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.

soxhop411

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Dec 4, 2009
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I am moving the top half of this post over from the Off season thread
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$18.25 million!
It's a lot less exciting when you realize he turned down the $17.9M qualifying offer from LA a few months ago as well as a 4 year/$50M+ offer from the Mets more recently. Terrible job by his agent.

Honestly I’m becoming more confident that we are going to have a longggggg work stoppage/lockout/strike when this CBA expires.

Owners are going to try and make the CBA even more one sided towards owners than this current CBA already is and I hope tony Clark actually grows a pair and doesn’t cave to their demands.

And honestly given how terrible the last few offseason have been in terms of good players getting screwed $$$, I wouldn’t blame MLBPA if they strike. They deserve to get paid what they actually deserve.
The system is broken and it needs to be fixed. I mean he couldn't even beat the deal that Russell Martin got 4 years ago, despite being younger than Martin when he hit FA and having near similar wins in the 4 years prior to FA ( via Craig Goldstein) ..... Grandal's deal is only three hundred fifty thousand more than the damn QO for this season...

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Of course we are all aware of the "FA spring training" that occurred last season due to the obscene amount of "star" FA's that were left unsigned going into spring training... It will be interesting if we see a repeat of that this year.. It will also be interesting to see what FA contracts Manny Machado and Harper end up with....

FA spending has also been down the past few years:
Nowhere is this more evident than on the free-agent market. It was the avenue for players to find great riches for decades. Heck, it paid out a whopping $3.84 billion just four years ago, according to Spotrac.

But that now looks like a fluky one-off rather than a sign of things to come. Free-agent spending didn't surpass even $1.5 billion in either of the last two years, and the latter of those sent up red flags aplenty.

Notable 2017-18 free agents such as Yu Darvish, J.D. Martinez, Eric Hosmer, Jake Arrieta and Alex Cobb lingered on the market into February and beyond, and only Hosmer and Cobb beat their projected paydays from MLB Trade Rumors. Other stars—e.g., Mike Moustakas, Lance Lynn and Greg Holland—had to settle for one-year deals with small guarantees
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2814675-mlb-stars-have-to-prepare-for-war-with-cheap-owners-pocketing-millions

Jeff Passan wrote last January for Yahoo sports why baseball's economic system might be broken.


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For the past few years its been pretty apparent that FA is broken. And there have been signs that the MLBPA and MLB have growing tensions...

From Late last season:

The growing labor tensions between MLB and the MLBPA stepped up again yesterday as MLPBA Exec Dir Tony Clark said the players consider last winter's slower offseason free agent market a "direct attack" on their rights. Clark, in part referencing more than 100 unsigned free agents at the start of Spring Training in February and many others signed to shorter and smaller deals than expected, said, "What the players saw last offseason is that their free agency rights are under direct attack, and those rights have been a bedrock of our economic system. If that's the case, we're going to have difficult decisions to make." Clark, speaking before the Baseball Writers Association of America, went further to suggest that a work stoppage could occur when the current CBA ends after the '21 season, ending a quarter-century of labor peace. "To the extent there are challenges to those rights, historically I would suggest those have manifested themselves in a particular way,
REASON FOR WORRY: THE ATHLETIC's Jayson Stark writes Manfred and Clark did a "fine job of avoiding ... popular phrases like 'strike,' 'lockout' and 'NLRB.'" Stark: "But if you spent a couple hours, as I did, listening to them talk about the state of the sport ... you'd be terrified right now." Terrified that things are "bad and getting worse." Traditionally, that "never ends well" in this sport (THEATHLETIC.com, 7/18). In N.Y., Ken Davidoff writes the current ownership-player dynamic carries a "dangerous tension that hasn't been witnessed in a generation." One that "threatens baseball's viability as it tries to push forward" (N.Y. POST, 7/18). In Cleveland, Paul Hoynes writes the "free-agent freezeout" of '17-18 is over, but the "scars remain" (Cleveland PLAIN DEALER, 7/18). In Toronto, Richard Griffin writes there are "storm clouds forming on the labour horizon" and "battle lines are being drawn" (TORONTO STAR, 7/18).
https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2018/07/18/Leagues-and-Governing-Bodies/MLB-Labor.aspx

From Evan Drellich, the MLBPA is beefing up its legal firepower

Brodie Van Wagenen when he was an agent last year accused MLB owners of collusion and threatened spring training boycott
 

moondog80

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Sep 20, 2005
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I wonder if Eric Hosmer thinks the owners are colluding to suppress FA?

