New CBA negotiations

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is going to be a big and ongoing thing so I'm starting the thread so bits of news and rumor can be centralized.

 

Anyway part of MLB's proposal to the MLBPA last month was setting Free Agency eligibility by age(29.5 as of July 1) instead of service time, and boosting pre-FA salaries in the process: https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mlb-makes-new-service-time-proposal-to-players-union-sherman/

 

What MLB proposed was to create a $1 billion pool (and to tie that pool total to revenue in future years) for all eligible players, to replace arbitration. A formula would be created to determine how much players would receive. Arbitration-eligible players received roughly $650 million for this season.

 

I think I like the overton window being moved away from service time as a metric, and my guess is this gets more money to younger players which would be good. As an ownership proposal I'm sure it doesn't add up to the right amounts, but age-guaranteed FA with more money paid to pre-FA players is a loose idea I could see leading to a better result than the current system.

[UMFan83]

This is going to be a big and ongoing thing so I'm starting the thread so bits of news and rumor can be centralized.

 

Anyway part of MLB's proposal to the MLBPA last month was setting Free Agency eligibility by age(29.5 as of July 1) instead of service time, and boosting pre-FA salaries in the process: https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mlb-makes-new-service-time-proposal-to-players-union-sherman/

 

What MLB proposed was to create a $1 billion pool (and to tie that pool total to revenue in future years) for all eligible players, to replace arbitration. A formula would be created to determine how much players would receive. Arbitration-eligible players received roughly $650 million for this season.

 

I think I like the overton window being moved away from service time as a metric, and my guess is this gets more money to younger players which would be good. As an ownership proposal I'm sure it doesn't add up to the right amounts, but age-guaranteed FA with more money paid to pre-FA players is a loose idea I could see leading to a better result than the current system.

 

This is interesting I'm trying to think whether this would help or hurt late bloomers. Teams like the Cubs keep taking a shot at guys like Wisdom with the hopes that they breakout late and then they have team control over them for a few years. If Wisdom is 29 years old do the Cubs sign him knowing that even in the unlikelihood of Wisdom breaking out, he will be a FA after the season and could easily be outbid for him? On the flip side, those late bloomers will very likely never have a real shot at FA so the ones that breakout will never hit their earning potential.

[fromthestretch]

This is going to be a big and ongoing thing so I'm starting the thread so bits of news and rumor can be centralized.

 

Anyway part of MLB's proposal to the MLBPA last month was setting Free Agency eligibility by age(29.5 as of July 1) instead of service time, and boosting pre-FA salaries in the process: https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mlb-makes-new-service-time-proposal-to-players-union-sherman/

 

What MLB proposed was to create a $1 billion pool (and to tie that pool total to revenue in future years) for all eligible players, to replace arbitration. A formula would be created to determine how much players would receive. Arbitration-eligible players received roughly $650 million for this season.

 

I think I like the overton window being moved away from service time as a metric, and my guess is this gets more money to younger players which would be good. As an ownership proposal I'm sure it doesn't add up to the right amounts, but age-guaranteed FA with more money paid to pre-FA players is a loose idea I could see leading to a better result than the current system.

 

The argument against making that age based (specifically if the age they set it at is as high as 29.5) is that your superstars that tend to hit free agency before that age will now have it delayed a bit. Obviously, if they are getting more money during those years leading up to that, that will soften the blow a bit, but I'm not sure it completely makes up for it. Not that I have a better solution.

[Derwood]

I know a guy like Harper is an exception, but would this mean that the Nats would have had control for 10 years?

[Andy]

It does seem like those types would be the collateral damage in that proposed system. They definitely wouldn't get as many chances as they currently do.

 

That being said, that seems like a fairly reasonable and equitable solution, which means I'm probably missing something as there's no way the owners would actually propose something that acceptable this early in the process.

[Andy]

I know a guy like Harper is an exception, but would this mean that the Nats would have had control for 10 years?

That's also a good point. One would hope there would be a mechanism wherein guys who make the bigs very early would hit FA sooner than that.

[Derwood]

Perhaps this the MLBPA trying to keep guys (like Wisdom) being stashed in the minors through their mid-20's and STILL have to earn 6 years of service time? A "use 'em or lose 'em" system for all players?

[WrigleyField 22]

This is going to be a big and ongoing thing so I'm starting the thread so bits of news and rumor can be centralized.

