MLB Strike Is Near?

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Camden_yardbird said:

While I think that makes some sense it does not solve the problem that players need to get paid when they are younger and peaking.  Given current trends a 28 year free agency would likely grant a player one significant free agent contract.  Maybe players should start getting arbitration once they pass a performance threshold.

I also think it's a tough balance to pay players when they are younger and keep a competitive parity without some protections.

I think what baseball needs is not incrementalism, but wholesale changes, and I worry that cant happen unless there is serious market disruption.

I think you can still have a system like today, where you get league minimum for a few years, then increasing amounts in arb until you're a free agent.  If you're Manny and you get six or seven years of arb you'll essentially be making free agent rates by the last few.

[Camden_yardbird]

8 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think you can still have a system like today, where you get league minimum for a few years, then increasing amounts in arb until you're a free agent.  If you're Manny and you get six or seven years of arb you'll essentially be making free agent rates by the last few.

I thinks that's a fair assessment.  Case in point Mookie Betts. 

[Maverick Hiker]

T

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Players should become free agents at 28.  If you're really good and get called up at 19 you stay with your team for nine years.  If you aren't good enough to play in the majors until 26 you get two.  No service time games, no trying to get that 7th year.  Get them to the majors when they're ready to contribute in some role, and you have them until 28 unless you negotiate an extension.

Probably a good idea, at least compared with the present system.  Teams are playing too many games with keeping players in the minor leagues, to hold them longer before they can become free agents.

However suppose a player just made the team at age 27 due to injuries, or perhaps one of those tryout camps that teams infrequently  have. Then they would just have him 1 year and he departs at age 28?  The free agent at 28 rule would need to be tweaked. 

Edited July 11, 2019 by Maverick Hiker
typo

[Sessh]

3 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

How far down do you have to go to give a 70-win team a shot?  And how hard do you try if the end result is a 1/16 or 1/20 chance of getting through multiple layers of playoffs against obviously better teams?

Again, I think expanded playoffs basically just tells the good teams to pull back on investing in their teams and take that in profit.  Because there's little or nothing you can do to turn a 1/20th shot at the championship into worthwhile odds.  Shoot for 85 wins or so, and hope the luck works out.

I don't know, this doesn't happen in hockey at all. Teams are still fighting for the division if things are close at the top in the final week or two. Winning the division isn't the point of the season, though. It's winning the Stanley Cup. Division banners hanging in your stadium are nice and all, but that's not what those players dream about as kids. That doesn't mean no one tries to win the division and the NHL has 16 teams in the playoffs. As an NHL fan, I love this. Playoff hockey is the best hockey of the year and there's three months of it. The competition to even get the wildcards usually go down to the wire between at least four teams per league.

Anyway, I know it's a different sport and league, but there's no disincentives visible at all in those leagues. Also, division winners get home team advantage throughout the playoffs. I just don't think the situation will be as grim as you seem to think it will be. I would rather have a more competitive regular season, even a shortened one if necessary, and more playoff baseball instead. I don't think there's any disincentives and of course teams would be happy to get into the playoffs at all. A 5% chance is better than a 0% chance.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Sessh said:

I don't know, this doesn't happen in hockey at all. Teams are still fighting for the division if things are close at the top in the final week or two. Winning the division isn't the point of the season, though. It's winning the Stanley Cup. Division banners hanging in your stadium are nice and all, but that's not what those players dream about as kids. That doesn't mean no one tries to win the division and the NHL has 16 teams in the playoffs. As an NHL fan, I love this. Playoff hockey is the best hockey of the year and there's three months of it. The competition to even get the wildcards usually go down to the wire between at least four teams per league.

Anyway, I know it's a different sport and league, but there's no disincentives visible at all in those leagues. Also, division winners get home team advantage throughout the playoffs. I just don't think the situation will be as grim as you seem to think it will be. I would rather have a more competitive regular season, even a shortened one if necessary, and more playoff baseball instead. I don't think there's any disincentives and of course teams would be happy to get into the playoffs at all. A 5% chance is better than a 0% chance.

What are the spread in results in hockey?  I don't know, but in baseball an epic generational dynasty doesn't get to .700, and most playoff teams are in the .550-.625 range.  So almost all playoff series are essentially coin flips.  Most years the best team in baseball has about a 20% chance of winning the Series on the first day of the playoffs, sometimes less.  If you add a couple more rounds to the playoffs you'll see a 105-win team with 10% odds of winning it all, and a 78-win team with 4%.  I guess maybe that's what some people want.  I don't know that having the best team with a 90% chance of being eliminated is right.

