MLB Talks ... latest news

[Monkeypaws]

On 2/19/2022 at 4:19 PM, jimbo92107 said:

The owners are all billionaires. No matter how long the strike lasts, not a one of them will miss a thousand dollar steak dinner.

I am with you on this.

I think about sub-million dollar draft picks, the Bailey Obers and Jose Mirandas of baseball - this isn't the millionaire being depicted in the media vs. the billionaires. Most MiLB, and many MLB players will need to work until senior citizen benefits kick in.

Let's be clear who the clueless culprits are.

[Vanimal46]

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Vanimal46 said:

I heard it phrased as "the owners are making December offers" and I think that's spot-on. This $5m increment crap needs to stop. We all know they're going to end up somewhere in the middle, sit down and hammer this ****ing thing out so everyone can move on to the next negotiating point or the season is going to start losing games.

[AceWrigley]

On 1/25/2022 at 2:45 PM, Cap'n Piranha said:

The MLBPA alone has 1200 members...

Shrinkage.

[AceWrigley]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I heard it phrased as "the owners are making December offers" and I think that's spot-on. This $5m increment crap needs to stop. We all know they're going to end up somewhere in the middle, sit down and hammer this ****ing thing out so everyone can move on to the next negotiating point or the season is going to start losing games.

 

[Vanimal46]

8 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I heard it phrased as "the owners are making December offers" and I think that's spot-on. This $5m increment crap needs to stop. We all know they're going to end up somewhere in the middle, sit down and hammer this ****ing thing out so everyone can move on to the next negotiating point or the season is going to start losing games.

On the bright side, only 16 more meetings until the owners concede and meets MLBPA at their proposal if they give up $5 million each time. 

[terrydactyls]

As I read all this crap, the owners keep making small concessions and the players keep saying "not good enough."  It doesn't appear to me that the players are negotiating.  They are just saying NO!!!   That isn't how negotiating works.

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

As I read all this crap, the owners keep making small concessions and the players keep saying "not good enough."  It doesn't appear to me that the players are negotiating.  They are just saying NO!!!   That isn't how negotiating works.

The players have backed down from significant demands such as earlier free agency and universal two year arbitration, both of which affect young players and how they're paid. The compromise has already been made on the player side of things and the owners continue to make pretty insulting offers to the pool money, which is much more beneficial to ownership than two year arbitration or early free agency.

Never mind that owners, until recently, have been countering most of their "compromises" with something completely outlandish that often saves them more money than the "compromise" they proposed. In essence, they've been "giving up" 50 cents in one place and then asking for 60 cents back somewhere else, all in the same proposal. That's why you get the feeling the players keep saying "not good enough"... because they're pissed off, and rightfully so.

While I'm also unhappy with the players in this, the owners have not been negotiating in good faith. They're definitely the bigger problem in this situation.

[terrydactyls]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

 

While I'm also unhappy with the players in this, the owners have not been negotiating in good faith. They're definitely the bigger problem in this situation.

That is an opinion, not a fact.  Most of the player demands (as I read them) benefit the multi-millionaire end of the player spectrum, and not the younger players.  They re the ones that need better conditions.  Arguing that the luxury tax is too high when only one team was impacted in the last two years is pointless.  Yes, I know the owners are all billionaire, but it is their business that they paid for and they should reap more of the rewards than the players.  I cannot be on the side of a group where members turn down $350 million because it ain't enough to live on.  It's all become a sick business.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, terrydactyls said:

That is an opinion, not a fact.  Most of the player demands (as I read them) benefit the multi-millionaire end of the player spectrum, and not the younger players.  They re the ones that need better conditions.  Arguing that the luxury tax is too high when only one team was impacted in the last two years is pointless.

Only one team was impacted by the luxury tax because the owners are using it as a de facto salary cap and they only want to double down on that, as evidenced by their attempt to link the loss of a draft pick to going over the luxury tax threshold earlier in the negotiations (which is why I made the "concede 50 cents, ask for 60 cents back" point earlier). It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to establish a luxury threshold, all agree not to go over said threshold, then claim it doesn't need to be raised. Come on, you have to be able to see through that ploy.

And I'm pretty angry at the players for so quickly backing off the two year arbitration and/or early free agency points but it's now the owners who are making these feeble offers for the arbitration pool. The players aren't doing as much as they should for younger players in my opinion, but at least they're trying to do something while the owners keep making $5m offers to be distributed across a few dozen players as some sort of "reasonable compromise". 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Well, it appears both sides are finally getting serious about this as we approach the eleventh hour.

 

[Squirrel]

11 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Well, it appears both sides are finally getting serious about this as we approach the eleventh hour.

 

It’s often how negotiations work. Peter around, stall, make a bunch of proposals and counters that do nothing … then boom, down to business. As I’ve said many times here in various places, a deal can get done relatively quickly (in days or a week, depending on the issues remaining and the length of the negotiation sessions) if the desire is there to do so.

