Kuzul

All major league teams currently abide by a 40-man roster, and every off-season the Rule 5 Draft is held, allowing teams to acquire players that otherwise were left off of those rosters. It is an element to the rulebook that ensures that teams cannot stockpile players in their minor league system, and thus forces teams at this time of year to gauge progress and determine who to keep and who to let go.

The essence of this article is to demonstrate that linking administrative mechanisms already at the GMs’ disposal–i.e., roster size and the Rule 5 Draft–to teams’ cumulative won-loss records over recent seasons could be instrumental to solving a fundamental baseball dilemma–the disparity in fielding competitive teams from the largest to the smallest market. And in doing so, it would prove more effective than an NFL-style or NBA-style artificial ceiling on salaries.

Ought There Be Joy in Mudville?

What routinely gets glossed over these days in discussion of the divide between the MLB haves and have-nots is that, though some baseball authorities brag that the playoffs routinely feature a sprinkling of middle-market teams that occasionally even win a World Series, that fails to address the actually-relevant question of how frequently a franchise fields a team with a roster capable of making the playoffs.

And on that front, there can be little debate that larger market franchises will be substantially more competitive year-in-year-out than their middle market competition, and much more so than their small market competition.

There’s almost no denying that there is a problem here that needs to be fixed for the good of the game.

While I’m not one generally inclined to socialism, when it comes to the limited scope of baseball, the game excels better when there is some rotation over time between the successful and the unsuccessful.

Why? Because the competitive balance—which is at the root of why anyone watches a game since they want to be entertained, not bored—is necessary to the overall popularity of the game if it is to continue to operate in 30 markets.

Cap the Cap Talk?

Now, historically, this is where the baseball socialists would like to enact a salary cap.

I understand their reasoning, but make the case that, not only is that politically problematic (players union) and not only does it stand against free market principles that time has generally proven to encourage success for any given industry, but that, once a person analyzes the whole of the situation more closely, there emerges a way to accomplish a higher competitive balance in the game—one not encumbered by those negatives.

The bottom-line here is talent acquisition, and the degree to which teams have approximately equivalent capacity to accomplish that.

Some teams acquire talent through the draft and develop players because, not only is it effective, but more basically that they have little alternative, given their market size and resources.It’s what they can afford. Among these teams, there are those who do this with some measure of success, and others who do not. (See footnote below for some additional elaboration to this point.)

Other teams acquire it through the draft and develop players. They also have the advantage that when they do not have adequate MLB-level talent at a given position, they are able to dip into the free agency pool and pull out a decent-to-good player to take that role on their roster where they perceive there is need.

And then, there are the teams who not only draft and develop players, and not only dip into the free agency pool on occasion, but who, year-in-year-out, are capable of signing elite veteran players to their roster.

Better Solution?

To think about how we might modify the off-the-field game of talent acquisition, let’s use the analogy of the stock market.

Think of individual players as individual stocks, baseball clubs as purchasers of stocks and the end-game is to be the one who holds the most money at the end of a given year.

Big market teams ordinarily can afford to obtain and develop the smaller-money stocks like anyone else, but also can obtain the bigger-money blue-chip-type stocks as they see fit. That gives them advantage.

To remedy this, some want to limit the number of blue-chip stocks they can buy (i.e., a salary cap).

But here’s a better alternative that is rarely, if ever, suggested:

Instead of placing limitations on blue-chip acquisition by the clubs with deeper pockets, why not focus on the capacity of the smaller-market clubs to buy and hold more of the less-expensive-yet-somewhat-promising stocks?

That is, allow the smaller-market clubs to draft, develop and hold onto more of the players in their system than larger-market clubs can; and in fact, use permitted roster size in combination with the Rule 5 Draft to accomplish that.

Not Really into the Stock Market?

Let’s put it still another way.

Visualize a fishing lake. As it is currently, the big clubs and the small clubs all draw from fishing lakes that are as long and wide as one another, but the big clubs have been able to spend elaborately to dredge their lakes so that they are deeper, which gives them a year-in-year-out advantage.

What is being proposed here is the same as suggesting that we re-configure the rules to allow the smaller markets to expand the length and width of their lakes by kicking down some of the dams that currently contain them.

“Okay. I understand now. If one group of teams has greater capacity in one way to acquire and develop talent, it is conceivable we could balance that by increasing the capacity of other lesser-resource teams in the less expensive way to be able to acquire and develop talent.”

“But there are two problems,” you say, “One is that not all smaller-market teams are necessarily unsuccessful. And two, if you try to use market-size or some other financially-linked number as a basis for expanding or deflating permitted roster size, that likely is just as problematic politically as-is a salary cap.”

“Absolutely correct,” I say…which leads me to my next point.

Does Size Matter?

What we really care about is competitiveness, and therefore it is a misnomer to enact anything that portends to enhance or detract from teams’ talent acquisition on the basis of numbers that reflect market-size or financial success.

Accordingly, what is proposed here is not specifically something that seeks to remedy market-size imbalances, but rather that seeks to remedy production imbalances in some proportion to the degree to which clubs are more or less able to acquire, develop and hold onto their talent.

You’ll see what I mean as I now roll out the features of this proposal…

What Exactly Are We Talking about Here?

When I become Commissioner of Baseball (*wink*), among the things I will establish is this process for determining allowed roster size:

1) Teams in each league will be grouped each off-season according to their W/L record for the previous four seasons.

