Cubswin11

From Kiley today, fwiw

Asuaje horsefeathering sucks. I remember hating picking him up back when all we had to worry about were Cubs transactions.

An alternative to MLBN and Harold Reynolds is something nice

Yeah, the owners are trying to get the majority of players ($5 mil or less guys) on their side here. And/or drive a wedge between the majority of the league vs the minority high earners.

I saw this pointed out on Twitter and didn’t realize it. The majority of the league, 70%+, makes under $5 mil. This new proposal comes close to the ~50% pro-rated plan for guys in that group and they might actually have won some of those players over with this. Or at least have that group, which is a majority, thinking they’re close. The guys making $2 mil or less are especially close to the pro-rated amount. So maybe this was smart and they have a good chunk of player support or players thinking they’re in the ballpark. The owners will always win the public sentiment too if it’s the $20+ mil player saying they want more and the guys making less are cool with the idea. They’re also potentially dividing the players on this if the majority or a lot of the $5 mil or less players are good to go and the $10+ mil guys, which are a minority, are pushing back.

I’m hoping these are just negation tactics with leaking stuff to the press and it is one of the first offers, but man if they horsefeathers this up and don’t play this year (lets assume it can be done in a safe manner) and then strike in 2 years MLB is going to have some serious long term viability issues. It will piss off and alienate a bunch of existing fans and continue not adding fans. I’m really doubtful right now they play this year, the owners are being greedy and shortsighted, the players seem dumb and disorganized and are run by an idiot in Clark. They also only have 1-2 weeks to really figure this out to hit a July 4 start date.

Yeah I think you go upside/risk with the picks this year and then go get the more projectable, higher/safer floor dudes in the UDFA part. Daniel Cabrera is probably my favorite pick if they do go with a “safe” pick at 16.

And then he died

So either MLB is flat out lying or the players didn’t read or didn’t understand the prorating language/section in the agreement/had it explained to them poorly. Idk if MLBPA/Clark deserve the benefit of doubt they have an air tight agreement that didn’t allow for any sort of exclusions/conditions with prorating.

Don’t listen to Passan on Woj’s or Russillo’s most recent pods if you want hope of a season being played. Sounds like it’s just a complete horsefeathers show and no serious talks have even started yet. A few highlights (or lowlights); - “There definitely are over leveraged teams out there looking at potential bankruptcy.” -Russillo pod around the 25:30 mark - MLBPA always use to win negotiations and have the smartest guy in the room, now they don’t. Basically calling the players and Clark horsefeathering morons without saying it. - MLBPA just sounds really disorganized and doesn’t have a unified front. NBA has a few stars that have the respect of the league and can be their voice like Lebron and Chris Paul right now being involved in talks to figure things out, MLB does not have that and it’s all over the place. - Players continually get stuck on non money issues, like the last CBA focusing on amenities over the LT and money issues. Hears their big point of contention right now is players want to be able to dress and shower in locker rooms before/after games (MLB proposed plan called for dressing at home/hotel before game, showers at home/hotel only). - Overall just seems like both sides have gotten petty and don’t trust each other at all. Owners basically greedy assholes and the players are dumb and unorganized.

From the link Raisin posted in the minors thread regarding Hernandez;

I factored in the players selected by the A’s as far as traits of players selected. I’m still diving into it, but a few notes (I primarily looked into pitchers here and will look into position player traits later): Where players have been selected in the first and supplemental round: Kantrovitz has put a strong emphasis on polish with the selections of college pitching. He drafts from “power programs” (7 of 14 first-round picks) and heavily from Florida. Five of the first-round sections from 2012-2019 and a total of 11 of his top 5 round picks were from Florida. He really likes polished college pitchers with change-ups. Three straight drafts featured first-round picks on polished college pitchers who featured a strong change-up: Michael Wacha (2012), Marco Gonzales (2013), and Luke Weaver (2014). His HS pitching targets also feature an emphasis on change-ups. His teams have drafted HS pitchers five times in the first five rounds from 2012-2019. Everyone features at least an improving change-up. Several pitchers feature plus to plus-plus change-ups. I think it'd be foolish to not factor in that every organization is going to have their own preferences, but as far as pitchers I'd imagine there will be players targeted who have solid to plus future change-up grades. I went through the top 150 on MLB pipeline and highlighted players who have similar change-up grades to the players above. His time with the A’s was a fairly even mix of “high floor” and “high ceiling” Richie Martin (2015-floor), AJ Puk (2016-higher floor at least as a reliever), Austin Beck (2017- ceiling), Kyler Murray (2018-ceiling), Logan Davidson (2019-floor). When players have “fallen” in the draft, Kantrovitz’s teams have often been the team to pick the player. Wacha 19th (BA 8th, MLB 11th), Piscotty 36th (BA 26th, MLB 18th) AJ Puk 6th (1st by BA). The A’s also drafted Garrett Mitchell in the 14th round in 2017. If he fell in this draft, I would not be surprised to see the Cubs take him. It was a lot to go through the pitchers so I'll look into position player trends later and combine those for a list of possible draft targets. Cool stuff, thanks for taking the time to do this. Look forward to the hitter list and seeing if we can use the pitcher/hitter list to identify some targets for this draft.

