glory

If they end up missing a huge chunk or even all of the season, then I don't think baseball recovers from this. They'll still have fans and loyal local followings, but they'll inch closer to being the NHL in terms of having no national footprint and being strictly a regional/niche sport. If they only miss April, then we'll probably see no significant change since no one cares about baseball in April anyway, but this definitely seems like the type of lockout that will last most of the season, if not all of it. Baseball recovered in the 90s because of the home run chase, but also keep in mind that baseball was a lot more culturally relevant back then so it was easier for something big to bring fans back. In 2021, we saw the modern day Babe Ruth and it barely made a ripple outside of baseball circles. If Ohtani was around in the 90's he would have probably been one of the biggest athletes in America. Baseball over the last 10 or so years has really fallen off the national map, and even if someone were chasing Bonds' single season home run record in a few years (spoiler: no one will), I don't think it would bring the level of attention that the home run chase of 98 did.

Yeah April is horrendous for attendance and weather, so I could see the logic from the owners. If the season starts May 1, then they'll be fine with that. Unfortunately I think this lasts a lot longer than that.

James Harden in his next contract is going to make $60m in the final year of his deal, and that's in a salary cap league. While MLB players wear the "free market" like a badge of honor when players didn't even break $40m AAV until last year. A salary cap tied to league revenue solves pretty much all of the PA's issues but it will never happen.

Apparently MLB's offer is: 12 team playoffs (instead of 14) $675k min salary $25m pre arb pool $220m luxury tax ($220m for first 3 years then $224m in 2025 and $230m in 2026) CBT penalties same as last CBA Draft lottery for top 5 picks No draft pick compensation on free agents They still seem to be apart in all of the financial areas, but at least there was enough movement to extend the deadline. Just have to hope they find a compromise in the $$ today. According to Evan Drellich, the owners are asking for an international draft in these talks, so my guess is the players concede on that and some of the numbers (pre arb bonus, CBT, etc) increase.

If it ends up being 12 playoff teams then it means the players would have caved in other areas, so I’m actually surprised the players value 12 more than 14 so much that they’d potentially sacrifice other things. Either way, 12 would be better than 14 from a fan standpoint. If expansion happens again in the future, with 2 more franchises added, then 14 might be more desirable but with 30 teams, 12 is a nice compromise. Hope this gets done today and we can finally talk baseball again.

More logical would be if top team only has to win 1 game to advance while wild card team has to win 2, but I guess the league wants to ensure a 3 game series for financial reasons, and in that format the max a series would go is 2 games. I understand why they want to do something like that but I don’t think it would work.

The players want 12 teams while the owners want 14, so the players are ok with expanded playoffs, just not 14 teams. Which is kind of stupid because we are talking one extra team in each league making it so it's hardly a huge difference. My guess is they are holding out on that because it's the one piece of legitimate leverage they have on the owners so they are using it as their biggest/only bargaining chip. Based on what I've read, the owners have been consistent in that they won't budge on 1) revenue sharing and 2) the super 2 percentage. The players keep trying to make changes to this, but it seems futile since the owners don't even consider it something to be bargained. My guess is if there's any chance for movement in the next 2 days it will be if the players concede on those two issues. They'd get their increased minimum, and the owners might marginally increase the pre arb bonus if the players back off the super 2 stuff. The draft lottery seems like a minor/petty argument to begin with so I don't think that means much in the long run. It's the CBT that is going to be make or break this, and it sounds like "break" is more realistic at this rate.

Agreed, I'd just keep Vlad at 1B and get a short term 3B to bridge to Martinez/Groshans/whoever (barring a trade for someone like Ramirez), but the Jays seem legitimately interested in Freeman, so it's possible they have already considered the option of moving Vlad back there. If the other option is to sign Freeman and put Vlad at DH (or vice versa), then that seems like a bad use of resources/money, but I trust the front office in their decision making.

If slim Vlad is an average 3B, then moving him back there is a no brainer. My guess is he'd still be below average there, but no where near as bad as pre-2020, so might still be worth it if the upgrade at 1B (Freeman or otherwise) was big enough to justify it.

