General Baseball Chit-Chat Thread

[CubinNY]

As the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement between the league and the Players Association looms this offseason, Major League Baseball made its initial proposal to the MLBPA on Wednesday. The pitch reportedly included a new salary minimum of $100 million for each team, according to Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Coupled with that change would be a lowered luxury-tax threshold of $180 million, with a steeper penalty than teams currently pay now.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/08/18/mlb-proposes-salary-floor-lower-luxury-tax-mlbpa

 

This is only a proposal, and it almost certainly won't make it through as initially described, but anything along these lines seems really bad for the Cubs. It would give the Ricketts' another excuse not to go over $180 million.

Lower the LT to $180M? I know it’s the first round of negotiations but horsefeathers that. That’s laughable

You can bet the Ricketts's hands were all over that. The floor is about 4 million per player.

[Rex Buckingham]

Lowering the LT would be a gigantic win for the owners, so it's pretty much what I expect to happen. Even if the floor comes up, I'm pretty sure you'd just see dudes getting huge one year deals to meet the minimums to play on garbage teams. Need a 5th starter? Let's pay an old guy who was good once $15 Million to suck and sell some jerseys

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Lowering the LT would be a gigantic win for the owners, so it's pretty much what I expect to happen. Even if the floor comes up, I'm pretty sure you'd just see dudes getting huge one year deals to meet the minimums to play on garbage teams. Need a 5th starter? Let's pay an old guy who was good once $15 Million to suck and sell some jerseys

 

Why would teams who always have to be at the minimum overpay for bad players on short deals over and over instead of just spending the same amount to get better players or extend their current good/popular players? Not sure I understand that complaint.

 

As an ownership proposal that's a first salvo in negotiations I am sure it's very bad when you add up what the net spending would be, but I am curious about what would happen to parity and team building with a minimum salary and/or a smaller deviation in team payrolls. It's possible something very bad for players in that sense could be very good for the competitive environment and therefore the health of the game, which might make for some trickiness in negotiating. To be clear, the health of the game and good outcomes for players are not mutually exclusive ideas by any stretch, but given the structural disadvantages it may end up with that being the way the choice is framed without a lengthy work stoppage.

[UMFan83]

Need a 5th starter? Let's have the Dodgers pay an old guy who was good once $15 Million to suck and sell some jerseys

 

Added some context to this sentence

[CubinNY]

Lowering the LT would be a gigantic win for the owners, so it's pretty much what I expect to happen. Even if the floor comes up, I'm pretty sure you'd just see dudes getting huge one year deals to meet the minimums to play on garbage teams. Need a 5th starter? Let's pay an old guy who was good once $15 Million to suck and sell some jerseys

 

Why would teams who always have to be at the minimum overpay for bad players on short deals over and over instead of just spending the same amount to get better players or extend their current good/popular players? Not sure I understand that complaint.

 

As an ownership proposal that's a first salvo in negotiations I am sure it's very bad when you add up what the net spending would be, but I am curious about what would happen to parity and team building with a minimum salary and/or a smaller deviation in team payrolls. It's possible something very bad for players in that sense could be very good for the competitive environment and therefore the health of the game, which might make for some trickiness in negotiating. To be clear, the health of the game and good outcomes for players are not mutually exclusive ideas by any stretch, but given the structural disadvantages it may end up with that being the way the choice is framed without a lengthy work stoppage.

I'm not so sure I understand how artificially suppressing wages is good for baseball. What it means is shorter contracts for less money for good/great players and still underpaying good/great players under team control.

 

Cost certainty for the owners is bad for baseball. I suppose if there is some form of profit-sharing that gets divided evenly by the MLBPA and owners and is distributed to the players that might make the proposal more palatable to players.

[WrigleyField 22]

Isn't that the crux of it? Every other major league/union has a guaranteed revenue share right? MLB has gone without but also not had a cap. If the ownership really wants to push for a real or de facto cap and floor, they're going to give on a revenue split right?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I'm not so sure I understand how artificially suppressing wages is good for baseball. What it means is shorter contracts for less money for good/great players and still underpaying good/great players under team control.

 

Cost certainty for the owners is bad for baseball. I suppose if there is some form of profit-sharing that gets divided evenly by the MLBPA and owners and is distributed to the players that might make the proposal more palatable to players.

