Mlb history of collusion

[wntrtxn21]

I think most of the owners today are prioritizing turning big profits much more than prioritizing winning the World Series. They should get all the Harvard grads in their front office to crunch the analytics of the amount of extra money that comes in from winning it all.

 

This is a big component of the "collusion." I can't remember where I saw this one article, but it said teams make around $60 million from national and local TV revenue. Teams get an equal share of national TV rights, regardless whether they are shown on national broadcasts or not. There is currently no disincentive for a greedy owner to field a team that has no chance of winning but is profitable to the ownership. You can say you'll alienate the fanbase, but an owner could theoretically still turn a profit with attendance under 20k per game. Therefore, if the players want teams to shell out the $$$ in FA, they need to work with the league to make the owners feel a need to spend $ on veterans vs. trying their luck with their minor leaguers. Draft picks or bonus $ could be tied to making the playoffs or conversely picks or revenue sharing could be taken away from teams that chronically underspend.

 

I don't think the players have much leverage on trying to get the vets more $. I think that ship has sailed with the greater use of analytics to model how players will perform as they age. I think the MLBPA needs to get the minimum salaries raised and have an arbitration process based on player comparisons vs. an adversarial process between the team and the player. It may also make sense to bring the minor leaguers into the union and get player raises there. I think all baseball players in affiliated ball should have some labor protections.

 

You can never tie draft picks or bonus money to making the playoffs! That would give huge spending teams an even bigger advantage over the small market teams. Small market have a short window to compete until their top players are too expensive and have to be traded before FA. Losing valuable picks and money would make it even worse. How can you say any team under spends? Compared to what? What teams set the threshold for spending and which teams fail to meet the subjective number? Baseball already has a major problem with big tv markets compared to small markets. Making it harder for small market teams to compete would be extremely counter productive and eventually kill baseball in many markets.

[AJOHNSON104]

Not buying collusion. It appears to me teams got smarter about the value of young players that are cost controlled year-to-year. They were burned so many times on guaranteed, long-term, free agent contracts. We can argue about owners getting richer, but management is smart to not keep doing what got them into bad situations in the past.

[coolhandluke121]

You keep saying that all these viable alternative explanations don't preclude the possibility of collusion, as if people don't understand that. It's not that skeptics know there's no collusion. We obviously aren't in on those conversations and have no direct evidence one way or the other, so it should go without saying that we are speculating. The issue is that there are other, simpler explanations for what we're seeing in my opinion. Why risk collusion when the market can easily give you the same positive result without collusion? Why did guys like Cobb and Hosmer still get good deals? Why were there rumors of guys turning down better offers and then being left holding the bag? Why did some guys get good contracts early in free agency before everyone realized how much the market had changed? It seems far more likely that it was a case of adjusting to a rapidly changing market on the fly rather than explicit collusion.

 

Of course this doesn't mean collusion isn't happening. It's just Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the best. A lot of free agents aren't worth the money they used to get, so now they're getting paid much less. The changing landscape with pool money and luxury tax is also a factor. Could owners be using this data as an excuse to collude? Of course. I just don't see why they'd do that when they don't have to risk it though. All they have to do is stop over-paying free agents and trust most other teams to come to the same obvious conclusion independently because they have the same data. If other teams do the same, then everybody benefits, but that's not evidence of collusion. A lot of people here aren't really biased one way or the other. They're just looking for the simplest explanation. Is it possible you're biased? Kind of a rhetorical question obviously, as we all know you've got some horses in this race. So if the people who work for the players think it's collusion, and the people who think both sides are equally greedy and selfish think it's not, whose opinion is less likely to be biased in terms of judging the simplest possible explanation?

