New CBA negotiations

[UMFan83]

[itisallpartoftheplan]

[Bertz]

The devil is in the details, we saw that last time, but it seems like the players are caving pretty hard. Even assuming they get another 5-10% added to the CBT and the minimum salary.

[Andy]

 

My first thought was “thank god”

 

My second thought was “wtf somehow they tricked me into being relieved that were getting a 12 team playoff”

 

My third thought was “Crap it’s Nightengale which means 14 team playoff confirmed”

Right on cue Olney said this morning that the 14 team playoff is the big bargaining chip left. It's totally happening in exchange for insanely modest gains.

 

The players are gonna take a bath on this deal, again. Sigh.

[d_money]

The devil is in the details, we saw that last time, but it seems like the players are caving pretty hard. Even assuming they get another 5-10% added to the CBT and the minimum salary.

Tony Clark - doing his thing again

[Irrelevant Dude]

Right on cue Olney said this morning that the 14 team playoff is the big bargaining chip left. It's totally happening in exchange for insanely modest gains.

Sadly, there is too much money on the table for them not to go to 14 teams.

[Brian707]

Right on cue Olney said this morning that the 14 team playoff is the big bargaining chip left. It's totally happening in exchange for insanely modest gains.

Sadly, there is too much money on the table for them not to go to 14 teams.

 

 

horsefeathers 14 teams, now a larger percentage of teams will make the playoffs than the NFL.

[Bertz]

So based on the reporting from last night, and last week more broadly, I think this is where we're at?

 

What We Know

.- Minimum Salary is going up significantly. ~20% already, and expected to go higher today

- CBT is expected to go up modestly, $10M as of now, but players have indicated they need more

- There is now a pre-arb bonus pool for top performing youngsters, currently at $25M a year but as with the others expected to go higher in today's negotiations

- Playoffs are expanding, currently to 12 teams, but 14 might still be on the table, (like Andy said probably to fund the increases on the above 3 items)

- No expansion to the Super 2 class (this is the big killer IMO)

- Monetary penalties for exceeding the luxury tax will stay flat

- Ads are coming to uniforms

 

What We Sort-Of Know

- International Draft is a go

- There will now be a limit on how many times you can option a guy in a single year

- There will be some mechanism for players to accrue extra service time. The last I saw was that the top two Rookie of the Year vote-getters would get a full year regardless of how long they were up

- There will be draft-based carrots and sticks to try and curtail tanking

- I believe I saw that there's still a reduction in revenue sharing dollars on the table (likely a temporary formality to get an additional concession from the owners)

 

What We Don't Know

- Are the repeat offender penalties still in place for the luxury tax? Specifically the revenue sharing ones? These ended up being arguably the biggest problem with the last CBA

- Are there draft pick penalties attached to the CBT? Relatedly, are there still draft pick penalties attached to free agents? An earlier owner offer axed those, but I believe that came with higher monetary penalties for the CBT

- What will the playoff structure be? The players have gone as far as suggesting "ghost wins" to incentivize as many teams as possible to try as hard as possible

- There was a stray discussion of reducing the years to be Rule 5 eligible, no idea if that is going to be a thing or was a stray idea that never picked up traction

 

Based on the tenor of the reporting, I'm assuming this plus 5-10% on each of those first three items is going to be roughly the deal. A lot of small wins for the players, but man them caving on Super 2 is a huge killer.

[Brian707]

All of the MLB futures (division, league, World Series, MVP, ROY, leaders at whatever HRs, RBI, wins, etc) just showed up on my betting app outside of win totals, that’s very interesting.

 

 

Yup mine too

[pitchcs]

All of the MLB futures (division, league, World Series, MVP, ROY, leaders at whatever HRs, RBI, wins, etc) just showed up on my betting app outside of win totals, that’s very interesting.

 

 

Yup mine too

 

Maybe just because it’s March 1st?

[CubinNY]

So based on the reporting from last night, and last week more broadly, I think this is where we're at?

 

What We Know

.- Minimum Salary is going up significantly. ~20% already, and expected to go higher today

- CBT is expected to go up modestly, $10M as of now, but players have indicated they need more

- There is now a pre-arb bonus pool for top performing youngsters, currently at $25M a year but as with the others expected to go higher in today's negotiations

- Playoffs are expanding, currently to 12 teams, but 14 might still be on the table, (like Andy said probably to fund the increases on the above 3 items)

- No expansion to the Super 2 class (this is the big killer IMO)

- Monetary penalties for exceeding the luxury tax will stay flat

- Ads are coming to uniforms

 

What We Sort-Of Know

- International Draft is a go

- There will now be a limit on how many times you can option a guy in a single year

- There will be some mechanism for players to accrue extra service time. The last I saw was that the top two Rookie of the Year vote-getters would get a full year regardless of how long they were up

- There will be draft-based carrots and sticks to try and curtail tanking

- I believe I saw that there's still a reduction in revenue sharing dollars on the table (likely a temporary formality to get an additional concession from the owners)

 

What We Don't Know

- Are the repeat offender penalties still in place for the luxury tax? Specifically the revenue sharing ones? These ended up being arguably the biggest problem with the last CBA

- Are there draft pick penalties attached to the CBT? Relatedly, are there still draft pick penalties attached to free agents? An earlier owner offer axed those, but I believe that came with higher monetary penalties for the CBT

- What will the playoff structure be? The players have gone as far as suggesting "ghost wins" to incentivize as many teams as possible to try as hard as possible

- There was a stray discussion of reducing the years to be Rule 5 eligible, no idea if that is going to be a thing or was a stray idea that never picked up traction

 

Based on the tenor of the reporting, I'm assuming this plus 5-10% on each of those first three items is going to be roughly the deal. A lot of small wins for the players, but man them caving on Super 2 is a huge killer.

