Has it been so long since 2020 that some people on this board have already forgotten the difference between legitimate major league players and below replacement level talent? Think of some of the dreck the Sox were rolling out on the mound that August. You really think you can replace low end MLB talent with “college or semi pro players” without affecting the quality of the product?
I went to law school as well - never practiced but went into a consulting practice. At less than 10 years out, I know a number of people who will make demonstrably more than Kevin Plawecki over the course of their careers (and some who make more per year than Plaweckis highest number). And there are way more people who could conceivably do what they do than what Kevin Plawecki does.
Put another way, partners in big law firms/big4 accounting firms/BCG/Mck/Bain make more than Kevin Plawecki and they have much longer careers. Its also much easier to find someone with those skill sets than what Kevin Plawecki has.
I (and others) have made this point before but the players would not come back if a condition of lifting the lockout was a player promise not to go on strike before the entire season ended.
Given that most kids only DREAM of playing in the majors, yeah, I'd think that was pretty frigging great.
Plawecki made almost 2.5M last year. If that feels like a moral wrong to anyone because he is the 42nd best person at playing catcher and thus "deserves" more, I guess I just agree to disagree.
Unless they've stated that somewhere that I've missed, I think it's purely speculative. The players aren't operating at nearly the position of strength and leverage they were in '94, and don't have nearly as strong, borderline militant leadership as they had with Fehr and Orza. I think it's just as likely, with or without a promise, that they'd keep playing, not give up salary, and try to work out a new CBA. The landscape has changed significantly since the last strike.
They aren't allowed to make money after they finish playing baseball? Being a former major league player opens a lot of doors.
Yes it's speculative but first, the owners would never risk it without some agreement in place and the players have never suggested they'd forego striking.
Yeah, the bolded is just plain wrong. These guys have decades still of ability to work and earn a living doing something other than play baseball. They just have a pretty great head start over the vast majority of people. Good for them - they've earned it. But let's stop with the "they have to live the rest of their lives off whatever they make during this tiny window before they hit 30" stuff. It's just not even remotely true.
Who's arguing that his work life is over at the end of his baseball career or that this is his only chance to earn a living?
Agreed, that an extension, however unlikely, would be the safest way to have a (mostly) full season in 2022. I really thought this would get settled last minute, and very few, if any games, would be lost. Voted that way in the poll. Yesterday's breakdown in the talks, the owners lack of any real compromise, and the tweet @jon abbey posted above, has me far less optimistic now. I think the owners, still pissed about being taken to the woodshed on so many labor negotiations in the 80's,90's, and the oughts, and having the hammer now, are determined to break the union, and reduce them to something more akin to NFLPA level. Hope I'm dead wrong, but I think this is now a long stoppage, possibly the entire season.
Of course players can continue to work after they retire. We all can. I can become a Walmart greeter or drive Uber once my career is over. I’m not sure what the market is for a manager or coach position/tv job but I’d venture to guess it’s quite competitive. Who wants to read a “A Squat Too Far” - The Keven Plawecki Story. I’m sure lots of companies would also be interested to hear what he has to say about workplace synergy as well. I might throw him $49.95 if he makes it on to Cameo though.
What are they going in the real world to match the money that they made in the 20s?
I would bet that the players would be happy to trade a lower CBT cap for a salary floor/more Super 2s/higher minimums. But there is no way the owners would accept that trade. All of this directly impacts the bottom line of the cheapest, most hard line owners the most. Negotiating a higher CBT cap instead is at least theoretically something the players can achieve because it only really impacts large market teams operating above or near the cap. And the "small" market owners only pretend to care about the CBT to "promote competition" and will never be directly affected by it. I can't read minds so I suppose the MLBPA could be focusing on raising the CBT cap because the players all think they'll be getting $300M contracts one day, but I think it's far more likely that they've been told that the increases you advocated for are completely unrealistic/non-negotiable.
