John_Havok

Cheeky bastard, you stole my line.

THis is my favorite so far:

Hey, you learn something new everyday. I was not aware it was the owners who had originally pushed for arbitration, and it used to start after 2 years, with no limits on how often if could be gone through. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-lockout-examining-baseballs-precedent-for-arbitration-eligibility-after-two-years/?fbclid=IwAR1lyjOCc0ruztSmMzGLqbViJ6fuIYcqHtr6j2jeyZLUIdYTUwS90N6TgtQ

Yeah, there are stories from back in December that dont go into details, but basically state he is not expected to return to the team this season. Maybe he gets traded at the deadline, but otherwise will be bought out at the end of the season. He just doesnt want to play for Toronto for whatever reason.

Yeah. Gotta love it. Some other umps retired too, Fieldin Culbreth, Kerwin Danley, Gerry Davis, and Brian Gorman along with Joe West.

That's his point. The MLB statement is worded so that it puts the blame on the PA for Spring Training not opening on time, when the only thing currently stopping it is the lockout, which is 100% on the ownership group.

Damn. I never even had the thought that Davis might have been on steroids.

Only the lockout is currently preventing spring training from moving forward. Kind of an important word to have been left out. If the owners ended the lockout, there's no guarantee the player's wouldnt strike.

Of course, but like I said. its all about perspective.

Persepctive I guess. Whats fair to the players when they;ve been getting smoked by the owners is every CBA since 1994 is probably different than what's fair to the owners, who have been doing the smoking. If fair agreements had been happening since then, the 2 parties likely wouldnt be where they are today.

It's a terrible look for the owners, its just another optics play for the court of public opinion. They're counting on this looking like a sincere effort to get a deal done, when the reality is they know the players won't want a mediator because the mediator would likely recommend far more concessions than they want to give like the mediator did in 1994. THey kicked him to the curb then, and don't want to repeat that process. Many forget that the strike only ended in 1994 when a judge ordered the previous CBA be reinstated. A new CBA agreement wasn't actually reached until 1997. Current acting driector of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service is Gregory Goldstein since the Senate didn't confirm Biden's nominee. From his bio - Goldstein is a career member of the Senior Executive Service and has served as the Chief Operating Officer for FMCS since 2018. Ramirez began his FMCS career as a Commissioner in 2005 and is currently the Executive Manager of the Division of Agency Initiatives. He has mediated disputes in almost all sectors of the American economy, including multi-party disputes in manufacturing, construction, and education.

THis wouldnt happen at all. You'd just see them replaced within the next 10 minutes with the next poor schlub willing to play for peanuts. THe whole reason the MILB players get stiffed is because some idiots on the supreme court decided they shouldnt be subject to the Sherman Antitrust act because MILB didnt qualify as interstate commerce, so the system of getting screwed has just become the expected norm for the past 100 years. Its important to note that no other sport has been granted this exemption except MILB

It really is all about the dollar signs. For the most part, people can definitely relate to not getting paid their fair share when they see their company or workplace being highly sucessful, but they just consider themselves lucky to be employed and the fact that the dollar figures for the players are so much more than they make, its like they think the players should just be happy to get what they get just because it's more than what they make. It's hard to put yourself in the players mindset for sure because of the actual dollars, but if they had all the info, I think they'd feel differently. The basics of "The employee's wages are getting lower, while the owner's profits are getting higher..." is still valid, no matter what the actual dollars are.

It's actually kinda weird when you go on message boards, or look at the comments on facebook posts about stuff like this. It actually seems like most people blame the players for being greedy and should just be greatful for whatever pay their ownership overlords deem worthy. Granted, most of them probably have the IQ of a peanut, or may just be bots the owners signed up to fake post support for them but it'll still interesting how so many people at the bottom of the totem pole think that being at the bottom of the totem pole is a privilege, and dont truly understand how incredibly great the owners have it over the players right now.

Yeah. it's hard to say exactly which approach is "better" given the spending restrictions, plus you never truly know how invested some teams are in scouting internationally. The Jays have always been very active in that pool, along with several other teams, whereas others just don't seem to allocate any effort or real dollars into it. So I think the Jays really do benefit from the approach of sign 1 big fish, then spread the rest out and try to hit the jackpot. And of course, different years have different talent pools just like the actual amateur draft.

Of course, but its not a tactic that makes sense. It would actually have the opposite effect as what they want it to have. My above statement is how I would be replying as the union. They're willing to miss games? Great! Then we're gonna hold out for more and make it worth it. The public seeing that statement already tilts the court of public opinion against the owners at least a little more, so take advantage of it.

Well, the owners have already stated they are "willing to lose games" to get what they want. Makes it even harder for me to even think of siding with them when they already had the better deal. Put it this way, the owners would vote tomorrow to end the lockout if the players dropped all their demands. That's how skewed it is in the owners favour right now. They say they are willing to lose games... if I were the PA, I'd take advantage of that. If the owners are willing to lose games, then as the PA I make sure I dont give anymore on mydemands. I make damn sure the missing games are worth not just a tiny insignificant win, but a meaningful one.

