Just because the Major League players are no longer being tested for performance enhancing drugs doesn’t mean that nobody is getting tested. Four minor league players were just suspended for Stanozolol use and one for amphetamines. Fortunately, none of these players are in the Angels organization.
Cancer again. This time former Mariner Calvin Jones at the age of 58.
So the big picture issue with the CBA is that players are angry that computers have made it far easier for front offices to see that half the MLBPA isn’t worth what they demand to get paid and most of that half is over 30.
So the owners/GMs game the system a little and the average age of a rookie goes up by a couple years from 2001 to now. Thus avoiding paying 32 year olds 20M for 3 more years at the ass end of a horrible contract.
As a fan, I like this.
The players say they want to get paid more money earlier. They also want to continue getting paid even more money later in their careers.
The owners contend that they can only afford to overpay Max Scherzer because they underpay Shane Beiber. Unless you are still living in an overripe socialist dream where owners just pay more money for the hell of it because Star Wars or whatever, the owners have a point. If younger players should get paid what they’re worth then so should Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols.
As a fan I don’t like old has beens being paid tens of millions of dollars to suck. I do think it would be cool to find some way to scale payments for arb/pre-arb players to get paid according to production.
And this is where my problem lies. I think most owners, other than Nutting, would be fine if there was suddenly some magic waving of a wand and now Chris Davis gets paid 650K a year and Matt Olson gets 23M. If your team suddenly has 10 Players of Olson’s value on the team then suddenly you have a 280+ million payroll probably. You also probably won the championship. Most owners would probably still be OK with this.
The player’s union, not so much. And this is why, this time around, I’m a little down on the MLBPA. They are pretty much demanding that, because richer guys are richer, they need to dumb it down, play stupid, and piss away money they don’t have to because “fairness”. At the same time the MLBPA isn’t planning to bight any bullets when most teams TV contracts expire and the new ones are worth 2/3 of the old one or some other financial disaster strikes are they?
You’d think that, after the lessons of the UAW etc this union would realize that demanding stupidity in order to appease them doesn’t ever work out in the long run, especially when your major issue is “holy shit, 80% of us can be totally replaced by a random 25 year old playing at Durham right now”. Ford’s not gonna pay a guy $32 an hour and a pension to pull a lever, they will find a way around it. The same holds true of most GMs when faced with paying Carlos Santana or Brendan McKay to do the same job.
The worst part for the MLBPA is that this just isn’t going away. The math is out there. Change the way it’s done a little, the geeks are still going to find a way to avoid paying out useless dollars as much as possible. Honestly, if I were them I’d find a way to get a high salary floor, no revenue sharing, and just accept a salary cap as soon as I can. Just copy the NFL’s system.
But that’s not going to happen. I say settle on a 5 year deal with a salary floor, some sort of modification to draft pick/FA system, a higher MLB minimum, the universal DH, expanded play offs (for the owners) with large post season bonuses for players, better MiLB conditions (the owners will do this anyway from shame plus Covid’s out of the way) and a payroll penalty system the way the owners want it and let’s move along. The MLBPA’s just not in a position to bully the owners into taking it from both ends.
But MLB also wants to give Manfred more power to limit the amount of minor league players a team has on its roster. Manfred doesn’t need anymore power.
There are like 12 to 200 other issues you can point to they may decide to argue over. Where are you seeing the “we want Rob Manfred to have the power to decide how many MiLB players are on a (40 man?) roster.” demand from the owners? I don’t recall that one, but like I said, there are a lot of wishes on the lists.
There was that one idea about limiting the number of times an individual player can be sent up and down in a single option year. Though I don’t know what part Manfred would play in that…. also, I thought the players want to limit the shuttle service.
That’s actually a problem with this whole bargaining session, especially for the players. It seems like every idea reads “Here is how this could be good for the players…” followed by “on the other hand, this change could mean that X Y and Z can happen, and the players don’t want that….”
That seems to be an issue with almost every facet of things, other than the MLBPA’s basic demand, which is, as I said “Stop being smart and good at your jobs and just pay us all a lot of money whether we’re actually worth it or not. In fact, please stop figuring out if we’re worth it or not, it hurts our egos.”
