Second Deadline Passes, Still No Deal

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Bad weather coverings? No indeedy!

It’s the owners proposed new larger bases!

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Bang-bang play at first! 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

I’m hearing that the players countered with bringing back the neighborhood play on double plays at second

[tony&rodney]

8 minutes ago, Hosken Bombo Disco said:

Bad weather coverings? No indeedy!

It’s the owners proposed new larger bases!

Hilarious. Manfredball needs to go away forever. Ghost runners, high school length games, safety bags, designated spots where a fielder stands, etc. The picture says it all. 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

6 hours ago, USAFChief said:

I hope the owners do just that. Play ball. Open camps, and play with whoever shows up.

The union will cave within weeks. And we'd all be better off for it.

Actually, for the times we are living in, that doesn’t sound like a far-fetched scenario to me (except for the last part).

[wabene]

8 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

How is raising the CBT threshold good for the game.  It widens the gap in parity and there can be no argument to the contrary.  

In 2020, we could have had more games.  The last proposal was for 80 games as I recall but 80% of comp.  They elected for  60 games at 100%.  They had the audacity to go public with MLB promised prorated salaries.  The memo that was leaked clearly showed they were purposefully misleading the public. 

They are not partners and therefore not due a percentage of revenue.  Partners invest capital and there compensation varies based on the success of the business or this case individual team.

US Household income has increased almost identically to the adjusted rate of inflation.  Had MLB players income grown at the same rate they would be making 5% of what they make today.  Yes, 5%.  Yet, they are unwilling to play for the increases that have been proposed.  

What's wrong with an international Draft?  I see that as a more equitable approach that promotes parity.

The owner's last offer looked perfectly reasonable.  I might add that if there was no union we would have baseball and players would still be the most fortunate group of players on the planet.  They would still be making 100X that of the people paying their salaries. and top players literally make nearly 1,000X that of the average American income.  Yet, they are unwilling to work.

Finally, if you think the players are more concerned about the health of the game tan owners you have lost your mind.  Even it's purely financially driven, their interest is far more long term.  Also do you really think athletes, with no business experience and for the most part no formal education are better equipped to determine what's better for this business than a group of 30 of the most accomplished business people in the country?  There are 3 Harvard MBAs and a couple other MBAs.   Several with degrees from Wharton and 28 of the 30 are as accomplished as it comes.  Anyone here who believes they are qualified to stand in judgment better have some serious credentials.

When I admire people with advanced degrees it would be the type that would take far less pay than the private sector would offer building schools and clinics for USAID. Admiring greedy billionaire business people is just licking the boot.

[Major League Ready]

14 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

the owners have locked out the players. Let no one call this a strike, please.

They could be playing ball, if the owners wanted to. 

We could have also been playing ball had the players accepted the latest offer.  Here are the facts...  

The players were not exactly starting from a bad place as evidenced by the contracts handed out before the lock-out.  The average payroll has been around $140M the last few years.  Therefore, the average player capable of making an opening day roster earned $5.38M.  We have players making over $40M season.  Scherzer would earn roughly 1.34M per game if he remained perfectly healthy and he would make $43M next year if he didn’t play at all. The premise that the existing salary for veterans or the free agent market was not adequate is absurd.

In addition they qualifying offer was removed which obviously was a gain but once again only advantages the top 5%. 
The CBT increase is no doubt modest.  Why are we not dead set as Twins fan on minimizing any further advantage held by top revenue teams?

The raise to offered to prearb players was $150K on the minimum or 26% plus $30M in a bonus pool which equates to roughly 88K per full-time equivalent earning the minimum.  This assumes 100 full-time equivalents are used to replace injured players.  In other words, 4 players playing 4 games each are 1 FTE.  I could be a little off on this but I was not about to track down the exact numbers for a point that will be ignored.  That’s a total average increase of $238K and average of $808K and a raise of 41%.

Of course they also offered a DH which would mean 10-15 jobs at an average around $10M so another $100M to players.  