 

Lastly, you still haven't addressed my question about player collusion. Are agents talking to each other? Are players pressured to get as much as possible to set the market for everyone else? Didn't you get some heat from the players' association for JJ's contract? How is that not collusion?? We hear about stuff like that all the time, and it's never been addressed despite the other part of the collusion clause - players should not act in concert with each other. I think one could make a pretty strong, indirect case that players have actually been colluding to inflate free agent salaries for years, and what we're seeing now is just that they don't have the leverage to do so anymore because, frankly, most of them aren't wanted or needed that much.

[wntrtxn21]

Players are allowed to shop their services once they reach FA or even before they are drafted. If they think they aren't being paid what they are worth, they are free to go to Korea, Japan, Mexico, or sign on to an independent team. I think Europe may also have a league.

[Jenkins5]

A bit off topic of collusion but has to deal with how hard it is to earn money in baseball. Players ability to make money within their first decade or so is exactly why the As are in big trouble with Kylar Murray. He gets drafted he may have smaller or equal signing bonus but yearly he will far exceed earnings in his rookie contract than he will going through minor league system. If you look at the issue, below is best case scenario of 3 years in minors & then up. This doesn’t even look at the following 5 years where he still not make much money. For NFL based on everything I have read, he will be a 1st round pick if he commits to football. I went with lowball #32 looking at Lamar Jackson’s contract. Very well could go higher.

 

Best case 4 Kyler

Signing Bonus 4.7 million

Year 1 A ball median (Of A & A+ for 7 months) 10k

Year 2 AA 12,500

Year 3 AAA 15,500

Year 4 MLB 575,000

 

 

6.1 million over first 5 with signing bonus

 

NFL is he is at least 32nd in 1st round (Lamar Jackson last year)

Signing Bonus: 5,000,000

Year 1 480,000

Year 2 555,000

Year 3 630,000

Year 4 705,000

Total: 7.5 million guaranteed

 

Numbers are off a bit, Jackson at 32 got 9 million guaranteed. Many believe Kylar could go top 10 even at his height. That could push him up to 18 million guaranteed

 

Baseball his signing bonus is only sure thing & he may take 4-5 years to be regular MLB player earning service time. Moreover, NFL he will receive more endorsement deals earlier as well since investing in players in minors with limited exposure.

 

Again off topic of collusion on MLB FAs but I do have a problem with how low salaries are through minors & even pre arbitration. Believe teams have plenty of money to improve in this area. 10 years to reach your real payday is long time. I tend to care more about the little guys over being upset if a guy will make 25 or 30 million over next 10 years.

[coolhandluke121]

 

Again off topic of collusion on MLB FAs but I do have a problem with how low salaries are through minors & even pre arbitration. Believe teams have plenty of money to improve in this area. 10 years to reach your real payday is long time. I tend to care more about the little guys over being upset if a guy will make 25 or 30 million over next 10 years.

 

I don't think that's off topic. It just shows why free agent salaries are so low right now. Guys can't hit up PEDs and be all-stars until they're 38 anymore, so the young guys are a much better value. Why pay $10m for someone who's not likely to be much better than, say, Perez and Spangenberg? You don't have to be a small market to see the benefits of spending less in situations where you're no worse off anyway.

 

And it goes back to my first response in the entire thread. You gotta start paying the young guys more. You can't have guys getting underpaid for so long and then expecting to make up for it when they're free agents. Nobody can make teams overpay them to compensate for how much they were underpaid. Yeah, it's unfair... but the solution is not to go back to handing out huge contracts to guys who are already on the decline. Seems the people complaining about collusion want that, but that angle is a dead end to me unless PEDs come back.

[Tbadder]

I think that the owners should give the players 60% of the gross revenue. This money should go to the union directly and the union should decide which players get what. I also think the players union should decide where each of the players go. This will never happen of course,but at least it would be relief not to put up with the whining and talk of collusion and injustice and nothing’s fair and Yada Yada Yada. Both sides can bite it for all I care.

