When Does The Lockout End? Answer: March 10th, 2022

[Thurston Fluff]

What, compared to the previous CBA, are the players giving up this year

 

Why should the players be giving up anything if revenues are going up and salaries are stagnating?

 

I don't think they should be giving up anything, but people are implying and stating that they are. I was simply looking for the thing they are giving up.

 

It depends on how you define giving up something. If it's strict dollars then they aren't giving up anything. They just aren't getting much. If it's based on the percentage of total revenue then I think it's fair to say they are losing something.

[gebc1997]

I don't think they should be giving up anything, but people are implying and stating that they are. I was simply looking for the thing they are giving up.

When they offer to move 35% from their position and the owners move 5% then they are "giving up" more than the owners.

 

What the owners have offered/agreed to is a $150,000 raise to minimum wage and $25M for a bonus pool. If 10 players per roster are on minimum and the bonus pool went through that's roughly $2.3M committed (per team) more salary, let's round up to $75M for all teams. Where else have the owners promised? $10M in the luxury tax cap that about 8 teams might use? another $80M?

 

So the total payroll for baseball was about ~$3.57B last year compared to a high of ~$4.0B in 2017. That's a $155M commitment of more salary while salaries have gone down $430M. Yep, those are pretty equal.

 

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

[owbc]

I think we're getting somewhere with these comments.

 

New revenue is available (playoffs + new national TV contract), the players negotiated with the assumption that they would get a piece of the new revenue. The players' offer works out to an (estimated) $5.5 million per year per team and a salary increase of somewhere in the 1.5%/year range if you extrapolate from a couple years ago to a couple years from now.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/just-how-far-apart-are-the-league-and-the-mlbpa/

 

Given the new revenue sources, the owners have an obligation move toward the asks of the players. The asks of the players did not appear to be unreasonable. I'm not saying the owners should have accepted all of them, but they should have been willing to move a bit closer and try to reach a middle ground compromise. Instead, they lied to the media about progress being made and tried to sneak in other changes at the last minute. They also were incentivized by a desire to cancel April games to pay less salary, which was a slap in the face to the fans.

 

I also tend to write off most of it as labor negotiation stuff that will be forgotten once there is a deal, but the intentional canceling of games (which was obviously planned even going back to 2021) really bothers me. I was looking forward to the first 'normal' Opening Day in 3 years. It's a big disappointment and it fits into the narrative that I already had about Manfred and the owners' intentions, which isn't good.

[Thurston Fluff]

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

 

How is changing the way of evaluating player worth to a way that pays players less not being cheap?

[Fear The Chorizo]

The premier players are still getting monster deals in free agency that continue to dramatically increase. Young pre-arbitration stars are routinely offered life changing money in longterm extensions that are viewed as "leaving too much $ on the table", so they continue to take things year to year until they reach free agency in their late 20s. The players getting the contract squeeze are the middling veterans who were never deemed valuable enough for teams to offer them a longterm contract until they reached free agency, and teams in this day and age of baseball are much less inclined to offer them 3-5 year contracts at $12-18M per season when they can get the same amount of production from a younger, pre-arbitration player or from a veteran free agent picked up off the scrap heap or from overseas. Dramatically increasing the luxury tax threshold isn't going to make big market teams suddenly pay higher contracts for middling veteran talent - they'll simply offer more to the handful of superstar players and the disparity between what they make and what pre-arby and veteran scrap heap players makes will continue to grow.

 

Part of the financial issue of player pay, in my opinion, is that we're now far enough removed from the PED era that baseball players are now having more expected career arcs, where many of them now don't reach free agency until they are at or even just beyond the years that would be considered their prime - the current arbitration/free agency structure evolved during the steroid era where average vet players were still given big contracts way into their 30s in large part because their primes were also extended unnaturally. IMO the initial fix would be to reduce a year of team control and also maintain a lower luxury tax threshold than what the players want - players will have to get paid more at younger ages by smaller markets if they hope to contend and there will be sufficient luxury tax revenue available for them to afford doing so.

 

The biggest disconnect for me is this negotiation hasn't addressed the problem with MLB's financial structure - 6 yrs of team control with 3 of them being pre-arbitration pushes most players past their prime before they can ever truly capitalize financially. The Super 2 stuff and pre-arby bonus pool is on the fringes of this, but frankly I think they should scrap both and just roll with 5 yrs team control and have the negotiation be between having either 2 or 3 of them in arbitration. In order to get player pay more in line with onfield production both the players and owners need to be willing to make significant concessions that will make future CBA negotiations much easier to conduct.