The fact is that the players said we are unwilling to work under these terms where players turn down $300M contracts and the average minimum is double the average pay for an ER doctor.  Anyone capable of sticking on a roster for 10 years as a bench player can retire at 34-35 and never work a day in the life.  Those poor bastards.  How can we expect them to work under these terms.  If the union went away tomorrow, baseball players would still make ungodly money and we would have none of this chaos.  Perhaps more importantly, the owners would not have to work around players to institute rule changes that are necessary to counteract the changes that have led to three outcome baseball.  

The premise that the players position has anything to do with parity or the long-term interest of the game is extremely naive.  You can't ask for shorter control and a big raise in the CBT, and a reduction in revenue sharing and insist you are interested in quality of competition.  Those demands were clearly not in the best interest of the game but the players are fighting for these changes in spite of the negative effect because it increases their income, and you know those $100M or $200M or $300M contracts just are not enough.      
 

[MMMordabito]

Both sides can pound sand. Target Field is off the destination list for 2022. Gophers started up yesterday* @$10 a ticket. Northwoods League tickets will probably be about the same later this spring. Saints tickets will likely be the only more costly option. My methods for consuming MLB games will only be of the zero monetary cost to me variety.

*Edit - They started playing up north yesterday.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

5 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Anyone capable of sticking on a roster for 10 years as a bench player can retire at 34-35 and never work a day in the life.

Indeed, if the Twins front office carried a player on the big league roster for ten years but never put them in a game, you might find a way to praise them for smart roster management! 

The rest of your post is the usual pro-owner, anti-player stuff, and we’ve all went circles on this so many times, and few of us have any desire to engage anymore. 

[Whitey333]

While I will find other endeavors while this ridiculous lockout continues I am totally frustrated with MLB and PLayers Association.  Owners claiming "poverty "  over the past 5 years is ludicrous.  If your franchise isn't profitable or lining your greedy pockets enough, sell it.  Players, who in my opinion have the best CBA and working conditions of the 4 major sports,don't like their working conditions and are claiming " poverty " get a different career.  Go out and get a real job.  We have a joke for a commissioner, and a joke of a players union.  The real folly is that both sides seem to think we cannot exist without their sport.  Your fan base has been dwindling for years and tv ratings continue to drop.  The game, with all it's new rules defensive shifting and overdone analytical approach to the game has already made it unwatchable.

[Brock Beauchamp]

10 hours ago, USAFChief said:

I wish the owners WOULD set about busting the union. You act as if the MLBPA has anyone's interest at heart except themselves.

That's laughable. They don't care about fans, they don't care about the health of the sport. They care only about making more cash. 

They have that right, but get off your high horse. You can pick a side, but stop insisting it's the "right" side. 

I want a healthy MLB, with some semblance of parity. Only owners can give me that.

Sure, the owners that are pushing hard to preserve tanking, want less revenue sharing, would love to go back to indentured servitude of players, want to expand the postseason to include 50% of teams, while also implementing a hard cap have the sport's best interests at heart. You go ahead and keep believing that nonsense.

Unlike your fetishization of the owners' motivations, I hold no pretenses that the MLBPA has the sport's best interests in mind, I simply realize they're not the biggest villains right now.

You claim to want baseball back yet you're actively cheering on the side that locked out the players, then didn't negotiate for 45 days, then ran right to their own artificial deadline by making incremental moves of less than half a percentage point in a year when inflation is nearly 5%, all while demanding a really bad postseason plan that would devalue the regular season so they could put an additional $150m+ in their pockets.

If the owners were even half as benevolent as you seem to believe, they'd offer a 50/50 split with revenue in trade for a hard cap and floor, just like other sports do. Except owners won't do that because the players would agree to it before they finished the sentence.

Tell me again how you're such a baseball fan and on the side of light again, please.

[jmlease1]

There are no heroes in this negotiation from a fan standpoint; neither side gives a crap about us. Should they? Yes, of course, because fan support is critical to the long-term health and wealth of the game, but the reality is they're much more interested in their personal financial situations and any reference to the fans from either side is nothing more than a PR ploy.