That example aside, I think teams are (mostly) getting smarter about FA and there has been a market correction. I'm not sure what the breaking point was, but after one too many Pablo Sandovals, things tightened up.
 

Plympton91

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Oct 19, 2008
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I voted yes but I have some hope the owners will be willing to concede on some issues given how stable and large their revenues are.

The could easily give back arb-2 for everyone, and increase the minimum for major leaguers, as well as for 40-man players on split contracts, and improve the deal for major league veterans on minor league deals. It wouldn’t be that painful for them to make everyone a free agent at 29, even if they haven’t hit 6 years of service time. All that except arb-2 and the reduction in control for late bloomers would be chicken feed, but all would show good faith.

Then it would be up to the players to decide if they wanted a cap/floor system to create a better market for non stars, or if they want to protect the rights of a few superstars who hit free agency at 27 to become essentially co owners.
 

RG33

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Yeah, Grandal barely saw the field in the postseason. He is a bad example — he may have a shitty agent for turning down the Mets offer, but that is not a example of some sort of collusion against free agents.

I agree with Moondog that teams are just more analytical, have a firm grasp of the history of free agent contracts, and going forward are just going to pay elite talent and let the other 150 or so guys come to them in January or February looking for jobs. Just because things have changed, doesn’t mean it is some grand conspiracy. Teams have gotten smarter, that’s really what is happening.
 

Rough Carrigan

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I am moving the top half of this post over from the Off season thread
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Honestly I’m becoming more confident that we are going to have a longggggg work stoppage/lockout/strike when this CBA expires.

Owners are going to try and make the CBA even more one sided towards owners than this current CBA already is and I hope tony Clark actually grows a pair and doesn’t cave to their demands.

And honestly given how terrible the last few offseason have been in terms of good players getting screwed $$$, I wouldn’t blame MLBPA if they strike. They deserve to get paid what they actually deserve.
The system is broken and it needs to be fixed. I mean he couldn't even beat the deal that Russell Martin got 4 years ago, despite being younger than Martin when he hit FA and having near similar wins in the 4 years prior to FA ( via Craig Goldstein) ..... Grandal's deal is only three hundred fifty thousand more than the damn QO for this season...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------


Of course we are all aware of the "FA spring training" that occurred last season due to the obscene amount of "star" FA's that were left unsigned going into spring training... It will be interesting if we see a repeat of that this year.. It will also be interesting to see what FA contracts Manny Machado and Harper end up with....

FA spending has also been down the past few years:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2814675-mlb-stars-have-to-prepare-for-war-with-cheap-owners-pocketing-millions

Jeff Passan wrote last January for Yahoo sports why baseball's economic system might be broken.


-------

For the past few years its been pretty apparent that FA is broken. And there have been signs that the MLBPA and MLB have growing tensions...

From Late last season:




https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2018/07/18/Leagues-and-Governing-Bodies/MLB-Labor.aspx

From Evan Drellich, the MLBPA is beefing up its legal firepower

Brodie Van Wagenen when he was an agent last year accused MLB owners of collusion and threatened spring training boycott
We saw real collusion in 1987, for example. Nobody being stupid is not the same as they all refuse to make an offer. Yes, the free agent market is gummed up by the two biggest guys out there still window shopping.

But what distinguishes the market action so far as collusion and not the buyers just being smarter than they used to be? Grandal had some form of 4 year offer from the Mets but turned it down. He's a catcher with some serious miles on him.

Everybody who signed so far has apparently had multiple offers at around what were market figures for them.

Back when free agency first started, Charlie Finley's solution for the owners was to have no limits on free agency. None. No first six years under a team's control. His angle was that a larger supply of players would tend to keep their salaries down.

The owners didn't go for it and the system we have now restricts the supply of free agents by only letting players out of team control after six years. Initially, the system also had to shake out the effects of breaking out of the reserve clause because it outrageously restricted salaries. In the early 1960's, the Dodgers were taken to court by someone fighting them in regard to their parking lots. Buried in the court documents was the fact that the Dodgers, in 1962, admitted making a profit of $5 million. In 1966, Koufax and Drysdale had to stage a joint hold out when they asked to be paid a total of $300,000 that year. The system under the reserve clause was a joke.

Is the functioning of the system now that different from when salaries were rising faster? Is the qualifying offer system such a drag on salaries compared to the draft pick system that preceded it? What's really different besides the owners being a little smarter?

