Owners submit new economic plan to union : UPDATED

[CallMeBrooksie]

11 hours ago, MurphDogg said:

If the union were to agree to a cut in salaries beyond prorating, it should be up to the union to decide how to divide the money. This "offer" is a cynical, disingenuous insult to the concept of collective bargaining and seeks only to divide union members against one another.

The owners need to put on their big boy pants, pay the players their prorated salaries, accept that they may lose money for the first time in 25 years and taken comfort in the fact that they make money literally every other year and that franchise values have doubled in the last 15 years.

You can't be a socialist with the losses and a capitalist with the gains. If they want to renegotiate the entire CBA to cut players in on profits and franchise values increases and MLBAM then fine, but as a one year offer to move $700+ million from labor to management because management caught a bad break is garbage.

I fully expect they will split the difference and come to a fair agreement.

That said, if we don't have a baseball season due to the players refusing to come off of their full pro-rated salary demands..  then this will be almost totally a failure of the MLBPA, not the owners.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

I fully expect they will split the difference and come to a fair agreement.

That said, if we don't have a baseball season due to the players refusing to come off of their full pro-rated salary demands..  then this will be almost totally a failure of the MLBPA, not the owners.

Without seeing the underlying numbers the current offer from ownership looks brutal.  I think the Union was right to leak it.

[CallMeBrooksie]

11 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Without seeing the underlying numbers the current offer from ownership looks brutal.  I think the Union was right to leak it.

It doesn't look great, but it's an active negotiation. We know that's not their best offer. I don't think it's worse than the players saying they won't play for a penny less than their full pro rated salary. 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

It doesn't look great, but it's an active negotiation. We know that's not their best offer. I don't think it's worse than the players saying they won't play for a penny less than their full pro rated salary. 

I'd say it is as bad.  It looks to me like the owners are really trying to take it to the players.

[CallMeBrooksie]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'd say it is as bad.  It looks to me like the owners are really trying to take it to the players.

Strongly disagree. This looks like a reasonable step towards meeting in the middle to me. The players are going to have to take a salary hit for this to work. The progressive scale seems like a decent way to make this happen in a way that hurts the least amount of players, though it's definitely too aggressive as currently proposed.

If the big boys aren't willing to take a sizeable cut to make a season work, then the players should figure it out amongst themselves how they'd prefer to see the paycuts structured.

Refusing to accept a paycut will absolutely make the players out to be the bad guys. But again.. I expect them still to split the difference and come to an agreement. Too many smart people on both sides to not make this work.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

Strongly disagree. This looks like a reasonable step towards meeting in the middle to me. The players are going to have to take a salary hit for this to work. The progressive scale seems like a decent way to make this happen in a way that hurts the least amount of players, though it's definitely too aggressive as currently proposed.

If the big boys aren't willing to take a sizeable cut to make a season work, then the players should figure it out amongst themselves how they'd prefer to see the paycuts structured.

Refusing to accept a paycut will absolutely make the players out to be the bad guys. But again.. I expect them still to split the difference and come to an agreement. Too many smart people on both sides to not make this work.

I think that if at one end you have a cap and at the other end you have prorated that this is about this close to meeting in the middle.

I----I------------------I

[CallMeBrooksie]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think that if at one end you have a cap and at the other end you have prorated that this is about this close to meeting in the middle.

I----I------------------I

I don't really disagree with that, but I don't think it means the owners are taking it to the players or that they are negotiating in bad faith. Let's see where the negotiations end up. 

[Can_of_corn]

36 minutes ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

I don't really disagree with that, but I don't think it means the owners are taking it to the players or that they are negotiating in bad faith. Let's see where the negotiations end up. 

I'm worried they are intentionally looking to limit the pay of those that have the most power in the Union.  Perhaps in a ploy to sow dissension in the ranks.

[spiritof66]

47 minutes ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

Strongly disagree. This looks like a reasonable step towards meeting in the middle to me. The players are going to have to take a salary hit for this to work. The progressive scale seems like a decent way to make this happen in a way that hurts the least amount of players, though it's definitely too aggressive as currently proposed.

If the big boys aren't willing to take a sizeable cut to make a season work, then the players should figure it out amongst themselves how they'd prefer to see the paycuts structured.

Refusing to accept a paycut will absolutely make the players out to be the bad guys. But again.. I expect them still to split the difference and come to an agreement. Too many smart people on both sides to not make this work.

Sure, starting out with an extreme position is one way to negotiate. But it often leads to a protracted process in which each side gives ground slowly and grudgingly, in small steps. There's not very much time to work this out and have baseball in 2020.

 

[Can_of_corn]

7 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

Sure, starting out with an extreme position is one way to negotiate. But it often leads to a protracted process in which each side gives ground slowly and grudgingly, in small steps. There's not very much time to work this out and have baseball in 2020.

 

I think owners are more concerned with gaining long term advantage out of this than they are playing this year.

[Redskins Rick]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think owners are more concerned with gaining long term advantage out of this than they are playing this year.

And some also believe the players are doing the same, and not wanting to take any pay cut is pretty self-centered.

I want to quickly point out, I think there is plenty of blame on both sides.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think a lot of fans want a cap because they think it will improve their team's chances of winning. 

I am not at all sure that is the case.

People like simple, straightforward solutions to complicated problems.  A cap and floor could potentially be implemented in ways that increase competitive balance.  But I think other things could do that in a less ham-fisted manner.

And there are plenty of counter-examples.  The Browns and Patriots are both under the same cap and floor.  NCAA sports are all capped at the value of a scholarship and some teams go winless for years, and teams like Alabama and Clemson rarely lose.  Angelos essentially had a self-imposed salary floor for the Orioles around league-average payroll for most of the 2000s and they were awful.

[CallMeBrooksie]

41 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

Sure, starting out with an extreme position is one way to negotiate. But it often leads to a protracted process in which each side gives ground slowly and grudgingly, in small steps. There's not very much time to work this out and have baseball in 2020.

 

Is refusing to take a penny less than the full pro-rated salary not an even more extreme position? This is how negotiation works. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this has been the players/Boras/union's stance up to this point. That's not reasonable.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

Is refusing to take a penny less than the full pro-rated salary not an even more extreme position? This is how negotiation works. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this has been the players/Boras/union's stance up to this point. That's not reasonable.

You are comparing the player's first offer with the owner's second.

And it hasn't been the Union's position this whole time as the leaked email showed that they understood things would be renegotiated if fans were not going to be present at games.

[CallMeBrooksie]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

You are comparing the player's first offer with the owner's second.

sure.. I just don't see a case for demonizing the owners and taking pity on the players union from what we know so far. I could be mistaken, but we've yet to hear of any willingness from the players to take less  money, have we?