Hadn't voted on this before but after having read through the owners' latest rejections - I really think they're going to lose the entire season. Stupidity levels are off the charts.
Poll: How long will the MLB lockout last?
- Thread starter BringBackMo
- Start date
Yup. Appears that way. A shame really as it’s still by far my favorite sport, but honestly, if they do I am not so sure I come back.
How is this possibly true? Players are asking for Super 2 to be increased from 22% to 75%-80%? That's hundreds of millions of dollars right there. That's not even including increases to luxury tax limits? What new revenues is Sheehan talking about?
He probably means since the previous CBA:
- MLB revenues have soared from $8.2 billion in 2015 to over $10.7 billion in 2019, a 30 percent increase
- Player salaries have decreased by 6.4 percent, with the average salary declining from $4.45 million to $4.17 million during the span of the current CBA.
- The median salary has fallen from $1.65 million in 2015 to $ 1.15 million in 2021, a decline of 30 percent.
Also, one thing no one mentions, ‘increases to luxury tax limits’, those don’t force owners to spend any more unless they choose to. So the big sticking point in these negotiations is owners insisting on having spending limits legislated on themselves collectively instead of just choosing not to spend individually if they want.
That's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that the players want multiple concessions from the owners compared to the last CBA without giving up much without the possible exception of expanded playoffs.
As the article points out, one of the biggest reasons why player salaries have seen a reduction is because (just for example), every incentive for BAL is to not spend at the major league level (although BAL is making investments at the minor league level and internationally). That's an entirely different issue - and we've talked about this - and to me, the players' proposals don't really address that. Having stricter mandates on use of revenue sharing $ might, but the sides would have to get super creative to do this.
We've also talked about how it's in everyone's interest to promote competition. People like to see competitive games. Trying to figure out a way to do this would be a better tack than just forcing owners to spend more $, which is a non-starter for apparently a powerful bloc of owners.
I mean, yeah, because the previous CBA was quite unfair and stupidly signed by the players, whose main negotiator (Mike Weiner) died suddenly and was not properly replaced. The players played under this unfair CBA for years (they had no choice, they are not allowed to strike legally with a CBA in place) and now this is their one shot to try to fix things a bit. The average franchise value is up something like $1.5B since purchased, the owner’s intransigence on making the CBA one notch more fair to share a bit of that profit with the players is disgusting.
You (WBCD) have pushed back a lot against this being a good guys/bad guys thing but it one hundred percent is, and that is not a talk radio-level talking point (another accusation of yours), it’s just facts. It’s sickening and it’s stupid by the owners, who could give in easily, focus on growing the game together as partners and end up with everyone as big winners, including the public desperate for a normal season of MLB. Instead, here we are.
Again, just to be clear, I'm not pushing back on the good guys/bad guys thing; I just don't think it's very interesting. (And as an aside, if the negotiators are framing this as good guys/bad guys - not saying they are but if they are - it's not very productive). I see what's going on as a negotiation. If others want to see it as a morality play that's fine. Maybe y'all find that more interesting. Not the first time I've been in the minority.
I will push back against the notion that the previous CBA was unfair. Yes, the players have taken multiple steps back from where they were a couple of decades ago, but I'll continue to assert that the MLB union has the best deal in US professional sports. As I mentioned upthread, they'd be the ones proposing something like the NBA or NHL revenue sharing system and the owners would happily jump on that. But the players are the ones running away from that, which tells me that they think the current system is better for them. I'll also say that the players seem like they want the certainty of guaranteed revenue but not participate in any downside when severe disruptions to revenue occur. That's something that is baked into the NBA agreement - and why the NBA players signed onto to the bubble so quickly. Clearly, the negotiations about the pandemic year left a bad taste in the mouths of multiple owners.
(I know some of the above is redundant and so sorry to folks for that but I just don't agree with your characterization that the current deal is unfair.)
Sure the owners could cave. Life would go on for them and I'm sure they will make money. The players could cave too and they'd be doing fine. The one thing I agree with is that the fans are the ones getting the shaft, but that happens every time. I mean it's the fans who are generally funding the massive increase in revenues and they appear to be quite happy to pay the exorbitant ticket, concession, and memorabilia prices so at this point, I agree that neither side really cares about the fans.
I'm not tracking this. Even if the younger players got a $500,000 raise, that's only increasing payroll by so much. Isn't the main reason why player salary share is going down because there are some teams that have a $20M payroll? Isn't the main reason teams don't want to sign veteran, non-star free agents because increasing a team's win total from 60 games to 75 or even 80 games actually decrease a team's future chances of winning a title?
Also, when teams like BAL tank for multiple years, they are leaving tens of millions of dollars in gate, concession, and advertising revenue on the table. How is that good for either side?
This is absolutely not true as it would involve owners opening their books and they have completely refused to do this.
https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2020/05/15/players-reportedly-ask-mlb-owners-to-open-the-books/
(just the top link on google, but there are many articles along these lines)
Again, opening the books is not a precursor to getting to a revenue sharing deal. The NBA owners never opened up their books.
If this were to happen, they'd define "Baseball-related revenues," there would be verification of those revenues, and the players would take a to-be-negotiated share. Other revenues would not be captured so the "books" would not have be opened.
