2016 National Baseball Arbitration Competition

Upon beginning this project, our team hoped to discover which batting statistics resulted in higher salary for players. Knowing this we could

It wasn’t that long ago when I became in love with the game of baseball. I still remember the day that my neighbor met me outside in the front yard just as we always did. It has been approximately two years ever since that Friday after school he asked me if I want to go to a Angel’s baseball game. I decided to go nothing better to do that day, when I got there it was such a rush seeing all the people that came to watch a baseball game. I followed my neighbor down the line, eagerly I waited to try to obtain a baseball players autograph. My friend gave me a baseball to try to get autographed, and later that day I luckily got my first baseball players autograph. His name was Dino Ebel the bench coach for the Angels,

"Baseball as America." Academic Search Premier. Spec. issue of USA Today Magazine 1 Apr. 2002: n. pag. EBSCO. Web. 1 Dec. 2015. The Baseball Hall of Fame is an iconic American landmark, which houses thousands of artifacts from baseball's crude beginnings to its current day glory. This piece is simple, yet it demonstrates what an important aspect of American culture baseball has become. The artifacts demonstrate how far baseball has come, among its highlights are Jackie Robinson's uniform, articles from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and even "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's cleats. Pictures accompany the article which adds the needed bit of glamour to illustrate how greatly baseball has influenced American

“Eddie Cicotte, our leading pitcher, had won 28 games in 1917 and still was making only $6,000 a year”(The Black Sox: My Side of the Story). The significance is that Eddie was not payed very fairly as far as the amount of games he

He states, "This is not about stupidity, it is about what is fair in baseball, and what is not. It is about the overall appeal of the national pastime. It is about caring, interest, and most of all, competition. Right now, there is very little of any of these components outside of the 212 area code." Most importantly, he explains why baseball needs a salary cap by saying "it is the only way to put constraints on what the Yankees are doing and to return the sport to the interesting and suspenseful form of sporting entertainment it once used to be." The Yankees are at an unfair advantage all across the league, and nobody, not Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, or perhaps even Los Angeles, can acquire talent the way they can. The only way to prevent them from doing so is to put a cap on how much they can pay their entire team.

The Vital Baseball organization was founded in early 2015 in the northern part of the state of Utah. The strategic plan of the founding managers was to build an organization that supports youth baseball at every age level. “First and foremost, strategic planning is a process” (Abraham, 2012, p. 1.7). This process is not to be taken lightly and the Vital

Teams with large payrolls routinely win at a higher rate than teams who cannot afford to spend the massive amounts of money other teams do. For example, in the last fifteen years the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, two teams which regularly are among the highest spending teams in baseball, won on average 94.7 and 86.8 games respectively. By comparison, the San Diego Padres and the Kansas City Royals, two teams who are not able to compete financially with teams with deeper pockets, won an average of 77.1 and 71.6 games respectively in that same time span (Major League Baseball). This disparity in season wins is a direct cause of Major League Baseball’s lack of a salary cap. Over the course of a 162 game season, teams with higher payrolls, and therefore better talent on their roster, will prevail more often than

The collective bargaining agreement between the National Hockey League and the player’s association stipulates that arbitration must be used initially in order to resolve disputes relating to salary, grievances, and system. A case that did a good job of demonstrating the authority of the collective bargaining agreement’s stipulation of an arbitration clause was McCourt v. California Sports, Incorporated. In this case plaintiff signed a National Hockey League Standard Players Contract to play professional hockey with defendant team. After defendant picked up a free agent from another team, the other team proposed that plaintiff's contract be assigned to it as compensation. An arbitrator agreed and plaintiff's contract was assigned. Plaintiff filed suit alleging that the reserve system and the assignment of his contract as compensation for the free agent violated § 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.S. § 1 (1976). The district court entered a preliminary injunction restraining defendants, hockey league, team, and players' association, from enforcing the arbitration award and from penalizing plaintiff for refusing to

''And this idea of players making large amounts of money also says something uncomfortable about our society, where a ballplayer can make so much more than, say, a teacher. But it's not the fault of the players. The money is obviously there. It seems like the owners have a death wish about the

The MLUA umpires had struck several times in previous years (1979, 1984 and 1991) and had been locked out for the first days of the start of the 1995 baseball season under Richie Phillips tutorage. Each of these previous work stoppages had worked out in the umpires favor; they enjoyed huge increases in their pay scale, more job security, and better vacations. The MLB and MLUA always had caustic labor relations and tensions were soaring in the summer of 1999 as the MLUA’s five year labor agreement was entering its final year. The MLUA had great concerns with some major changes proposed by the MLB to the strike zone, umpire evaluations and staff consolidation but were

Every year, it becomes more obvious that many sports in America have problems. For years, Hockey has been criticized for its excessive violence. The National Football League has also been scrutinized for this reason as well as the fact that many of the top players have constantly been in trouble with the law. Major League Baseball is no different. The situation with baseball is more complicated, and is not only ruining the game itself, but also drawing millions of fans away from the sport. The biggest problem is with the high salaries paid to athletes. These salaries are taking the competitiveness out of several sports, especially baseball, where there is no salary cap. Action must be taken

1. Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its:

For prospects that are forced into the minor leagues for development, the road to the majors has proven a grueling process and the majority of players never make it to the major leagues. Extremely low salaries and bonuses in the minor leagues has become an ongoing, controversial topic between MLB commissioner Bud Selig and minor league players 17. A fast food worker makes between $15,000 and $18,000 a year, which is two or three times as large as minor league players’ average salary, so minor league players are forced to have multiple jobs throughout the year 18. The majority of minor league players lie below the federal poverty level and while MLB salaries are rapidly increasing, minor leagues salaries remain constant. The MLB receives exemptions

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

The 10 year contract which Tom Hicks and his team proposed for Alex Rodriguez was one of the biggest ever in the history of Baseball. It was a major Investment decision for the group. The Group had taken over the Dallas Stars few years earlier and spent on buying quality players. This worked wonders for the team and Dallas Stars went on to lead the group. Tom Hicks had a policy of spending 50-55% of team revenue on team payrolls. If that is maintained he always gains an operating profit of 10-15%.