I
 

Apisith

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The luxury tax has become a hard cap because it’s tied to draft picks. And draft picks are now much more valuable than ever because other avenues of getting talent are controlled. International FAs and young international FAs are all heavily controlled, meaning teams can’t just spend money to get them. All of these factors makes draft picks much more valuable than before. Then, you make penalties related to draft picks which effectively makes the luxury tap a hard cap. The hard cap acts as an upper bound of spending and most of the big teams are at or will be at the hard cap level.

Then because draft picks have become so much more valuable, you’re actually incentivising teams to go all-out at tanking because that’s the only way they can acquire talent. So teams that would have been borderline competitors but could acquire talent are now incentivised to tank lest they be in purgatory for 3-5 years, no chance of winning but no chance of acquiring premium talent.

All of this leads to less competition at the top and reduces the incentives for top teams to sacrifice picks to win. The yankees are comfortable with their squad, no need to spend $300m on Harper because either way, they’re going to win 100 games and make the playoffs. Playoffs are a lottery anyway and they can pick up pieces from teams who want to tank at the trade deadline.

Teams are smarter, sure. But the last 2 CBAs have completely changed the incentive structure in the game.
 

Apisith

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Pile on top of it is signing FAs actually cost you picks. Before the last 2 CBAs, the team that lost the player got compensation picks but the team that signed the player didn’t lose anything. So now teams are less incentivised to sign FAs, find it harder to acquire talent through other means than the draft pick, and the draft pick is now attached to the luxury tax making the threshold in effect a hard cap.
 

jon abbey

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We've talked about it a lot in the 'Baseball is Broken' thread but another strike against FAs is loss of roster flexibility. Every guy you sign who is unable to be optioned if they are terrible but healthy makes it a bit harder to manage your roster.

Basically salary needs to be much more closely related to performance, younger players who perform need to get paid a fair amount more quickly, and older players need to expect less if they're not superstars (this part is already happening, the problem is the first part is not accompanying it). I'm not sure how to do that, but maybe every player hitting FA the winter after they turn 27 is a start. That would at least stop service time games, no need to not play your best players if they are going to end up as FAs at the same time anyway.
 

j44thor

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We've talked about it a lot in the 'Baseball is Broken' thread but another strike against FAs is loss of roster flexibility. Every guy you sign who is unable to be optioned if they are terrible but healthy makes it a bit harder to manage your roster.

Basically salary needs to be much more closely related to performance, younger players who perform need to get paid a fair amount more quickly, and older players need to expect less if they're not superstars (this part is already happening, the problem is the first part is not accompanying it). I'm not sure how to do that, but maybe every player hitting FA the winter after they turn 27 is a start. That would at least stop service time games, no need to not play your best players if they are going to end up as FAs at the same time anyway.
I don't think you can arbitrarily use age as the determining factor for FA. That will heavily incentivize teams to draft HS players so that they have them longer. I do think they need to shorten the overall window of control esp for the top players. Xander is a great example, he has already put up 14+ WAR and has career earnings of 14M and won't be a UFA for another year. Certainly he should have been a UFA earlier.

I do think the system is largely broken when it comes to September call-ups/post season. Teams shouldn't play 140+ games with one set of rules then add weapons the last month of season + playoffs, many of whom won't get service time despite their contributions.

Had X clock started in 2013 when he debuted he would be a UFA now which seems about right. Admittedly he is an outlier given he debuted at 20 but with the youth movement we are seeing he likely won't be the outlier moving forward.
 

uncannymanny

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An easy place to make some changes are the absurd restrictions around performance incentives. Guaranteed contracts aren’t going away, but let teams pay for whatever bonus structure they want. Lower the amount of Sandoval-type disasters. I think teams will pay $40/year gladly for top performance.
 

Saints Rest

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I wonder how much the reduction/elimination of PEDs has changed the calculus of baseball vis a a vis FAs. 20 years ago, players in their late 30s could still be incredibly productive players, probably helped in part by PEDs on some level. Now the peak of one’s career (speaking as a league wide average) is surely getting younger. This puts a higher pressure on getting paid earlier.
JD Martinez’s market may have been shortened by the fact that teams didn’t want to pay for the “twilight of his career” (to intentionally borrow an appropriate phrase: Duquette assumed that a pitcher like Clemens should have been entering the twilight, but PEDs pushed that twilight back by 8-10 years!).
Machado and Harper are interesting examples due to their age, but my sense is that if contracts could only be 5 years in length, they would both be signed by now, but teams don’t want to be paying $30MM+ per year for those mid-30’s years when they will be in decline.
Theo was onto this when he foresaw the approaching decline years for Pedro.
Cano is another example. The word was (IIRC) that the Yanks only wanted to go 7 years but Cano wanted (and got) 10 years from Seattle. It’s those 3 years with no PED help that will make that contract look bad. (23.7 WAR in his first 5 years in Seattle almost justifies the full $228MM in contract value, and certainly is worth the first half of it. But what will these last 5 years bring in WAR??)
 