 

Anyway part of MLB's proposal to the MLBPA last month was setting Free Agency eligibility by age(29.5 as of July 1) instead of service time, and boosting pre-FA salaries in the process: https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mlb-makes-new-service-time-proposal-to-players-union-sherman/

 

What MLB proposed was to create a $1 billion pool (and to tie that pool total to revenue in future years) for all eligible players, to replace arbitration. A formula would be created to determine how much players would receive. Arbitration-eligible players received roughly $650 million for this season.

 

I think I like the overton window being moved away from service time as a metric, and my guess is this gets more money to younger players which would be good. As an ownership proposal I'm sure it doesn't add up to the right amounts, but age-guaranteed FA with more money paid to pre-FA players is a loose idea I could see leading to a better result than the current system.

 

This is interesting I'm trying to think whether this would help or hurt late bloomers. Teams like the Cubs keep taking a shot at guys like Wisdom with the hopes that they breakout late and then they have team control over them for a few years. If Wisdom is 29 years old do the Cubs sign him knowing that even in the unlikelihood of Wisdom breaking out, he will be a FA after the season and could easily be outbid for him? On the flip side, those late bloomers will very likely never have a real shot at FA so the ones that breakout will never hit their earning potential.

Obviously any system that isn't a totally open market is going to have unintented consequences.

 

Random idea, let players just buy out arbitration years. For the vast majority of players the buyout will be too punitive to be worth it. For top tier players they'll make it back in the difference between arb salary and FA dollars. The buyout would go down over time based on age, so that the late bloomers have a reasonable buyout team and teams get a cash benefit if they find a late bloomer who buys out his 30+ afb years which would be very cheap.

[CubinNY]

It does seem like those types would be the collateral damage in that proposed system. They definitely wouldn't get as many chances as they currently do.

 

That being said, that seems like a fairly reasonable and equitable solution, which means I'm probably missing something as there's no way the owners would actually propose something that acceptable this early in the process.

 

It means a lot of fringy types are out of baseball by 28. It also means that FA expenditures are substantially reduced in years if not AAV dollars. Overall, it means less money for the players, even lesser for the really good players.

 

The current system is already punishing mediocre mid-career guys, This simply accelerates it.

 

I don't not like the idea, though. Except I think it should be tied to the median number of years of a MLB career. According to the Google machine the median career length is 2.7 years. Make free agency 5 years from the year that person was on a 26 man roster (for even 1 day) and have the roster pool stuff included from the original idea.

 

So the clock would start even on September call ups.,

 

Edit and probably not coincidentally, the average retirement age for a player right now is currently 29.5. That means no free agency for the average player.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/69716/an-alternate-baseball-salary-system/

 

This is not a proposal that has been made from either side in the real negotiations, but something the BP Author(Jonathan Judge, of catcher framing metric fame) put together in the above article. You can read it with a free BP login, but if you want the Tl;dr

 

- A proportion of all revenue is put in a centralized player salary pool

- Salaries are based on previous year's performance using an objective metric(being BP they suggest WARP or some derivation, but the specifics are less important). That means if the performance is equal the pay is equal, regardless of team. Teams do not control salaries in any way(save for secondary effects like playing time), and they pay the same amount towards player salaries regardless of who the players on the roster are.

- He briefly describes the need for some type of mechanism to help insure players with injuries don't get screwed, and years of control and the free agency process would need to be evolved to avoid an NBA-esque consolidation of the most valuable free agents.

 

All in all this was more of a framework that's light on details, but at the very least it's interesting as a thought experiment. I had never tried to think through the idea of making team payroll completely separate from the players on the roster before.

[WrigleyField 22]

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/69716/an-alternate-baseball-salary-system/

 

This is not a proposal that has been made from either side in the real negotiations, but something the BP Author(Jonathan Judge, of catcher framing metric fame) put together in the above article. You can read it with a free BP login, but if you want the Tl;dr

 

- A proportion of all revenue is put in a centralized player salary pool

- Salaries are based on previous year's performance using an objective metric(being BP they suggest WARP or some derivation, but the specifics are less important). That means if the performance is equal the pay is equal, regardless of team. Teams do not control salaries in any way(save for secondary effects like playing time), and they pay the same amount towards player salaries regardless of who the players on the roster are.

- He briefly describes the need for some type of mechanism to help insure players with injuries don't get screwed, and years of control and the free agency process would need to be evolved to avoid an NBA-esque consolidation of the most valuable free agents.

 

All in all this was more of a framework that's light on details, but at the very least it's interesting as a thought experiment. I had never tried to think through the idea of making team payroll completely separate from the players on the roster before.