Players don't want this because they think they have a better deal. The same website you quoted described this back in 2020: https://www.blessyouboys.com/2020/7/20/21328610/is-it-time-for-mlb-players-to-accept-gasp-a-salary-cap
The idea wouldn't be to increase young player salaries by half a million, it would be to pay 2nd or 3rd year players at free agent rates. There's less incentive to tank and collect young players if those young players are no longer cheap. I don't think there's a chance that would happen since the small market teams would never go for it, but it would definitely solve a lot of the problems.
And maybe to take this down a more productive path, the main point I've been trying to make is that I think the best deal the players are going to get is right now.
I recognize that the people negotiating for the players are way smarter than I am so maybe they have a clearer sense of how this is going to play out. Maybe they think they can work on the dove owners to move the other owners and when push comes to shove, the owners will back down. And if the players can get that, I'll happily congratulate them and admire (and study) the work done by their negotiators.
I recognize that the people negotiating for the players are way smarter than I am so maybe they have a clearer sense of how this is going to play out. Maybe they think they can work on the dove owners to move the other owners and when push comes to shove, the owners will back down. And if the players can get that, I'll happily congratulate them and admire (and study) the work done by their negotiators.
Good thing there’s a lot of great new video games coming out because we’re not getting baseball any time soon. Which is unfortunate. Baseball is my favorite sport by far, it’s sad to see the state of the game as it stands
Your handle and avatar could not possibly be more appropriate for this post.
I know the intent of this post, but change the title of red to "top line," change yellow to "wages," and this chart wouldn't draw much attention in most board rooms. I don't mean to lob a turd here, but I have imagine through the lens of a business owner, the 5.6 years the average player contributes to the company constitutes temporary labor that constantly needs replacing - essentially a high-cost commodity with in most cases very limited ROI. Where's the line for Human Resources? Recruiting, training, evaluating and retention of labor has to be a massive part of the overall budget too. I don't bring this up as an endorsement (I don't have a dog in this fight, nobody will starve), but if the owners dig their heels in, I don't think their rationale will be greed, rather part of the same business experience that got them to be in a position to own an MLB team in the first place: They probably don't know how to run a company any other way.Via Eno Sarris on Twitter:
I think this approach to labor comes from an approach where labor is essentially another widget and labor can be easily replaced. This does not accurately describe baseball players, who are the very best at what they do on the planet. Replacements are going to likely be worse, diminishing the product on the field, and putting individual teams at a competitive disadvantage.
And for everyone wondering where the super expensive “other costs” of running a team are on these graphs (HR, player dev, ballpark maintenance, etc), they’re easy to find. They are hidden inside the difference between the player salaries and team revenues and valuations. Unless your argument is that team profits are dropping as all the other lines go up, you would find those costs well below the X-axis on these graphs.
And the point to me is that instead of fighting over every possible detail and hurting the sport, if the players and owners could figure out a way to work together more peacefully and fairly, everyone would win. Revenues would go up, salaries would go up, team valuations would go up (even more).
Yes - this is a case where I think it's very possible to "grow the pie." A good starting point would be to establish some trust between the two sides, and that work could start with a commissioner who wasn't just a tool for the owners. Yes, I know the commissioner is hired by the owners, but a smart commissioner could lead. Wish we had one.
Psychoanalyzing MLB owners... In practice, filling out 40 roster spots X 30 teams with replacement players/scabs presents a whole host of P.R./optics issues obviously, but in theory if the top 1200 players vanish, and all teams diminish equally, would the product on the field look that much different? The 1201st best baseball player on the planet (pick one... Triston Cassas) playing against players #1202 through #2400 would appear to be really effing good. Again, I don't think this is the best approach to labor in MLB, but I think it's the default thought process for people who own MLB franchises. Maximizing shareholder value by negotiating favorable labor agreements is in their DNA. /Gordon Gekko
No, it wouldn’t be good, compared to what baseball fans are used to. They tried this before, with replacement players in 95, and it was awful.
Also it would not be so simple, I don't even know how to think that through. In this imaginary world, the best 1200 players disappear and the next 1200 all agree to play essentially as scabs? I doubt that would happen, but more relevantly, I feel like a competing league of 8 or 10 teams with the real players would pop up almost immediately, and it's not unthinkable that the owners would destroy their own franchise values.
In other industries, where replacement labor is often readily available, this is exactly the nuclear option management has in their back pockets. It's the ultimate leverage. But MLB is different: Owners really don't have that option. And without MLB's vast infrastructure, MLBPA are just a collection of highly skilled athletes. This is why these CBAs are always so difficult to navigate for both sides: Each can't really exist without each other, both sides know it but won't admit it, and it all naturally devolves into a pissing contest as to who can survive without income the longest.
What I can't stand is the Joe Sheehans of the world who say owners are killing baseball one day, and the next day they're flush with cash and that needs to be shared with players. You can't argue both sides - which is it? We lament the 3 true outcomes, lack of appeal to younger audiences, length of games, cost of stadium beer, etc., but on the balance sheet MLB is wildly successful and (rightly or wrongly) owners are quite satisfied with this performance.
