Is baseball headed for a strike in 2022?

Do you think we will have a strike when the MLB CBA expires

  • Yes

  • NO


Results are only viewable after voting.

Plympton91

bubble burster
SoSH Member
Oct 19, 2008
12,408
Because it’s hurting many of the free agent veterans who are still good enough to make and help teams, but not quite good enough to commit a definite permanent roster spot to. The difference since 2009 is that the gap between 23 year olds and 31 year olds has closed quite a bit.
I don’t think it’s as big a deal as you think it is. Teams that aren’t trying to win aren’t going to pay 10x , 20x the minimum to sign an Adam Jones type just because they get to stash him at AAA if he goes into a slump or sudden decline. Teams aren’t signing those types of veterans to middle class contracts because they’d rather put a Jacoby Jones type out there for the minimum and shoot for a few more losses and a higher draft pool.

As we just saw with Josh Harrison, what these teams want veterans to do is to sign for rock bottom contracts, options or no options.

And if you’re talking about teams that are trying to win, then my point about encouraging talent hoarding comes into play. Yeah, I’m sure the Yankees and Dodgers would love to be able to sign 3 or 4 veterans for 3 or 4 million each and stash them in AAA for emergencies. But that just makes the rich even richer.
 
Last edited:

Max Power

thai good. you like shirt?
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
7,878
Boston, MA
  • for veteran FA contracts, any FA contract over 4 years in length has an automatic mutual opt-out at the halfway point (rounded up, so a 5 year contract has it after year three), where the player can opt-out and become a FA again, and the team can buy out the remainder of the contract by paying something like 50-75% of the remaining salary on an annualized basis; that way, the players can get the upside benefit of maximizing earnings if they kill it early on in the deal, and the teams can sign deals without worrying about being crippled long term if the player falls off a cliff or gets hurt, but the player still gets a guarantee of a chunk of the contract
That last part needs some work, but we really just need to find a way to remove the disincentives for teams to sign FAs to big contracts, which is what's driving the current atmosphere.
That doesn't get to the heart of the issue. Pre-FA players generally produce more than free agents overall. When you consider salary on top of that production, they can literally be an order of magnitude more valuable. Messing around the edges of free agency isn't going to change team behavior when it makes so much more sense to try to hoard younger players.

There are only two solutions. 1. Pay players more before their free agent years. 2. Bring back steroids to make older players more valuable.
 

Boggs26

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 12, 2005
1,152
Ashburnham, MA
The more I read, the more I think an enforced salary floor is a big party of the answer. With a floor of 125M, nearly 1/3rd of the league would have needed to spend more money - some a lot more. That would almost certainly mean that some clubs would be in on FAs that they skipped on under the current system, and other clubs would probably offer long term extensions to their younger players.

I think adjusting the risk of long-term extensions for pre-arb players could be good in a number of ways. Obviously paying young stars more is good for the player, but it's also likely that teams would wind up with fewer albatrosses which is good for teams, and finally teams would become more likely to hold on to players past their Arb years which I think would be good for the sport.
 

Plympton91

bubble burster
SoSH Member
Oct 19, 2008
12,408
Correct. The issue is that professional sports have found themselves in a system where winning is not incentivized. When teams can do better by losing, that's a terrible place to be for a product that depends on competition.
Exactly. I was glad to see that the players’ counterproposal this winter went in the direction of penalizing teams for losing.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 26, 2005
30,501
Exactly. I was glad to see that the players’ counterproposal this winter went in the direction of penalizing teams for losing.
Baseball needs to incentivize teams that. Winning 80 games but not making the playoffs is heroic in the current system. Whether it's giving such teams additional revenue sharing; more cap; more draft cap; more international cap; or some sort of player exemption (i.e., what if teams that win over 75 games but don't make the playoffs are allowed to sign one player to a one-year deal that doesn't count against the cap?) - there are dozens of ways to do it but something has to be done to get every team to try.
 

