MLS salaries not so inequitable

at Fernandez’s salary. $300k seems like a steal for what we got.

One thing I was thinking about – Keller makes some good cash for a top rated keeper. No other keeper in the league makes over $200k. When he retires that’s a good chunk of cap space that will be freed. And there are a lot of good keepers in the league that we could conceivably sign.

Also…looking at some of the 2010 draftees – I’m shocked at what some of these guys make, compared to those drafted in 09 or 08. Corben bone has made two appearances for Chicago and is making $136k. Dilly Duka has made one appearance for Columbus and is making over $200k. Compared to Lenhart, who’s making $40k, or Justin Braun who’s making $65k. These newbies must’ve had some badass agents working for them. Jack McInerny and Toni Stahl are also good examples, each making over $100k.

I think our FO absolutely has the right idea in what they are doing. I won’t lie – I think it’d be pretty good to have the Henry’s and Marquez’s of the world play for us and have a huge DP budget. The flashiness is pretty sweet. But, I love the reserved approach to finding talent and paying reasonably for it, rather than paying extra for the name.

to give it the attention it might deserve, but it would be fun to see a ranking of PPD: Points Per Dollar. Perhaps looking at the first half of the season, what has happened since the summer signings, and where teams are expected to finish.

Here are the rankings for $ per point. I decided to base it off median salary and used the current ppm to predict a final point total.

$ per point
Dallas 1,532
Los Angeles 1,540
Salt Lake 1,610
Seattle 1,782
Colorado 1,819
Columbus 2,025
New York 2,096
New England 2,139
San Jose 2,206
Toronto 2,262
Chivas USA 2,283
Chicago 2,377
Houston 3,047
Kansas City 3,492
Philadelphia 4,464
DC 4,527

…that the league’s overall quality could be increased significantly if it were set at a higher – but not too much higher – amount. If it were, say, $4 million, with a few buy down options, just moving up by $1,500,000 would increase average player salaries by about $60,000, and in the grand scheme of things, would not really cost the MLS that much (keep in mind that with a $4 million cap, SSFC wages could still be covered entirely by the xbox money, and many other teams could cover a big chunk of that with their kit sponsor money). Higher quality players overall, with more depth (let’s face it, very few teams in this league have bench guys whose supporters don’t immediately cringe at the thought of them being on the pitch), increases the quality of the product, especially on TV.

If there were buydowns, it would cause a little bit of imbalance…. but let’s be honest here, competitive balance hasn’t exactly drawn fans to places like Dallas and San Jose. Instead, the places that actually get butts in the seats (Seattle, now New York, Toronto, Phila) can rake in tons of cash and be semi-attractive for DPs…. while killing their overall depth since the DPs take up so much cap room. I have a feeling that we’ll still be getting strong attendance for years to come, but if your team will never really be great – or is obviously outclassed internationally – it isn’t quite as enticing for the average sport fan to get sucked into it. Really, a league with a few teams with three or four DPs surrounded by $100,000-$150,000 players playing against teams with $200,000 starters and $100,000 subs/reserves would be much more attractive to fans, as well as potential DPs who actually have a choice between here and Europe, and it wouldn’t exactly break the bank.

Yeah there are have-nots at around 2.5 million, but San Jose’s 2.5 million figure DOES NOT reflect Geovanni’s salary, which should certainly bump it up to 3.0 to 3.75 million.

All the salary cap talks about the disparity (or lack thereof) between the small and large markets teams. The real disparities are between the salaries of the players on the same team.

I’m glad there’s no longer the shameful $12,000 developmental salaries, but there’s still quite a gap there. I’d love to see the cap raised gradually to the $4 million range with the max (non-DP) salary staying at the $335,000 range.

That way more starters and rotational guys can make that $100,000 salary which I think will improve the overall play of the league more than adding more expensive DP salaries.