John_Havok

Not quite, but i think there's elements of truth to what you're saying. the Luxury tax probably should increase though. The PA wants teams that can get up to that number, to get up to that number or over as often as possible. Most teams treat it as a cap anyways due to the penalties, so the union still sees money being left on the table that could be spent on it's members. The Union still needs to fight for that as part of their mandate. If they didn't, they wouldnt be doing their job. But I somewhat agree with you that when the main message of this entire negotiation has been to fight for the little guy, and the little guy got some pretty good increases in the quality of their paychecks. Therefore, the CBT (which did also move up.. just not as much as they'd like) shouldn't be what stops a deal from getting done. And likely it wasn't the sole reason, but that's how it's going to look.

ok.

Well, what Manfred said is accurate. THe ball is in the PAs court. Everyone leaving the city and no scheduled talks is not a good look. The Union can't afford to become the bad guy here and the longer this goes, the more the whole process will turn against them, likely from within. If the PA was even half intelligent in seeing this coming, they would already have had a counter proposal pretty much ready to go and stated they were willing to stay and hash it out if the owners were.

There's still no reason for the regular season to be delayed... yet. Owners may have just been giving a deadline as yet another bargaining ploy. What will be really interesting is that IF the MLB announces cancellation of the first week of MLB games, will the PA stick to its guns of "if any games are cancelled, expanded playoffs gets taken off the table."

Survey says.... Now we get to see if the owners actually meant that it was their final and best, or if they will look at a counter.

Owners are really sticking to their CBT ceilings, offer concessions on bonus pool and min salary. Enough for the PA to accept??? Seems like a pretty good result from a minimum salary POV compared to previous and along with 30 million bonus pool... not a huge win, but a win. CBT moves up, but not a lot.

Are there any real examples though of someone playing C and a position other than 1b though? Like , I know it would be great but when is the last time it actually happened?

Yeah. They don’t make a salary, but they share in a playoff revenue pool that gets split up based on where the team finishes. But, the pool doesn’t just go to players, they vote on how many “shares” end up getting split between the players and other club personnel

They want expanded playoffs but only to a certain point. If too many teams make the playoffs then it could have the opposite effect they want, in that more teams will choose NOT to invest heavily in players because they’ll just take their chances that they back into the playoffs, get the extra revenue from a few home games and call it a year. It’s a fine balance between the playoffs being important enough to try hard for every year, without it being a participation trophy

Good. Based on todays info it seems like if the PA gave the 14 team playoffs and mlb gave the 35% super 2….that puts both those issues to bed. Leaves the CBT, min salary and whatever the unilateral super power problem is along with revenue sharing left.

I know the Raps would never have won with him…maybe Chicago can if his changes are for real, the supporting cast is good enough and they have enough real depth. Toronto had some good pieces as secondary options but true depth was always missing.

Here’s the “progress” today in a nutshell https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2305943 The players were infuriated to the point they considered walking away from the bargaining table, a person familiar with their plans told The Washington Post's Chelsea Janes. The MLBPA dropped its request to expand arbitration eligibility from 75% of players with two-to-three years of service time to 35%, according to The Athletic's Evan Drellich. (It’s currently 22%) Neither side offered any change to the minimum salary structure or the pre-arbitration bonus pool, according to Drellich. The union's proposal also included coming down $2 million on the competitive-balance tax thresholds each year from 2023 to 2025, Janes added. The league countered with an offer to raise the threshold only in the second year of the agreement from $214 million to $215 million. (Seems like the union made the more significant give) MLB also offered to lower luxury tax penalties to 45% for the first threshold, 62% for the second, and 95% for the third, according to ESPN's Jesse Rogers. (Owners concession) The league reiterated wanting the window of notice to unilaterally impose on-field changes shortened from the current one year to 45 days, which the players didn't receive well, Passan reports. (Unilateral powers with 45 days notice instead of 1 year….really? Wtf owners….) And just when it looked like they were on the verge of agreeing on 4-team draft lottery, that blew up too when MLB insisted on 14-team playoff pool instead of union’s proposal of 12. (Honestly can understand why the owners are taking the hard stance here that’s a lot of extra cash and don’t really get the players reluctance to go to 14) The negative tone of Saturday's negotiations also represented a backtrack from the optimism on Friday that they were close to an agreement on a draft lottery.

Yeah they could do both, as long as the target is a multi-positional player so if Vlad takes it over, then you still have him to play elsewhere. That's why I like McNeil as a target. High floor, low risk, multi-position guy

Its possible he's a better player now, but my only objection is the "now that he's gone from Toronto ..." part that seems to say that he's better because he left and Toronto somehow was preventing him from succeeding. He's been gone for 4 years, and just getting better in his 4th. He was still the same old guy or worse in San Antonio for 3 years.

Looks like Tiedemann is the Jays system helium candidate for the year given all the reports we've seen over the winter.

That's what ST is for. Get him back at the hot corner every day for a month and see if he shows well enough to make the switch. It's not like 1b is so hard that being away from it for 1 month will cause a downward spiral of his confidence into the abyss of irrelevance.

Must be. DeRozan has always put up points and this season is just a slight bit better than his best with Toronto. He's still a pure volume scorer that relies on FG% to be effective, and this year his FG% is way above is career rates as is his 3pt %. Whether those are indicitive of a real change or just a sustained hot streak is the real question

Mets have already said he's on the trade block too so he can be had.

Sign Conforto, package Gurriel + top end prospect as the main return for J-Ram and ... yup.

Manfred is actually on hand for today's negotiations according to a few reports. He's never been present in the negotiating rooms prior to today. Thats a good sign i guess?

Whether directly realted or not, its money they made because of the team. Plus, the Braves are publically owned so aside from them and the Jays, we'll never see anything like this from any other team to even guess at the real numbers.

I'm sure San Diego would be willing to part with Hosmer - but for very good reason. His profile is interesting in that he still hits the ball very hard, he just beats it into the ground way too much, like 60% ground ball rate. If he was capable of making a swing change he'd probably end up having a few good years. And no, not advocating a trade for him, his contract is FUGLY and there's no way to bank on a change being made that makes him useful. Jeff McNeil is available. Can play 2b/3b and LF. Quality bat and results from 2021 dont really match the underlying numbers. Decent bounce back candidate but not like all-star calibre or anything. Just solid.

Hypothetically though, which would you prefer to lose in trade if they did end up getting Ramirez; Moreno or Orelvis? No way a trade gets done without 1 of them for sure.

holy s***. Those shoulders are massive compared to previous years. Lower half looks pretty trim as well.