[jerichoholicninja]

Lastly, you still haven't addressed my question about player collusion. Are agents talking to each other? Are players pressured to get as much as possible to set the market for everyone else? Didn't you get some heat from the players' association for JJ's contract? How is that not collusion?? We hear about stuff like that all the time, and it's never been addressed despite the other part of the collusion clause - players should not act in concert with each other. I think one could make a pretty strong, indirect case that players have actually been colluding to inflate free agent salaries for years, and what we're seeing now is just that they don't have the leverage to do so anymore because, frankly, most of them aren't wanted or needed that much.

 

Grandal admitted to this in his press conference. I'm pretty sure he was lying and making an excuse for his stupid decision to turn down more money but he said he took the higher average salary so that other catchers would get paid more. That's exactly what you're describing.

[KCBrewerfan34]

100% correct Coolhand. Players collude every FA period on the high end at each position to raise the bar for future brothers to get better contracts. That is collusion. The players and agents have enjoyed crazy contracts for 20+ years. The pendulum is now swinging the other way.

 

I’ve noticed Agent39 has disappeared

[clancyphile]

I think that the first MLB team to offer its minor-league player REAL money in terms of salary... like three or four times what players in MiLB currently make... is going to start cleaning up big.

 

Plus, maybe they also go beyond college, but also trade school. I recently saw an ad in my local paper saying a HAZMAT driver could get up to $125K a year for this one company.

[Jenkins5]

100% correct Coolhand. Players collude every FA period on the high end at each position to raise the bar for future brothers to get better contracts. That is collusion. The players and agents have enjoyed crazy contracts for 20+ years. The pendulum is now swinging the other way.

 

As long as mlb doesn’t become NBA where player/agent collusion (I mean “player empowerment“) runs wild and they control league... I’m fine. The day Machado & Harper take huge pay cuts and shorter contract in prime (2 years 30-35 million or something under the value) to join Kris Bryant & cubs to create super team... I’m done with mlb outside of Brewers just like I’m done with NBA outside of Bucks. NFL is only one of the major sports that does pretty good job of keeping competitive balance. Crap teams usually come down to poor player personal decisions (scouting & FAs) every team has same amount to work with. Rookie contracts are fixed. It’s much easier to do it in NFL due to players going straight to pros over MLB & NHL having minors.

 

Salary cap based on revenues could help competitive balance but again with minor leagues and how fluid rosters are it’s more complex. Have to also make share cap is set at value that all teams can afford which may force more revenue sharing. Salary cap would have to be for 40 man roster over 25 man. Agents & player most likely would have biggest issue because it puts a ceiling on spending so that doesn’t help their cause.

 

That is all a tangent

[Jenkins5]

I think that the first MLB team to offer its minor-league player REAL money in terms of salary... like three or four times what players in MiLB currently make... is going to start cleaning up big.

 

Plus, maybe they also go beyond college, but also trade school. I recently saw an ad in my local paper saying a HAZMAT driver could get up to $125K a year for this one company.

 

Really no reward if it is just one team. You draft guys. Minor league players won’t request & leverage trades. Minor league free agent signings are not usually big deal. No team is going to do it if they can get away with paying McDonald wages to these guys. Even if you make them happy in minors, they give you 6 years.... come time they will still chase the money in FA over be loyal because you treated them better in minors

[KeithStone53151]

While I disagree with collusion being the likely reason for players struggles in FA, I think many are oversimplifying this with the argument of players getting signed to bad contracts in their 30s and teams getting smarter. That's only one piece to the puzzle. Is it fair for Josh Hader to be getting paid $550k this year? Absolutely not, he'd be worth probably $10 million per year on the open market...at least. Players were willing to overlook this severe injustice in the name of competitive balance, so long as they still got the big FA contracts which maintained their share of the revenue. I think Josh's primary argument is that it isn't fair for Josh Hader to make $550k this year and then for teams to get smarter on players in their 30's and stop doling out the big contracts. And on that he's absolutely right, that isn't fair. The collusion cries are a bit silly though. It's not like every team all of a sudden got smart at once. Most teams can't and don't bid up in those territories anyways, and the ones that did have slowly realized how bad those contracts are. Teams stopped hiring the Dave Stewart's of the world and started hiring guys like Stearns, who are better suited to analyze data and maximize their value. And again, collusion doesn't make sense when there still are quite a few guys getting big contracts the last 2 years. Corbin, Cain, Eovaldi, Darvish, Hosmer, etc...you didn't see that in the other instances of collusion.