In the NBA the top seed wins more than half the time, I don't know the exact number.  In a 20-team playoff in MLB you're basically just picking a team out of a hat.  It'll be nearly random.

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, Maverick Hiker said:

However suppose a player just made the team at age 27 due to injuries, or perhaps one of those tryout camps that teams infrequently  have. Then they would just have him 1 year and he departs at age 28?  The free agent at 28 rule would need to be tweaked. 

I think that's fine.  If a guy is in the minors until he's 27 he's probably been through several organizations.  Why shouldn't he be rewarded, at least a little, for persevering through 6, 8, 10 years of minor league bus rides?

[Hallas]

6 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think you can still have a system like today, where you get league minimum for a few years, then increasing amounts in arb until you're a free agent.  If you're Manny and you get six or seven years of arb you'll essentially be making free agent rates by the last few.

You could have a system where it's 28 or 7 years service, whichever comes first.  You can play service time games for players under 21, but that's a pretty small subset of MLB given that it takes a pretty special player to be worthy of callup at age 20.

[Sessh]

3 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What are the spread in results in hockey?... I don't know that having the best team with a 90% chance of being eliminated is right.

In the NBA the top seed wins more than half the time, I don't know the exact number.  In a 20-team playoff in MLB you're basically just picking a team out of a hat.  It'll be nearly random.

/hockey

Well, the east looked like this last year.

Metro division

Washington    48-26-8 (104pts)
NY Islanders  48-27-7 (103pts)
Pittsburgh    44-26-12 (100pts)

Atlantic division

Tampa Bay   62-16-4 (128pts)
Boston      49-24-9 (107pts)
Toronto     46-28-8 (100pts)

Wild cards

Carolina   46-29-7 (99pts)
Columbus   47-31-4 (98pts)

Next two teams

x Montreal 44-30-8 (96pts)
x Florida  36-32-14 (86pts)

- Tampa Bay lost to a Columbus team that made several high profile rental acquisitions VIA trades to go for it and that team had just started playing really well with a few games left in the regular season. TB was completely outmatched and they were a soft, highly skilled finesse team while Columbus was also skilled and very physical which was too much for them, so TB got beat up all series and swept in the first round. They were thoroughly outplayed, out-efforted, lost all the board battles and failed to do all the small things needed to win. The highly skilled team that had a historically incredible season was completely shut down for this series. Columbus had also been eliminated in the first round like three straight years and had something to prove.

- Washington lost to Carolina in seven games and they made it all the way to the conference finals and swept the Islanders in the second round. Despite having 104pts, the Capitals hadn't played all that well starting in January and it wasn't a surprise that they lost. They looked tired and their play was inconsistent for most of the second half of the year and this series probably due to a shorter rest from winning the cup last year. Carolina was a good, scrappy team and deserved to win both their series, but they got swept by the Bruins in the conference finals.

Western conference

Central division

Nashville  47-29-6 (100pts)
Winnipeg   47-30-5 (99pts)
St.Louis   45-28-9 (99pts)

Pacific division

Calgary  50-25-7 (107pts)
San Jose 46-27-9 (101pts)
Vegas    43-32-7 (93pts)

Wild cards

Dallas    43-32-7  (93pts)
Colorado  38-30-14 (90pts)

Next two teams

Arizona  39-35-8 (86pts)
Chicago  36-34-12 (84pts)
3 more teams above 80 pts

- Nashville lost to Dallas in six games. The Stars had been called out publicly for their play particularly their star players by the FO in the media which got them going. Nashville was dealing with some injuries and were starting to show their age. I didn't watch a lot of this series, though.

- Calgary lost to Colorado in seven games. Calgary's star offensive player didn't perform in this series while Colorado's did. They were a team on the upswing since last season and almost won the second round as well. Calgary has a history of losing in the first round of the playoffs having done so in 12 of their last 14 playoff appearances since winning the cup in 1989. Colorado's goalie (formerly Washington's backup goalie) had emerged as a star particularly in the second half and was a big reason for their success.

I wasn't all that surprised by any of these outcomes though I was surprised that TB got swept the way they did, but I couldn't see Columbus losing and had doubts about TB's physical game and their "killer instinct" for lack of a better term.

One thing that is unique to hockey is that the playoffs are a completely different game than the regular season. Play is much more physical and refs generally let more things go that would get called in the regular season. It's been this way forever and players seem to love it this way. It's a harder, more physical game and certainly more entertaining to watch as well. Tampa Bay was a team built to win in the regular season and that's what they did, but the team didn't have another level to turn their play up to. They lacked the physical element needed for the postseason and got run over by Columbus.