I hate it (only read your tl:Dr summary)

[jersey cubs fan]

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/69716/an-alternate-baseball-salary-system/

 

This is not a proposal that has been made from either side in the real negotiations, but something the BP Author(Jonathan Judge, of catcher framing metric fame) put together in the above article. You can read it with a free BP login, but if you want the Tl;dr

 

- A proportion of all revenue is put in a centralized player salary pool

- Salaries are based on previous year's performance using an objective metric(being BP they suggest WARP or some derivation, but the specifics are less important). That means if the performance is equal the pay is equal, regardless of team. Teams do not control salaries in any way(save for secondary effects like playing time), and they pay the same amount towards player salaries regardless of who the players on the roster are.

- He briefly describes the need for some type of mechanism to help insure players with injuries don't get screwed, and years of control and the free agency process would need to be evolved to avoid an NBA-esque consolidation of the most valuable free agents.

 

All in all this was more of a framework that's light on details, but at the very least it's interesting as a thought experiment. I had never tried to think through the idea of making team payroll completely separate from the players on the roster before.

I hate it (only read your tl:Dr summary)

Yeah, that is not a very promising framework.

[WrigleyField 22]

I still like my arbitration buyout idea. Will probably be effectively a big revenue sharing transfer between big market and small market teams, almost like the Euro loan model. Introduces extra freedom of player movement, and tamps down the advantage of service time manipulation (buyout amount would primarily be a function of age, not service time), but not leave teams empty handed. And it's relatively simple instead of needlessly complex. And maybe that could eliminate the pick comp model, which harms guys markets so much. Teams can just expect to be financially comped if a good/great player departs (maybe throw in a draft pool bonus on top as comp, similar to the NFL comp model which doesn't penalize teams/players directly, just a set pool for the losers to draw from.

 

Put Manfred on the line.

[Tryptamine]

Can we just get through one negotiation where both sides don't screw the MiLB/Amateur players yet again?

[WrigleyField 22]

Can we just get through one negotiation where both sides don't screw the MiLB/Amateur players yet again?

They don't have a seat at the table.

 

So no?

[Bertz]

[UMFan83]

Good to know they are actively communicating with each other.

 

What is the likelihood of a shutdown this winter?

[Bertz]

Good to know they are actively communicating with each other.

 

What is the likelihood of a shutdown this winter?

 

The vibe I've seen from various insiders is that there's definitely going to be a shutdown, but it won't last long enough to affect any games or anything.

 

My guess is it lasts about a month, because no one in this damn industry can do anything without a deadline. So whatever the magic date in January is where they need a deal before it starts affecting spring training games, they'll finalize a deal within 48 hours of that.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Passan had the most complete take that I've found on the recent developments, including the ownership proposal that arbitration be replaced with a formula-based decision on salaries for those years: https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/32612663/why-mlb-seems-headed-lockout-how-thatll-create-free-agent-frenzy

 

From the ownership side, it's frustrating that while there's some benefit to eliminating the contentious nature of arbitration, the dollar amounts don't do anything to move the needle for anyone. Twitter ran with a few examples(using fWAR which was only in the MLB proposal as an example) where some folks would hypothetically come out better or worse, but substantively there wasn't any macro-economic shift that I could see. Window dressing masquerading as substance.

 

On the player side, it's frustrating that they're apparently dead set on keeping arbitration as a concept and preserving that step of negotiation, even though arbitration in its current form is basically haggling over relative pennies and the illusion of negotiation. Slam the economic outcome of that proposal and how it keeps pre-arb guys in indentured servitude all you want, but it's disappointing that they see the mechanism itself as a non-starter just to be able to preserve agent power or map to some ideal around negotiation that the current system doesn't really live up to.

[WrigleyField 22]

Passan had the most complete take that I've found on the recent developments, including the ownership proposal that arbitration be replaced with a formula-based decision on salaries for those years: https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/32612663/why-mlb-seems-headed-lockout-how-thatll-create-free-agent-frenzy

 

From the ownership side, it's frustrating that while there's some benefit to eliminating the contentious nature of arbitration, the dollar amounts don't do anything to move the needle for anyone. Twitter ran with a few examples(using fWAR which was only in the MLB proposal as an example) where some folks would hypothetically come out better or worse, but substantively there wasn't any macro-economic shift that I could see. Window dressing masquerading as substance.

 

On the player side, it's frustrating that they're apparently dead set on keeping arbitration as a concept and preserving that step of negotiation, even though arbitration in its current form is basically haggling over relative pennies and basically the illusion of negotiation. Slam the economic outcome of that proposal and how it keeps pre-arb guys in indentured servitude all you want, but it's disappointing that they see the mechanism itself as a non-starter just to be able to preserve agent power or map to some ideal around negotiation that the current system doesn't really live up to.