[wntrtxn21]

A bit off topic of collusion but has to deal with how hard it is to earn money in baseball. Players ability to make money within their first decade or so is exactly why the As are in big trouble with Kylar Murray. He gets drafted he may have smaller or equal signing bonus but yearly he will far exceed earnings in his rookie contract than he will going through minor league system. If you look at the issue, below is best case scenario of 3 years in minors & then up. This doesn’t even look at the following 5 years where he still not make much money. For NFL based on everything I have read, he will be a 1st round pick if he commits to football. I went with lowball #32 looking at Lamar Jackson’s contract. Very well could go higher.

 

Best case 4 Kyler

Signing Bonus 4.7 million

Year 1 A ball median (Of A & A+ for 7 months) 10k

Year 2 AA 12,500

Year 3 AAA 15,500

Year 4 MLB 575,000

 

 

6.1 million over first 5 with signing bonus

 

NFL is he is at least 32nd in 1st round (Lamar Jackson last year)

Signing Bonus: 5,000,000

Year 1 480,000

Year 2 555,000

Year 3 630,000

Year 4 705,000

Total: 7.5 million guaranteed

 

Numbers are off a bit, Jackson at 32 got 9 million guaranteed. Many believe Kylar could go top 10 even at his height. That could push him up to 18 million guaranteed

 

Baseball his signing bonus is only sure thing & he may take 4-5 years to be regular MLB player earning service time. Moreover, NFL he will receive more endorsement deals earlier as well since investing in players in minors with limited exposure.

 

Again off topic of collusion on MLB FAs but I do have a problem with how low salaries are through minors & even pre arbitration. Believe teams have plenty of money to improve in this area. 10 years to reach your real payday is long time. I tend to care more about the little guys over being upset if a guy will make 25 or 30 million over next 10 years.

 

Average number of years played in nfl is 3.3...MLB is 5.7years. He can (on average) make more playing baseball. Plus the average AAA minor leaguer makes around $76,000.

[tmwiese55]

I would assume that actual collusion would require teams communicating with each other in someway and making agreements in some way. Tough to know if that's the case but I don't it's a given that it's happening, I'd actually guess not. I mean, we're just idiots on the internet right and people like us have been mocking teams for handing out these stupid contracts for years? Didn't all of us laugh at the Pujols, Cano and Votto type deals immediately?

 

How big of a stretch is it for teams to simply realize the same thing? Especially when you factor in business/profits reasons which are a legit reasoning to reduce spending (sorry, we can't blame business owners for maximizing profit) when they do the math and realize spending an extra 25 mil per year generate no extra revenue. Then, add in the stupid nature of the youth/arbitration system that is artificially deflating the salaries of young players thus creating drastically cheaper alternatives to overpaying FAs. Basically you can get 95% of what the FA provides for 1/20th or less of the cost.

 

For example, if say Hernan Perez was being paid 8 mil instead of 2ish mil (guessing numbers here) well then paying Marwin Gonzalez 11-12 makes sense to upgrade from Perez (because it's not thaat much more). But if Perez is 2 mil (or 55K if pre arby like he's been), well then paying Marwin isn't nearly as logical.

 

Long story short, the pay system to the young players needs to be drastically altered in the next CBA. Less years of control and/or higher yearly pay. that's the clear solution, and I know it's bad for the Brewers. Also, get some money floated down to the minors somehow so these guys aren't living below minimum wage.