And those lawyers didn't collectively bargain their way to that situation, did they? The market determined that they were worth that, and that is most likely because the difference between the #20 and #200 or #2000 lawyer in their specialty is most likely roughly equivalent the vast majority of the time, and they all make them a lot of money. That is not true of the #20 and #2000 MLB player. Those bottom of the roster non-stars have been deemed by the market to be of little monetary value. I know the argument there would be that baseball is not a truly free market, and that is right. But there are plenty of markets, especially relating to entertainment where the money distribution is highly unequal. The Rock and a career character actor are not paid similarly. The highest paid fine artists make an enormous amount compared to the talent levels just below them. They are very pyramid shaped professions. Sports are like that too, with very few difference makers gaining the most value. Unless there are ceilings intentionally put on earnings, like in the NBA for example.
JOBU, post #600, for example.
He can make as much as he's able, and I'm all in favor of it. I'd love for players - really, guys at the bottom of the MLB pay scale (and I'm even really thinking about minor leaguers) - to get paid more.
It's not clear to me who you're arguing against. Certainly not me.
Probably nowhere. I mean, there aren't THAT many jobs that pay you a million dollars a year (or "even" $600,000)**. But so what? They can make money along the lines of what more "normal" people make, but they've gotten a wonderful head start financially if they play a few years in the majors. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me.
No idea how much you make, but from your description of your life, you probably make in the neighborhood of what a lot of my lawyer friends do. There are many, many, many coal miners and strawberry pickers out there who would look at salaries like those of a lot of my lawyer friends and be flabbergasted that anyone could think they deserve for more. Yet a lot of my lawyer friends know exactly what their market value is and sleep quite soundly at night--as they should--demanding it. Do you work for less than your market rate?
I have no idea what you are arguing - I never argued anything that could possibly disagree that sports is a pyramid shape profession - it obviously is as most can never make anything at it. The rest of your post is nonsensical/doesnt respond to the point. The agreement is collectively bargained and was bargained on the history of the reserve clause. Other than a small subset of minimum guys who are only there becasue they are cheap (i.e., they arent good major leagues, but are there as the 24/25/26 spot on the roster churn), the vast majority would make significantly more than $600k in a free market.
Excellent point. The question is: What is the "market rate" for a MLB rookie? How in the world could we possibly know, because the system isn't really a fair market system. If we got rid of luxury taxes and draft slots and wage scales, etc., we'd find out the true "market rate" for rookies (or anyone else). But unions don't operate that way.
Sorry to pull this out from a long post, and I am not actually questioning this statement, but I wonder if there is something you could cite to back this up? It could very well be correct, I genuinely don't know, but I'm curious to read more about it, thanks.
Unions really run the spectrum on this - some unions (perhaps particularly public sector unions?) do exactly what you describe. On the other hand, there are plenty of unions that push for things like salary floors but are also totally fine with things like merit based raises.
But salary floors are limits on the marketplace, right?
The bolded is your argument? Seriously?
How easy do you think it is to become a professional baseball player? Yes, players are born with off-the-charts hand-eye coordination and athleticism, but they have to work at it. Constantly. Consistently. There are many, many, many hours of refining that athleticism, making sure that their bodies are in top shape, that they're mentally ready for every game, every inning, every pitch. Then if they're lucky, they get to go to the minors for another few years where they make a wage that's well below the poverty line. This is where stuff starts to ratchet up; you're not playing against Jim and Johnny from down the street, you're playing against the best-of-the-best. Every town's All-Star is playing against you every night for the privilege of being on that 40-man roster.
Add me to the curious on this. There aren't many owners left from the 80s and 90s, are there? Per this list on wikipedia, the longest tenured ownership is currently the Yankees. Including them, only four owners/groups/corps remain that purchased their teams before 1990. There are 13 that purchased their team before 2000. Of those, some have been passed down to children or trusts so the current people in charge don't date back that far (the Steinbrenners and the Illitches for example). I suppose there's some institutional memories at play, but it seems odd that any owners would be so personally affected as to be "pissed".
The bolded isn't "my argument". It was a little comment on a comment of yours.
I wouldn't balk at that if what I was doing for a few years was earning $600,000 as a 22 year old MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER (thus fulfilling a lifelong dream of millions of kids), and was thus forced, after my playing career was over, to go back and work more like a regular person and make no more than half of what I did as a player per year. No, I wouldn't balk at THAT at all.
It's incredibly hard. I don't even know why you'd ask this question.