 

I think the other thing that actually skews that average player salary has been the increase in deferred money being handed out in these mega contracts that isn't included in superstar salaries for a given season.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Fear The Chorizo

[gebc1997]

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

 

How is changing the way of evaluating player worth to a way that pays players less not being cheap?

 

I suppose I should say it's a way of not spending money's unnecessarily for a veteran player who will bring nothing special to the table beyond a rookie level player.

[jerichoholicninja]

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

 

How is changing the way of evaluating player worth to a way that pays players less not being cheap?

 

Teams aren't paying aging veteran free agents 7 figures a season when they can get similar production from guys from their own system for a few hundred thousand. That's not being cheap. That's being smart.

[CheeseheadInQC]

I don't think they should be giving up anything, but people are implying and stating that they are. I was simply looking for the thing they are giving up.

When they offer to move 35% from their position and the owners move 5% then they are "giving up" more than the owners.

 

What the owners have offered/agreed to is a $150,000 raise to minimum wage and $25M for a bonus pool. If 10 players per roster are on minimum and the bonus pool went through that's roughly $2.3M committed (per team) more salary, let's round up to $75M for all teams. Where else have the owners promised? $10M in the luxury tax cap that about 8 teams might use? another $80M?

 

So the total payroll for baseball was about ~$3.57B last year compared to a high of ~$4.0B in 2017. That's a $155M commitment of more salary while salaries have gone down $430M. Yep, those are pretty equal.

 

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

 

The problem with that line of thinking is you are both acknowledging that there have been fundamental changes that involve salary while still arguing that the baseline should be a CBA agreed to under a previous set of assumptions. I can understand the owners not wanting to make fundamental changes to the current system given it would be tough for them to reach consensus among themselves let alone with the players, but you can look at not getting the kind of structural changes that would account for the new status quo as what the players are giving up.

[gebc1997]

What the owners have offered/agreed to is a $150,000 raise to minimum wage and $25M for a bonus pool. If 10 players per roster are on minimum and the bonus pool went through that's roughly $2.3M committed (per team) more salary, let's round up to $75M for all teams. Where else have the owners promised? $10M in the luxury tax cap that about 8 teams might use? another $80M?

 

So the total payroll for baseball was about ~$3.57B last year compared to a high of ~$4.0B in 2017. That's a $155M commitment of more salary while salaries have gone down $430M. Yep, those are pretty equal.

 

The problem with that line of thinking is you are both acknowledging that there have been fundamental changes that involve salary while still arguing that the baseline should be a CBA agreed to under a previous set of assumptions. I can understand the owners not wanting to make fundamental changes to the current system given it would be tough for them to reach consensus among themselves let alone with the players, but you can look at not getting the kind of structural changes that would account for the new status quo as what the players are giving up.

 

Which us why the changes to the proposed new CBA address getting more money to the 0-3 year players. we can certainly differ as to how much needs to go to them, but the effort has been made to get those younger players more money early. I don't think there's anything that can be done to get those average veterans the type of contracts they used to get, that ship has likely sailed.

 

Also, regarding the new bonus pool, it does make sense the clubs would want the starting point to be as low as reasonable, because once they agree on that number for the bonus pool, that number will only go up in future years and cbas, it will never go down.

[Thurston Fluff]

I truly feel a lot of that 430million in reduced salaries has a lot more to do the the new way of evaluating player worth in free agency, than in just general cheapness of the powners

 

How is changing the way of evaluating player worth to a way that pays players less not being cheap?

 

Teams aren't paying aging veteran free agents 7 figures a season when they can get similar production from guys from their own system for a few hundred thousand. That's not being cheap. That's being smart.

 

Being cheap and being smart are not mutually exclusive. What is being cheap is finding people who can do the same for less money then refusing to change the system that allows them to exploit the people who are doing the same as those who made more.

