A Letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

Here's my letter:

Dear Mr Manfred:

Break the union. Start spring training with minor league players. I guarantee you, a missed paycheck or 2 from the pampered crybabies will have the MLBPA begging to get back on your teams. 

Focus on making the sport more competitive top to bottom. Institute salary floors and caps that are relatively narrow, and all teams can live within. Pay more to minor leaguers, and flatten the payscale of major leaguers. Give players the ability to move around after 6 years of service, but take away the enormous financial advantage of some teams to buy up players that exists now. 

MLB and its fans will be better off with a neutered players union and more competitve league. You'll get some short term bad press, but long term you'll better the sport.

Sincerely,

Chief

Those pampered crybabies were ok missing quite a few paychecks in 94 and 95. The MLBPA has been stockpiling money for years to prepare for this fight. They're not just going to crumble after a few missed checks.

Starting with minor leaguers costs the league fans and money as fans won't pay the ridiculous prices to watch that product. Not sure how this would help the game at all.

The owners couldn't care less about the game being more competitive top to bottom. As long as the value of their franchises continue to rise many owners have no cares about that. Manfred isn't paid to improve the game or make it more competitive, he's paid to make the owners as much money as possible. Make no mistake, that is all these negotiations are. The owners trying to keep as much money as possible while the players try to claw back whatever they can.

And a neutered players union and slashed contracts just leads to the elite athletes choosing other sports over baseball and the quality of the product going down which then hurts the owner's bottom lines as their tv contracts shrink and fans stop showing up.

The pampered cry baby billionaires could just pay 50% of revenues to players and make this all go away. Most reports I've seen give them a 57-43% advantage in revenue split. Agree to open their books and give the players a 50/50 split and watch the competition balance out and avoid bad press all at the same time.

3 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Nobody was okay with the losses from the strike and the strike was not successful. It was a disaster for players and owners alike. 

Year	Min Salary	Ann. Increase	Avg Salary	Ann. Increase
1967	6000		19000
1970	12000	26%	29303	16%
1975	16000	6%	44676	9%
1980	30000	13%	143676	26%
1985	60000	15%	371157	21%
1990	100000	11%	597537	10%
1995	109000	2%	1110766	13%
2000	200000	13%	1895630	11%
2005	316000	10%	2476589	5%
2010	400000	5%	3014572	4%
2015	507500	5%	3952252	6%

 

They weren't happy about it, but the comment I was replying to said the players would immediately cave to the owners once they started missing checks and the owners were using minor leaguers instead. The players don't want to miss checks, and missed games would be awful, but the players aren't going to cave because they miss checks.

15 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Ok. Let's pretend the players never come back. I can't see that happening, but what's the long term downside? A few years down the road nobody will know the difference. The same current minor league players that will constitute MLB....will constitute MLB.

And for the record, they WILL come back. None of them are going to give up 6, 7, and 8 figure annual salaries for very long.

Why aren't the minor league stadiums gigantic and full of 40,000 fans paying 60+ bucks a ticket and $12 for a beer and $8 for a hot dog? Is it because the product isn't the same? The owners absolutely want nothing to do with getting rid of roughly 1200 of the best players on the planet. I've worked in baseball for years, I've paid for MLB.tv for a decade despite living in the Twins market because I watch as many games as I can, and I've been a Twins season ticket holder. I won't watch another major league game for the rest of my life if they "broke" the union and just went to minor leaguers because their 57% share of $10B in revenue wasn't enough.

If someone as diehard and dedicated to the game as I am would walk away you don't think a large chunk of the average fans would? They're already losing fans and you want them to drop the 1200 best players and think that wouldn't kill the sport? I promise you the best 1200 minor leaguers right now are not what "will constitute MLB" in the future. There's a reason minor league stadiums are a fraction of the size as major league stadiums and their prices are a fraction as big.

