John_Havok

This is how the owners spin the current system, it’s intended to work exactly like that. Free agency after the end of the season when you’ve accumulated 6 years of service time. But because of how they calculate service time you end up with guys under control for 7 seasons or longer. Until they remove the “days of service” as the way the calculate a season, the problem still exists. The wording has to be concrete. For me, it’s simple, any player who is first called up in any season, it’s free agency at the end of the 6th season from the debut date or as of the end of the season where you’re 29, or you turn 29 after the current season but before the next one starts, whichever comes first. End of story. No calculations of days of the season. Called up the first game of the season in 2022 at age 21? Congrats, you’re a free agent at the end of 2027. Called up on the last day of the season in 2022? Free agent after 2027. I don’t care how many games you play, or days spent on the roster in any year. Send him to the minors? Doesn’t matter. DFA’d at any point and removed from the 40 man in 2025, only to re-sign and not make the 40 man again until 2027? Too bad. Still a free agent after 2027. Signed elsewhere? Oh well, that team has to let you go after 2027. Any player of course could still sign an extension to negate this if they were offered the chance. Same scenario with a guy who’s 24 at his debut in 2022, except he gets to be a free agent a year earlier.

Seems like a nice SS prospect problem to have in the yankee system right now. Volpe and Peraza

That's just it, some teams... it really doesnt matter if they are winning or not, their revenues don't move all that much because of their s***** local situations. Owners in that scenario would likely just defer to making as much money as they can while maintaining the illusion of trying to be competitive. Which is why you have to force them to spend money on player salaries... or they won't.

Even without that save from Tiny Tim. Haven't you seen his van?

"If we do implement a salary 'floor' - I do wonder if teams will use the money they have to spend to actually get better. I suspect some will use it to rebuild. They'll 'take' s***** contracts back in exchange for better prospects and those s***** contracts will allow them to get up to the floor without the team actually improving." THat's not entirely bad though, from a player's salary point of view. Because those teams unloading bad contracts will still have to maintain their floor. IT all depends on the lens you look at the proposals through. the PA wants more money spent on player's salaries, because that's their job. There's plenty of teams out there that make money regardless of whether they are contenders or not, because of revenue sharing. Of course, we don't ever get to look at the books of these teams because they're all privately owned (exception being the Jays and Braves) to see exactly what teams revenues and profits are... but I don't think it's all that much of a secret to think that the vast majority of teams are in the black every year, to varying degrees. Some may barely get in the black, some are raking in cash hand over fist. There's also a bunch of revenue the owners of these teams generate that's not directly the result of owing the team, but they do generate it because of their association with the team. This is why you see entire revitalization and large area proposals that don't just include stadiums now. Owners are using the infrastructure and business all around the stadiums to make money year round off their team, without it being considered revenue from the team. And while the MLBPA cannot expect those kinds of revenues to be shared or ever see them in the form of player salaries, when they see team valuations going up up up every year and player salaries going down like they did last season, it's enough to make them take a fairly hard stance.

It's not a good look for the PA to not have announced when their counter offer will be proposed. I mean, they should have known the first offer from the owners would be nothing but s***, so have something ready-ish that can be tweaked and counter-proposed within a day or two. I know I'm firmly in the players camp for hoping they win this round of negotiations, but they still need to accept some responsibility for the process being dragged out.

THat's because St Louis also benefits from the small market competitive picks every year, intended to go to small market teams that can't really afford to go free agent shopping at the top end of the pool. St Louis has the best of both worlds.

Yeah you’re right, round 1 at 2 million per would be drastically lower than current, 2 million each pick for round 2 would be higher but not significantly so.

2 million per draft pick for the first 2 rounds seems pretty high dont ya think? LIke, player 64 drafted gets the same bonus as #1? I like the minimum salary targets for MILB but, that's a pipe dream. Last year the AAA minimum salary increased to a shockingly high 700$ per week.