[JosephC]

 

NFL is he is at least 32nd in 1st round (Lamar Jackson last year)

Signing Bonus: 5,000,000

Year 1 480,000

Year 2 555,000

Year 3 630,000

Year 4 705,000

Total: 7.5 million guaranteed

 

 

If he'd suffer a catastrophic knee injury in his first training camp then the year 1, year 2, year 3 and year 4 dollars are not guaranteed, although it would be a lock that the team would probably IR him instead of releasing him so year 1 money could be considered money in the bank 99.9999% of the time.

 

I'm just really convinced that Murray likes to play football more than baseball. I don't think the money part is a big factor as the actual guaranteed money is fairly close. If anything factors in other than his simple love for one game versus the other, it probably has to do with going to the big show right away in football while with baseball he'd get to ride around on that minor league bus for about 3 years which probably isn't all that attractive of an idea.

[tmwiese55]

Some major site, probably was on CBS, a few weeks ago broke down the math on Murray's situation and concluded as long as he's a first rd pick he should go NFL. Essentially just came down to that his rookie deal will be more than he's guaranteed in MLB. While MLB has that big possibility of the guaranteed deals down the line the chances of him ever getting to that point are quite low especially since he needs years in the minors and won't FA until later even if it all does work out(the issue being discussed in this thread).

 

Then throw in that he probably likes football better and doesn't have to spend years in the minors and he's probably going to go this way. Of course you have the head injury issue going against NFL though so who knows how much he factors that in

[coolhandluke121]

 

Average number of years played in nfl is 3.3...MLB is 5.7years. He can (on average) make more playing baseball. Plus the average AAA minor leaguer makes around $76,000.

 

3.3 years does not apply to first-round qb's. I bet it's around 8-10, and good qb's get some of the juiciest contracts in sports. They also can have very long careers because of how much qb's are protected these days. Even running qb's have much less risk of injury than players who have a ton of contact and/or sprinting on every play.

 

Young baseball players should make more. It's just not realistic to underpay them 8-10 years and then overcompensate them later. I get that young guys should pay some dues, but it's ridiculous in baseball. I don't think the owners are colluding, but don't take that to mean I sympathize with them at all. I sympathize with the young players. The owners have been very greedy, but I think some of the generations of veteran players were extremely greedy to agree to this stuff in the first place. Veterans have too much influence in lots of unions, and unless they self-regulate and avoid abusing their power, they just make their cash grabs and let the next generation suffer the consequences of unsustainability and union image issues.

[homer]

The guys in the minors should absolutely be paid more. Unfortunately, they lack the bargaining power of the union because they aren't members until they make it to the bigs. There are rumblings that the minor leaguers will organize with a different union (US Steelworkers of all things) to get some bargaining power. Interesting article with some more details on that:

 

https://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-sp-mlb-column-20180915-story.html

[agent39]

20 teams are 75 mil under the tax threshold and you guys are great with those clubs literally having the ability to sign 2 hall of fame 26 year old talents and not lose money. Any team can sign both and STILL BE UNDER

 

But sure....analytics

[3and2Fastball]

100% correct Coolhand. Players collude every FA period on the high end at each position to raise the bar for future brothers to get better contracts. That is collusion. The players and agents have enjoyed crazy contracts for 20+ years. The pendulum is now swinging the other way.

 

I’ve noticed Agent39 has disappeared

 

 

You guys all read what the reporters get told by teams and people like me. Im bias...but im not wrong. You think any ownership group had the self restraint to do this all at the same time all at once? I dont have any time to listen to that noise just as much as I dont have time to entertain political debate. This has deep seeded idiological roots and its definitely systemic.....

 

Thank you very much for your contribution here. I happen to agree 100%

 

I've been listening in the last few week to the people on MLB Network satellite radio talk about how if there is a lockout or a strike in a few years, the fans will blame the players. I'm not so sure about that anymore at all. That may have been true in the 80's & 90's but people in general are more aware now, and the money with TV contracts is much much bigger. I predict that there will be some pretty huge backlash against the owners if they don't come to the table in the next CBA with some serious ability to compromise.