Plympton91

bubble burster
SoSH Member
Oct 19, 2008
12,408
Baseball needs to incentivize teams that. Winning 80 games but not making the playoffs is heroic in the current system. Whether it's giving such teams additional revenue sharing; more cap; more draft cap; more international cap; or some sort of player exemption (i.e., what if teams that win over 75 games but don't make the playoffs are allowed to sign one player to a one-year deal that doesn't count against the cap?) - there are dozens of ways to do it but something has to be done to get every team to try.
Yup, I’ve made the exact same suggestion in several posts in the Baseball is broken thread. I think that’s exactly what is needed. Could also do something like if you lose 100 games your draft pick drops 5 spots.
 

charlieoscar

Member
Sep 28, 2014
1,339
Penalizing teams for losing?

Is there enough talent to go around to prevent that? For example, in the 2018 season there were 27 players who hit 30+ HR but only 15 who hit 35+ and there were only 16 batters qualifying for the batting title who hit .300+ and only six who hit .310+. You'll see the same type of thing when you look at pitchers and part-time players. I realize that there are other factors involved but I don't think there is enough talent to put all 30 teams on more or less an equal basis.
 

Plympton91

bubble burster
SoSH Member
Oct 19, 2008
12,408
Penalizing teams for losing?

Is there enough talent to go around to prevent that? For example, in the 2018 season there were 27 players who hit 30+ HR but only 15 who hit 35+ and there were only 16 batters qualifying for the batting title who hit .300+ and only six who hit .310+. You'll see the same type of thing when you look at pitchers and part-time players. I realize that there are other factors involved but I don't think there is enough talent to put all 30 teams on more or less an equal basis.
So what? The point is to generate demand for talented players, not to make it easy for teams to avoid the penalties. And “don’t lose 100 games” is not exactly a demand that teams be on equal footing. It’s a demand they not field replacement level minimum salaried non-prospects at half the positions on the field like the Marlins and Orioles are planning to do.

And I’d disagree there isn’t enough talent. There’s a whole expansion team of major leaguers who were starters last season out there still. With the opening of Japan, Korea, and Cuba, plus population growth in the past 20 years, MLB should have 36 teams, probably.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 26, 2005
30,501
Penalizing teams for losing?

Is there enough talent to go around to prevent that? For example, in the 2018 season there were 27 players who hit 30+ HR but only 15 who hit 35+ and there were only 16 batters qualifying for the batting title who hit .300+ and only six who hit .310+. You'll see the same type of thing when you look at pitchers and part-time players. I realize that there are other factors involved but I don't think there is enough talent to put all 30 teams on more or less an equal basis.
Yeah, I'm going to the other way. Our current structure of salary and talent acquisition incentivizes teams to lose, or at least not try to win. So long as the franchise doesn't fold, losing 500 games over 5 seasons is going to be a long-term benefit to the team, as we are about to see with the Os.

What baseball needs to do is incentivize winning. Plympton has mentioned this in other threads and I agree with him. My belief is that penalizing losing is not enough; that teams have to be given an incentive try. I think there are some ways of doing it but it doesn't matter what they do so long as they do something. Having 8-12 teams not try in one year is terrible for baseball.
 

Sandwich Pick

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 9, 2017
701
One of the things they can do is make 1st round picks lottery picks. The first 10 (half of the teams who miss the playoffs) can all have an equal chance at the first overall pick.

I don't think a salary floor will help because it will just create another situation where the money goes to guys who dont deserve it in the name of cap compliance.
 

keninten

New Member
Nov 24, 2005
588
Tennessee
What about just flipping the draft order a bit. The worst team gets the 10th pick and the 21th best team gets the 1st pick. The 20th best team gets #20 and the top team to miss the playoffs,11th place, gets 11th pick. It would incentivize winning.
 

Cesar Crespo

79
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2002
21,588
I think adding a 26th roster spot will be a talking point. It's more money to the players without increasing individual salaries and that's where the game is headed anyway.
 

soxhop411

news aggravator
SoSH Member
Dec 4, 2009
46,277
Well I didn’t see this coming.