[BillScottCanRake]

I'm pretty sure the players pay a nominal fee for the food that is prepared at the stadium. Their "meal money" is when traveling their other meals need to be covered (IIRC). Sure, owners don't have to provide food after the game, but at some point federal and state laws apply for how long someone can be "working" before getting a meal break. They don't just clock in then walk out to introductions. The players are at the stadium hours before games start and games are 3.5 hours long or more plus post-game. I'm sure the owners want the players around after the game in a good mood (even when they lose) to interact with the media, not rushing to get out and not telling the media to get lost because they are in a hurry to get a meal.

 

And really what is the total cost for the "meal money"? Maybe 0.02% of the $220M luxury tax. Is it really a bargaining position to discuss something that small or is it just a dig to piss off the other side. I haven't been through a divorce, but from my experience from friends/associates some very petty issues come up that are closer to 1% of the total issues/dollars that will be fought over because one side or the other digs in and just wants to piss off the other side. Damn an agreement, I want to win that battle...

 

Part of the problem with taking sides in this disagreement are the arguments that Apples equal Oranges or the owners moving 2% is equal to the players giving 20%, or vice, versa.

 

I don't disagree with you. I just think that making this public knowledge is a PR spin to get people on "their side" mad. Both sides do this, so I'm not pointing fingers. I don't really care one way or the other, so I don't understand getting upset over these things.

 

If a Brewer player makes an error that costs them the playoffs, get upset. If management decides to trade away your favorite player to save some money, get upset over it. If the cost of a player's beef burrito is put into a different column in the team's Quickbooks ledger, who cares?

 

BREAKING NEWS: Milwaukee Brewers reveal they use Quickbooks to manage their finances.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

 

Being cheap and being smart are not mutually exclusive. What is being cheap is finding people who can do the same for less money then refusing to change the system that allows them to exploit the people who are doing the same as those who made more.

 

That's true, but changing the system to spread out where dollars are being spent and ultimately increase the size of the pie the players get would likely need to lead to a stagnation of free agent mega-deals for aging superstars. The problem many on the players' side have is they want to continue seeing those contracts balloon because they worked themselves through this outdated process themselves.

 

I think organizations would be much more willing to pay younger players significantly more $$ if they also don't feel like they have to pony up over $40M a season for 3 fully guaranteed years on a new contract to have a 37-yr old be a starting pitcher in order to actually acquire a superstar veteran on the downside of their career.

[Brock Beauchamp]

As usual, Effectively Wild had a great podcast about the lockout today, bringing in Even Drellich (probably the best reporter through this process) to talk in-depth about where the sides are and where we might be going.

 

In general, I just highly recommend the EW podcast for general basebally-ness.

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1818-smile-youre-on-manfred-camera/

[DuWayne Steurer]

Evan Drellich

@EvanDrellich

· 7h

Sources: Angels, Diamondbacks, Reds and Tigers owners opposed MLB luxury tax increase to $220 million. MLB also proposed including player meal money in calculation of luxury tax, which irked players.

 

The Reds continue to be an absolute dumpster fire of a franchise.

 

I'm sure they have some good reason to - as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame.

 

 

I feel bad that no one picked up on this post and I want to make sure it's appreciated.

[Thurston Fluff]

 

Being cheap and being smart are not mutually exclusive. What is being cheap is finding people who can do the same for less money then refusing to change the system that allows them to exploit the people who are doing the same as those who made more.

 

That's true, but changing the system to spread out where dollars are being spent and ultimately increase the size of the pie the players get would likely need to lead to a stagnation of free agent mega-deals for aging superstars. The problem many on the players' side have is they want to continue seeing those contracts balloon because they worked themselves through this outdated process themselves.

 

I think organizations would be much more willing to pay younger players significantly more $$ if they also don't feel like they have to pony up over $40M a season for 3 fully guaranteed years on a new contract to have a 37-yr old be a starting pitcher in order to actually acquire a superstar veteran on the downside of their career.

 

I get what you're saying. The older players who paid their dues and are about to cash in would essentially be left out when the system changes. But they can implement changes in phases to deal with that. In the mean time one thing the owners an do is address the problem of rebuilding teams not fielding competitive rosters. I get not spending money when there is no hope of winning but it effectively eliminates 30% of the teams from spending every off season. Given the salary floor is out of the question maybe something like a minimum wins threshold teams must reach or they have to pay a players tax or some such thing. That would help reduce tanking and get more teams to participate to some level in free agency. It would also help fans in the sense that they'd get to watch more competitive games during the season. Even if your team is good it still sucks to watch them play a AAAA team.

