New CBA negotiations

[Transmogrified Tiger]

 

 

I like incentivizing the best record in the league, but wild card round going best of 3 only works if games 2 and 3 are the same day and even then isn't my favorite.

[Rob]

If half the teams in baseball are making the playoffs, lots and lots of owners [notably the Ricketts] will settle for trying to be just good enough to squeak in and never put up a top-tier payroll even if they can support one. Because once you have that many teams in playing short series, it's just a crapshoot who advances.

 

If I'm the players union, I'd be fighting that like hell. No reason to disincentivize spending.

[Cubswin11]

[Tryptamine]

 

This is so blatantly obvious, I'd like to believe the player's association can't possibly miss the owner's intentions.

[Andy]

 

This is so blatantly obvious, I'd like to believe the player's association can't possibly miss the owner's intentions.

Yeah, I think they see it, which is partially why they didn't allow them to roll over the 2020 expansion to 2021 like the owners wanted to. If they roll over on that point they can't do it without major concessions in other areas.

[cl smooth]

https://twitter.com/timmarchman/status/1465769504680681480

[BigSlick]

The playoff system is perfect and elegant and if its changed it would be to the detriment of the entire sport, so of course it'll expand to 18 teams or whatever.

 

Changing FA rules to age rather than service time is better but setting the age at 29 is horrible given the vast vast vast majority of players earn almost all their value before that age. It should be like, 25. But! So it goes.

[Bertz]

[Bertz]

If you take all the reporting for the last few days, it feels like this is roughly where we're going to end up?

 

For the Owners

- Expanded Postseason (only 12 teams though)

- Ads on uniforms

- MLBPA drops their greivance from last summer

- Harsher Luxury Tax penalties

 

For the Players

- 5 years or age 29.5 for FA

- 2 years to arb

- Increased league minimum salary

- Increased luxury tax level

- Modest anti tanking and anti service time rules

 

It shouldn't take 2 months to get there from where they're at currently, but it's absolutely going to.

[Derwood]

If you take all the reporting for the last few days, it feels like this is roughly where we're going to end up?

 

For the Owners

- Expanded Postseason (only 12 teams though)

- Ads on uniforms

- MLBPA drops their greivance from last summer

- Harsher Luxury Tax penalties

 

For the Players

- 5 years or age 29.5 for FA

- 2 years to arb

- Increased league minimum salary

- Increased luxury tax level

- Modest anti tanking and anti service time rules

 

It shouldn't take 2 months to get there from where they're at currently, but it's absolutely going to.

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

[Cubswin11]

If you take all the reporting for the last few days, it feels like this is roughly where we're going to end up?

 

For the Owners

- Expanded Postseason (only 12 teams though)

- Ads on uniforms

- MLBPA drops their greivance from last summer

- Harsher Luxury Tax penalties

 

For the Players

- 5 years or age 29.5 for FA

- 2 years to arb

- Increased league minimum salary

- Increased luxury tax level

- Modest anti tanking and anti service time rules

 

It shouldn't take 2 months to get there from where they're at currently, but it's absolutely going to.

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

[jersey cubs fan]

[stitchface]

raising the limit from 210 to 214? Is that even a concession? WTF?

[stitchface]

If you take all the reporting for the last few days, it feels like this is roughly where we're going to end up?

 

For the Owners

- Expanded Postseason (only 12 teams though)

- Ads on uniforms

- MLBPA drops their greivance from last summer

- Harsher Luxury Tax penalties

 

For the Players

- 5 years or age 29.5 for FA

- 2 years to arb

- Increased league minimum salary

- Increased luxury tax level

- Modest anti tanking and anti service time rules

 

It shouldn't take 2 months to get there from where they're at currently, but it's absolutely going to.

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

 

I can only speak for myself, but what we've seen from the MLBPA so far is not a big enough overhaul to the current system for me to think they're going to start costing themselves money just to get a win on the last dollar of where specific lines are drawn. If the players were like "2 million minimum salary and restricted free agency after 2 years service" then I might feel differently, but what we've seen thus far is the same broad mechanisms and just trying to shift the lines, which makes for easier points of compromise than blowing things up. Also a lockout has been coming for a very long time regardless of the progress in negotiations, and given the lack of actual consequences for waiting to this point I don't think much of that part. Nothing helps progress like a deadline.

