Hometown Discount

Baseball Prospectus's Nate Silver makes a case for a "hometown discount" program in which MLB would release money from a team's revenue-sharing duty so that team could retain a free agent who is worth more to another team.

Here's part of the problem, as Silver explains:

Let's shift gears for a second and revisit the finding I introduced last week, that from a revenue-generation standpoint, players are worth significantly more to teams with a reasonable near-term hope of competing for a playoff spot. One of the implications of this is that teams that are not competitive, particularly ones that play in smaller markets, are at risk of joining something of a permanent underclass. When Jason Bay becomes a free agent in a few years, and the Pirates still stink, they're going to find that he might be worth $8 million per season to them, while he would be worth $10 million to the Phillies, who presumably will have gone 85-77 for seven years running and will desperately need a player to get them over the playoff bubble. If the Phillies outbid the Pirates for Bay, it's because he really is worth more in Philadelphia, not because the Pirates are being cheap.

Link here (premium content; req's paid subscription). More fans could understand the economic logic of that argument.

My initial response to his proposed solution was, Great idea, but how would the league explain this to the fans? On second thought, I think it would be an easy sell. The program could be wrapped in some kind of "family values" or "we build teams" context that might also do much to shed the negative connotations steroids has attached to the sport.

It would do nothing to improve the attitude and/or performance of notable grousers like Kris Benson, Kip Wells, or, more recently, B.J. Upton, who approach their time with a small-market club as the heavy dues they have to pay before they can play for a "real" team.