 

There's two levers here, total spending and spending inequality. Fixing spending inequality makes more teams more competitive, changes incentives that lead to teams getting rid of good players, and ultimately would lead to better competitive balance. More teams with more seasons where they play meaningful baseball is good for the sport. This remains true even if total spending is flat or even down somewhat(though there are limits). Most importantly though, any choice between the two is a false choice, you don't have to lower total spending to address spending inequality. But given where the goalposts are and the owners' incentives, it's very possible that's the choice that will be offered without a sustained work stoppage.

[jersey cubs fan]

Fixing spending inequality makes more teams more competitive, changes incentives that lead to teams getting rid of good players, and ultimately would lead to better competitive balance.

Spending is not an inequality. You can't fix cheapness and greed. And you have absolutely zero evidence that artificially restraining spending by top teams and adding a very low arbitrary floor will actually lead to better competition or an improvement in the game.

 

Even if your theory proved correct, I don't think it's great for baseball to have everybody win 84 games.

 

Professional athletics is about greatness. Disincentivizing the goal of greatness is not good for any sport.

[BigSlick]

 

Poor Chris Davis has to be in the running for worst contract of all time right? Everyone knew it was a bad idea at the time, he had the most pronounced 'old guy' skills of anyone ever, and then they gave him the GDP of a small country and he folded as a productive player immediately.

 

There are other contracts that maybe garnered less value-to-money ratio, but this was like watching a train ram into a car from 5 miles away and the conductor being like "yes, lets do this".

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Fixing spending inequality makes more teams more competitive, changes incentives that lead to teams getting rid of good players, and ultimately would lead to better competitive balance.

Spending is not an inequality. You can't fix cheapness and greed. And you have absolutely zero evidence that artificially restraining spending by top teams and adding a very low arbitrary floor will actually lead to better competition or an improvement in the game.

 

Even if your theory proved correct, I don't think it's great for baseball to have everybody win 84 games.

 

Professional athletics is about greatness. Disincentivizing the goal of greatness is not good for any sport.

 

This is a baffling take and at odds with the exact things that folks rightfully critical of ownership have been saying for years. The difference between the top payroll this year and the 30th is 200 million, the difference between 5th and 25th is over 110 million. Putting a huge dent in that delta would of course make a huge difference in competitive balance, to imply otherwise would be to imply that spending doesn't matter or that low payroll teams are structurally inferior in some substantial way that just does not exist.

 

Moreover, 'every team winning 84 games' is not a true depiction, even in this bad proposal the gap of 80(or more) million is significant, you absolutely would still have stratification. But I'd also argue that every team clustering around .500 would be way better for the league than the current environment with 5-10 teams staring down multiple years(if not indefinite) of non-competitiveness in a sport whose long season/total number of games is part of its appeal/value proposition.

[jersey cubs fan]

This is a baffling take and at odds with the exact things that folks rightfully critical of ownership have been saying for years. The difference between the top payroll this year and the 30th is 200 million, the difference between 5th and 25th is over 110 million. Putting a huge dent in that delta would of course make a huge difference in competitive balance, to imply otherwise would be to imply that spending doesn't matter or that low payroll teams are structurally inferior in some substantial way that just does not exist.

What the hell are you even talking about? People complain about cheap owners, you think suppressing spending so cheap owners can pretend to catch up answers that? That's not going to change anything for the better.

 

This doesn't fix anything, it only holds down spending.

[UMFan83]

Finally someone's City Connect uniforms are worse than the Cubs:

 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is a baffling take and at odds with the exact things that folks rightfully critical of ownership have been saying for years. The difference between the top payroll this year and the 30th is 200 million, the difference between 5th and 25th is over 110 million. Putting a huge dent in that delta would of course make a huge difference in competitive balance, to imply otherwise would be to imply that spending doesn't matter or that low payroll teams are structurally inferior in some substantial way that just does not exist.

What the hell are you even talking about? People complain about cheap owners, you think suppressing spending so cheap owners can pretend to catch up answers that? That's not going to change anything for the better.

 

This doesn't fix anything, it only holds down spending.

 

I'm genuinely confused that this is an arguable point. The baseline assumption for folks complaining about cheap owners(be they temporarily tanking or habitual low spenders in small markets) is that spending more would help the team have more success. If that's true and spending is correlated with success, then having a more narrow margin in everyone's spending means success is distributed more evenly. The only way that's not true is if spending is not correlated with success, or in a huge coincidence teams that spend a lot now have some unrelated quality that will keep them on top when their spending advantage is lower(or vice versa for teams that spend less).

[Tim]

 

Poor Chris Davis has to be in the running for worst contract of all time right? Everyone knew it was a bad idea at the time, he had the most pronounced 'old guy' skills of anyone ever, and then they gave him the GDP of a small country and he folded as a productive player immediately.