Based on today's results, seems like the only way baseball will begin (either March 31 or any time after that) is if the players cave. I don't think the owners care if they miss games or even a season. They'll survive. It's the players who lose guaranteed money, lose a year of their careers, etc. I don't think we see a resolution to this any time soon. I hope I'm wrong and they figure something out by Monday, but that's looking like a pipe dream. Last year the Jays missed the playoffs by 1 game in large part due to not being allowed to play home games for 4 months, and now have a roster that on paper looks like it could contend for the playoffs even if they are not expanded and we don't even know when or if the season will begin. Having to sit through the 2017-19 seasons only to get completely screwed when the competitive window begins. Frustrating. I could stomach a 60 game season during the pandemic due to the circumstances, but a shortened season because the two sides couldn't figure out how to split $10b is ridiculous.

Vlad is competent enough at 1B to be there long term so if the team is seriously interested in Freeman, then it would have to mean Vlad to 3B. Moving him to a DH role at age 23 when he's legitimately in the best shape of his life probably wouldn't go over well with him. His IG bio still has "3B" on it, so he probably still wants to be there (or he's too lazy to change his bio, I guess). I'll trust the front office on this one if it actually happens. Freeman is probably going to the first team to give him a 6 year deal, so curious to see if the Jays would actually do it given all their other FA contracts added recently.

The 3B free agent market stinks and Jose Ramirez may not even be available in a trade (especially if expanded playoffs becomes a thing). Moving Vlad back to 3B and either trying to sign Freeman or trade for Olson might be superior options at this point, although that means competing with the Yankees, Dodgers, and Braves for those two players so it won't be cheap.

Yeah, I don't think what the players are asking for is unreasonable, but the entire structure is so different from previous CBA's that it's clearly an attempt to make up for getting screwed in the last one (or last couple). Arb after year 2 + $100-115m pre arb pool + 36% increase in league minimum + 15% increase in CBT (from 2021 to 2022). Again, can the owners afford to make these changes, or at least meet somewhere in the middle on them? Sure, but you can't correct the structure in one CBA. Lay the ground work and then build from there seems like a more realistic way to implement these things. If they agree to a pre arb bonus, even if it's $20-30 million this time around, it's still a new structure built into the CBA that didn't exist before and it can grow over time. You can't make all the money back in one negotiation. If the owners agreed with the $775k minimum, raised the pre arb bonus to say $50m, and did the lottery for the top 7 teams, then maybe the players back off on the CBT increase. If they do all that while getting the 14 team playoff format and advertising on the uniforms, they'd still come out way ahead in the end, but the players would get a win as well. There has to be a middle ground when it's just money, but I don't think either side wants to go there.

Yeah there's no chance any minor leaguer with even a small chance of making the Majors would ever be a scab. They'd be blackballed by the PA. If it wasn't for the stupid antitrust exemption, I'd be rooting for a bored billionaire to create the baseball version of the XFL so that baseball fans could watch nationally televised baseball that hasn't been touched by Manfred or Clark, but unfortunately we are stuck waiting for the two sides to agree, whether that happens in 4 days or 4 months. I'm not a big fan of college baseball, and minor league baseball without 40 man roster players is going to be messy.

Seems like the owners thought the players would fold with the lockout, or at least concede on some important issues because Tony Clark always concedes, but the PA is taking a hard stance this time and I think the owners genuinely have no clue how to proceed from here. They are so used to throwing the PA a crumb and having the PA act like it was a steak dinner. The biggest issue was the lockout beginning on December 1-2 and the owners not coming up with a proposal until 6 weeks later. It was clear from that point that they were just waiting for the players to bend rather than actually wanting to negotiate. At this point I don't care which side "wins", just give me baseball on the regular schedule, but if there is a delay then it's 100% on the owners. They should have been having these types of meetings in Dec-Jan, not just on the final week of a self imposed deadline a few weeks before the regular season.

Starting ST on March 5-6 would make sense with a 2/28 deadline to get a CBA done. Of course, this assumes a CBA will get done by 2/28, and I'm not as confident about that.

I find it very hard to believe that the Jays as is have a top 5 farm system. I think most publications would agree with Kiley/BA's ranking. Although obviously I hope Law ends up being right.

If they are sincere about meeting everyday next week and both sides look at the 2/28 deadline in the same way, then maybe a deal to save the regular season is possible. I won’t hold my breath though.

