John_Havok

Kind of a genius move by the PA, as long as they are doing it because it's the right thing to do, not just to throw shade at the owners and score some PR points.

I dont disagree with anything you said really, though there's some nuance to the TV viewership thing. Yeah it's down, but im sure youd see that streaming is up, because it's increasing in every major sport, and MLB still gets it's cut on streaming. Yes, local TV deals will likely not be the cash cow that it is today, but that revenue can, and will be made up by streaming royalties, ads on player patches, and dozens of other avenues the owners will be able to cook up. I agree 100% that it is the small market owners that are holding this up. The big market guys are losing out on way more money than the smaller markets with games being cancelled in April. The big market guys dont give two shits if the CBT goes up to 225 or 230. Even the Padres went over the threshold last year. Other teams that have come close and gone over sometime like the Cubs, Phillies, Giants... they could go over easily if they felt they have a good window of competition for a title. The CBT is a nice headline story but it's not the whole story. If the owners actually put some teeth into the revenue sharing process to "force" teams that get massive amounts of revenue sharing to use some portion of it on players, im sure some smaller market teams would get into longer competitive windows. I truly think that most small market owners want to spend more money and win, but have been boxed into these corners where it doesnt really matter if they win or not... they're revenues are going to be what they are, so why bother spending it on players if it doesnt translate to higher revenues for the team (see Tampa). They're gonna get their chunk of revenue sharing and be done with it. Yeah they might scout well, develop well and pick up a few star players along the way, but there's no way they can afford to keep them all long term (see Cleveland/Tampa/Oakland). Some are just greedy ****s (see Florida) or completely inept (see Pittsburgh). I dont think a salary floor even fixes these problems necessarily, but if the owners want a real hard cap like they always say they want, they will never get it without a hard floor. Honestly, I think the NHL system is the best way of the 4 big sports as all revenues are split 50/50 and the floor/cap moves as revenues increase. If something unforseen like COVID happens, both sides got together and quickly hammered out a compromise that acknowledges reality and didnt try to f*** the other side in the ass.

Billionaires dont get to where they are in life without being some combination of smart, intelligent and ruthless, and the lawyers they hire... ditto. It's not the same kind of smarts and intelligence that us peasants would typically think of because there any many different types of intelligence, but they are not, in any way, stupid. They go to where they are precisely because they are the sharpest knives in the drawer. They also generally don't give two flying f***s about anything other than money and power.

I dont WANT to sell high on Teo just because, I think it might be a necessity to try and keep Bo and Vlad in the fold beside all the other big dollar deals on the books already. Can't keep them all unfortunately.

If you think the people negotiating a CBA worth billions of dollars aren't smart as hell, you're a f***ing idiot.

I don't think there's any teams actively trying to lose, but they sure aren't doing everything they can to try and win.

Maybe, but with revenue sharing the way it is, is it really unreasonable to expect that the Pittsburghs and Tampas of the league who get 10s of millions of dollars in revenue sharing to actually spend a pretty big chunk of it on players? That was the majority intent of revenue sharing to begin with. The poor teams were constantly reminding everyone how they never had enough money to compete for free agents. Enter revenue sharing where they get money for nothing over and above where they were before. Same teams are saying the same things now. Can't afford free agents.

I'm sure Manfred has already contacted Rawlings to get those balls juiced up a notch or two.

It's all relative. If the players are providing a product that is being sold at higher and higher dollar vallues every year, they have every right to collectively bargain for a relatively increased piece of the pie. In the long run, a cap and floor is inevitable imo. Whether it's hard caps/minimums or soft... remains to be seen.

Yeah that was me that posted that stuff about the percentages. i wish i could find the article that I got it from as it was really interesting. I think in all reality both the Owners and union know that baseball needs a cap/floor situation, but being the last of the major sports to not have something like that they're going to fight it tooth and nail ... but, eventually the work stoppage that precedes a cap/floor in MLB will be really long.

I think getting the CBT raised is just part of the bigger picture of revenue sharing. When the top teams can spend big money while the low end end teams just pocket it and dont spend it on players like they "should" be then may as well let the big boys throw cash around. Both New York clubs, Boston, the Dodgers.... all of them could spend 250-300 million on salary every year and still make shitloads of profit.

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.