[wsnydes]

28 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

It’s often how negotiations work. Peter around, stall, make a bunch of proposals and counters that do nothing … then boom, down to business. As I’ve said many times here in various places, a deal can get done relatively quickly (in days or a week, depending on the issues remaining and the length of the negotiation sessions) if the desire is there to do so.

Neither side wants to lose money/pay, so now that it's a reality it only makes sense that both sides would be more willing to actually negotiate and quit screwing around.

[ashbury]

4 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

I cannot be on the side of a group where members turn down $350 million because it ain't enough to live on.  It's all become a sick business.

Go back through baseball journalism, and you'll find laments about "it's only a business, not like I remember," through the years.  Ty Cobb complained that players were only in it for the money anymore.  I'm sure the founders of the National League had gripes about the mercenaries wanting too much in 1876.

But the "ain't enough to live on" trope is nothing but a straw man.  The players today aren't saying that.

If the money doesn't go to the players, then the owners keep it.  Perhaps you have some pipe dream that the owners will voluntarily cut ticket prices; they won't.  But even if they did, ordinary fans won't benefit; scalpers will, when they scoop up all the seats and then you have to deal with StubHub and the like instead of the team's website and box office.

Every mature business carefully separates its "cost centers" from the revenue side.  If the cost can't be brought below revenue, the business fails.  If it's close, maybe a few costs can be shaved, at the risk of a death spiral on the revenue side.  Otherwise, revenue and cost are pursued independently; no matter how well costs are controlled, VPs of Marketing and of Sales continue to do their best.

That's what we've seen here, and the players rightly want to share in the uptick of revenues which we've seen Forbes and other reputable sources document.

[Vanimal46]

 

[wsnydes]

6 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

 

Small moves are still moves towards resolution.  Still not all that optimistic but at least they're moving in the right direction.

[Brock Beauchamp]

16 minutes ago, wsnydes said:

Small moves are still moves towards resolution.  Still not all that optimistic but at least they're moving in the right direction.

It's all positive but it either needs to speed up drastically or these negotiations should have started a month earlier than they did so everyone could have gotten their peacocking out of the way and we'd be moving on to real negotiation at this point.

[wsnydes]

26 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

It's all positive but it either needs to speed up drastically or these negotiations should have started a month earlier than they did so everyone could have gotten their peacocking out of the way and we'd be moving on to real negotiation at this point.

Agreed, hence the lack of optimism.  At this rate it'll be settled by spring training of next season.

[Trov]

19 hours ago, ashbury said:

Go back through baseball journalism, and you'll find laments about "it's only a business, not like I remember," through the years.  Ty Cobb complained that players were only in it for the money anymore.  I'm sure the founders of the National League had gripes about the mercenaries wanting too much in 1876.

But the "ain't enough to live on" trope is nothing but a straw man.  The players today aren't saying that.

If the money doesn't go to the players, then the owners keep it.  Perhaps you have some pipe dream that the owners will voluntarily cut ticket prices; they won't.  But even if they did, ordinary fans won't benefit; scalpers will, when they scoop up all the seats and then you have to deal with StubHub and the like instead of the team's website and box office.

Every mature business carefully separates its "cost centers" from the revenue side.  If the cost can't be brought below revenue, the business fails.  If it's close, maybe a few costs can be shaved, at the risk of a death spiral on the revenue side.  Otherwise, revenue and cost are pursued independently; no matter how well costs are controlled, VPs of Marketing and of Sales continue to do their best.

That's what we've seen here, and the players rightly want to share in the uptick of revenues which we've seen Forbes and other reputable sources document.

The argument that dropping ticket prices would not benefit the fans because ticket brokers will take the tickets anyways and set the market is a poor argument in my mind against lowering ticket prices.  First, at least for the Twins, you can almost always find a ticket for a game somewhere at the box office.  If you believe broker will buy up all the tickets because they are cheaper, that is not accurate either, because they still would take risk that fans would still just go to box office and then they are sitting on lost money.

Maybe for the super high priced seats will have been purchased, but those are already out of most fans price tag.  Lowering the upper deck prices is doable and would not lead to brokers buying up all the tickets. 

Second, if the fans refused to pay the increased prices from a broker, then there is no worry there.  I remember walking to the Dome and people would  be selling the GA tickets, remember GA first come first serve seats, at face value.  I was young and wondered how they made money.  Then I learned they just bought up a ton of season tickets at a huge discount, then would seek to sell enough walk up tickets to make money.  It is up to the fans to keep ticket broker tickets down, and brokers have lost money in the past because no one is willing to pay the resale price.  I have managed to see tickets at below face value close to games because the brokers know selling it for less than they paid recoups some costs than to have an empty seat and get no money back. 