I think the "choose your opponent" feature is great. No other sport does it, so it would be unique to baseball, and I think in today's clickbait obsessed world it would be a pretty good marketing tool to add drama to the Wild Card round. Of course, they'd have to do it properly. Have a 30 minute special on ESPN where fans get to see the teams choose their opponent live. Have a player representative from each team, preferably the star player, show up on a split screen, and then let that rep announce which team is chosen as the opponent. Might be too gimmicky for some, but I like it. I think with the way bullpens are used in playoff rounds nowadays, a bye into the DS is a real incentive since teams can rest their relievers rather than having to use them excessively to win a 3 game series prior to it. The only drawback is it would allow some mediocre teams into the playoffs, and devalue the long regular season. Ex. the exciting AL Wild Card race last year would have been boring since all 4 of Boston, New York, Toronto, and Seattle would have made it rather than only two of them. They might want to consider shortening the regular season in addition to this change, but it all comes down to money in the end.

12:59 PM @EvanDrellich MLB has arrived to hear the MLBPA’s latest proposal, and thus another collective bargaining meeting begins 1:18 PM @EvanDrellich The meeting between MLB and the MLBPA has ended.

I don't think the next CBA will impact what top earners get. There won't be a salary cap or floor, and the CBT is probably going to increase at least marginally, if not more than that, so I doubt much will change as far as what elite players are getting on the open market unless league revenues suddenly plummet 3 years from now. Whether Soto could get $500m is debatable, but I think he beats what Trout got given his age. Where I agree with you is injury. If he was a FA a year from now then the risk would be considerably less, but 3 years is a long time, and anything can happen. However, if Soto feels he could get more than that by waiting, then I respect that he's willing to bet on himself (or wait for a better offer from the Nats). Also, 350/13 is a little under $27m AAV. That could be viewed as a lowball offer even factoring that he's not a FA for another 3 years. His arb years are going to be high, probably around $60-70m in total. He'd be selling his FA years way short.

Glad Soto turned that down rather than go for the financial security. It’s a risk because a lot can happen in 3 seasons but he has 3 expensive arb years left and then could be a $500m player in free agency (or damn close to it). I’m sure it was hard to turn down $350m guaranteed but when you could potentially get $150m more than that, you have to weigh the risk/reward. Hope he stays healthy and gets to that level after 2024.

Yeah, it seems like if MLB just met the players in the middle on the pre arb bonus pool (say, $50-60m), then they'd probably be close to an agreement. The minimum salary difference seems pretty arbitrary so meeting in the middle there is probably easy, and the CBT issue can probably be resolved by limiting the penalties for going over rather than having to increase it significantly (which I believe MLB started to do by eliminating draft pick loss for going over the first tier but financial penalties still exist). I agree, it would be insane for a $10b business to come to a halt over this. If MLB was asking for a salary cap like they were in 1994, then that type of difference would be difficult to overcome, but this is strictly money. Seems like a pretty damn easy fix if both sides were motivated to get a deal done. The sad thing is, I don't think the the owners realize (or maybe they don't care) what type of damage this would do to the sport. This is an industry that is tied heavily to local cable contracts, and the RSN model is going to have to change significantly in the coming years (which will hurt owners). If there is a lockout into the regular season, then they are risking fan interest and future attendance, which is going to hurt the owners if it leads to a decline in both. No one is breaking Bonds' record any time soon, so even if they juice the hell out of the ball again it's probably not going to save the sport like McGwire/Sosa did coming off the last work stoppage. They really need to figure this out, and within the next 2 weeks.

The "meet in the middle" period comes when both sides feel pressure to make a deal and/or both sides start to lose money. That's probably going to happen some time in the next two weeks because if they want 4 weeks of ST and to start the season on March 31, then they'll need a deal by the end of Feb. That's when (hopefully) the urgency starts to kick in. If not, then who knows when it is. I guess the good thing about their differences is that they appear to be mainly numbers. It's not like one side is saying they refuse to do one thing while the other is continuing to push for it. The MLBPA wants the CBT to start at $245m while the owners want it to start at $214m. The MLBPA wants the pre arb bonus pool at $100m while the owners are offering $15m. The MLBPA wants 12 playoff teams while the owners want 14. The MLBPA wants a set minimum of $775k while the owners want a $615k-$650k-$725k system for the first 3 years of service. They are clearly still far apart but you can meet somewhere in between with numbers, and they seem to agree with the general point of the changes. It's just a matter of which side concedes first, and unfortunately I don't think either side wants to feel like they "lost" when this is over, so stubbornness is a real threat.