The players have a the fundamental problem of having been crushed in the last negotiation, starting them off in a weaker position. (which they may or may not realize) Most of what they're asking for isn't all that unreasonable in the context of the financials of the game, which has huge amounts of revenue to play with. But the mlbpa has never truly wrestled with the financial imbalances between the biggest markets and the smallest, and prefers a financial structure that favors those largest teams. Big teams in big markets handing out massive deals to stars does drag the salary structure upwards overall...but it also puts things in position of haves and have nots...and the mlbpa doesn't care about that until more than 3-4 teams in a year appear to be tanking/rebuilding and not spending on them. (They've also shamefully ignored minor league players for their entire history, really, and foolishly haven't sought to fold them into the union in an effort to increase their own membership and power)

The owners, on the other hand, always manage to suck even more. They're a bunch of contemptible greedheads who care nothing for the game they're supposed to be stewards of, and have a ginormous split between the largest teams and smallest. There's not nearly enough revenue sharing to have true competitive balance and the owners seem completely uninterested in addressing it. They had to have a lawsuit come at them and the threat of congressional hearings to have any movement on the disgusting treatment of minor league players. They locked the players out because they don't care all that much about the regular season and simply wanted to pressure the players into accepting another bad deal, to keep them from a) massing additional warchests for a strike, and b) to keep the players from having the power to spike the postseason 4-5 months from now and give them leverage for a better deal. They locked the players out, they're cancelling games, they refuse to do anything for real competitive and financial balance, and they want to be guaranteed to make money no matter what happens, on top of having their franchises increasing in value by massive amounts. (even the worst franchise in baseball is worth over $1 Billion.) They want to have all the power to whatever they want, whenever they want. They suck. They get away with a lot of this because a) people root for laundry more than they root for players, even now, and b) they tend to stay out of sight, no one knows who they are, and there's far fewer of them so outside of markets where fans are perpetually mad at ownership...people don't personalize this against them. The hide behind the team logo to make people think it's only "greedy" players screwing this all up, when the truth is no one can possibly match the greed and arrogance of the owners.

In terms of the actual negotiations, I feel like the players are going to end up settling because the owners have more power, especially after the mlbpa got totally housed in the last CBA, and it's harder to swim against that tide especially with a larger membership, many of whom "need" those salaries. Ownership is fabulously wealthy with or without ticket sales and concessions and they damn well know it. They'll give us all a middle finger, cancelling games for months to keep what they have and get what they want.

Yuck.

[Major League Ready]

10 hours ago, old nurse said:

Yeah the union has done nothing for the player’s incomes. In 1972 Danny Thompson as a third year starting player made 13,500. Median household income was 11,200. Thanks to the union the players aren’t doing that much better than median household income now, if you move the decimal point over to the left one position and divide by 2 

The average income for players that made the opening day roster the last couple years is around $5.3M.  How does it change the game or our experience as fans if they made $3M/year on average?  

I really don't understand what point you are trying to make.  We agree player income has skyrocketed.  Yet, even with the considerable increases proposed they are not willing to work for what equates to generational wealth in many cases.  Which by the way your dollars pay their salary.  So, while your income you utilize to pay those salaries has gone up 7X over the past 50 years, player's income has gone up 140X.  That makes it pretty hard for an average guy to afford to go to a game.  

What if the owners all decided to provide free streaming and cut the price of attendance in half and adjusted spending on free agents to compensate?  That would cut player compensation considerably.    They could adjust free agent spending to maintain their profit level as well.   Would that be bad for the game?  Why should I care if top free agents get $175m instead of $350M.  How does this change the game for fans?

What would change the game would be to widen the gap in the CBT threshold.  Yet, people seem to cheer for it to be raised.  I fail to comprehend the logic.  What would hopefully change or improve parity is an Internation draft which the players rejected.  What would hopefully improve the game is the rule changes the players rejected.  Now, IDK how effective these rule changes would be, but something has to be done and the union is an impediment.  The only thing that makes sense as to why they are standing in the way is because these are bargaining chips and it irritates the hell out of me those potential improvements are rejected for bargaining position.  The Players are clearly demonstrating a willingness to prioritize compensation over the game.

