Re: Baseball - whats the solution?
An NBA model would be great for MLB. A soft cap and 100% luxury tax (which serves as a de facto hard cap).
The reason that NBA teams tend to be 2-3 guys making tons and a bunch making far less is that that's what you need to win in the NBA. With the same system in MLB, you'd surely see 4-6 guys per team making big dollars. Keep in mind also that the NBA has annual limits (max salaries) so that you can also control the distribution of $$ within the cap that way.
Also, in regards to an international draft - you just need to make the current draft apply to every man, woman and child on earth above a certain age (currently 17, I believe). Draft rights are retained for, say...3 years, and anyone not drafted is a free agent. Pretty soon, every decent Japanese and Cuban player would be 'owned' by one ML team or another. In the long run, I suspect this would address the "Yankees get 2/3 of foreign players" problem.
Of course, to control the managerial disgraces taking place in small markets like Montreal, Milwaukee and Kansas City (where owners continue making a solid return on investment based in large part on revenue sharing while their payrolls remain miniscule and their teams generally suck), you'd need a salary floor (something like 2/3 the soft cap would work).
Irish
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