There is the possibility that MLB/MLBPA extend the CBA if they can hash out differences


The sides also agreed to work through these more immediate matters that they see as win-win with the promise that they will discuss issues most pertinent to the union, namely the slowed free agent market, service time manipulation and tanking. If the sides are able to come to agreement on these larger economic issue the hope would be to extend the CBA beyond 2021.

The sides have amended the CBA in progress in the past for items such as drug testing and a domestic abuse policy. But have never done so before on major economic issues. So, there remains concern — especially since significant tension exists between the parties — if they could find common ground in these areas.
https://nypost.com/2019/03/01/august-trades-on-the-ropes-as-part-of-mlb-rule-change-talks/
 

soxhop411

news aggravator
SoSH Member
Dec 4, 2009
46,277

jon abbey

Shanghai Warrior
Moderator
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
70,731
I am fully with the players on this, but it's hard for me to take them totally seriously until they fire Tony Clark, who so badly botched the last negotiations and who still seems to be butchering his job. The owners and Manfred went to the players in 2018 and offered to renegotiate the CBA mid-contract, which I give them a lot of credit for, but the players reportedly have yet to really respond with anything coherent. This week Clark said publicly he'd like the draft gotten rid of, but Manfred said he had never told them that before. Hire professionals to represent you, MLBPA!!!
 

shaggydog2000

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 5, 2007
11,483
I am fully with the players on this, but it's hard for me to take them totally seriously until they fire Tony Clark, who so badly botched the last negotiations and who still seems to be butchering his job. The owners and Manfred went to the players in 2018 and offered to renegotiate the CBA mid-contract, which I give them a lot of credit for, but the players reportedly have yet to really respond with anything coherent. This week Clark said publicly he'd like the draft gotten rid of, but Manfred said he had never told them that before. Hire professionals to represent you, MLBPA!!!
Yeah, even though I want my team to have all the best players forever, especially the ones I like, I also want them fairly compensated. I don't know what is the exact best way to allow continuity with teams and fair pay, but I do know the players negotiated their way into this mess, and their going to have to have to find somebody who won't make huge mistakes like agreeing to a de facto salary cap without getting anything substantial in return and then complain that most free agents aren't getting huge contracts any more. If I were the players I would agree to a hard cap and reduction in contract length (which effects a tiny percentage of players) if it got me earlier free agency, a set share of league revenues, and a salary floor.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
Yeah, even though I want my team to have all the best players forever, especially the ones I like, I also want them fairly compensated. I don't know what is the exact best way to allow continuity with teams and fair pay, but I do know the players negotiated their way into this mess, and their going to have to have to find somebody who won't make huge mistakes like agreeing to a de facto salary cap without getting anything substantial in return and then complain that most free agents aren't getting huge contracts any more. If I were the players I would agree to a hard cap and reduction in contract length (which effects a tiny percentage of players) if it got me earlier free agency, a set share of league revenues, and a salary floor.
The set share of revenues is by far the most important point, and is something football and basketball already have. Fix that and you’ll still have disputes among players (free agency and arbitration, minimum salaries, etc.) and among owners (salary cap/flooor, revenue sharing), but the pitched battles between owners and players that cause most work stoppages will be avoided.
 

uncannymanny

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,081
I am fully with the players on this, but it's hard for me to take them totally seriously until they fire Tony Clark, who so badly botched the last negotiations and who still seems to be butchering his job. The owners and Manfred went to the players in 2018 and offered to renegotiate the CBA mid-contract, which I give them a lot of credit for, but the players reportedly have yet to really respond with anything coherent. This week Clark said publicly he'd like the draft gotten rid of, but Manfred said he had never told them that before. Hire professionals to represent you, MLBPA!!!
Wait you think they should hire someone experienced in labor negotiations to lead their labor negotiations, not an ex-athlete with no experience? Insanity.