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Originally Posted by SteveP
What changed when teams began to make more money was the advent of bonus babies, who did sometimes score big bucks in the form of signing bonuses. That was regulated by the advent of the draft.
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Just to expand upon the above...
It was WWII and the demands for young men which started the first signing bonus binge. The post-war period saw a boom in the amount of signing bonuses for amateur players (so much so, in fact, that some clubs were paying out more in bonuses to unproven amateurs than they were spending on salaries for major league players).
MLB tried three times to bring bonuses under control: the first bonus rule which lasted from 1947-50; the second bonus rule which lasted from 1952-57; and the first-year player draft, which lasted from 1959-66. None of these measures were successful in their aim to reduce amateur player signing bonuses. It was only the adoption of the amateur draft in 1965 (now called the first-year player draft) which did so. (At least, it did so until the start of the 1990s, at which point bonuses again began to climb sharply.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveP
If you are bringing new historical players into the league as free agents, you've created a situation that is not historical, and one that the financial model doesn't try to account for...
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That's pretty much the case. An ideal financial model would be able to recreate the environment within which amateur players were acquired both before and after WWII.
Some day perhaps...