[GreatNWwi]

Given the salary floor is out of the question maybe something like a minimum wins threshold teams must reach or they have to pay a players tax or some such thing. That would help reduce tanking and get more teams to participate to some level in free agency. It would also help fans in the sense that they'd get to watch more competitive games during the season. Even if your team is good it still sucks to watch them play a AAAA team.

 

I can hear the discussion in the clubhouse now. "Since we won't make the playoffs this year, lets not win too many games so we get our cash bonus." Now suddenly you will have about 12 teams not passing that threshold every season.

[owbc]

Given the salary floor is out of the question maybe something like a minimum wins threshold teams must reach or they have to pay a players tax or some such thing. That would help reduce tanking and get more teams to participate to some level in free agency. It would also help fans in the sense that they'd get to watch more competitive games during the season. Even if your team is good it still sucks to watch them play a AAAA team.

 

I can hear the discussion in the clubhouse now. "Since we won't make the playoffs this year, lets not win too many games so we get our cash bonus." Now suddenly you will have about 12 teams not passing that threshold every season.

 

No matter what you decide there will be an attempt to manipulate it. Promotion/relegation seems to work the best, but that's never going to happen.

 

Let's look at it from a Brewers fan perspective. Are we being rewarded for being a small market team that is run well and tries to be competitive? I would say no. Pittsburgh, Miami, etc. are being rewarded with high draft picks and revenue sharing money for not being competitive.

 

I think service time is the root of the problem. It takes 3-4 years to turn around a losing baseball team, so there really is no incentive to spend during that period. You can't build a winner from free agency. If you're a cheap owner, you can drag the "rebuilding" on even longer.

 

Draft lotteries are a great start, but I would throw all 30 teams into the lottery. Make the whole thing random. Or use some metric that gauges organizational success. What if gate attendance determined draft order among non-playoff teams? That would be a fun way to get owners to encourage fans to come to the ballpark.

[ewitkows]

What about having the draft be determined by the market size.

[CheeseheadInQC]

I still say tie revenue sharing dollars to payroll. If more is going to the small market teams that are actually spending it would also break down the players’ argument against it.

[jerichoholicninja]

 

Being cheap and being smart are not mutually exclusive. What is being cheap is finding people who can do the same for less money then refusing to change the system that allows them to exploit the people who are doing the same as those who made more.

 

I won't disagree with that but is the union doing anything to fix it?

[xisxisxis]

BREAKING NEWS: Milwaukee Brewers reveal they use Quickbooks to manage their finances.

 

Why Not? Isn't the company motto:

 

Free

Free

Free Free Free

Free

 

Most owners would say: "You had me at Free"

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

As usual, Effectively Wild had a great podcast about the lockout today, bringing in Even Drellich (probably the best reporter through this process) to talk in-depth about where the sides are and where we might be going.

 

In general, I just highly recommend the EW podcast for general basebally-ness.

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1818-smile-youre-on-manfred-camera/

 

Seconded. Two good pods from them this week.

 

The more I reflect, the more I am convinced that this is about owners trying to squeeze every dollar they can. And the reality is it's probably small-market owners being the most ruthless, and, even as a Brewer fan, I think that's bad.

 

I get that we're all prone to buying arguments about "competitive balance." Baseball is economically unfair. That sucks. The reality, though, is it's going to stay fundamentally unfair, and that's because of TV money. Other than straight-up NFL-style revenue sharing, the system is going to be 98% tilted to New York, LA, and, to an extent Chicago. And haggling over the CBT (and moving almost zero on it) is just a way to say "we're fine with 98% unfair but 98.1%? NO!"

 

I think that's especially troubling because Mark A, for example, did not buy the Brewers to maximize year over year profit. If he did, he's not nearly as smart as we give him credit for. I like Mark A, mind you. He's the right owner for this team. But (and I'm not singling him out) this lockout, at this point, is about small-market owners trying to hit that nearly impossible window of perennial contention and profitability when every smart owner in a city like Pittsburgh knows that getting both is a top 5% outcome at best.

