Pittsburgh Pirates' Team President Supports a Cap

As written in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pirates' team President Frank Coonelly has come out in support of a salary cap. Both Mr. Coonelly and the author Dejan Kovacevic are smarter than I am, so I will post a link and excerpts below.

"Team president Frank Coonelly, who worked a decade in commissioner Bud Selig's office before taking his current post two years ago, made clear that he would back Selig should the sport pursue a cap in its next labor negotiations in 2011."

""Having studied the issue for years while working at the commissioner's office, I continue to believe a salary cap is an economic system that works for a sports league as a whole, the individual clubs and, because of the growth it can promote for the league, the players," Coonelly said in an interview Friday. "As a result, yes, the Pirates would support an effort by the commissioner's office to secure a salary cap in collective bargaining."

"Baseball's history in attempting to negotiate a cap is well known and, thus, I don't think it's productive to place odds on whether the commissioner's office will attempt to secure a cap in 2011 or beyond," Coonelly said. "While we would support such an effort, we will leave that decision to commissioner, and we will spend all our time and energy working to build an organization that will win championships under the current system."

"As I have said repeatedly, I firmly believe the Pirates can compete and win under the current system," he said. "The combination of revenue sharing, the competitive-balance tax and the debt-service rule gives us the wherewithal to field teams that compete for championships. Certainly, we cannot afford to make mistakes that a team like the Yankees can afford to make, we cannot afford to commit $180 million to any one player, and we need to work harder and make smarter decisions than clubs with larger revenue streams. But all of this is a challenge that we relish. Nothing that has occurred this off-season has changed the competitive landscape or shaken our view that we can compete on that landscape."
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