And even with the players giving in and giving up even more of the revenue, why would I want that? Why would any fan want the billionaire owners to get more than 60% of the revenues? You think that helps with the competitive balance in baseball? I don't know how else to say it than this has nothing to do with the game of baseball. It is 100% about who gets to take home how much money. The owners aren't on your side. They never have been and never will be. They care about competitive balance as much as it increases their bottom line. And clearly that isn't much.

Neither side cares about the fans. Neither side cares about the game. This is, and always will be, a fight over money and how much each side is able to pull away from the other. That is the only thing they're fighting about and none of them care about competitive balance or a fair game. Look at the constant cheating done all over the sport and realize the players don't care. Look at the tanking owners do every year and realize the owners don't care. None of them care about us, but at least the players entertain us.

3 hours ago, Dman said:

While I agree in principal I am not so certain reality wouldn't be different.  I remember the NFL strike and the replacement players.  People still watched and some cities came out ahead because instead of having a bad team suddenly they were competitive.  Fans root for their home team.  If the product is all MiLB players for every team then that is the pool.  Would some fans leave and never come back sure but I am not certain enough of them to make a large enough difference and over time I think it would even out.  Might take a while like the last strike but MLB will still be there the machine is just too big.

Comparing MLB tickets\games to MiLB is disingenuous.  Most MiLB sites are in smaller cities,  the players don't stay there long as they move up levels, they don't have a TV presence\advertising or the marketing the MLB clubs enjoy.  MiLB serves a completely different purpose as that talent bubbles up to MLB which is promoted as the best of the best so that is the league that becomes the most important to fans.  If the MLB players were locked out indefinitely then the best MiLB players would now be the best of the best that fans would watch.

I don't see that the players have a ton of leverage here.  I think they should focus on service time issues as I think that is something fans can get behind.  I agree that players should get at least 50% of the pie revenue speaking and I don't like that we don't get to see the teams books because to me that means they are hiding things.  Things that would most likely show them in a bad light.  I am not for either side really but probably on the players side more given what I know.  The issue is there is only so much they can do if the owners don't open the books.  If they could get that then maybe public outrage would be enough to change things but until then what MLB is offering is likely the best they are going to get.

I certainly took some liberties and exaggerated, but I strongly disagree that the machine is just too big. In the sense that the league will likely be around for all of our lifetimes, sure, but in the sense that it'll be what it is now? I don't think so. Attendance numbers have been going down for 15 years. World Series viewership has been tanking. Viewership overall is going down, and has been for years. They just lost almost an entire season to covid and saw people change their viewing habits. If they lose games this season, or come out with minor leaguers, I don't know that they ever recover.

Participation in youth baseball has been declining. Now you have the superstars of the sport staying home to watch a bunch of guys the kids have never heard of? I don't think the sport recovers from any missed games, or Chief's suggestion of using minor leaguers. The level of baseball being played would be so far below what the average fan expects of major leaguers they'd lose many of the ones that they didn't lose to the greed of millionaires and billionaires right at the jump. I think the league is in real trouble of remaining even 3rd on the list of American sports leagues. 

Everyone involved with major league baseball wants to keep seeing their pocket books get bigger. I have real concerns that they don't understand what happens if they screw this up and their collective greed causes problems with the 2022 season. Will we still have MLB if this goes into next year or we get replacement players? Sure. Will it be a $10B a year industry? I don't think so. Baseball is dying already and at this point it appears they're trying to help the process along.

This line of discussion began with Chief suggesting the owners break the union and replace them with minor leaguers if need be. My stance is that that doesn't help the owners, the players, or the fans. I think it kills the league as we know it. I also think missing games kills the league as we know it. I'm certainly not educated enough on everything to have such a strong stance, but just looking at the direction the viewership/attendance has been going and adding on top a lockout or strike going into the year and I just don't see that baseball bounces back like those involved in the negotiations seem to think it will.

29 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Chief, I have a new found respect.  Most people fall into ethnocentric alignment.  In other words, they identify with labor before management so they take the players side and ignore the things the players are demanding is bad for parity and bad for the sport.  We fund these salaries and you considered what's good for fans.  Bravo!