The thing with the lottery in baseball is that it's still not that big of a deal to get the #1 pick, aside from the boost in bonus money, which they may or may not even use to try and get the best player at #1. I don't think teams tank in baseball to try and get that #1 guy or more money to allocate to a draft. They tank because the owners don't want to spend money in a season where they know they aren't gonna win. The extra pool money is more of a bonus. While a draft lottery of some sort probably should be implemented, a salary floor would be far more effective against the way MLB teams "tank"

I just laugh when the owners propose a deal and their own side admits they aren't optimistic it will be accepted. Well... offer something they want then? Or at least start from a place of good faith instead of basically offering nothing?

It's like they think the union is categorically stupid and won't be able to recognize being snowballed, or they just hope it wins them points in public opinion because they're the ones that made the offer and want the union to immediately reject it (which they should). They probably just want the "Well we made the offer to fix the problem..." to resonate with the drooling masses

More than all of us by far...that bastard.

If a draft lottery gets instituted where only the bottom X number of teams get in, and X is a small number like 5... yeah. If every non-playoff team is eligible for the lottery, then it makes 0 sense.

Yeah, they know the problem because they love having it as an option. Terrible way to address it though. That's one of those things that's akin to a slap in the face. "Hey guys, here's this problem that we know is a problem because we love having the ability to abuse it, so here's a completely non-sensical way to help solve the problem that we know is stupid, but we feel good because we offered to fix the problem."

His skillset announced his retirement years ago

So far, his exit velos are increasing, along with the avg launch angle. Sounds like he made some meaningful changes.

Do what I did, trade every prospect you ever drafted or picked up at their peak value for legit major leaguers, and win 2 seasons later. Whatever everyone else is doing, do the opposite.

When are they on?

I'd put Buehrle in before Lester, and I would never vote for Buehrle.

I've been listening to MLB network quite a bit the last few weeks... every single one of them have the stereotypical old school baseball opinions. Listening to them whine about A-Rod being the new co-host of a show MLB is doing was priceless. They are so out of touch it's kind of sad.

Andy Pettite lite?

Not really, it was almost 20 feet deeper than the joke of a RF porch in Yankee Stadium. 333 to the shortest corner. Now it could be as deep as 363 with a 12 foot fence. Oracle park in Frisco is 339 to LF, 10 feet high. Petco is 334, similar height. I know they said it could be moved "As deep as 30 feet" which might not mean a change to the LF corner and maybe they mean the LF power alley, but either way, a 12 foot fence with those kind of dimensions is pretty harsh.

30 feet + a 12 foot fence seems like overkill.

Until you take the numbers into context. PLus they generally only negotiate 5 year deals. The minimum salary has gone up every year since 2003, the increases are already a part of the CBA. From 2017 - 2021, the min salary went from 535,000, to 545, to 555, to 563.5 and 570.5. so the 10k per year increase was already happening, and i can only assume the slowdown towards the end was due to COVID negotiations. So, starting at 600,000 would be a decent start, but lets assume for a moment that if this wasn't being negotiated right now and there hadn't been a COVID slowdown... the min salary would already have been 575,000 for 2021 and would have expected to be 585,000 for 2022. so an extra 15k over what they already would have had for 2022 is supposed to be some monumental give by the owners? And instead of increasing by 10 K per year, if we assume a 5 year deal, they increase by 20. Well, they sure could spin it by saying they've doubled the yearly increase of league minimum. Sounds great, until the actual context is presented. If I were the union negotiator, my counter would be 750K for players in the first year, year 2 get 1 million, and year 3 (unless they get arbitration in year 3 as a super 2) gets 2 million. Then annual increases in that minimum can be tied proportionally to revenues or a static number, whichever is higher that year. There would also be bonuses for annual awards which the owners had proposed before. This counter would offer a concession that they don't change the current arbitration system and leave it as is. If the owners want less money than those minimums, then they'll be listening to a counter proposal that changes the arbitration system and gets players to arbitration sooner. That would be my angle from the players union, either you're paying up known quantities with increases tied to revenues, or we are re-doing the arb system to get players there sooner. I think the owners would rather do known quantities in order to preserve the ability to manipulate service time.