Plympton91

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Your Cano example is an excellent one to illustrate how the luxury tax is impacting the entire salary structure. Dispense with the trade complication for now.

The Mariners got the full value of the contract in years 1-6, underpaying early and overpaying late. With no luxury tax penalties, that structure works fine for both sides. But, if there’s a de facto cap, then in the out years where you’re overpaying it’s killing your ability to sign reinforcements. Without the cap, you just find a way to repeat the cycle of underpay now and overpay later.

You might wonder why it’s asymmetric? Why doesn’t underpaying early help you enough on the front end enough to offset the harm on the back end? I think it has to do with cycles. Teams go out and get big free agents when they’ve got a stable of younger-cheap-players that need a superstar or two to get over the top. So that means they’re not constrained by the cap when they make the signing. But then those young players mature into their primes, and the fact that you’re overpaying the back end of a former superstar makes it harder to fit your own pending free agents into the cap.

We’ll see it in Boston next winter. The Price contract will mean the Sox have to choose between Betts and Bogaerts. They’d be in a much better situation if Price was hitting free agency and choose between him and Bogaerts while they had 3 more years of Betts at $31 million per.

Those dynamics mean that teams think twice about overpaying the back end now.

Lots of stuff that the players union really didn’t think through. They really need to get some of it rolled back.
 

charlieoscar

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Sep 28, 2014
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A problem with back-loading contracts are those players who
a.) Get injured and never get back to their star level, or,
b.) Simply crash before they get to the end of their contract.

I'm not saying these were back-loaded contracts but Nomar Garciaparra was on his way to the Hall of Fame when injuries began to strike. In his first 8 seasons, Garciaparra had an OPS+ of 134; in his last 6, his OPS+ was 102 and his career SLG dropped 136 points as he averaged about 84 games per season.

Rice had a career batting average over .300 and a 133 OPS+ after his first 13 seasons but his final three seasons cost him a lifetime .300 AVG and he didn't get to 400 HR or 1500 RBI.

You either let players go and eat the rest of the contract of hope you can get something back in trade while still eating a lot of the contract. There is insurance but it has gotten a lot more expensive to insure mega-contracts and what is covered has gone down. Of course, the same could happen with younger players. Connie Mack's theory was to trade his stars before they started going downhill. Branch Rickey revolutionized the farm system, at one point in 1940, he owned 32 minor league teams, sometimes more than one in a league, and had working agreements with eight others. Landis once took 74 minor leaguers from him. Given that there is now free agency for MLB players and that their union is so strong and the draft rigidly controlled, it's not easy to come up with an answer.
 

Rough Carrigan

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Pile on top of it is signing FAs actually cost you picks. Before the last 2 CBAs, the team that lost the player got compensation picks but the team that signed the player didn’t lose anything. So now teams are less incentivised to sign FAs, find it harder to acquire talent through other means than the draft pick, and the draft pick is now attached to the luxury tax making the threshold in effect a hard cap.
I think the effort to curb the use of PED's has also depressed the value of older players making the younger players and the draft picks more valuable.
 

mauf

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Roughly 50% of MLB revenues go to player salaries. That’s in line with the players’ share of revenues in other major North American team sports.

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/2/21/17035624/mlb-revenue-sharing-owners-players-free-agency-rob-manfred

I voted “no” in the OP’s poll because I don’t think players have much chance of getting a deal better than any of the other athletes’ unions have been able to achieve. They certainly won’t succeed in getting the sort of sea change in the game’s economics that would be necessary to make it worth absorbing the cost of a protracted strike.

The MLBPA is making noises about collusion for the second straight offseason because star players and their agents are complaining. I don’t think the union is wrong to respond to those complaints — their job is to represent their constituents, and it’s not like the owners don’t have a track record in this regard. But the hard truth for the complainers is that front offices are finally recognizing that long-term contracts for veteran players are usually a sucker’s bet.
 

mauidano

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Hasn't the annual average AGE of a MLB player dropped as well? Teams are going to get the longest control of players as they can until FA. At that point it's a buyers market. Less than star players are not going to be getting long term deals. Teams will cycle back to youth.

