Camden_yardbird

Why does he make that exception for just the Orioles?

$30 million is never an acceptable payroll. It's not an acceptable product for which you should expect to pay money for. Its fails to use resources provided by MLB (revenue sharing or media $) to take any sort of short term risk to get ahead. Everyone want to follow the Tampa model but their lowest in the last 20 years is $37 million in 2003 and an average closer to $85 over that period. No but this is the Houston model? Over the last 20 years their low is $49 in 2013 and an average closer to $110 over that period. What the Orioles are doing is not building a team...its killing a franchise.

No one. They are criminally mismanaged. Seriously, not trying to sign long term pieces, not trying to sign flippable stop gaps, not taking any chances. They signed only what they needed to field a team, and the lowest viable candidates at that. Lyles, Odor and Chirinos. Right now their payroll sits at $30 million. A joke. And I dont know why anyone would spend money on the drivel they are trying to sell you on. Keep in mind, every team will be making $100 million from TV deals this year. Thry don't need your money, they are doing just fine.

Not unless they worked out an extension, which frankly already should have happened. That makes this all moot. In fact that is the way to game the new system as it takes out the calculation of whether you take the risk of a lost year of control to get a draft pick.

I mean we can play this game all day right? What does ownership let Elias do? If we are going to start getting into that there is ZERO value to this thread because Elias isn't doesn't really factor in, your actor in that scenario is ownership and we should be asking what the ORIOLES should do to be competitive. Of course you are also placing an arbitrary parameter on the question which you have no knowledge of, namely the intention of the owners. If however we are having an honest and productive discourse about possible routes to contention we have to assume Elias has the ability to spend money. If we want to examine the parameters of the discussion under your paradigm, specifically "How should Elias make the Orioles a competitor in a world where the owners won't let him spend money now but will in the future?" I would say the discussion is moot because the answer is Elias should draft prospects (which costs nothing) and spend money in the future to fill holes - for which our conversation would be almost completely uninformed as we don't know whether the holes in the roster will be. The answer is dictated by the question. That won't result in a competitive Orioles team, not in any meaningful way given the current crop of prospects. We will just be the Orlando Magic of the MLB, everyone else's farm system, perpetually locked in a system of mediocrity or worse, perhaps with some up years with a smart move or two but destined for this same process of tear down as soon as one bad contract is signed or one key player gets injured. Wait, what that I see? Ruschman shut down with elbow discomfort, right on cue.

Its following the Houston model which is stupid. It isn't the same MLB from a rules stand point, it isn't the same market conditions, and it isn't the same AL west. IMO Elias should be more aggressive than Houston was, has to be to compete with a peaking blue jays team and three teams in NY, BOS, and Tam who really don't have down years. The FA market was flush with SS talent, a position of need, this year in a way we won't see in the future. Supply and demand side economics dictated a more aggressive approach.

MLB and the MLBPA come to an agreement to try and stop service time manipulation. The Orioles have the #1 prospect in the game who is by all accounts ready for primetime. Don't you think Manfred is going to put a little pressure on the Orioles to show that the adopted solution to a stated grievance by the MLBPA is shown to be effective in year 1? If AR isn't on the OD roster, it would be exhibit #1 for MLBPA as to how the system is broken and more work is necessary to fix the problem.

If they adopt this rule and then the concensus top prospect who is 24 years old is not on the OD roster then its going to look really bad for MLB and the PA. There will be immense external pressure on the Orioles to put AR on the OD roster.

My wife is a life long pirates fan, and the two teams haven't played in some years. The last time they did we were not able to even watch the games. I have in laws who are Cubs fans and there is a rivalry there as well. I could give a hoot about game #18 or 19 against the Yankees, but these other series I will pay attention to. Anecdotally, I think you would find people on either side of the coin. The unbalanced schedule was trash. It was time to move on.

