How to Build an MLB Team

By Guest
Updated: September 23, 2019

Written by Matt Brown, a writer at liftyourgame.net.

The MLB is one of the few professional American sports leagues that doesn’t have a salary cap.

However, there’s much more to making a great team than simply offering a higher salary than everyone else. After all, to bring in record crowds and earn all that dough, a team has to actually be good in the first place.

So how do the best MLB teams attract and retain top players?

1. Splashing the cash

Obviously, the more money you have, the easier it is to just pay your way through the MLB Luxury Tax and sign the best players in the competition.

However, money isn’t just about paying for salaries. It also allows you to actually build the foundations of your team, and hire a great GM to do a better job bringing in great signings. We’ll discuss these issues in more detail below.

2. Building a great team

Most MLB players, especially veterans, are pretty smart guys. They don’t want to have to put the team on their shoulders. Not only will they have to put in all the effort – they’ll get blamed when the team’s form suffers too.

When trying to get a player to sign, the GM will try to sell the story of the team he’s trying to build, and how the new signing will fit into the roster.

No-one wants to miss out on playing for a great team that will make an incredible finals series run. This is especially true for older players who know they only have a limited amount of time left in their career to potentially win a World Series.

3. Playing up the player’s strengths

No one wants to have to carry the team. But no-one wants to be the worst player on the active roster either.

There’s a fine balance the GM has to achieve here. On the one hand, he needs to convince a player that they’re going to be a crucial part of the team, and show them where they’ll fit in – maybe now, maybe in the near future.

But on the other hand, if they hype them up too much, it’ll seem like they’re highly dependent on the player, making it much easier for their agent to demand a massive salary.

The way to be subtle about this is to talk about the player’s strengths. Flattery can be an incredibly effective negotiation tactic.

4. Signing a great manager

But it’s not just the team that gets players signed. If you can convince an athlete that your manager understands their talents, it becomes much easier to get a player’s signature.

Sometimes, even just having a great manager can convince a player why the team you’re putting together will win a World Series. The coaches and facilities the club has access to can also make a difference, especially for young players who realize that they still have a lot of training ahead of them before becoming a world-class player.

Let’s face it: playing under someone like 2000+ Major League wins, like Bruce Bochy, is much more appealing than playing for a rookie manager with a half-decent Minor League record. Although rookies can still win a World Series!

5. Great agent relationships

An agent is essentially a player’s business partner. Like a player’s family and friends, they have a lot of influence over how and where they play their baseball.

However, unlike family and friends, agents are quite accessible for GMs, making it much easier for teams to forge close relationships with them. GMs and agents both live and breathe baseball, which also makes it much more likely for these relationships to be formed. Some agents have even made the switch to GM, because of the contacts they’re able to make inside the clubs.

Not all agents will get on well with all GMs – after all, it’s an agent’s job to get as much money from a team as possible when their player signs. However, these relationships do exist, and they can be used to land deals for in-demand players that wouldn’t have otherwise been signed.

6. Playing up the crowd

These days, it pays to have a really strong social media following. The more followers you have as a player, the more money you can squeeze out of sponsorship deals.

The biggest metro teams in the league will always try to play up their crowd figures when signing players. And this makes perfect sense – the more eyeballs you have on your games, the more valuable your brand is to companies who could sponsor you.

There’s a catch though – you have to play well! Having 50,000+ fans at a match is great when you’re doing well, but it’s not going to help much if you’re always letting the team down.