[strumdatjag]

9 hours ago, Hosken Bombo Disco said:

Bad weather coverings? No indeedy!

It’s the owners proposed new larger bases!

Can someone explain the benefit of larger bases?    Easier to steal?    It seems to me that Nishioka would just have broken both legs on larger bases. 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

9 minutes ago, strumdatjag said:

Can someone explain the benefit of larger bases?    Easier to steal?    It seems to me that Nishioka would just have broken both legs on larger bases. 

I can’t explain it.

“Larger bases for you players, so that fewer of you get injured.” It’s a weird bargaining chip and the evidence for it seems dubious. 

[Trov]

I expected this.  I know some where hoping after Monday that something would happen, but I had little hope.  I expect this to min drag into May.  The owners are not loosing much, if anything by losing April games.  The owners are hoping the players will cave when they lose those game checks.  The owners are trying to bully the players into taking what is offered.  I saw this coming all along.  The owners truly hold all the power.  Most of them make their money from other businesses and owning MLB team is just for fun, and to make some more money, but not only way they get money.  Most of the players this is their only way of making money.  Some will have some extra incomes but most will only be making it from game checks.  

I have blamed both sides for this mostly.  It really goes back years.  I have found the players ask to not be good for baseball overall, but I also find the owners are greedy and hiding what they really make to back up their claim that they make very little.  I wish the two sides would have agreed to a revenue share in 2020 to build some level of trust and make the owners open the books to the players.  However, the players have always said no cap, which now has backfired against them, because without a cap there is no floor.  

The players claim owners have more they can spend, but without a floor there is no reason they have to.  The players could have fixed this issue years ago by agreeing to a cap and floor.  However, the owners now are being rich bullies that are trying to force an agreement on the players.  The owners have lied to the fans and the players all along, as their actions have shown.  

Personally, at this point I would support a full missed season.  Let the owner decide if losing all money from MLB is worth it.  The players need to stand strong and force the owners to see what it is like.  I feel for all the day to day employees though that will be out jobs because of all of this. 

[TheLeviathan]

I support workers being paid more in all industries. However, I'm not typically a fan of unions and the way they go about things.  So this is not some pro-union, anti-owners thing. 

It's abundantly clear who the villain is this time. I don't support pretty much anything the players want except one overarching idea: the owners don't get to do this.  They are the villains.  They are crying poor while soaking taxpayers for stadiums.  They are crying poor while their investments double and triple in value.  They are crying poor when they profit 100M in a pandemic with attendance issues.  They chose this path.  They chose this outcome.  They chose to lie.  They don't get to stop baseball, cancel games, and cry poor.  That's all BS.  Sit at the table and negotiate in good faith and pay fairly.  The owners have interest in doing neither but so long as they won't even attempt to behave fairly?  Screw 'em.  They are the villains.

[rv78]

As a fan, I'm extremely disappointed. As a person, I could care less if the owners or players ever make another dollar. Both sides are letting greed get in the way of playing the game. Multi-million dollar contracts for players who can't hit .200 or pitch 6 innings are absurd. $100 tickets to sit in a stadium with $10 beers and $7 peanuts is absurd. If you think minor league baseball or independant ball is inferior I challenge you to take a look and enjoy a game played by people who play it for the love of the game, not for the dollar. By the way, it won't cost you an arm and a leg to go to it either.  It's time to stop giving the greedy self-centered you know whos your money.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Major League Ready said:

What if the owners all decided to provide free streaming and cut the price of attendance in half and adjusted spending on free agents to compensate?

As soon as owners do this, I will support them whole-heartedly.

While we're just making up fairytale scenarios, I'd also like to be able to fly. That sounds fun.

[diehardtwinsfan]

16 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

the owners have locked out the players. Let no one call this a strike, please.

They could be playing ball, if the owners wanted to. 

while I agree with that, I haven't forgotten 1994. Neither have the owners... and I suspect the same thing would have happened this year as well.