However it still pays to be young and mega talented like Mookie Betts or Thor with the Mets.
 

jon abbey

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However it still pays to be young and mega talented like Mookie Betts or Thor with the Mets.
Both with four years of top performance under their belts already, the big pay rise needs to happen quicker when guys are that good.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Roughly 50% of MLB revenues go to player salaries. That’s in line with the players’ share of revenues in other major North American team sports.

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/2/21/17035624/mlb-revenue-sharing-owners-players-free-agency-rob-manfred

I voted “no” in the OP’s poll because I don’t think players have much chance of getting a deal better than any of the other athletes’ unions have been able to achieve. They certainly won’t succeed in getting the sort of sea change in the game’s economics that would be necessary to make it worth absorbing the cost of a protracted strike.

The MLBPA is making noises about collusion for the second straight offseason because star players and their agents are complaining. I don’t think the union is wrong to respond to those complaints — their job is to represent their constituents, and it’s not like the owners don’t have a track record in this regard. But the truth for the complainers is that front offices are finally recognizing that long-term contracts for veteran players are usually a sucker’s bet.
You are correct about the bolded but that is only in relationship to the value of productive young players and the way the system is set up.

I don't know if the owners understood what was happening when they did this, but most of the recent structural changes in baseball have decreased the value of veterans. First and foremost, revenue sharing has allowed most teams to lock up players that they really want, limiting the free agent talent pool. But also consider these factors: draft pick and international salary caps greatly increase the value of the top picks in the draft, which means that teams are incentivized not to accumulate talent to win; as the average salary climbs, so too does the value of rookie contracts; as mentioned above, drug testing appears to have reduced the longevity of baseball players; and to me, even the wild card system (when combined with tanking) helps to reduce the value of free agents because a team can go cheap at several positions and still "compete" for a playoff spot without having to get veteran players in.

I know the players have always been willing to trade off rookie contracts for what they perceive as FA friendly rules (given that none of the players voting will be impacted by future rookie contract rules) but all that has done is to increase the value of rookie contracts and decrease the value of FA contracts. Really, if the players association wanted to do something about this, they'd figure out a way to increase the compensation for players on rookie contracts, particularly good players. According to BRef, Mookie, for example, has accumulated 35.2 WAR while being paid $12.5MM. That's the problem right there.
 

uncannymanny

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On the one hand, yes. On the other, unless you’re instituting retroactive salaries, how would the Red Sox for ex know that paying Betts $20m+ in years 2 or 3 is sound with a year or two of track record.

IOW, the problem with “paying for future performance and not past” is that only the latter is actually in evidence.
 

Apisith

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Players on arb years should be paid more than if they were signed as FAs since arb years are only 1-year guaranteed contracts. Just an idea, but every player has only 1 year on the minimum, then it’s arb right away. And any player who gets MVP votes or CY gets the highest salary + 10% or something like that. So Mookie next year would be paid $35m and continue to climb for the rest of his arb years (1 more year). This pays players when they are performing while still allowing the club to have control. Also reduces the incentives to tank and hoard young players.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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On the one hand, yes. On the other, unless you’re instituting retroactive salaries, how would the Red Sox for ex know that paying Betts $20m+ in years 2 or 3 is sound with a year or two of track record.

IOW, the problem with “paying for future performance and not past” is that only the latter is actually in evidence.
I think there are a lot of ways to figure out how to make this work. For example, rookie Ks could have built in incentives. And frankly rookie K base salaries should increase at least at the rate the average salaries increase.
 

uncannymanny

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I think there are a lot of ways to figure out how to make this work. For example, rookie Ks could have built in incentives. And frankly rookie K base salaries should increase at least at the rate the average salaries increase.
Totally agree. I think a base salary+incentives structure is where they have to head. Some will win and some will lose in such a change, but IMO the right players are on the right sides. Veterans like Sandoval would lose and young players like Betts would win.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
I like where this conversation is going, particularly the need to get over MLB's aversion to performance-based incentives.

I would love to see some kind of composite structure where salaries are made up of three components:

1) a base salary that increases with service time till it maxes out at the FA stage. Could start at $1M and increase by $1M each year until it maxes out after the fifth year at $6M;
2) a performance component that's based on WAR x a multiplier; WAR could be computed as either previous year's performance, projected next-year performance, or a combination of the two. You could phase this in along with the base salary, increasing the WAR multiplier for each year of service time.
3) a bonus component for FA that would be at the bidding team's discretion.

