The other side of the salary cap (cap on the total annual salary) introduced from this season to prevent a money feast. The phenomenon of getting poorer and poorer and richer richer between low-wage players and high-wage star players is also intensifying.

The salary cap, which will be implemented in the KBO League starting this year, is to prevent clubs with rich economic power from monopolizing players and widening the power gap between clubs. It may not be possible to balance the slope of the scale equally for each club, but the purpose is to increase the fun of watching baseball by reducing the deviation.

In addition, the salary cap also aims to present a baseline for the ransom of players who run excessively due to competition between clubs. It is also to prevent the ransom value of the top players from increasing too much while leveling the overall means.

However, in the end, there are cases in which this limited intention is twisted and other phenomena occur one after another. Even before the implementation of the actual salary cap, each club is coming up with ways to avoid the system in various ways, such as multi-year contracts. Valuable free agents (FAs) are scarce, and even that means is difficult, so the method of non-FA multi-year contracts was brought out.

In 2021, SSG signed the first non-FA multi-year contract with Park Jong-hoon for a total of 6.5 billion won for 5 years (5.6 billion won in annual salary, 900 million won in options) and 5 years with Seung-won Moon for a total of 5.5 billion won (4.7 billion won in annual salary, 800 million won in options), respectively. notified

Afterwards, Samsung signed a free agent contract with Koo Ja-wook for up to 12 billion won for 5 years, SSG with Hanyu Island for up to 6 billion won for 5 years, Lotte with Park Se-woong for 5 years and 9 billion won, and NC with Koo Chang-mo for up to 12.5 billion won for 6 years. There is a bar that has signed a large-scale multi-year contract that approaches or exceeds that level.

Such a contract itself is reasonable, and is already widely implemented in the US major leagues. However, the difference between the United States and Korea is that this kind of multi-year contract has become the latest trend in the context of the aforementioned introduction of the salary cap and scarcity of free agent resources.

It means that it is a phenomenon that appeared because it is very difficult to manage the salary cap of the club in order to sign an FA contract at the same level as in the past. While it is difficult to control the external market situation in which players from 10 clubs can declare free agency and negotiate with each club, a non-FA multi-year contract has the advantage of being able to manage a significant portion of the annual salary of the club.

For example, in a season when there is room for the salary cap, players who have signed multi-year contracts in advance can pay a large annual salary, and in a season when the club’s total annual salary is relatively likely to increase, it is possible to use a method such as reducing the annual salary.

These advantages have allowed some players to sign long-term contracts sooner, adding safety to their lives and the environment. Clubs also have the advantage of being able to catch promising players of their clubs as franchise players for a long period of time and avoid free agent competition, just like the recent trend in the US major leagues.

However, due to the existence of the salary cap intervening in the total amount, as a result, when someone laughs, someone is forced to cry. An increasing number of players claim that they have suffered significant damage from the salary negotiations this year.

An official from the club A in the metropolitan area explained, “It is true that the relatively existence of a salary cap is a burden in salary negotiations, etc.”

In fact, in the course of salary negotiations this year, there are differences between clubs or players, but quite a lot of pain has occurred, and there are a lot of clubs that are still in progress. Due to the salary cap, the available resources for each club are limited, but it is said that there are more players than in previous years who are difficult to understand in the contract process, centering on players with a large increase in annual salary or players with a small increase in annual salary.

A player from the B team in the region said, “From the outside, it seems like a warm wind is blowing as large non-FA multi-year contracts have been coming out steadily for several years, but that’s also the story of some players.” From their point of view, the fact that a salary cap is created only feels like a decrease in my ransom or a decrease in annual salary increase. During this year’s negotiation process, I think I realized the stricter club standards,” he said, hinting at the fierce atmosphere of the negotiations.

Artificial restrictions such as salary caps inevitably have a direct impact on the direction of suppressing the natural increase in the total annual salary of the players. But even in such a situation, some players still have value. As a result, the club has no choice but to make choices and focus. The side that suffers more damage from the decision has a side that can only be low-salary players who have relatively low value as a useful resource from the club’s point of view.

스포츠토토 As these situations continue, demands for system improvement and change of the salary cap, which are not realistic, are emerging among the players of each club as well as club officials. Of course, there are many who are in favor of the salary cap.

The growing deficit of the club for the development of a healthy professional baseball industry is also not a positive factor. Nevertheless, despite natural inflation and inflation, it is also against the logic of the market to institutionally suppress the width.

As a professional, the biggest basis for attracting players’ activities, the widening variance in salary and treatment level cannot be a prerequisite for a healthy league. While someone is toasting in the spotlight, someone may take off their uniform or shed tears in a difficult environment.

In the introduction and settlement of a new system, light and darkness inevitably coexist. However, it is also the role of responsible people to look into whether there are no people groaning in the system.