 

But yes, you're correct, it's a lockout, not a strike and people should use the correct terminology. 

[Karbo]

17 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

the owners have locked out the players. Let no one call this a strike, please.

They could be playing ball, if the owners wanted to. 

I have to call B.S. on this. No contract means the players would walk out as soon as the regular season would start.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, Karbo said:

I have to call B.S. on this. No contract means the players would walk out as soon as the regular season would start.

The players wouldn't have walked out in April but they almost surely would have walked out in August.

But no matter what the players would have theoretically done, the owners locked them out. That is a fact.

Mike is correct that players would be in Florida and Arizona right now had the owners not locked them out.

[diehardtwinsfan]

1 hour ago, jmlease1 said:

There are no heroes in this negotiation from a fan standpoint; neither side gives a crap about us. Should they? Yes, of course, because fan support is critical to the long-term health and wealth of the game, but the reality is they're much more interested in their personal financial situations and any reference to the fans from either side is nothing more than a PR ploy.

The players have a the fundamental problem of having been crushed in the last negotiation, starting them off in a weaker position. (which they may or may not realize) Most of what they're asking for isn't all that unreasonable in the context of the financials of the game, which has huge amounts of revenue to play with. But the mlbpa has never truly wrestled with the financial imbalances between the biggest markets and the smallest, and prefers a financial structure that favors those largest teams. Big teams in big markets handing out massive deals to stars does drag the salary structure upwards overall...but it also puts things in position of haves and have nots...and the mlbpa doesn't care about that until more than 3-4 teams in a year appear to be tanking/rebuilding and not spending on them. (They've also shamefully ignored minor league players for their entire history, really, and foolishly haven't sought to fold them into the union in an effort to increase their own membership and power)

The owners, on the other hand, always manage to suck even more. They're a bunch of contemptible greedheads who care nothing for the game they're supposed to be stewards of, and have a ginormous split between the largest teams and smallest. There's not nearly enough revenue sharing to have true competitive balance and the owners seem completely uninterested in addressing it. They had to have a lawsuit come at them and the threat of congressional hearings to have any movement on the disgusting treatment of minor league players. They locked the players out because they don't care all that much about the regular season and simply wanted to pressure the players into accepting another bad deal, to keep them from a) massing additional warchests for a strike, and b) to keep the players from having the power to spike the postseason 4-5 months from now and give them leverage for a better deal. They locked the players out, they're cancelling games, they refuse to do anything for real competitive and financial balance, and they want to be guaranteed to make money no matter what happens, on top of having their franchises increasing in value by massive amounts. (even the worst franchise in baseball is worth over $1 Billion.) They want to have all the power to whatever they want, whenever they want. They suck. They get away with a lot of this because a) people root for laundry more than they root for players, even now, and b) they tend to stay out of sight, no one knows who they are, and there's far fewer of them so outside of markets where fans are perpetually mad at ownership...people don't personalize this against them. The hide behind the team logo to make people think it's only "greedy" players screwing this all up, when the truth is no one can possibly match the greed and arrogance of the owners.

In terms of the actual negotiations, I feel like the players are going to end up settling because the owners have more power, especially after the mlbpa got totally housed in the last CBA, and it's harder to swim against that tide especially with a larger membership, many of whom "need" those salaries. Ownership is fabulously wealthy with or without ticket sales and concessions and they damn well know it. They'll give us all a middle finger, cancelling games for months to keep what they have and get what they want.

Yuck.

very well said

[Karbo]

1 minute ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The players wouldn't have walked out in April but they almost surely would have walked out in August.

But no matter what the players would have theoretically done, the owners locked them out. That is a fact.

Mike is correct that players would be in Florida and Arizona right now had the owners not locked them out.

I agree they would be and it would be a tease. All these super rich owners and players are full of BS. Neither side cares about anything but money and winning. This argument that players are trying to lookout for future players is BS also. If they were they would be forcing the owners into improving conditions for the minor leagues, regardless of the fact those guys aren't union. Those are the future generations of players. The guys coming up seem to get paid VERY well,(minimum) better than most people can dream of, to play a game many of us play or at least have played, for fun.