[Samurai Bucky]

Since Sabermetrics (analytics) seems to be a much better gauge of a person's ability, could it be a good time to really upend things? If collusion is supposedly happening today, lets try to fix the problem instead of pointing fingers?

 

As was mentioned in this thread, if I am in a company and my company is failing, then I may have to take a pay decrease. Or... I may lose my job. If I do not perform to my contract, I may get walked to the door. If the company does well, then I get a salary increase, get bonuses, or get money through profit sharing.

 

Could baseball work on something like this (round numbers for ease). Each player would get a per-game base salary amount based on the level where they play. MLB: $10,000 / game, AAA: $3,000, etc. After that, Sabremetrics is brought in for a non-biased (somewhat) evaluation of a player. Let's say Christian Yelich, being the MVP, is worth $40MM. The difference between the $1.6MM and the $40MM would be due to his performance. Likewise, if a Jeff Suppan or Matt Garza doesn't perform well, then they may only make an extra $1MM or so a year.

 

For younger players in rookie ball or A ball, I find it ridiculous that, on average, players get around $1,100 a month. Some of these players don't have a college education to fall back on, so what happens if they get hurt or don't make it up the food chain? This almost seems like it is semi-professional, but they work 60-70 hours a week!

 

I know that performance-based pay has not been a good option. Perhaps modern Sabermetrics can help with that. If a player has a good running average over a few years, perhaps the $10,000 / game increases to $20,000 a game. This allows for a more tangible means of measuring a players worth opposed to owners hoarding the profits or the players whining about collusion.

 

Would this be a good place to start?

[xisxisxis]

Mlb history of collusion

#1

 

Posted: February 02, 2019, 10:28 AM Post

 

 

Would love to discuss here. Basic primer

I do not need message board validation to know im correct.

So what did you come here for?

 

 

Young baseball players should make more. It's just not realistic to underpay them 8-10 years and then overcompensate them later.

The 8-10 years aren't equivalent though:

 

Minor Leagues (3-6 years) = Definitely Underpaid

Minimum MLB (3 years) = Underpaid for Some

Arbitration (3 years) = Paid Market

 

The fairest would be to increase Minor League pay so that it actually is consistent with a Traineeship. I made $8000 the first year I was a trainee and $14,000 the last year. Current trainees in my field make ~$25,000. There's plenty of money if you take a fraction of the increase from the bonus money pool and INT FA pool money and a the remainder from the owners pockets. Spread it around so that players in the minors can lead a "normal" life. The other issue is the number of Minimum MLB wage years. Reduce to 2, but make the 2nd year significantly higher *say 3X year 1). The third year converts to arbitration (4 years of arbitration) where players are much closer to making a salary realistic to performance, however, I would remove the clause on reducing the pay by only a fixed percentage - if players way underperform they should get a cut that is proportional. I would even put a clause in where a team has until the end of the first arbitration year to tender a multiyear contract to the player (minimums for the contract could be based on performance of the player through year 2.5 compared to positional average - top third, middle third, bottom third) that covers the arby years or the player is a free agent after 3 arby years.

[3and2Fastball]

20 teams are 75 mil under the tax threshold and you guys are great with those clubs literally having the ability to sign 2 hall of fame 26 year old talents and not lose money. Any team can sign both and STILL BE UNDER

 

But sure....analytics

 

This is the thing that baffles my mind. It seems evident to me that owners are not doing everything they can to win, and fans just seem to accept that. Whether or not Mark A triples or doubles his money is not high on my priority list as a fan of the Brewers!!!! The value of the Brewers has quadrupled since Mark bought the team, from $250 million to a Billion dollars. Would I be much more thrilled if the Brewers had won 2 World Series in the last 10 years and Mark had only doubled his money?!?!?? You better believe it!

[homer]

If you can't post without cussing you will get banned. We don't care who you are.