[Bertz]

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

 

February 1st is roughly the point it starts affecting money. You can get all of the offseason stuff done in 2-3 weeks and have spring training still open mostly on time. Most of the league reporters think they sit on their hands until then, but don't expect more than a week or so of spring training to be affected.

[Rob]

Yeah, I sincerely doubt we hear much movement on this until at least late January. The owners are motivated to cut off paychecks and wait for players to get antsy and put pressure on the union. The union is motivated to use the threat of missing games to force the owners' hands. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see this drag out til March or April, even.

 

I hope we all enjoyed the hot stove season we got, as it's going to be a while before it picks back up.

[Cubswin11]

 

Nothing will get done until players start losing checks and owners start losing ticket revenue

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

I don’t think they’re really that far off from a deal/middle ground in reality. There’s no huge asks by either side it seems they can’t sort through. Everyone can have a few weeks here to get their sound bytes and tweets and what not out to sound mad or whatever, but I think end of the day they’ll get something done sooner than later (in terms of losing games/affecting the season).

 

The Covid season negotiations may have helped a bit too since they had to sort some similar things out for that.

[Derwood]

I’d be shocked if this thing lasts in to the season and they start losing games. I’d bet they have something done in February at the latest.

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

I don’t think they’re really that far off from a deal/middle ground in reality. There’s no huge asks by either side it seems they can’t sort through. Everyone can have a few weeks here to get their sound bytes and tweets and what not out to sound mad or whatever, but I think end of the day they’ll get something done sooner than later (in terms of losing games/affecting the season).

 

The Covid season negotiations may have helped a bit too since they had to sort some similar things out for that.

 

The owners are dug in. This will take forever

[Cubswin11]

 

This is so optimistic but how can you feel this way? They've had months to negotiate and walked away after 7 minutes yesterday. What will create the incentive between now and February that wasn't already there?

I don’t think they’re really that far off from a deal/middle ground in reality. There’s no huge asks by either side it seems they can’t sort through. Everyone can have a few weeks here to get their sound bytes and tweets and what not out to sound mad or whatever, but I think end of the day they’ll get something done sooner than later (in terms of losing games/affecting the season).

 

The Covid season negotiations may have helped a bit too since they had to sort some similar things out for that.

 

The owners are dug in. This will take forever

They’re dug in until they aren’t. They’ll come to some sort of agreement (good or not) before losing a season or part of a season.

[Derwood]

I don’t think they’re really that far off from a deal/middle ground in reality. There’s no huge asks by either side it seems they can’t sort through. Everyone can have a few weeks here to get their sound bytes and tweets and what not out to sound mad or whatever, but I think end of the day they’ll get something done sooner than later (in terms of losing games/affecting the season).

 

The Covid season negotiations may have helped a bit too since they had to sort some similar things out for that.

 

The owners are dug in. This will take forever

They’re dug in until they aren’t. They’ll come to some sort of agreement (good or not) before losing a season or part of a season.

 

The thing that's [expletive] (not just now, but for the past forever years) is that ownership/Manfred always decry the chasm between the large and small market teams.....that they created themselves. It's an artificial complaint that they use for leverage and everyone knows its crap. One of the richest owners in the league is the owner of the Guardians, but he acts like he has no money. They're all billionaires; the large/small market thing is negligible.

[CubinNY]

 

The owners are dug in. This will take forever

They’re dug in until they aren’t. They’ll come to some sort of agreement (good or not) before losing a season or part of a season.

 

The thing that's [expletive] (not just now, but for the past forever years) is that ownership/Manfred always decry the chasm between the large and small market teams.....that they created themselves. It's an artificial complaint that they use for leverage and everyone knows its crap. One of the richest owners in the league is the owner of the Guardians, but he acts like he has no money. They're all billionaires; the large/small market thing is negligible.