Not entirely sure about your first question but the way I read it, it just eliminates the loss of draft pick for the signing team. It doesnt mention the team losing the FA would also lose their compensatory pick - so my interpretation is that the team losing the free agent would still get a pick. Second question - no it wouldnt impact anything from the current offseason signings

Rule 2 – Section 35 – STRIKE ZONE 2-35 The strike zone is that space over home plate, the top of which is halfway between the batter’s shoulders and the waistline, and the bottom being the knees, when he assumes his natural batting stance. The height of the strike zone is determined by the batter’s normal batting stance. If he crouches or leans over to make the shoulder line lower, the umpire determines height by what would be the batter’s normal stance.

Meant to post sooner, but fangraphs did a pretty good analysis of what some of the proposals would mean economically to the players: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-economic-impact-of-yesterdays-cba-proposals/ Some excerpts: "First, both sides proposed instituting new salary minimums. The MLBPA suggested a new minimum salary of $775,000. The league countered with a tiered structure – $615,000 for players with less than one year of service time, $650,000 for players with between one and two years of time, and $700,000 for everyone else on a minimum salary. “Players on a minimum salary” might not sound like a key part of the structure of baseball, but they absolutely are, as FanGraphs alum Travis Sawchik has covered. These players aren’t a huge part of the money, of course – “minimum” is a helpful word there. In 2021, teams spent roughly $3.842 billion on player salaries, per Spotrac. Minimum salaries accounted for roughly $289 million of that, or 7.5% of the total outlay. On the other hand, those players accounted for roughly 47% of the service time accrued in 2021. That’s not quite the same as games played – you accrue service time while on the injured list or while on the 26-man roster but not appearing in games – but the player pool skews heavily towards pre-arbitration players no matter how you slice it. 58% of all players to appear on a 26-man roster in 2021 haven’t yet reached arbitration. When you consider the composition of the major league player pool, these small-sounding changes in pre-arbitration salaries take on increased importance. The union’s proposal would move that outlay for minimum-salary players from roughly $289 million to roughly $386 million, a $97 million increase. That’s small potatoes in the business of baseball, of course – the league reportedly saw $10.7 billion in revenue in 2019, and even if you just compare it to the overall player salary pool, it’s only a 2.5% increase in the total salary pool. The league’s proposal is for an even smaller increase – it would have paid minimum-salary players roughly $319 million in 2021, a 0.7% increase in total player salaries." "In 2017, the last time the CBA was re-negotiated, the minimum salary was set to $570,000. Since then, the CPI-U, the most commonly used measure of consumer price inflation in the US, has increased by 14.8%. If the minimum salary kept up with consumer inflation, it would be $654,000 today." "In the 2016 season, 779 players accrued at least one day of service time while ending the season eligible to receive the minimum salary. 51% of those players still haven’t reached arbitration, which means they’re unlikely to – those are essentially players who got a cup of coffee but didn’t have a significant major league career. Of that group of 779, only 112 have reached free agency. Minimum-salary players are the biggest part of the MLBPA – and most of those players will never get the kind of gob-smacking payouts associated with premium players in free agency. In addition, most of them don’t play the full season in the majors, which makes their take-home pay significantly lower than the quoted minimum." "It also hasn’t yet been reported how the bonus pool would be split. It would likely be tiered in some way, but at this early stage in the negotiation, there have been no public discussions of how that would work in practice. In addition, it’s unclear how these bonuses would affect competitive balance tax calculations, as the money would be paid from central revenues, not by individual teams. There’s time to work out those finer points, but there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty on the specifics of the proposal. "In the league’s version, that work hardly seems worth it. They proposed to set aside $10 million out of central revenues to pay players who hit those bonuses. That’s, well … not enough. Using the top-30 WAR benchmark and assuming the pool is distributed evenly, that’s $333,333 per player using the league’s numbers, and while that’s nice, it’s just not enough money to move the needle when it comes to rewarding impactful early-career performances. The union proposed a $105 million pool, which feels like it goes too far the other way. The players who would receive these bonuses are likely to get large payouts eventually anyway, and having nearly a quarter of the pre-arb salary pool league-wide payable as bonuses (if both player proposals were applied to the 2021 season, minimum-salary players would make roughly $490 million in salary plus bonus) strikes me as a poor way to allocate money to minimum-salary players." "At the moment, we project the Pirates for the lowest salary in baseball in 2022, at $39 million. They have seven players on their roster who are either free agents or qualify for arbitration. That leaves 19 pre-arb players. Under the union’s proposal, that’s an additional $3.8 million in payroll; under the league’s proposal, it’s closer to $1 million. Either would be a meaningful increase for Pittsburgh compared to their current payroll – and still leave the Pirates with the lowest salary in baseball, even if the minimum-salary change only affected them. The change won’t be earthshaking, is the point I’m trying to make here, even as it means a lot to individual players. Instead, it will be an incremental change, as those players get paid more without suddenly becoming better, which might actually make better players with higher salaries relatively more attractive."

What this video didn't show... the next pitch killed one of the guys standing off to the right.

ah... no. I dont pay for free stuff.

wow. I dont see it at all anymore. I must be lucky.

BTW, anyone wondering about Fangraphs god-awful yellow banner that came up after every screen change... it's gone.