Thanks for the recap. I read somewhere about shifting rules, but I don't know if that was a rumor.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Based on the tenor of the reporting, I'm assuming this plus 5-10% on each of those first three items is going to be roughly the deal. A lot of small wins for the players, but man them caving on Super 2 is a huge killer.

 

Seeing it spelled out like you did(big thanks for that) makes me feel a bit better about this for the players. Yes the CBT is barely keeping pace with inflation and not with revenue growth, but ultimately that's a lever that impacts only a few teams and mostly in how they spend on free agents, which is not a population I care about getting maximum gains from. If they can get as high as possible on the minimum salary, stacked with the pre-arb bonus pools, (very mild) service time manipulation protections, and option limits, I think that's a decent outcome under the circumstances(owners negotiating in such bad faith they resemble cartoon villains) in terms of getting younger players paid. In terms of helping the game itself and the competitive landscape, I don't really see anything that is going to change the tide. Maybe the many small changes add up to something I can't see, but I'm not seeing anything materially changing the incentives when it comes to roster building. This is largely the owners doing(treating super two expansion as a third rail is again, bad faith garbage that precludes meaningful reform), but on the whole that part is a miss.

[Cubswin11]

All of the MLB futures (division, league, World Series, MVP, ROY, leaders at whatever HRs, RBI, wins, etc) just showed up on my betting app outside of win totals, that’s very interesting.

 

 

Yup mine too

 

Maybe just because it’s March 1st?

The books aren’t dumb and usually really know things, maybe it was a default setting that all that dropped overnight. But I take more as an indication they know we are getting 162 games if they’re putting out odds on all this stuff.

[Bertz]

Based on the tenor of the reporting, I'm assuming this plus 5-10% on each of those first three items is going to be roughly the deal. A lot of small wins for the players, but man them caving on Super 2 is a huge killer.

 

Seeing it spelled out like you did(big thanks for that) makes me feel a bit better about this for the players. Yes the CBT is barely keeping pace with inflation and not with revenue growth, but ultimately that's a lever that impacts only a few teams and mostly in how they spend on free agents, which is not a population I care about getting maximum gains from. If they can get as high as possible on the minimum salary, stacked with the pre-arb bonus pools, (very mild) service time manipulation protections, and option limits, I think that's a decent outcome under the circumstances(owners negotiating in such bad faith they resemble cartoon villains) in terms of getting younger players paid. In terms of helping the game itself and the competitive landscape, I don't really see anything that is going to change the tide. Maybe the many small changes add up to something I can't see, but I'm not seeing anything materially changing the incentives when it comes to roster building. This is largely the owners doing(treating super two expansion as a third rail is again, bad faith garbage that precludes meaningful reform), but on the whole that part is a miss.

 

Yeah, I think this in a vacuum is probably a push or maybe a very small win for the players, which is a loss after the last two agreements and considering how much of their political capital they spent to get here. That said this stuff is complicated and I could see a couple ways this turns out surprisingly well:

 

1. Like you said, if it's a death by a thousand cuts sort of deal. Winning a half dozen concessions valued at $50M a pop is better than one big $200M concession and status quo elsewhere

 

2. There can be "hidden" provisions that make a shockingly big difference. Like I mentioned above the revenue sharing costs to being a repeat offender were a HUGE problem in the last CBA, and no one picked that up until Brett went all lawyer on the CBA in l]2019 to figure out why PTR wasn't spending

 

3. Because the gains are largely concentrated on younger players, does that have a snowball effect? Like take the minimum salary. Using some quick and dirty Fangraphs numbers, increasing that by 20% is worth $60M. Does that 20% bump also lead arb salaries to rise by 20%? Because that would be worth another ~$170M per year. Then you have other hidden benefits, like fewer guys signing crappy pre-FA deals, etc.

[Irrelevant Dude]

Stick a fork in it.

 

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

[UMFan83]

Oh go horsefeathers right off owners

 

[Irrelevant Dude]

First, MLB sells a playoff package to ESPN that includes 14 teams. Then, they push the narrative that a deal is close so that they can turn around and accuse the players union of backing out. If anyone is not negotiating in good faith, it is the owners. Even if the players did come in today with a minor adjustment in tone, that is understandable given the previous day's marathon bargaining session. It is entirely possible that, after a little time away from the table, they realized they were compromising much more than the other side and needed to pull back the reigns.

[UMFan83]

it just sucks that the owners are cartoonishly evil and not even a villain in denial or anything. They know they know they are greedy fucktards and they just don't care

[CubinNY]

it just sucks that the owners are cartoonishly evil and not even a villain in denial or anything. They know they know they are greedy horsefeathers and they just don't care

No shame at all. Like charging $5.00 for $0.11 of syrup and carbonated water in a $0.10 cup.

[Andy]

If they'd just move a little closer to the players on those stupid-ass luxury tax thresholds, I'd probably say fine, the players got what they're going to get, let's make a deal and play ball. But those thresholds are too low and they need to go up.

[17 Seconds]

it's crazy how many people still agree with the owners and think this is just greed from the players

[cl smooth]

it's crazy how many people still agree with the owners and think this is just greed from the players

 

[SpongeWorthy]

[17 Seconds]