I think it was the first time that all four WC teams knocked out all the top seeds. It made for a wide open postseason which was fun. St. Louis won the cup and at one point during the season, they had the worst record in the league. Parity in the NHL is pretty damn good. The two worst teams were two rebuilding clubs Ottawa (69pts) and the LA Kings (71pts).

/end hockey

To your point about the NBA top seed winning more than half the time, isn't that much more pointless? Why even play the first round if you already know who's going to win? Your comment about it not being right that a team that has the best regular season record losing seems like you're putting more emphasis on a team's play in the regular season than you do in the playoffs. If a team is the best in the regular season and they can't bring that same level of play into the postseason, why do they deserve to win? It is my understanding that there is a huge gap between the top teams in the NBA and the middle teams, right? If the top seed is almost guaranteed to win, I don't find that to be all that exciting. Why even watch unless you're a fan of either of those teams?

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Sessh said:

To your point about the NBA top seed winning more than half the time, isn't that much more pointless? Why even play the first round if you already know who's going to win? Your comment about it not being right that a team that has the best regular season record losing seems like you're putting more emphasis on a team's play in the regular season than you do in the playoffs. If a team is the best in the regular season and they can't bring that same level of play into the postseason, why do they deserve to win? It is my understanding that there is a huge gap between the top teams in the NBA and the middle teams, right? If the top seed is almost guaranteed to win, I don't find that to be all that exciting. Why even watch unless you're a fan of either of those teams?

Since the playoffs are several short series in a row, they're often as much about luck as skill or ability or talent.  If you play 162 games and win five more than anyone else, that's a reasonably fair representation of your team's ability.  If you play seven games and win four, well... 60 win teams beat 90 win teams four out of seven all the time.

It comes down to what you want out of sports.  If your goal is to just eliminate the bad teams and be entertained by exciting but essentially random playoffs, then expand them.  There are legitmate reasons for that in my mind, such as the current case of not being able to level revenues, so you have to randomize things or the Yanks/Sox/Dodgers will win most of the time.  But if you want the better teams to come out on top more often, limit the number of rounds.

The regular season in MLB is a 162-game playoff, with a large sample to give you confidence in the results.  A five- or seven-game series is largely luck; a .575 team playing a .550 team is a coin flip.  A seven-game series is the '69 Mets beating the '69 Orioles.  The Orioles were indisputably the better team, but the Mets got to take the trophy home because they were better for a week, while the Orioles were better for six months.

If all you care about is excitement and don't care about the results being random, then you could just do away with the regular season and have a six month long round robin tournament.

[TradeAngelos]

The MLBPA would sooner disband baseball before they agreed on a 28 year old blanket free agency age. The arbitration system is very player friendly (no other sport has anything even remotely similar for young players). These aren't the problems in MLB now, overall competitive balance is. And the union will make sure that is the case til the end of time. The owners are still raking in piles of  guaranteed TV money so they could care less and won't have the spine to stand up to them. Most are old billionaires who could care less what the state of the sport is 10, 15 or 20 years from now. They want their money now, and won't be around later. 

[TradeAngelos]

You have to give something to get something. Give the players 4 years service time instead of 6 to get to free agency, but get in return some type of salary control so that 25 teams instead of 5 teams are vying for said free agents when the time comes. And you don't have 1/3 of the teams essentially in tank mode for 2-4 years just trying to keep their head above water to compete (**maybe, hopefully, if it all goes right and pans out over a 2-4 year stretch, you don't make any really bad decisions etc etc.......**). How can you sell that product to a fanbase for such a long period of time? You can't. 

[Sessh]

14 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Since the playoffs are several short series in a row, they're often as much about luck as skill or ability or talent.

It comes down to what you want out of sports.  If your goal is to just eliminate the bad teams and be entertained by exciting but essentially random playoffs, then expand them.  There are legitmate reasons for that in my mind, such as the current case of not being able to level revenues, so you have to randomize things or the Yanks/Sox/Dodgers will win most of the time.  But if you want the better teams to come out on top more often, limit the number of rounds.

The regular season in MLB is a 162-game playoff, with a large sample to give you confidence in the results.  A five- or seven-game series is largely luck; a .575 team playing a .550 team is a coin flip.  A seven-game series is the '69 Mets beating the '69 Orioles.  The Orioles were indisputably the better team, but the Mets got to take the trophy home because they were better for a week, while the Orioles were better for six months.

If all you care about is excitement and don't care about the results being random, then you could just do away with the regular season and have a six month long round robin tournament.

