The Wincentive System - Young Player Incentive
Young Player Incentives
Few things are more deflating to a fan base than the conversation about your team getting ready to trade away a young player because they are about to become “too expensive”. I find it hard to be excited as a fan to get rid of young proven talent for multiple young players who probably won’t be as good as the outbound player and even if they do, they will become expensive and we get to do this routine again in a number of years. I call this the “A’s Problem”. I’m not sure how some fans stick with their teams when ownership groups clearly have no long-term interest other than cost reduction and league-wide team value appreciation. The Reds are on this list with Elly De La Cruz. I think this is young player problem is abused the most in baseball. Football and Hockey have different cultures and motivations around young players and the NBA is too far outside of my current view to have an honest opinion.
League Breakdowns
NFL - doesn’t really have a problem with teams dumping young players. Set contracts for draft levels has worked well. Gone are the days #1 picks were paid top-5 at the position contracts before playing a down. I want players to get paid, but college downs are not NFL downs, prove it before you get the big one. I don’t think zero-NFL-down rookies should take dollars away from the “rank-and-file” veterans.
MLB - Pick a WAR, any WAR. When a team signs a player to a contract that covers any post-arb years, the team is given a win percentage boost in the order equal to (Player WAR x .00617). This might be drastic and needs to be tracked over the course of coming off-seasons. An alternate incentive could be to offer compensation round picks to teams when they sign a player past arbitration years. Each post-arb year earns one 1st round compensatory pick. Using the Ronald Acuna contract as an example. Atlanta signed Acuna to an 8-year $100m contract with 2 more years of Club Options. That contract covers two pre-arbitration years, four arbitration years, two unrestricted free agents years, and two club option years. Under the Wincentive System, the Braves would have two first-round compensatory picks in the June 2019 draft and two more first-round picks after the Club options were exercised. If the options were player options, Atlanta would get 4 first-round compensatory picks in the 2019 draft.
It’s essential to think about the small market teams that have ownership more than willing to sit on a smaller payroll and take in TV and Luxury Tax dollars. The Wincentive System is about wins, so let’s build that into the Luxury Tax System. As of this writing, the total Luxury Tax dollars collected equals $182,945,024. Half of that goes toward player benefits in the current luxury tax CBA agreement. Keep that the same for the Wincentive System. That leaves $91,472,512 in payments for all the teams below the Luxury Tax threshold.
In the Wincentive System, those dollars are distributed to teams with a positive delta between the previous and current seasons. Teams that pay into the Luxury Tax System and/or have a negative delta between the previous and current seasons are excluded from the distribution of funds. The next step is to sum all the positive deltas to find a denominator. Each team with a positive delta makes up a percentage of the sum total. The team’s percentage of the sum’d positive deltas is the percentage of the distribution pool. As of Sept 24th, here are the luxury tax funds that would go to each team with a positive delta. It’s worth pointing out that of all the teams paying into the luxury tax, only the Braves are better this year than they were last year. This also illustrates the incentive for ownership that wants money.
NHL - The draft system solves the young player incentive for hockey. Teams have to win more games to get better draft picks, which is how to get Connor Bedard or Nathan MacKinnon on your team. NHL teams are good at moving young players around at the draft deadline. Rarely do you hear about a player stuck in a team’s minor league affiliate who is good enough to be on NHL ice and they are not found a spot. If you are worthy of getting top-level ice time in the NHL, it will be found for the player. Ownership motivations are different in the NHL as well. They are trying to “get their money back” for the money spent funding the Covid season when there were no fans in the stands. More than any other league, the NHL relies on ticket sales for a significant portion of its revenues.
What I believe needs to be solved for in the NHL is a team like the Ducks, who exist so close to the Salary Floor over their entire roster that they don’t look like they are going to be a competitive team. The difference is, they have 6 picks in the first 3 rounds in the 2024 draft. They also have a young player in Trevor Zegras, and they drafted 2nd overall in the most recent draft. There is hope for the fanbase. How do we make sure the young talent stays on the team?
I’m not convinced Hockey has a young player problem that requires more incentive than what the Wincentive System already supplies.
NBA - This one is a little too far outside my recent experience. I don’t have the same current-day understanding of player movements and incentives to give an honest write-up here. I’ll revisit this in the coming seasons.
CHR;)