If we're talking net dollars and cents, yea a lot of this is gonna be window dressing or a de facto negotiation not between owners and players, but young players verse old players.

 

The players need to focus primarily on growing the pie. If they can cover that hurdle, things like arbitration become more important and not just meaningless shuffling.

[Bertz]

Yeah, assuming we're locked into fairly incremental changes to the arb system, I much prefer the owners proposal to what we have currently.

 

The particulars of this initial offering are obviously unacceptable. But if you work out the dollars (adjusting how relievers are handled as mentioned, and upping those baseline $ figures), I think it's a much better system than we have currently. Procedurally arb currently is just a dumpster fire.

[WrigleyField 22]

Yeah, assuming we're locked into fairly incremental changes to the arb system, I much prefer the owners proposal to what we have currently.

 

The particulars of this initial offering are obviously unacceptable. But if you work out the dollars (adjusting how relievers are handled as mentioned, and upping those baseline $ figures), I think it's a much better system than we have currently. Procedurally arb currently is just a dumpster fire.

Any system where guys are locked into 6 years of control (not even including ML time) is gonna be a dumpster fire.

[WrigleyField 22]

I threw out a buyout type system before, but here's another spit ballin idea.

 

From the moment a guy is put in the 40 man roster, a team has to offer him one of two contract types.

 

A split contract which offers only 3 years of team control, similar to the pre-arb contract, and then a RFA type FA after that, with a max of 1 QO and then UFA after that. These contracts would be lux tax exempt.

 

A full major league contract that must be at least 6 fully guaranteed years, counts fully against the luxury tax and must meet some minimum (relatively large) base salary requirement and includes automatic incentive based risers, similar to the alternate arb system being proposed.

 

Aka you can protect star prospects and pay the cash premium to do so, but grant early FA rights for the vast majority of guys (and get a little benefit to do so).

 

Okay, tell me why I'm dumb.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I threw out a buyout type system before, but here's another spit ballin idea.

 

From the moment a guy is put in the 40 man roster, a team has to offer him one of two contract types.

 

A split contract which offers only 3 years of team control, similar to the pre-arb contract, and then a RFA type FA after that, with a max of 1 QO and then UFA after that. These contracts would be lux tax exempt.

 

A full major league contract that must be at least 6 fully guaranteed years, counts fully against the luxury tax and must meet some minimum (relatively large) base salary requirement and includes automatic incentive based risers, similar to the alternate arb system being proposed.

 

Aka you can protect star prospects and pay the cash premium to do so, but grant early FA rights for the vast majority of guys (and get a little benefit to do so).

 

Okay, tell me why I'm dumb.

 

Interesting, thinking on it for a sec I think the full contract would barely ever get used, the additional 3 years guaranteed is a lot of back end risk and the contract if sufficiently high enough is only so much savings compared to RFA. Maybe your Harpers or Bryants but hard to see it applying to more than 1% of the player pool, which then means you're functionallyl asking for the split to be the norm which isn't outrageous but likely to be a big sticking point for ownership.

[WrigleyField 22]

I threw out a buyout type system before, but here's another spit ballin idea.

 

From the moment a guy is put in the 40 man roster, a team has to offer him one of two contract types.

 

A split contract which offers only 3 years of team control, similar to the pre-arb contract, and then a RFA type FA after that, with a max of 1 QO and then UFA after that. These contracts would be lux tax exempt.

 

A full major league contract that must be at least 6 fully guaranteed years, counts fully against the luxury tax and must meet some minimum (relatively large) base salary requirement and includes automatic incentive based risers, similar to the alternate arb system being proposed.

 

Aka you can protect star prospects and pay the cash premium to do so, but grant early FA rights for the vast majority of guys (and get a little benefit to do so).

 

Okay, tell me why I'm dumb.

 

Interesting, thinking on it for a sec I think the full contract would barely ever get used, the additional 3 years guaranteed is a lot of back end risk and the contract if sufficiently high enough is only so much savings compared to RFA. Maybe your Harpers or Bryants but hard to see it applying to more than 1% of the player pool, which then means you're functionallyl asking for the split to be the norm which isn't outrageous but likely to be a big sticking point for ownership.

I mean maybe. You'd have to play around with the thresholds where maybe 20-30% of guys are locked up long term. The automatic performance still allows them to get paid and the lux tax exemption on the bottom guys is an offset to owners for giving up control. Though now that I think about it owners kind of low key like the tax as an excuse not to pay players. Pretty narrow group of owners it benefits.