The Orioles may have been better for six months, but they weren't better when it was all on the line. Being better for six months does not win you a championship if you aren't the better team for the final seven games of the season. Luck factors into every game no matter when it's played. A lucky bounce here, a bloop there, a timely seeing eye single etc. Luck doesn't just happen all of a sudden in the postseason. Just because you win 110 games in the regular season doesn't mean you deserve to cakewalk through the postseason. Heck, if you just want the best teams to win, just do away with the playoffs altogether and have the teams with the two best records play one series for the championship and everyone else can go home.

Yes, I want it to be exciting otherwise what's the point? I would rather everyone in the playoffs have a chance than to have only one or two teams have a chance because then it really is pointless if you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be without playing the games. The last thing I want in sports is too much predictability. The regular season has a purpose which is for teams to prove that they belong in the playoffs to play for the ultimate prize, but playoff action has a different feel and atmosphere to it than regular season play. That's one major difference and it is a significant variable. Much more is on the line and this can bring the best out of players. Stars are born under that kind of pressure. Unpredictable stuff happens and that's the way it should be. The more teams involved, the higher chance of something like that happening and the more competition you will have in the regular season. The alternative is half the teams in the league tanking for the best draft pick they can get because they have no chance of being in the top third of the league come October. I don't really see anything wrong with the team with the best regular season record falling to another team in the postseason. They aren't entitled to anything, they still have to beat the other team. If they can't, well, see ya next year.

The best team in the regular season is not necessarily the best team in the playoffs. I think I am more the kind of sports fan that is not so much a huge fan of any particular team, but a fan of all the teams. I want to see good baseball/hockey regardless of who's playing it. The best team is the team that is consistently good and finds ways to win until the end. Teams lose to other teams who are better than them on paper all the time, but sports aren't played on paper and unpredictable stuff happens when the competitive side of people is brought out, "heart" if you will. That's the beauty of sports. I don't view the regular season as a predictor of the outcome of the postseason.

[DrungoHazewood]

11 hours ago, Sessh said:

The best team in the regular season is not necessarily the best team in the playoffs.

The best team is the best team.  The outcome of the series will reflect who is the best team the longer the series.  If you have a one-and-done game like the wildcard a team like the Orioles that's barely major league quality, will beat a 105-win team 20-30% of the time.  Especially if they could start Means or Cashner.  Best has little to do with the playoffs. 

If you don't care, that's fine.  But don't pretend that the best team wins a single game or a short series.  The best team doesn't even always win in 162.  Seven games is picking a name out of a hat.  Best has little to do with it.

[DrungoHazewood]

11 hours ago, TradeAngelos said:

The MLBPA would sooner disband baseball before they agreed on a 28 year old blanket free agency age. The arbitration system is very player friendly (no other sport has anything even remotely similar for young players). These aren't the problems in MLB now, overall competitive balance is. And the union will make sure that is the case til the end of time. The owners are still raking in piles of  guaranteed TV money so they could care less and won't have the spine to stand up to them. Most are old billionaires who could care less what the state of the sport is 10, 15 or 20 years from now. They want their money now, and won't be around later. 

Why would they be so against a 28-year free agency age?  Especially if it was coupled with a guarantee of at least the same percentage of revenues going to payroll that we have today?

[Sessh]

11 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The best team is the best team.  The outcome of the series will reflect who is the best team the longer the series.  If you have a one-and-done game like the wildcard a team like the Orioles that's barely major league quality, will beat a 105-win team 20-30% of the time.  Especially if they could start Means or Cashner.  Best has little to do with the playoffs. 

If you don't care, that's fine.  But don't pretend that the best team wins a single game or a short series.  The best team doesn't even always win in 162.  Seven games is picking a name out of a hat.  Best has little to do with it.

If the best team doesn't always win in 162, then perhaps the problem is how you define "best" and what you base that on. Maybe it also means that the regular season is pointless as well since not even 162 games is enough to figure out who the "best" team is and therefore maybe determining who the best team is doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how many wins they get in the regular season. So, best also has little to do with the regular season then.

The best team to me is the team that finds ways to beat their opponents when the games matter the most. If you're the "best team" and you can't find a way to beat a team like the Orioles in one game with your season on the line, then they probably shouldn't be called the best team. The best team finds ways to win games and get the job done when it matters. The teams that don't do that lose. When you get to the playoffs, either you find ways to win or you lose. If those teams find some comfort in insisting they're the best team, fine. The best team, to me, endures to the end and wins it all otherwise how can you say you're the best team? You didn't rise to the occasion when it mattered, so maybe there's more to being the best team than stat sheets and regular season records.