[TwinsDr2021]

13 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

It's all positive but it either needs to speed up drastically or these negotiations should have started a month earlier than they did so everyone could have gotten their peacocking out of the way and we'd be moving on to real negotiation at this point.

Both sides know there is no real pressure to finalize a deal until it starts hurting the others pocket books. In negotiations one side always has the leverage, The players knew they had it in the offseason because I believe they aren't getting paid anyway, so they can ask for the world. The owners know they have no real leverage until it starts hurting the players (development or Pocket books) so they ask for the world and pretend to make concessions on things they started higher than they wanted anyway.

IMO the owners don't care much about spring training, I am assuming that isn't really a money maker for them, I might be wrong, but I assume the money being made is in the cities they teams play. The owners will get more serious if they TV money stops or revenue from the regular season stops, the players will get serious when they aren't getting their paychecks, and right now if I was an owner I would be betting on that I have deeper pockets than most players and the players will start pushing their leadership to get this done. Also if I was an owner I would be telling the players leadership, how much money is it going to cost guys like Lewis, Winder, etc with a short season and them not getting big league time to start their clock?

If you are the Pohlads for example and most of your pitching prospects are already getting older (in terms of pitching prospects) delaying their service time another year, how much money you can save in the long run? Half of these prospects will be on the wrong side of 30 when they become true free agents and more than likely unless they are awesome will never see the big contract with lots of years, this philosophy could actually help lower revenue teams compete until the next contract is due.

On the players side, they have to see the writing on the wall, teams are overprotecting their pitching prospects by slowly bringing them along in the minor, thus getting to the majors later, reducing the time to earn big money, and on top of that not training the pitcher to be actual starting pitchers again reducing the money they can make, all in the name of injury protection. Look at this site and how many people have talked about the idea of a pitching staff of innings (starters, stacking, no real roles) , you don't think the players see this and think, this isn't so much about a philosophy but an amazing way of keeping cost down? 

For the hitting and defensive side the stat analysis have made a ton of players expendable when they are getting close to free agency as well.  (Look at Eddie for example, a 29 year old coming off two top 20 MVP years and basically hitting 25 plus homers for 4 years in a row, he got a 1 year 8 million contract) the players have to see that and say WTF, unless you are future HOF, you are might struggle to get contracts after you become a free agent, so they basically sign less than the value extensions, putting them on the wrong side of 30 again. (again on this site the Twins signed Donaldson at age 34 coming off a top 11 MVP and people were complaining he was too old, and since that day trying to figure out how to get him out of town for somebody cheaper and not necessarily even as good)

(I understand this stuff doesn't really affect the best of the best, teams will always treat those players different)

That is my long winded rant for the day, have a good one.

[DJL44]

On 2/21/2022 at 9:08 PM, terrydactyls said:

the owners keep making small concessions

It seems like every concession from the owners is paired with making some other aspect more friendly to the owners. The net proposal doesn't get any better for the players, they just get a different mix.

[Squirrel]

14 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

Both sides know there is no real pressure to finalize a deal until it starts hurting the others pocket books. In negotiations one side always has the leverage, The players knew they had it in the offseason because I believe they aren't getting paid anyway, so they can ask for the world. The owners know they have no real leverage until it starts hurting the players (development or Pocket books) so they ask for the world and pretend to make concessions on things they started higher than they wanted anyway.

The players didn't have any leverage in the off-season, imo. Teams not being able to complete their transactions was equally problematic for both sides. Besides, the owners locked them out. The lockout was a lose-lose, imo, and has been nothing more than a strong-arm tactic by ownership meant to 'scare' the players into negotiating the way the owners wanted. It didn't work. And the owners more than the players are dragging their feet in this. Again, imo.

I'm not sure when the paychecks start coming ... maybe someone could tell me? ... in ST? Or when the regular season starts? But from what I've heard, the players and the union have quite a 'war chest' built up, so we'll see. I don't think either side really has any leverage at this point. We'll see come Apr. 1 (if they don't have it done by then). Although I think the owners care less than the players and are willing to hold out longer because they can. It's just hard to know.

[TwinsDr2021]

23 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

The players didn't have any leverage in the off-season, imo. T

I'm not sure when the paychecks start coming ... maybe someone could tell me? ... in ST? Or when the regular season starts?

You are probably correct, which explains why nothing really got done.

It looks like they get paid only during the season, not spring training or the playoffs.

IMO, the owners see what these new age FO are doing (Keeping costs low) and don't want to change that, I am sure they know there will be some price to pay for it (like less people in the stands), but at the end of the day it can save millions of dollars (for example not signing Eddie, ODO, and trading guys for prospects a few years out)

Look at the Berrios trade for example. they save 10 million this year (assuming SWR and Martin don't play in the majors), they get to put a rookie in the starting rotation to replace him, and they control Martin until he is 30, they can hold back SWR until probably 2024, thus controlling him until he is almost 30. If they turn out better than decent they can offer a less than value extension bringing them to wrong side of 30. It is a great business model for the owners and a horrible model for the players and fans (well unless the FO is magical and is always churning though players and the ones that come up are almost as good)

Imagine if all teams did something very similar, most 30+ years olds would be hired guns and don't have a bad or down year.