It’s really got to suck knowing that 70% of your union can be replaced by players like Josh Lowe… and that Josh Lowe would kill to replace any one of those players.
I think that another part of it is that the players want a percentage of the wealth generated by the league. Just as the owners/management are learning to use more detailed tools and technology to their advantage (finding the better players, using metrics to dial down into specific performance) they are also doing so to maximize the value they extract from the players celebrity. That revenue is only carried over to the players via contracts, so managing each contract to tie pay to perceived value on the field all means less security and less pay for the vast majority of the players. And, for the first time in recent memory, the Union does seem to be worried about all the players interests, and not just the veterans at the top.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/mlbs-cba-proposal-included-ability-to-reduce-number-of-available-minor-league-roster-spots.html
There it is.
Ah, yeah. I hadn’t even seen that idea. Though MiLB is gonna get contracted. Neither side in this wants to avoid it all that much.
Well thought out. But the anger is real and must vent before there is any chance for a deal.
Yeah. F*** their feelings. It sounds like the if the MLB were as truly evil as they are supposed to be they could put an end to all this squabbling by simply leaving a big old garbage bag of weed, pills and booze in what ever room the union leadership is meeting in next and letting things take their course.
Then the ones who are left can all go back to entertaining me…. the real victim here.
I feel the Union has all the piss-and-vinegar and the Owners have all the power. That is if the Owners can just wait it out. The Owners have time on their side as they all have plenty of money and actually save salaries and operating costs during the lockout.
It might mean a lost season, but if the owners stick together, the players will eventually mostly cave to a deal that favors the owners. That said, I don’t think the owners are capable of sticking together.
And I agree the fans are the real victims- although in time all will be forgiven and forgotten just like in the past.
Thanks Stan, for allowing these two stars to win a championship by surrounding them with other good players. Wish another owner in this town who I won’t mention would do the same!!!
Let’s see since 2020 The Lakers who were really very bad season in 2015/2016 (17-65) Clayton Kershaw won more games than the Lakers did by himself 3 times.
Also in 2020 The Dodgers enough said…………
Now the Trifecta has happened as of 7pm last night……….DOES YOU KNOW WHO EVEN GIVE DAMM? 😡 😡 😡 😢 💪 💪 👈
So your are saying it’s that easy? Just surround your stars with other good players?
I think Arturo should follow this diabolical scheme. Lets hope other teams don’t hear about this ‘genius recipe’ for building a champion…..That will make it really hard to stand out if everyone has the same easy masterplan.
Had no idea you were such a big Chargers fan! I wouldn’t sit around waiting on the Spanos family.
Eat. Balls. enough said. 😱 😵 👺 🛎 🔚
Can any of those dudes pitch?
Four years ago today is when Shohei showed up in Tempe
We’ve already wasted 4 years of Shohei?? 😥
Stupid Arte tearing Shohei’s UCL.
If he had just surrounded Shohei with jars full of healthy superstar UCLs Shohei would have won at least seven championships by now…. and Mike Trout would have figured out how to hit after August 15th….. also, cold fusion.
Drop in the Bucket compared to the years he wasted of Trout.
oh look, it’s Kevin Gregg. He had eight good years after he left us in 2006.
I watched zero seconds of the Stupor Bowl, and spent the afternoon on the golf course, then came home and cooked fish burgers for the wife and kids as a dinner treat. And after the MLB offer on Saturday, they are not even anywhere close to coming to an agreement with the MLBPA. This is going to drag on for awhile.
Not really surprising that 4 players tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in the Dominican League. They may see it as their route to a career like Big Flappy Papi, who was just inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Apparently so do Russian teenage figure skaters.
Hey baseball- you are lagging way behind football. So what do you do to follow up arguably the best football playoffs of all time? You cannot agree on a labor deal and delay the season. Excellent PR! Very smart!
Even more than this. I cut the cord and paid for MLB and could not watch the playoff and World Series. But I could watch the NFL playoffs and SuperBowl for free.
Halftime was foot tapping. Commercials were worthy to be in the Super Bowl. Fun night all around for SoCal Sports Fans.
Congratulations Rams
It was a really great football playoff season. Sometimes the Super Bowl game is a flop, but not this year!
And thank you Rams for not covering…..