Whether its the international players or minor league players, or development of the game at the amateur games (including the lack of black players) baseball needs to take a lot of time and make significant structural changes to the pre-pro baseball world. They need an equitable international market balanced against sustainable Latin American development They need to pay minor leaguers more than "$8000 to $12,000" per year (ESPN) They need to support little leagues, and promote the game and their players more. That said, these are tough nuts to crack, and I dont know that solving these issues is something that should be solved in the collective bargaining process. MLB wants to make the change and then figure it out and thats motivated by money - not the health of the game - and thats my biggest problem with the whole process this off season.

What kind of calculus is that though? "We can get extra picks if a player...does well in voting" What voting, allstar, ROY, MVP? What a load of shit. Players that do well in voting are ones in big markets, so now big market teams just get an extra advantage of being able to bring up players earlier? So now the media gets a say in the inherent balance of the game? How about we just establish some WAR thresholds and be done with it.

You don't have to justify that they are skewing the numbers. For one, they are because accountants get paid a lot of money to do that. But for two, and this is very important, $104 million dollars in profit for a single year is stupid money. Period. End of sentence. Keep in mind too this is a franchise that basically sold all their WS ticket to scalpers. Article Consider, it costs a family of four on average around $240 to go to a single game. Article And that the county is paying for a little under half, $300 million of $670 million, for the new stadium. Don't let owners make you think they aren't making out just fine.

There has been a pretty steady trend of the players coming back to the owners on things. We actually have a lot of issues finalized. Universal DH. Done Rules changes with three months notice. Done Top 4 draft lottery. Done. Money. Far from it. I think what ends up happening is the players give on the CBT and get a bigger pre-arb pool or the other way around. I am a little dismayed that the players gave up the 14 team post season but the owners did not respond in kind with give backs. That does not bode well.

I dont think the league spokesperson understands how negotiating works. If you give on one sticking point you ask for more on another. So if they are will to go to 16 teams in the playoff maybe they come back to a previous negotationg position in another. Clearly trying to move public sentiment against the players.

Fixed the for you. Orioles enter rebuild. Oops, no minor league season. Orioles get top pick. We are going to shorten the draft. Orioles have the top rule 5 pick. We don't have time for that.

"Feel good feelings like 'fairness' and 'justice" are in the eye of the beholder (i.e. subjective)? I don't think anything else I could say is going to be productive to this conversation. Its clear from your anecdote that as an owner of a business you will always fall on the side of the owners, and never on the side of paying the employees more. How do we know what is fair? How about some numbers: From 2015 to 2019 revenue increased $2.5 billion; during that same time average salaries decreased $300,000. Fair? Since 2000 when it peaked at 63% the players share of revenues has dropped to 47%. Revues have doubled. Fair? We quite literally have a statistic (WAR) which can be defined by a monetary value. And yet the value of $/WAR has been decreasing. Fair?

This completely disregards the value of the industry. If baseball (MLB) makes $12 billion a year what should a player make at a minimum? What percentage of that $12 billion dollar pie should the players be entitled to. Arguing whether a player should be "set for life" completely ignores this part of the equation - "are they getting their fair share?"

Feels like this might be missing the boat. Unlike IT or retail, there is no competitive job market for MLB players. The closest thing approximating that is the foreign leagues and you have in fact seen a larger number of players taking that route. So I guess we could call that a "great migration." Article The point being this is a situation where the owners provide one of the only forums for workers of this skill. Thus the need to unions and collective bargaining. I dont think anyone thinks a player having a 5 year career should be set for life, but there should be four things: 1. The player should be paid fairly according to their production. The players bonus pool offer for prepare players approxamates this. The owners on the other hand had a proposal that would give each team less than $2 million a year in bonus for pre arb players. 2. The pay should be commensurate with the value of the commodity. Baseball makes billions a year and the players who are the principal workers leading to the product should get a fair share. 3. The pay should be a living wage. Sadly this is not even part of the conversation. It is well documented that minor leaguers are paid trash wages. 4. The pay should be enough to support the players end of career transition. Baseball is a unique job for players wherein there is a necessary career transition for the players. For someone who makes multiple millions that is easy, but for a player who has devoted most of their twenties to the development of a skill that has minimal uses outside of the industry and maybe makes the minimum for two years, the pay needs to be sufficient so that they may maintain their life while they learn those new skills, whether that be coaching or whatever else they go into. For example my little league coach, who got to AAA, went on to become an EMT.