A key piece of this concept is that over the course of a FA contract, base and performance components would continue to be computed in the normal way (call this "nominal salary"). The FA contract would be a promise to pay X more than nominal salary for each year of the contract; the total amount would fluctuate along with performance, but with a guaranteed minimum of bonus + base.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I like where this conversation is going, particularly the need to get over MLB's aversion to performance-based incentives.

I would love to see some kind of composite structure where salaries are made up of three components:

1) a base salary that increases with service time till it maxes out at the FA stage. Could start at $1M and increase by $1M each year until it maxes out after the fifth year at $6M;
2) a performance component that's based on WAR x a multiplier; WAR could be computed as either previous year's performance, projected next-year performance, or a combination of the two. You could phase this in along with the base salary, increasing the WAR multiplier for each year of service time.
3) a bonus component for FA that would be at the bidding team's discretion.

A key piece of this concept is that over the course of a FA contract, base and performance components would continue to be computed in the normal way (call this "nominal salary"). The FA contract would be a promise to pay X more than nominal salary for each year of the contract; the total amount would fluctuate along with performance, but with a guaranteed minimum of bonus + base.
I don't think it's MLB as a whole which is adverse to performance based incentives but the players. The players have held out for so long for guaranteed contracts that I suspect it would take a great deal of education for them to come off of that position. Particularly since it worked very well for a while, and the players' union is dominated by guys who care about what worked in the past and don't really think about what might work in the future.

It's hard to blame owners for not wanting to pay for past performance since who does that in real life?

Finally, just to beat a not quite yet dead horse, it's always been great sport for the players' union to get additional benefits at the expense of rookie and minor league players. That has got to stop. There is currently literally no downside - as we are going to see from the Os for the next 5+ years - in tearing down the roster and playing nothing but kids on rookie contracts. Those who perform well get signed to team-friendly extensions. Those who don't perform well get jettisoned, and every loss that results means that the team gets a better draft pick.
 

Plympton91

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That’s why I think the players union needs to focus on including “anti-tank” provisions in the next agreement. Reward teams that try to win but come up short of the playoffs with extra draft picks and internationally money. Penalize teams that lose 100 games with a skimpy payroll by taking away a draft pick.

In the past there was an argument that cutting major league payroll could be reinvested in development. That’s not true anymore with draft slotting and the international cap. Teams need to be forced to try to win as many games as they can, even if that’s just going to be 68 wins instead of 62, and then rewarded if they go 81-81 instead of 72-90.
 

charlieoscar

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I like where this conversation is going, particularly the need to get over MLB's aversion to performance-based incentives.
Isn't there a potential problem with performance-based incentives because clubs do not play the same schedules and because of park factors? West Coast NL teams play different teams than do East Coast AL teams and a left-handed batter like Wade Boggs certainly benefited from the Monster at Fenway more than Ted Williams did. While there are corrections that can be made, I'd bet there would be players who think they got shafted.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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That’s why I think the players union needs to focus on including “anti-tank” provisions in the next agreement. Reward teams that try to win but come up short of the playoffs with extra draft picks and internationally money. Penalize teams that lose 100 games with a skimpy payroll by taking away a draft pick.

In the past there was an argument that cutting major league payroll could be reinvested in development. That’s not true anymore with draft slotting and the international cap. Teams need to be forced to try to win as many games as they can, even if that’s just going to be 68 wins instead of 62, and then rewarded if they go 81-81 instead of 72-90.
That's certainly one way to do it (so would raising bonuses for the top picks in the draft but that's another post.) As Neil Payne wrote before the beginning of last season: " From a bottom-line perspective, buying wins that aren’t likely to tip a team over the threshold to making the playoffs is a poor way to maximize revenue".

Maybe this is becoming too convoluted, but giving teams that win over 70 games with a certain minimum payroll some kind of salary relief, additional draft or international signing cap room, or even a supplemental draft pick would be helpful. As a corollary to what Payne wrote, teams right now are either built to win 90 games or 65. Teams that are built to win 70-82 games are a bad business proposition.
 

YTF

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Isn't there a potential problem with performance-based incentives because clubs do not play the same schedules and because of park factors? West Coast NL teams play different teams than do East Coast AL teams and a left-handed batter like Wade Boggs certainly benefited from the Monster at Fenway more than Ted Williams did. While there are corrections that can be made, I'd bet there would be players who think they got shafted.
I get what you're saying but shouldn't that be factored into negotiations? Incentives are just that and would/should differ depending on player and team. With that in mind the agents should argue which incentives are or aren't attainable given a variety of factors. I think the bigger concern with incentive laden contracts might be a club blocking certain goals via playing time.
 