Aside: Four seasons is selected because it is sufficient to produce a number that suggests overall team success—or lack thereof—and, to limit the degree to which any outlier seasons have affect on the result. Then, as you will see below, it is relevant to note that the math/stats show that within the most recent four year period, about 70 percent of all team season records should fall within four wins plus/minus 81 (.500), which is essentially one standard deviation from the mean.

2) The teams whose four year average shows that they have won 77-85 games remain at their current, conventional 40 roster slots.

3) Going beyond one full standard deviation, then, teams that average 76 or fewer wins gain 1 quarter-roster-slot for every one below 81; teams that average 86 or more wins lose 1 quarter-roster-slot.

No… What EXACTLY Are We Talking about Here?

“Translate that,” you say. “What would this mean for my favorite team?”

Well, first of all, it would mean that at the conclusion of the regular season, you and your GM would know how many roster slots he has to work with for the coming season—again, based on the four year formula above.

These teams, then, would gain roster slots for this off-season (i.e., all have averaged 76 or fewer wins over the last four years):

* By way of explanation, the Pirates would have five (+ 5 ) additional roster slots above the conventional 40 slots (i.e., 81 minus 63 average wins multiplied by 0.25, rounding up for any fraction of a player)

These teams would, on the other hand, lose roster slots for this off-season (i.e., all have averaged 86 or more wins over the last four years):

* By way of explanation, the Phillies would lose three (- 3) roster slots, so instead of 40 on the roster, they would be limited to 37, and would have to cut loose three additional players to the Rule 5 Draft pool who potentially could add to other lesser-teams pool of talent.

And so, for this off-season, it would mean these teams would all have the conventional 40 roster slots (i.e., all have averaged 77-85 wins over the last four years): ATL, CHC, CIN, COL FLA, HOU, MIL, LAD, NYM, SDP, STL and SFG in the NL; CHW, CLE, DET, TBR, TEX and TOR in the AL.

Rewarding Losers and Penalizing Winners?

“Okay, I get it. I’m still having trouble with the fact, though, that I just don’t like rewarding losers and penalizing winners,” you say.

Okay, I get that, but balance that with the premise that professional sports leagues’ success is dependent on their teams’ capacity to compete with some regularity for their championship trophy, and that, when teams have increasingly greater capacity to acquire talent over other teams, they tend to be more competitive year-in-year-out than those who do not. By enlarging or constricting roster size, the league is able to compensate to a greater degree for teams that are substantially advantaged or disadvantaged, and without the necessity of capping payroll.

In this scenario, the only team that is somewhat unduly penalized for their success is Minnesota, and at that, they lose only one slot. Other than that, there can be no question that the other four teams spend what they need mostly as they feel compelled to spend it.

And on the other end, there are only two teams that are somewhat unduly rewarded for their occasional ineptness, those being Seattle and Arizona, the only teams of the seven that have eclipsed .500 baseball at some point over the previous four seasons.

I can live with the occasional Minnesota, Seattle or Arizona situation if it means we have been successful in giving fans in all 30 cities some legitimate reason to believe their team is competitive.

Anything Else?

Where the Rule 5 Draft itself is concerned, I would make one additional and important change, which is that the least successful teams would be allowed to keep Rule 5 draftees on their roster indefinitely, and not have to use a 25-man roster slot for anyone drafted.

At the end of the day, this would place 14 more players up for grabs from among PHI, MIN, ANA, BOS and NYY, while it concurrently would open up a sum of 22 more roster slots on PIT, WAS, ARZ, BAL, KCR, SEA and OAK that could be used for accommodating more prospects—potentially even several of those that otherwise got knocked off of the other teams due to their signing the older, more experienced players out of free agency.

Is this the End-All-Be-All Plan?

All of this may very well be enough. Then again, it may not be. Only time would tell if that amount of roster enlargement and constriction is sufficient to be meaningful.

I, therefore, would suggest a re-evaluation after some prescribed period in order to determine if the system needs some tweaking (e.g., adjusting the quarter-roster-slot in the equation).

But this, at least, would set into place a mechanism that plausibly will be effective to remedy advantages and disadvantages due to market inequities, and thus, to grow the competitive health of the game so many of us love.

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Footnote regarding lower-revenue teams and the competency of their organizations’ leadership:

 For those teams that are mostly limited to acquiring players through the draft, it was mentioned that some do this well, and others do not. Some observers are quick to seize on this point, and attribute that status simply as lousy organizational management–that is, lousy talent evaluation (scouting and drafting) and lousy player development (coaching). Yet, even lousy organizational management might just be, at its root, a problem of not having the financial resources to hire sufficient coaches and scouts, both in terms of quantity and quality. And clearly, smaller market teams are more likely to find it difficult than larger ones to find the bonus money sometimes necessary to sign all of those drafted in the June amateur draft.

Incompetency, then, is better judged at the other end of the continuum, where there are teams that clearly have resources but fail to perform. The situation is too confounded at the lower-revenue end to truly understand the degree to which organizational incompetence is the problem versus lack of revenues.

Thus, the point I would want to emphasize here is that, even if there is a substantial degree of incompetence that has doomed a given franchise to perennial failure, that does not diminish the point that there needs to be some counterbalance in the system to compensate for the tighter financial resources that make every player acquisition move just that much more critical for them.

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