Owners are only lookout for their own best interests but their best interests are the interest of the game.  The demands made by players indicate they are either clueless as to what's good for the game or they just don't care.  While they say they want to get players more in the early part of their career, their proposals focus on things that are good for the highest paid players.  Looks like the Boras effect to me.

I bet the owners would accept ....

Minimum salary of $1M / 1.25M / $1,.5 M for the 1st 3 years.

A salary floor where the difference between the floor and minimum is divided among all prearb players.  The amount could be a running 3 year average to allow teams to adjust to their build cycles.

The 6 year free agent status is something MLB owner should never change for the sake of parity.  I thought their proposal on this item was more than I expected.

One final note ... I am with you on Milb pay.  Quit giving out $7M bonuses to unproven players,  They will get it when they prove they are worth it.  Take 80% of that bonus bonus money and put it into salaries so that all Milb players make a good living.  This practice would add roughly $60K to whatever they are earning now.  AAA players would/should make $100K.  

 

Why do you think the owners would take the savings from not paying big bonuses and put it towards minor league salaries? Minor leaguers don't have a union. The CBA doesn't dictate minor league pay. It does dictate the MLB draft signing bonuses, though. Those bonuses are the only reason any of the minor leaguers have any money at all. The owners would pocket that money and laugh all the way to the bank. 

20 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

The MLBPA has ignored minor leaguers since it's formation. MlB players do nothing for minor leaguers. 

 

Try again.

You're right. They haven't. But that's kind of the point. The MLBPA has no say in anything that has to do with the minor leaguers beyond the draft. The minor leaguers are not union members. The only thing the MLB players can do for minor leaguers is get them bonuses as draft picks. And you want to get rid of that. 

Not sure what you want me to try again. Be mad that the MLBPA isn't negotiating things out of their control? Seems like a weird thing to be mad at the players for.

2 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I think the owners would gladly accept a compensation system in the new CBA that reallocated bonus pool money to Milb salaries.  In other words, the new CBA would set salary guidelines that included these funds into Milb salaries.  Why would owners care.  This would be relatively easy.  You have to ask yourself why the emphasis on such a small portion of players.

Those bonuses benefit a relatively small portion of players.  In this case the system is benefiting the players who will eventually become the highest paid players,  At least in theory.  Seems like another Boras influence.  All they need to do to right this system is pay them when they actually earn it at the MLB level.  Playing baseball should not have to be a financial struggle for any Milb players given the amount of money in the game.  They could make life much better for  Take 80% of the already existing bonus pool and pay it out in salary.  That money would fund (roughly) an additional $60K in salary for all players.  The goal should be a system that pays $100K at the AAA level.  

I modeled a system that started at a $1M bonus at 1/1 and decreased by 2% for each pick until it reaches 30K.  The end of the 2nd round is $250K and it gets down to $30K after the 6th round.  It's really a matter of taking care of everyone or only focusing on top picks.  Like I said, seems like another Boras influence.  Lety's pay them when they earn it and eliminate financial hardship for all Milb players.

The MiLB players are not part of the union and their salaries cannot be negotiated. That is the entire point here. You're taking away the 1 piece of minor league pay that the MLBPA can influence, the singing bonus system. You've also suggested never giving up the 6th year of team control which is another way the owners get away with paying young players very little (compared to their older peers). 

There's no point in discussing what the minor league pay (beyond the bonus money) should look like coming out of this CBA because this CBA cannot, and will not, have anything in it about MiLB pay. It simply won't. Bonus pool money can be negotiated because it's part of the MLB draft before the players are assigned to minor league teams where the MLBPA no longer has say in what they're paid. It's that simple. The MLBPA simply cannot negotiate a deal that forces the owners to pay minor leaguers better salaries. It's impossible. They can't do it. So at that point you're taking away large bonuses and hoping the owners will pay better for no reason at all other than they're good hearted people who want to pay players what they're worth. And I don't think anyone disagree that that is not how the owners work.