Haunted

The Man in the Box
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They must have edited the article, as Pearce is not mentioned in that one anymore.
 

soxhop411

news aggravator
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Manfred just now
“ I reject the notion that payroll is a good measure for how much a team is trying or how successful that team is going to be."”

Ok Manfred... If this is the case, then get rid of the CBT, and get rid of the "salary cap"
 

soxhop411

news aggravator
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Dec 4, 2009
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Honestly that whole Manfred press conference today was a train wreck where he was blaming everyone but the owners... Its two FA off seasons in a row that this depressed FA market has happened...


I thought it would be impossible to have a worse commissioner than Selig, but Manfred is getting to that point (and will be there if there is a strike)..
 

j-man

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Dec 19, 2012
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there needs to be a cap floor so that teams like MIA OAK have to speand X $ i wouild have 3 tiers

Tier 1200- 236 MIL BOS NYY LA CHC WASH PHILLY STL

Tier 2 150-199 mil NYM CWS CLE TOR DET SEA TEX HOU LAA ATL MILW CINY SF ZONA SD COL BALT MINN

TIER 3 118-149 MIL MIA PITT TB KC OAK
 

jon abbey

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Oakland won 97 games last year, pretty ridiculous to make them waste money if they don’t need to. Young players need to get paid more and faster and veterans should be allowed to be sent to AAA if they’re not performing (their salary stays the same), that will go a long way to fixing things.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Oakland won 97 games last year, pretty ridiculous to make them waste money if they don’t need to. Young players need to get paid more and faster and veterans should be allowed to be sent to AAA if they’re not performing (their salary stays the same), that will go a long way to fixing things.
Or MLB could do what the NBA does and if a team doesn't meet the floor, the players under contract receive raises until the team meets the floor.
 

Boggs26

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Oakland won 97 games last year, pretty ridiculous to make them waste money if they don’t need to. Young players need to get paid more and faster and veterans should be allowed to be sent to AAA if they’re not performing (their salary stays the same), that will go a long way to fixing things.
So perhaps a floor makes it more likely that a team like Oakland buys out Arb and FA earlier to meet the floor - which would have the effect of young players getting paid more and earlier.

Someone like Matt Chapman - with 2 years left at minimum, then 3 Arb years - might become worth the risk of a long-term contract with a salary floor. If the A's suddenly had to add $40 million to reach a salary floor, would they consider offering something like 7/95 with a couple of team options to bring it up to 9/125 or something like that? Basically what the Rays did with Longoria? They could do that, still be in on a Harper or Machado, and if they didn't sign one of them they could try buying out any number of other players sitting at Min or early Arb.

Obviously Oak would rather keep paying their young guys 600k, but forcing them to reach 100M or whatever line for payroll doesn't have to mean overpaying 33yo FAs. They could continue playing young guys while also increasing the likelihood of keeping them longer than 5 or 6 years.
 

jon abbey

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So perhaps a floor makes it more likely that a team like Oakland buys out Arb and FA earlier to meet the floor - which would have the effect of young players getting paid more and earlier.

Someone like Matt Chapman - with 2 years left at minimum, then 3 Arb years - might become worth the risk of a long-term contract with a salary floor. If the A's suddenly had to add $40 million to reach a salary floor, would they consider offering something like 7/95 with a couple of team options to bring it up to 9/125 or something like that? Basically what the Rays did with Longoria? They could do that, still be in on a Harper or Machado, and if they didn't sign one of them they could try buying out any number of other players sitting at Min or early Arb.

Obviously Oak would rather keep paying their young guys 600k, but forcing them to reach 100M or whatever line for payroll doesn't have to mean overpaying 33yo FAs. They could continue playing young guys while also increasing the likelihood of keeping them longer than 5 or 6 years.
That all makes sense, I just would prefer them to eliminate loopholes for teams to manipulate first, as much as possible anyway, and then put in a floor after that if needed.

In addition to the two things I mentioned last post (Young players need to get paid more and faster and veterans should be allowed to be sent to AAA if they’re not performing (their salary stays the same)), the length of team control shouldn't be able to be manipulated any more, maybe a set time from when the players are initially signed/drafted to when they hit FA.
 

Max Power

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One way to achieve that is through restricted free agency. There have been a few articles on Fangraphs about it recently. Basically a team still controls a player for six seasons, but after the first a player can choose to become a restricted free agent. They'd be free to negotiate with any other team for a contract that covers the remaining portion of the six seasons (or longer). Their original team can either match that and keep them or let them walk.