 

These guys know analytics well enough to know this stuff isn't moving the needle for them. They know they buy these teams for occasional yearly dividends but mostly for prestige, fun, adrenaline, and the massive asset appreciation. And yet here they are, haggling over literal pennies on the dollar. The argument that these teams are a business defeats itself. Anyone who buys the Reds expecting to be both competitive and year-to-year rich bought into the wrong industry. It's like the equivalent of buying a Sun Belt football team. You signed the deal knowing the system was tilted toward big money teams. Deal with it or change it, but at this point you're just being greedy.

 

Let me be clear. I wish baseball was more economically fair. But none of these proposals make a dent in that. It's like, yeah we'd all be technically safer by a tiny bit if we were still wiping down groceries, but it just isn't worth the effort, anxiety, and knock-on effects because the benefit is trivial. I'd rather watch a more equitable product in terms of owners/players because a more market-balanced league ain't happening.

[nate82]

With the biggest sticking point for the players union right now being the CBT increased I don't see how that helps the non premiere free agents at all. If the players union were truly unhappy about some of the other teams spending then they should have proposed a salary floor which they did not. The owners were the only ones to propose a salary floor. The players know that if they propose a salary floor that will essentially put a salary cap in place in MLB and the players union will not allow that to happen. With the CBT increase this is all about the premiere players getting more and not about the players union as a whole.

[xisxisxis]

With the biggest sticking point for the players union right now being the CBT increased I don't see how that helps the non premiere free agents at all. If the players union were truly unhappy about some of the other teams spending then they should have proposed a salary floor which they did not. The owners were the only ones to propose a salary floor. The players know that if they propose a salary floor that will essentially put a salary cap in place in MLB and the players union will not allow that to happen. With the CBT increase this is all about the premiere players getting more and not about the players union as a whole.

Floors and caps only work with a defined share of revenues. Based on the initial offer from the owners there was no clear idea where the players share of Revenue would be based on an artificially low floor that allowed the current revenue sharing among owners to continue. The NBA and NFL use those methods (cap/floor) to make sure they are allocating the correct amount from Revenues to players salaries. If baseball owners wanted long-term labor peace they would come up with a way to guarantee a revenue split with the MLBPA. Unfortunately, the owners want to squeeze every dime from the players. I've said this for months, but there will continue to be long-term labor fights/shutdowns/strikes as long as the owners don't want to commit to a split of revenues with the players. Every agreement is a battle between the two sides to tweak the variables to try and get a little more for them and the fans sit and wait for the pigs to feed at the trough. But I guess that's why I'll never be a billionaire as I don't treat every negotiation as how can I win and the other side loses, because it appears win-win is just not in their DNA.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

With the biggest sticking point for the players union right now being the CBT increased I don't see how that helps the non premiere free agents at all. If the players union were truly unhappy about some of the other teams spending then they should have proposed a salary floor which they did not. The owners were the only ones to propose a salary floor. The players know that if they propose a salary floor that will essentially put a salary cap in place in MLB and the players union will not allow that to happen. With the CBT increase this is all about the premiere players getting more and not about the players union as a whole.

Floors and caps only work with a defined share of revenues. Based on the initial offer from the owners there was no clear idea where the players share of Revenue would be based on an artificially low floor that allowed the current revenue sharing among owners to continue. The NBA and NFL use those methods (cap/floor) to make sure they are allocating the correct amount from Revenues to players salaries. If baseball owners wanted long-term labor peace they would come up with a way to guarantee a revenue split with the MLBPA. Unfortunately, the owners want to squeeze every dime from the players. I've said this for months, but there will continue to be long-term labor fights/shutdowns/strikes as long as the owners don't want to commit to a split of revenues with the players. Every agreement is a battle between the two sides to tweak the variables to try and get a little more for them and the fans sit and wait for the pigs to feed at the trough. But I guess that's why I'll never be a billionaire as I don't treat every negotiation as how can I win and the other side loses, because it appears win-win is just not in their DNA.

 

This seems exactly right to me.

 

Within the current MLB system (which is bad), the players seem to be acting more in their rational self-interest whereas the owners are acting, to me, in ways that are much more narrowly self-interested, and will cancel games to preserve a massive power gap.

 

That's not to say the union is just and virtuous. Just that the system makes true change nearly impossible. For radical change to work, owners have to agree to much more league regulation of payroll and a fixed system ensuring equitable revenue distribution to the players. There aren't 23 votes for that, and I think a lot of the union's misplaced priorities stem from that fact.