Yeah that popped up on my Tl the other day and seemed informative. With the draft being such an unknown maybe some of those guys slip but yeah seems like your assessment of where they’ll go is as good a guess as any. Still pissed Veen skyrocketed as he seemed possible to get at 16 in December/January, Lol. Workman I am irrationally attracted to for some reason the more I read, especially as someone outside the first.

I know others here have more knowledge on the topic and spend more time. But some names on this list that interest me that would be available to us to some degree whether it’s after the first/as FA/as under slot first guys are Daniel Cabrera, Justin Foscue, Nick Loftin, Casey Martin, Aaron Sabato, and Gage Workman (who isn’t listed here but have seen the name in top ~75 lists).

So unless I'm completely misunderstanding something or have missed something..... Everyone seems mostly good with the pro-rated plan to pay players, the league and players even seemed to have agreed to it already. At end of May, which is already agreed to, the teams will have played players approximately 1/3rd of their salaries for the year. So let's say teams owe roughly 20% of payroll yet (82 game schedule is roughly 50% and let's put some fluff in the numbers 33%+20%=53%). According to spotrac the average team payroll for 2020 is $133,276,460, so that means there's roughly $4 billion owed to players this year. That means the 20% owed yet under the pro-rated plan is a shade under $800 million, about $26 mil per team. Cubs owe about $37 mil yet under the 20% thinking, the Marlins about $9.5 million as team specific examples. That's really not that much money for teams and is such a small amount to be willing to throw away a season, especially because they know they have to pay them something under the revenue split proposal. It's not like they think they can get away with paying nothing if there's a season, so they'd really be potentially willing to throw away a season for a few million to like $10 million per team.

This has been sooo good. Just because we have so little content for a while after this I wouldn’t mind if someone took this and edited it to run more linearly and not all the time hopping (not that I mind the time hopping) but as a rewatch wouldn’t mind the styles switch.

I don’t think there’s been any official report they’re going to want further salary reductions than just a pro-rated set up. Think it’s all been speculation on how everyone expects the owners to act. Silver/NBA had a conference call last week and he hinted/implied NBA players will probably have to take a a pretty big pay cut because of lost revenues. But they have a different set up with a salary cap and that moves directly with revenue. Rosenthal has reported the players are expected to be asked to take a further pay cut. This is not just speculation. Got it. Missed that/my Athletic subscription expired a few months ago and I let it run out, didn’t feel it was worth it much anymore. All the Cubs guys report stuff that can be found anywhere else.

I don’t think there’s been any official report they’re going to want further salary reductions than just a pro-rated set up. Think it’s all been speculation on how everyone expects the owners to act. Silver/NBA had a conference call last week and he hinted/implied NBA players will probably have to take a a pretty big pay cut because of lost revenues. But they have a different set up with a salary cap and that moves directly with revenue.

The original agreement when they shut down was MLB/owners agreed to pay the players as if it was business as usual through end of May. So they will have gotten about 1/3 of their total salary for the year by end of this month. After that there was no guarantee or agreement on future salary payments for the year because of force majeure language in contracts allows teams not to pay (they technically didn’t have to even do the payments of salary March-May). They also negotiated that this year counts as a year of service time too regardless of any games being played. Payment reduced on a pro-rated basis makes sense to me (simple math, if they play 81 games they should get 50% of their salary). I think people in here think and are upset MLB/Owners are going to ask/force a larger reduction of pay though.

Players stop getting paid in ~3 weeks. I’m guessing they’ll fold soon after the paychecks stop, if not before, and agree to reduced pay for whatever type of season we end up having.