IMO, this is what the players need to worry about.

[Unwinder]

On 2/22/2022 at 9:08 AM, terrydactyls said:

Yes, I know the owners are all billionaire ... It's all become a sick business.

Fixed

[Squirrel]

1 hour ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

You are probably correct, which explains why nothing really got done.

It looks like they get paid only during the season, not spring training or the playoffs.

IMO, the owners see what these new age FO are doing (Keeping costs low) and don't want to change that, I am sure they know there will be some price to pay for it (like less people in the stands), but at the end of the day it can save millions of dollars (for example not signing Eddie, ODO, and trading guys for prospects a few years out)

Look at the Berrios trade for example. they save 10 million this year (assuming SWR and Martin don't play in the majors), they get to put a rookie in the starting rotation to replace him, and they control Martin until he is 30, they can hold back SWR until probably 2024, thus controlling him until he is almost 30. If they turn out better than decent they can offer a less than value extension bringing them to wrong side of 30. It is a great business model for the owners and a horrible model for the players and fans (well unless the FO is magical and is always churning though players and the ones that come up are almost as good)

Imagine if all teams did something very similar, most 30+ years olds would be hired guns and don't have a bad or down year.

IMO, this is what the players need to worry about.

We are getting a bit far off the discussion of the negotiations, but I don't think the Berrios trade was made to save money. Nor was not signing Eddie. It's more complex than that. 

[TwinsDr2021]

32 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

We are getting a bit far off the discussion of the negotiations, but I don't think the Berrios trade was made to save money. Nor was not signing Eddie. It's more complex than that. 

The opening day left fielder was Cave (600k), game three was Kyle Garlick (570k), game for was Rooker(300k), all three players worse than Eddie. The twins saved around 7 million dollars by not signing Eddie, and where did they spend that 7 million (Simmons maybe)?  Sure it might be a bit more complex, and it was probably the right thing not signing those players, doesn't take away from my point that I was trying to make about the players hopefully seeing their future and doing what they can to change it.

Berrios was traded because they wouldn't pay him what he wanted, and where did they spend that money they saved? (or the belief could be he hated MN so bad he there was no amount of money that he would have signed for) We will see this year, if Martin is up right away or if SWR sees the majors, then it might not look like a money deal, but if Martin is good and isn't added to the 40, or if SWR looks like he could be brought up and isn't well.....

[wsnydes]

1 hour ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

The opening day left fielder was Cave (600k), game three was Kyle Garlick (570k), game for was Rooker(300k), all three players worse than Eddie. The twins saved around 7 million dollars by not signing Eddie, and where did they spend that 7 million (Simmons maybe)?  Sure it might be a bit more complex, and it was probably the right thing not signing those players, doesn't take away from my point that I was trying to make about the players hopefully seeing their future and doing what they can to change it.

Berrios was traded because they wouldn't pay him what he wanted, and where did they spend that money they saved? (or the belief could be he hated MN so bad he there was no amount of money that he would have signed for) We will see this year, if Martin is up right away or if SWR sees the majors, then it might not look like a money deal, but if Martin is good and isn't added to the 40, or if SWR looks like he could be brought up and isn't well.....

They did extend Buxton.  That was no guarantee even after they dealt Berrios.

Also worth noting that the offseason isn't technically over, it's on hold.  They may still spend more of that money.

We should get back on topic, however.

 

[Mike Sixel]

On 2/20/2022 at 11:17 AM, Prince William said:

It was reported that Boras is the agent for most of the players on the union council and he has been advising. Both sides have huge faults. People should not forget that it will be unlikely that the pre arbitration and minor league players are going to benefit from this CBA

They're literally asking for the minimums go up drastically......because more than 50% of playing time goes to players in pre-arb contracts. I suggest reading up on what the players are asking for and saying about that. 

[umterp23]

Interesting article on SI.com about what is at stake for baseball long term.  Long read but worth the time.  

https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/02/22/baseballs-greatest-threat

 

[Prince William]

4 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

They're literally asking for the minimums go up drastically......because more than 50% of playing time goes to players in pre-arb contracts. I suggest reading up on what the players are asking for and saying about that. 

The money is made in arbitration. Perhaps you might  want to read up on that process. What will the union drop, shorter length of time for arbitration.  Prove your 50% claim.  On the Twins 55% of the IP were not pre arb. 61% of the PA were not pre arb players.  From my perspective, considering the weakness of the Twins with injuries and ineffectiveness, it is unlikely your statistic would match the reality