Steve Cohen
I consider you guys knowledgeable and passionate about baseball, so I'd like to hear what you all think about what Steve Cohen has done this winter.
To date, Cohen has raised his teams payroll for 2023 north of $384M, incurring a current tax bill of around $111M. In total, Cohen will be spending just shy of HALF A BILLION DOLLARS for his payroll. I don't know about any of you, but I fully expect him to sail well past the $500M mark when all is said and done.
The obvious questions are . . . Is this good for baseball? What, if any, ramifications will this trigger within the sport? Does this make a complete mockery of last year's CBA negotiations and ultimate settlement? Is the system broken?
On the surface of it, I believe it definitely brings certain issues to the forefront. First and foremost, is there an competitive imbalance in the sport because there is no hard cap on spending. Don't get me wrong, I understand all owners/ownership groups are billionaires operating teams that are worth billions. I have long wanted a salary floor AND some level of public accountability to be instituted to make some of these miserly owners spend and prove they're not just hording profits at the expense of their teams. But you have to admit that there is a HUGE difference between the Bruce Sherman's (>$1B net worth), Charlie Monfort's (~$1B), Robert Nutting's ($1.1B) of the world and Steve Cohen's estimated $17B net worth. No matter the market size, team success, fan base, there is no way many (most?) of these owners can afford to spend $500M in a given year (and more than likely for multiple years). It's just not a sustainable model.
I am interested to hear what others think about the many layers of this argument.
Topic: Steve Cohen (Read 306 times)
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