lucked out by having Trout and Ohtani land in his lap, the two most marketable players on the planet. 

But what Arte wants to see on the field isn't what wins games. Look at the Giants from the last decade. Three World Series championships, and the teams themselves had value top to bottom but very few superstars. 

The Angels have superstars and not a lot of value elsewhere. 

[tdawg87]

Angels fans shouldn't really care. His payroll limit is around 180 million. It's not like if the threshold was $230 million he'd raise his limit.

He's not going that high. Now let's make it more difficult on the owners that do.

[Blarg]

35 minutes ago, Second Base said:

I oppose raising the luxury tax number as well. In fact, I'm in favor of steeper penalties for exceeding it and a significantly high salary floor. 

I think large market teams get away with buying success in MLB, and I also believe smaller market teams have the funding available to spend if they so choose, they're simply not spending because they know they can get away with it. 

I think if you want 30 continually competitive teams, you need to stop the FA madness of spend happy larger market teams and force small market teams into trying to compete and prevent tanking. 

Let me ask you this, does raising the floor increase the quality of players on the field or just make lower tier players more expensive?

I see forcing teams to make a minimum investment in crappy players to meet the floor doesn't make them more competitive and again raise the cost for mid level players for the rest of the league.

If these negotiations were about compettive balance then there would be sensible salary tiers and individual player caps so that when a top tier player hits the market their maximum salary and years would be a set number.

But agents don't want this. They want higher salary floors and higher luxury thresholds to pump more money through their accounts. That is what is driving these negotiations and not any sensible economy to enrich all players equally by their talent. 

[Erstad Grit]

4 hours ago, halonatic13 said:

Damn, I miss that food.

Some food I liked as a child seems so horrific now. Avolios tastes even better. There is nothing like it. 

[HanfordGuy]

I’m not opposed to raising the CBT…I mean “Arte” is not opposed to raising but at the end of the day are players fulfilling their pay? Pujols lied about his age and it showed once he hit the wall. Hamilton??? The dude lied about his sobriety to sign a multi-million dollar contract. Wells??? You give the benefit of the doubt and you give the person a change of scenery and he just phones it in. “Arte” is not cheap. He pays when he finds someone that is willing to sign. 

[TroutBaseball]

9 hours ago, rottiesworld said:

I’m tired of these damn players wanting more and more money. I wish they could be out here and making 2,000 dollars a month and see how it feels. There are people out here that can’t afford to by things they need or want and can’t have unlike these little crying bitches. They have a nice mansion like house with theater in them, bowling, tennis and basketball court. They have like 3 cars Lamborghini and other expensive cars and they cry like they need more money. They need a cap and stop this crap where trams can’t afford to get great players.

Why do you prefer the owner with 3 yachts to have the money rather than the players?  Who do you watch baseball games to see Arte or Trout?  The money has been generated and now it's time to decide who gets it.  All of the feelings about crying players can be equally applied to billionaire owners.

[TroutBaseball]

1 hour ago, Blarg said:

If these negotiations were about compettive balance then there would be sensible salary tiers and individual player caps so that when a top tier player hits the market their maximum salary and years would be a set number.

 

The Tampa Bay Rays have effectively destroyed ALL arguments that large budgets are the only way to have a competitive team.  Over and over and over again they prove it's not the only way. 

Edited March 5, 2022 by TroutBaseball

[floplag]

2 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

You were clearly asking a rhetorical question. 

No, i was not.
He said that the CBT should go up, i asked what benefit that had.
It is my view that what needs to go up is the floor.  There is a lot more money for the players in the 100-200M range on 28 teams than any  bump from 220-230 on 4. 

[Taylor]

27 minutes ago, HanfordGuy said:

I’m not opposed to raising the CBT…I mean “Arte” is not opposed to raising but at the end of the day are players fulfilling their pay? Pujols lied about his age and it showed once he hit the wall. Hamilton??? The dude lied about his sobriety to sign a multi-million dollar contract. Wells??? You give the benefit of the doubt and you give the person a change of scenery and he just phones it in. “Arte” is not cheap. He pays when he finds someone that is willing to sign. 

Is "Arte" a pseudonym?

[AngelsLakersFan]

3 hours ago, floplag said:

No, i was not.
He said that the CBT should go up, i asked what benefit that had.
It is my view that what needs to go up is the floor.  There is a lot more money for the players in the 100-200M range on 28 teams than any  bump from 220-230 on 4. 

Increasing the CBT threshold creates upward pressure on salaries. The current CBA has created a net downward pressure on salaries. 

[Second Base]

12 hours ago, Blarg said:

Let me ask you this, does raising the floor increase the quality of players on the field or just make lower tier players more expensive?

I see forcing teams to make a minimum investment in crappy players to meet the floor doesn't make them more competitive and again raise the cost for mid level players for the rest of the league.

If these negotiations were about compettive balance then there would be sensible salary tiers and individual player caps so that when a top tier player hits the market their maximum salary and years would be a set number.

But agents don't want this. They want higher salary floors and higher luxury thresholds to pump more money through their accounts. That is what is driving these negotiations and not any sensible economy to enrich all players equally by their talent. 

If you make tanking impossible, then it takes force smaller market teams into spending on the right players. Teams don't intentionally invest money into lesser players, and if you remove the benefits of tanning with a 25 million dollar payroll then I think you'll see a lot of mid-tier FA sign with smaller market clubs. 

[Stradling]

If this was a league like the NBA it would benefit from having some similar rules like mid level exception or even the Larry Bird type rules. But the owners have shown they don’t want to sign veterans to reasonable deals even if they are free of luxury tax penalties. 
I’d be fine with a salary cap but I’d want to benefit teams that draft and develop well. So if the Dodgers draft well they can sign their own players to market deals but not endure any penalties of the tax. 

[Jay]

I like the idea of having an exception for teams that re-sign players who came up through their system. Have the luxury tax apply to FA signings of players who came from another org.

 

[Stradling]

7 minutes ago, Jay said:

I like the idea of having an exception for teams that re-sign players who came up through their system. Have the luxury tax apply to FA signings of players who came from another org.

 

It only makes sense if you lower the threshold. Owners either can’t or won’t spend up to the cap to begin with, well 4-5 do but 85% don’t. 

[Blarg]

1 hour ago, Second Base said:

If you make tanking impossible, then it takes force smaller market teams into spending on the right players. Teams don't intentionally invest money into lesser players, and if you remove the benefits of tanning with a 25 million dollar payroll then I think you'll see a lot of mid-tier FA sign with smaller market clubs. 

They would still tank. There is a finite number of game changing players and the rest are pretty much interchangeable. You can take the league's top third players and put them aside and the rest you can make teams out of and they would all pretty much play the same. The talent there is a mix of mid level and lower level players. 

But it is not as though there is a supermarket of better players sitting on the shelf, available to pick and choose from. Good players are generally are not sitting out unless they demand more than their value. So paying more for the same guys doesn't improve any team. 

[AngelsLakersFan]

2 hours ago, Stradling said:

It only makes sense if you lower the threshold. Owners either can’t or won’t spend up to the cap to begin with, well 4-5 do but 85% don’t. 

I've wanted them to incorporate some kid of restricted free agency and 'free market tax' for years but neither side is really interested in addressing the competitive side of the game. You'd have to throw out the current luxury tax system entirely and I don't think either side wants that, as it acts as a de-facto line in the side with regards to total spending.