Who has said anything other than this? I'm rooting for the players here, as I've now said a half dozen times in this thread. But tell me what a 22 year old rookie MLB player is "worth". It isn't even a free market in the majors. Even the minimum salaries are artificial, something that's collectively agreed upon.
Poorly worded on my part. Should've left it at having the hammer after decades of losing negations to the MLPA, looking to break the union. Pissed is an assumption, and too speculative. Wrap on my own knuckles for questioning others on that, and then engaging in it myself.
So, can't we estimate this? Like, we have WAR to dollar values, teams are paying based on estimated production in a free-ish market (with salary caps, salary floors, etc.). The issue is probably that these values are depressed by underpaid labor locked into minimum and arbitrated salaries, and as such players in free agency are likely overpaid because of it. In short, I am guessing it would depend dramatically on the 22 year old's capability to produce? Heck, we do that with baseball cards - people don't seem to have any issue pricing a market for Wander Franco vs. Vidal Brujan for instance. On the field, for Wander, we have a projection (Steamer): .289/.346/.472/.818 slash line with 19 homers, 33 doubles, nine triples, 85 runs scored, and 84 driven in. This prediction is based on him playing the full season, with 651 plate appearances and 589 at-bats in 149 games. Javy Baez put up a very similar OPS to Wander in 2021 and signed for 6/140 after a miserable 2020 but pretty darn good prior handful of years. It's certainly harder but when Acuna signed 8/100m early people basically accused Atlanta of robbing him. There's ways to tell. Like you say, it's all artificially influenced: like Acuna isn't agreeing to 8/100m in a pure free market because he knows the first half+ of that deal is min or arbitration salaries. Javy Baez likely isn't getting 6/140 in an environment where Wander Franco can be in free agency, etc. I think the mental game of getting there is really challenging but I don't think it's too hard to say that the answer is: depends who the 22 year old rookie is. You probably have to start with how much you think labor deserves of the revenue of an enterprise to make that call to be honest: that'll influence a ton of it.
Agree with everything in these two posts. I think the MLB owners are acting much like the ill-fated Champions League owners, except they don't have prior written agreements to consider.
I don't doubt your or CaptainCoop's thoughts on what should be so please don't take any offense at that - I get where you both stand.
The bolded is exactly right, and it's why I blame Manfred in addition to both parties, because he has failed to facilitate this (among other issues, including that he's incompetent overall).
Numbers like 75 million dollars are so unfathomable to me that it's hard to wrap my head around it, if I'm being perfectly honest. If I own a baseball team, the reality is that I probably own lots of other successful enterprises, things that earned me so much money that I could buy a baseball team. Thus, I wouldn't even need the money from the baseball team to make a fortune, since I'd already have it in the first place.
When they get to the majors, they ARE well-paid. That's my point about the cardiothoracic surgeons. The highest-paid heart surgeons make basically what the lowest-paid MLB players make. Even though we can argue that MLB rookies should earn more, no argument can be made, if we're operating in real life terms, that they "aren't well paid".
See above.
Are you asking me this question? If so, I'd simply respond that (a) your assumption that that is "unquestioned in my mind" is erroneous, as I've never indicated any such thing, and (b) this conversation that *I* has become mainly about players, so that's the topic more than owners.
Tons of pro athletes (NBA, NFL, MLB, boxers, etc.) go broke after retirement. But it's not because they weren't paid enough.
As always, the owners want to pay and provide much less for the players.
Except it's a zero-sum game: if the money isn't going to the players, it's going to the owners. This is about how to split the revenue pie, and how most of us feel like it's weighed way too much towards ownership.
I'm primarily using your discussion to ask the question (which I admit is a little unfair as you've been clear that you think players should get more), but your argument pretty much reads as "players should be happy they're getting paid to play a kids game, look at what a plumber makes" argument, even if that's not what you intend. It's pretty easy for everyone who's played little league to imagine the joy of being a MLB player, but I don't see any reason this shouldn't be switched to asking why the owners should make that much more. I guess it's not worth imagining being Steve Cohen or JWH? The answer is just "capitalism"?
I agree it's weighted too far to the owners, which is why I'm rooting for the players and think they should be paid more.