Its possible the collective bargaining process isn't about the fans, or supposed to be about the fans. The parties at the table are the players and owners, and the future health of the game. The fact that we get to see and hear about everything going on is just a product of increased media coverage, which makes it feel like its about the fans. Where the fans interests are represented is at the ballpark in the exchange of money for entertainment. It is what the owners do with their half of the pie regarding fan support, managing prices, providing giveaways and unique experiences. I think we can agree that had dimished. I would rather go to a minor league game than a MLB game. But we are now sadly finding out that the product of the fan appreciation at MiLB may be because the product (the players) are in most instances getting paid less than a living wage. Where I have a problem with the collective bargaining process is that it necessarily needs to be part of the balance of a healthy game (not just parity which people seem to split on, but overall health of the game). Yet niether side seems to be interested in that. So in refusing to support the team going forward I think you would be taking a stand in that transactional exchange between you and the owner, but I dont think this collective bargaining process should weigh on that. Sadly I think that relationship was flagging long ago when both sides abandoned the health of the game and some owners decided that money was worth more to them than fielding competitive teams and giving the fans an entertaining product.

I agree, nietger side want a fair playing field. The CBT is there just to cap salaries on the "false promise" of competitive balance. If the owners wanted a competitive field they would have also proposed a salary floor. And yet no one did? Why is that? The players don't care about floors as much as they do caps. They will get a higher floor with the minimum salary increases they proposed. I know both sides think a lottery system will help incent teams to try and cyclically compete. I doubt it, the stats are just too clear on the lifetime war of picks 1, 2-4 and 5-10. That is why I am seriously frustrated with these negotiations. Neither side seems interested in the health of the game. That and I am frustrated because of the two sides I think the owners proposals are much closer to a balanced system than the players.

MLB doesn't want to miss game either. I would think March 15 is the real deadline on the cancellation of games. Also that number is actually higher. The owners had already agreed to higher minimum salaries.

Do you think the Orioles would have been more competitive over the last two season if they could have cut Davis with minimal financial pain? Do you think they would be in a better position next year, or overall in the rebuild? What if they just didn't care. What if their resources were so vast that a $20 million contract you got nothing from was just written into the books as standard losses every year? Risk taken with no gain.

Properly run. Let's talk about that. First, let me start by my definition of parity, well at least part of it. Parity means that risk is shared equally among all teams. In the NFL this happens because of the hard caps. Sign the wrong guy to a $20 million deal and it matters. MLB doesn't have it. At all. Take the 2017 Yankees for instance. In 2017 the Yankees paid jacoby ellsbury $22 million dollars, got a little over 100 games from him (a high point in the course of the contract) and 7 HRs, 39 RBI, and 65 runs. That same year thry paid A-rod $28 million...for nothing. Matt Holliday $13 million for a .231/.316 Tyler Clippard $6 million for a -0.2 WAR Thats $70 million for a combined 1.5 WAR. In fact one player Aaron Judge was nearly 15% of the teams total WAR. And yet despite this they made it to the AL Championship series and lost to a team that was cheating. Meanwhile, most of us would recognize that the current Orioles plight is due largely to one bad contract, and a failure to properly develop a farm system that they had to shift resources away from in competitive years. My point is this. Risk is not shared across teams. The MLB system is set up so that some teams can take risks that other teams just can't. I dont think that is a refutable to anyone as educated as this board is, we all recognize it. And in that way, I would say the threshold for "properly run" is very different for the Orioles than it is the Yankees, or Dodgers, or any of many other teams that bat away their failed risky contracts with enormous resources.

But what about not blocking Westburg? ... ...

You have buffalo twice. And every one of those teams with exception of the jags and lions has been to the playoffs in the last three years and all but I think three have WON their division within the last 4. Thats a significant amount of parity, SB wins aside. Championships shouldn't really be a metric for parity anyway.