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, Karbo said:

This argument that players are trying to lookout for future players is BS also.

Is anyone actually making this argument, though? All I've seen is condemnation for how the MLBPA treats its young players, both the pre-arb guys and the minor leaguers. It's literally the biggest (and probably most valid) complaint I see about the union.

[umterp23]

The games being cancelled will be at least 15 games worth as the owners will use that as another backdoor to service time to free agency. Young superstars service year credit toward free agency will be on yet another delay.  Still "laughed" when Kris Bryant got hosed by not making big league roster to start season but magically got called up one day later than required year of service day allotment of days.  Owners, we may hate them, but sure know how to run a business.  It's a business and not a love of the game for them. Always will be 

[RJA]

I have decided to be philosophical about this.  I cannot influence either side, so as Mercutio noted in Romeo and Juliet, "a pox on both your houses."  The long term harm being done to baseball is obvious to all.  Young folks no longer have the excitement about baseball as they did during the Ruth, O'Neil, Mays, Mantle, and Puckett eras, and  I cannot imagine this will bring any of them back to the game.  We all know this will be settled, but at what cost?  I fear the good of the game is a forgotten concept.  So, as I refuse to get upset about things over which I can exercise no control, I am going to focus on the minors and college baseball until such time as "play ball" is heard again in the majors.  I fear I love the game and the Twins too much to walk away despite all this needless rancor.  I just pray it is not mid summer before we begin again.

[Major League Ready]

55 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

As soon as owners do this, I will support them whole-heartedly.

While we're just making up fairytale scenarios, I'd also like to be able to fly. That sounds fun.

I completely agree it's fairytale.  It was in response to a post that suggested higher player salaries are somehow beneficial to the game or fans.  What either side makes is of no consequence to fans which this fairytale illustrates.  Most people are employess and a whole lot of them feel they should be better compensated.  Therefore, they align with the side with who, they identify.

I don't hear any discussion in terms of the relative merit of MLB's offer.  Prearb players were due a raise IMO.   They were offered an increase of $150K or 26%.  However, you can't only consider the league minimum.  The bonus pool like any bonus needs to be considered in tot comp.  Average comp to prearb players goes from $570K to $808K by my calculations. 

They also eliminated draft pick forfeiture which is obviously good for players.  However, it will have some negative impact on lower revenue teams in terms of their ability to hold onto players.  

The universal DH which would mean replacing 10-15 jobs with much higher paying jobs.  Net effect of something in the neighborhood of $100M to players.  Good for the game but also good for players.  Owners foot the bill.

Expanded playoffs means more pay for players.  Teams spend at least 85% of revenue on employees and operating cost.  Therefore, the players benefit at least as much from the players from the TV revenue.  More fans would be engaged which is good for the game, good for fans, good for players, and good for owners but the players fight playoff expansion as well.
They also added a draft lottery.

An international draft would also help level the playing field and improve parity.  Denied by the players, why? 

Let's be clear, we don't have baseball because players refuse to play under these terms.  How was the free agent market going before the lockout.  Did the signings suggest veteran players were not able to negotiate great contracts? The average payroll has been around $140M the last few years.  Therefore, the average player capable of making an opening day roster earned $5.38M.  We have players making over $40M season.  Scherzer would earn roughly 1.34M per game if he remained perfectly healthy and he would make $43M next year if he didn’t play at all.  Sota turned down $350M.  Does this sound like conditions under which employees should refuse to work?

[DJL44]

17 hours ago, USAFChief said:

I hope the owners do just that. Play ball. Open camps, and play with whoever shows up

The union will cave within weeks. And we'd all be better off for it.

If they open camps the players under contract would show up and the owners would have to pay them.  Opening up spring training camps would be the owners caving, not the players. This is a lockout, not a strike.

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, Karbo said:

I have to call B.S. on this. No contract means the players would walk out as soon as the regular season would start.

No, they'd walk out in September (assuming the continued negotiations were fruitless) so they got paid for the season but the owners wouldn't get the playoff dollars.