 

There are other contracts that maybe garnered less value-to-money ratio, but this was like watching a train ram into a car from 5 miles away and the conductor being like "yes, lets do this".

Prince Fielder?

[Andy]

Finally someone's City Connect uniforms are worse than the Cubs:

 

I'll be pedantic here; I think Arizona's, just by virtue of being spectacularly boring, were already worse, and it seems like SF's are being very poorly received (to me they're just meh and probably about as good/bad as the Cubs'). And I know some people dug Boston's, but holy hell do I hate those.

 

These LA ones would probably be fine except for those oh so loud blue pants.

[soccer10k]

 

Poor Chris Davis has to be in the running for worst contract of all time right? Everyone knew it was a bad idea at the time, he had the most pronounced 'old guy' skills of anyone ever, and then they gave him the GDP of a small country and he folded as a productive player immediately.

 

There are other contracts that maybe garnered less value-to-money ratio, but this was like watching a train ram into a car from 5 miles away and the conductor being like "yes, lets do this".

Prince Fielder?

 

He wasn’t a FA but the Ryan Howard extension was horrible also. He was worth -4.8 bWAR for the deal. Chris Davis was -2.6. Prince was actually worth 7.1 over his deal, including a 4.7 year.

[chopsx9]

Finally someone's City Connect uniforms are worse than the Cubs:

 

I'll be pedantic here; I think Arizona's, just by virtue of being spectacularly boring, were already worse, and it seems like SF's are being very poorly received (to me they're just meh and probably about as good/bad as the Cubs'). And I know some people dug Boston's, but holy hell do I hate those.

 

These LA ones would probably be fine except for those oh so loud blue pants.

 

Should have gone with Los Dodgeros - That would have been awesome. I feel that was probably on the table until someone got fired. I don't mind the Cubs' at all. I like the blue on blue at least partially because you just don't see it. If they were the everyday uniforms maybe I'd feel differently. I've tried a couple of times to buy one but they never seem to have the fatty sizes.

[Bertz]

 

If this is for non scandalous reasons, which the "story to come" part does not have me confident in, he's got a good chance of ending back up here IMO.

[squally1313]

 

If this is for non scandalous reasons, which the "story to come" part does not have me confident in, he's got a good chance of ending back up here IMO.

He was in the Epstein front office? Going to guess it was scandalous.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The Rangers fans seem to think he might be on the losing end of a power struggle, but yeah there's no benefit of the doubt for the Epstein front office tree right now.

[Regular Show]

 

If this is for non scandalous reasons, which the "story to come" part does not have me confident in, he's got a good chance of ending back up here IMO.

He was in the Epstein front office? Going to guess it was scandalous.

 

I seriously doubt that... I've met him and talked to him a few years back. I would be very surprised if he were involved in a scandal. He didn't come across as one of those "party frat bro" FO execs, but you never know I guess. Very smart dude and pretty humble, and helped get Cole Hamels back on track with the Cubs.

 

I also doubt he comes back to the Cubs... I can't confirm this, but I believe one of the reasons he left for Texas was to move up the organizational hierarchy and he knew he would never rise higher than AGM here. Same thing with Randy Bush, and I guess Jason McLeod falls in that same category too.

 

Jed will be interviewing execs for the Cubs' GM position in the offseason, but I seriously doubt Shiraz Rehman is a candidate for that role. I wouldn't mind it and I think he would do a good job. I just think we will hire someone completely fresh from conversations I've had. Dan Kantrovitz might get the GM role, but they probably hire someone new (with no ties to Theo or Jed).

[Tryptamine]

The Orioles are pulling away in the fecal league standings. Today marked their 18th loss in a row, their 2nd loss streak of 14 or more this season. Their record now stands at 38-85 good for a .308 winning percentage. That puts them on pace for a 50-112 season. This following a 54-108 record in 2019 and 47-115 in 2018.

[Derwood]

The Orioles are pulling away in the fecal league standings. Today marked their 18th loss in a row, their 2nd loss streak of 14 or more this season. Their record now stands at 38-85 good for a .308 winning percentage. That puts them on pace for a 50-112 season. This following a 54-108 record in 2019 and 47-115 in 2018.

 

I’m starting to wonder if they know that player development is a thing.

[Stu]

The Mets have lost 12 1/2 games in the standings to the Braves since August began.

[soccer10k]

The Mets have lost 12 1/2 games in the standings to the Braves since August began.

 

Mets can’t even tank at the right time.