alky313 said:
Matty said:
Matsuzaka was a different type of deal as he was moving from the Japanese Baseball League to the MLB. In that scenario teams must pay the "selling" club a fee, normally set in the millions of dollars. Movements between MLB clubs don't have transfer fees like we'd view them, they are normally trades or players moving under free agency.
Sorry. I wrote my response in two separate posts, but I'd do understand the "negotiation fees". In the end the form of transfer is different. But baseball clubs still take on debt and relinquish debt as they do here. The numbers aren't as massive but they do exist. As for moneyball, it should be noted that it dates back to the early 80s. But it was never properly put into form until much later at Oakland Athletics.
The question was will Henry spend til he wins. The answer is yes. The man needs to win.
I don't think he fully grasped, and still think he's struggling with the concept, just how expensive it is to make a side "competitive", yet alone win the trophies that really matter, in football. Baseball has a salary cap of sorts, called a luxury tax, this means anyone who spends more than a set amount on salaries is taxed on the excess, and this tax is distributed to the other teams in the league.
The Red Sox have exceeded this level in the past, but do not currently, in fact only the Yankees currently do. FFP may well act as a kind of salary cap, but not as strictly adhered to.
Take Andy Carroll as an example. Liverpool paid £35m for him, then you need to consider his salary (lets say £50k a week, which is probably low), any signing on fee (lets say 10%, so £3.5m), any agents feed (lets say £500k) and it soon adds up.
£35m transfer fee
£50k x 52 weeks x 5 years = £13m
10% signing on fee = £3.5m
£500k agent fee
So, as a very rough estimate, Andy Carroll will cost Liverpool £52m over the 5 years of his contract. That's a lot of money for a club being forced to "break even" under FFP.
You also have to question how much of the money the Red Sox spend is actually input from JW Henry and how mcuh is self generated by the club themselves. The Red Sox play 81 home games in a season, that's a lot of opportunities to bring in revenue, add to that the ability to negotiate their own TV rights in a huge catchment area like Boston, and the Red Sox are able to generate a huge amount of revenue without any input from their owners.