It's unlikely a competing team would simply bid up a player since they would end up getting stuck with them. Players would be paid what they're worth on a long term deal right after their rookie season. And the team controlling their rights would be under pressure to sign players to a long term deal at market rates before they exercise their option.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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In addition to the two things I mentioned last post (Young players need to get paid more and faster and veterans should be allowed to be sent to AAA if they’re not performing (their salary stays the same)), the length of team control shouldn't be able to be manipulated any more, maybe a set time from when the players are initially signed/drafted to when they hit FA.
Thinking about this since I'm bored, the funny thing is that tanking in all sports never seemed to be as much in vogue before they instituted the rookie salary cap (or equivalent). When the Kevin Garnetts and Sam Bradfords of the world were getting exorbitant rookie contracts, top picks weren't nearly as "valuable" as the mid-1st round picks that were exponentially less expensive.

Obviously, no sport is going back to those days but as you point out the current system sucks too.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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One way to achieve that is through restricted free agency. There have been a few articles on Fangraphs about it recently. Basically a team still controls a player for six seasons, but after the first a player can choose to become a restricted free agent. They'd be free to negotiate with any other team for a contract that covers the remaining portion of the six seasons (or longer). Their original team can either match that and keep them or let them walk.

It's unlikely a competing team would simply bid up a player since they would end up getting stuck with them. Players would be paid what they're worth on a long term deal right after their rookie season. And the team controlling their rights would be under pressure to sign players to a long term deal at market rates before they exercise their option.
If the RFA was just after their first season, teams would be incentivized to limit the playing time of all of their stars in the first season.

Also not sure that it's a great idea from a marketing standpoint to let big market teams poach young stars off the small market teams.

But agree that the current system makes guys like Mookie Betts so unbelievably valuable that teams are willing to punt entire seasons to try to get a couple of them.
 

Max Power

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If the RFA was just after their first season, teams would be incentivized to limit the playing time of all of their stars in the first season.

Also not sure that it's a great idea from a marketing standpoint to let big market teams poach young stars off the small market teams.

But agree that the current system makes guys like Mookie Betts so unbelievably valuable that teams are willing to punt entire seasons to try to get a couple of them.
It would be after every season, but just once by definition since the contract would cover the remaining years of control. So maybe a player thinks they'll earn more by waiting a year or two and cashing in on the last 3 or 4 years of team control.

Yes, it sucks that small market teams will lose young players. I'd imagine you'd see those teams filling up their roster with older players who would be cheaper under the new system.

The other way to handle it is just to make every year after the first an arbitration year and remove any salary limits. A second year player in the new system could be paid just as much as a sixth year player under the current system. No potential loss of talent other than non-tenders.
 

pokey_reese

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So, maybe the players would take something like:
  • 1 year reduction in team control on the back end, or young players get to arb one year earlier (so either way, good young players accelerate their earning potential)
  • A small increase in the league minimum, with a built-in annual increase structure pegged to revenues
Owners get:
  • Pace of play improvements
  • Reduce draft pick/pool signing penalties for signing FA
Both get:
  • 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.
 

jon abbey

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So, maybe the players would take something like:
  • 1 year reduction in team control on the back end, or young players get to arb one year earlier (so either way, good young players accelerate their earning potential)
  • A small increase in the league minimum, with a built-in annual increase structure pegged to revenues
Owners get:
  • Pace of play improvements
  • Reduce draft pick/pool signing penalties for signing FA
Both get:
  • 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.
Also I think they need to dump the concept of 'options' because the inability of veterans to be sent down hurts team's roster flexibility and hence is costing veterans jobs.
 

Plympton91

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Also I think they need to dump the concept of 'options' because the inability of veterans to be sent down hurts team's roster flexibility and hence is costing veterans jobs.
I still don’t understand why this is a bigger problem in 2019 than it was in 2009.

If you don’t want a veteran, you release them . There’s nothing for them to prove in the minors.

Plus, it would allow big market teams to hoard talent the way the Dodgers used the 10 day disabled list last season. You could sign 6 starters and rotate them through, “optioning” one down and skipping a start for for 10 days at a time.
 

jon abbey

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I still don’t understand why this is a bigger problem in 2019 than it was in 2009.

If you don’t want a veteran, you release them . There’s nothing for them to prove in the minors.

Plus, it would allow big market teams to hoard talent the way the Dodgers used the 10 day disabled list last season. You could sign 6 starters and rotate them through, “optioning” one down and skipping a start for for 10 days at a time.
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.