The owners are capitalists when it comes to the players and fans and socialists when it comes to them, much like late-stage capitalism in general.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Rosenthal has a piece on what he thinks the new CBA *should* look like, not necessarily what will happen or what is being discussed: https://theathletic.com/3003758/2021/12/08/rosenthal-what-a-new-collective-bargaining-agreement-should-look-like/

 

Here's the tl;dr for non-subscribers

 

Luxury tax: Increase thresholds, decrease penalties

 

Revenue sharing: Keep the formula the same, but require recipients to spend on major-league payroll.

 

Free agency: Free agency after six years of service time except for players who have at least five at age 30; elimination of direct draft-pick compensation; creation of system to help low-revenue teams keep franchise-type players before they hit the open market.*

 

*ed. note: this isn't super specific but reads kinda like a NFL Franchise tag/NBA offer sheet hybrid

 

Arbitration: Increase the percentage of players who qualify for Super Two eligibility; increase the minimum salary from $570,500 to at least $800,000.

 

The draft: A draft lottery for low-revenue teams with the top 10 picks, giving weighted advantages to those with the best records; additional selections for low-revenue teams that make the playoffs.

 

Expanded playoffs: An increase from 10 to 14 teams, with proper incentives for teams that attain best overall records in each league, other division winners and wild-card teams with the highest win totals — pretty much the owners’ plan.

[Bull]

What if you actually did pay for past performance?

 

I was talking to family about the wisdom of trading Baez Bryant Rizzo et. al. I pushed that it is not smart to pay for past performance and that Bryant is likely to make us drool for the the first 3-5 years of his next contract but he will be an albatross for the last 3-5 years if it.

 

The conclusion, just because it’s smart doesn’t mean that it’s not stupid that this is the best way.

 

Baseball needs lifelong team players and needs to change their system so that it’s good business to keep players around.

 

What if revenue sharing wasn’t shared with small market teams? What if it was put in a trust/endowment and was used for two thing: 1) to pay players for past performance. Literally. You hit certain benchmarks and get bonuses from this pool. 2) to help teams keep their own players. Adds 5% to your bid when bidding on your own players in free agency or extending them, 10% if they made their debut with you, 15% if you drafted them and they made their debut with you. This gives small market teams a competitive edge in resigning their own players. Obviously there are more nuances to be considered and these percentages may be way off. Players still have choice but teams can better develop their brand. If the game is “regional” then this should increase fan buy in.

 

Who hates this more, players or owners?

[Bertz]

What if you actually did pay for past performance?

 

I was talking to family about the wisdom of trading Baez Bryant Rizzo et. al. I pushed that it is not smart to pay for past performance and that Bryant is likely to make us drool for the the first 3-5 years of his next contract but he will be an albatross for the last 3-5 years if it.

 

The conclusion, just because it’s smart doesn’t mean that it’s not stupid that this is the best way.

 

Baseball needs lifelong team players and needs to change their system so that it’s good business to keep players around.

 

What if revenue sharing wasn’t shared with small market teams? What if it was put in a trust/endowment and was used for two thing: 1) to pay players for past performance. Literally. You hit certain benchmarks and get bonuses from this pool. 2) to help teams keep their own players. Adds 5% to your bid when bidding on your own players in free agency or extending them, 10% if they made their debut with you, 15% if you drafted them and they made their debut with you. This gives small market teams a competitive edge in resigning their own players. Obviously there are more nuances to be considered and these percentages may be way off. Players still have choice but teams can better develop their brand. If the game is “regional” then this should increase fan buy in.

 

Who hates this more, players or owners?

 

I think both say no? Small market owners for sure, they like being able to pocket money during downcycles.

 

I do think we eventually get something akin to the Larry Bird rule in the NBA. Teams and players have both come out in favor of stuff helping players stay with their original teams. That said such a rule would be a concession to help high end players, who are the one group not suffering the last 5-10 years. The next CBA or two are going to focus on lifting up younger players and lower end FAs.