Sheehan’s complaints are only mutually exclusive if current profits are your only measure of health and success. MLB is losing market share as it’s core audience of old white guys dies off, and it’s not replacing them with you fans . So instead of relinquishing a fraction of short term profits to the players (who actually drive interest in the game) and embracing the pie-growing model JA described, the owners are picking a labor fight that further reduces interest in their product.
View: https://twitter.com/MikeSilvermanBB/status/1497658180343668742
Both sides have been caucusing for most of the day. They finally came together to talk, and the owners left that meeting after roughly 10 minutes. Yeesh.
Both sides have been caucusing for most of the day. They finally came together to talk, and the owners left that meeting after roughly 10 minutes. Yeesh.
I think this is OK actually, the players made a new offer and now the owners are talking about it and presumably they’ll reconvene later today.
View: https://twitter.com/evandrellich/status/1497662293856952328?s=21
Owners did not like it. Players pissed. We're not getting baseball anytime soon.
View: https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich/status/1497701174773960705
View: https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich/status/1497701174773960705
To me, the more telling part of that thread from Drellich is that the players dropped their arbitration eligibility proposal all the way from 75% to 35%. Seems to me like the players tried to take a lot off their proposals today in an effort to break through the impasse, and were still met with an obstinate response.
Owners seem to want to kill the sport
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/jeffpassan/status/1497714664347779077
at this point I would just walk away if I was the MLBPA.
it’s clear as day the owners are not negotiating in good faith.
If there's one thing the owners won't budge on is Early Arb. The earlier proposal was a complete non-starter.
I think we're at the point where the owners should do the Status Quo proposal (whenever they feel like it), at the point when they are ready to cancel the season when the players reject it.
What benefit does that possibly give the owners to be making on-field changes to how the game is played with 45 days notice? They want to be able to mess with the rules in the middle of a season? Unless I'm missing something about how this would benefit owners' pockets somehow, this feels like something that's designed solely to piss of the other party and make them walk away. I'm not seeing the upside for them here.
They want to break the union.
Thankfully the union is stronger than the last time.
i want Someone here to make a sincere argument that the owners are negotiating in good faith. Every time the MLBPA makes concessions the owners make a worse offer
The one thing I really don't understand is why the other owners approved Steve Cohen 25-4 just a year or two ago. Everyone knew he was going to spend like a drunken sailor, and now it's going to cost MLB a good chunk of a season.
If everything the owners took off the table as "complete non-starters" were to hold, there would be no meaningful changes to baseball's economics (so far, their proposals would be a step backwards). Frankly, it makes sense to add more players to the super-2 rolls as a means to combat service time manipulation, which I don't think the owners have a good proposal for (awarding themselves draft picks for doing the right thing, rather than simply making it a rule is a laughable solution).
In the meantime while Manfred has cried poverty and posters here have talked about expenses, Liberty Media, the owners of the World Series winning Atlanta Braves released their earnings report for the year...
Is this like when MLB decided to enforce an existing rule last season: banning/checking for sunscreen/lotion on pitchers? Or is it something else entirely? Why would something like this even matter to a player, let alone piss them off so completely as to make them leave the negotiating table? Asking in all sincerity.
In theory wouldn't this allow Manfred to make an end run around any collectively bargained rules changes, and be able to implement anything he wanted without having to give up anything at the bargaining table (for rules the players don't like)? Rules changes implemented this way tend to be minor, but I can see how players wouldn't want to give him unilateral control that he doesn't have now.
As disruptive as a mid-season sticky stuff crackdown was, imagine a mid-season addition of a pitch clock...
As disruptive as a mid-season sticky stuff crackdown was, imagine a mid-season addition of a pitch clock...
Understood, and good example. If the offer was as broad as you suggest, I'd storm out of the room too. Welp. I hope these inside sources are wrong, and the sides are closer than we think. It has been odd prepping for fantasy drafts while in the back of my head thinking the season might not happen.
Some minor progress.
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1498473283037061124
There has been movement on minimums, bonus pools and CBT by MLB today going in the direction of the players. Still isn't enough for a deal at this point. If they get close enough, though, there's a chance they could put off deadline by a day to continue talks into tomorrow.
8:35 EST update: League negotiator Dan Halem heads back over to the players. 6th time the sides have come together for talks today/tonight.
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1498473283037061124
There has been movement on minimums, bonus pools and CBT by MLB today going in the direction of the players. Still isn't enough for a deal at this point. If they get close enough, though, there's a chance they could put off deadline by a day to continue talks into tomorrow.
8:35 EST update: League negotiator Dan Halem heads back over to the players. 6th time the sides have come together for talks today/tonight.
The whole situation shows an appalling lack of leadership on Manfred's part. He's hired by the owners, but he doesn't have to be a complete toady. Manfred's stated responsibility is to all of baseball ("best interests of baseball"), not just to those who pay him. Haven't we all had to tell our employers things they don't want to hear? He has all the money he will ever need, and just being able to keep his present job is a shit legacy. With proper leadership, the entire pie could grow and all sides would benefit. MLB needs a leader, not a(nother) lickspittle for the owners.