Who is to blame if there is not MLB baseball in 2020?

[HowAboutThat]

12 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

It cost mlb 434 million by the time they were done being penalized.

 

That’s pretty amazing, the idea that you can force me to hire somebody that I don’t want to hire, or Penalize me for not doing so, Or penalize me for suggesting that it is unwise to do so, is amazing, and yet here we are. Thanks for sharing.

[Mr. Chewbacca Jr.]

32 minutes ago, Philip said:

That’s pretty amazing, the idea that you can force me to hire somebody that I don’t want to hire, or Penalize me for not doing so, Or penalize me for suggesting that it is unwise to do so, is amazing, and yet here we are. Thanks for sharing.

It's not illegal to refrain from signing guys to long-term contracts because you think its a bad idea. It is illegal when George Steinbrenner pulls his offer for Carlton Fisk after Jerry Reinsdorf asks him to - in a secret, coordinated effort amongst all of the owners to keep player costs down. That's collusion.

[DrungoHazewood]

53 minutes ago, Philip said:

That’s pretty amazing, the idea that you can force me to hire somebody that I don’t want to hire, or Penalize me for not doing so, Or penalize me for suggesting that it is unwise to do so, is amazing, and yet here we are. Thanks for sharing.

If the owners didn't want to be penalized for colluding in free agency they shouldn't have agreed to that in collective bargaining. 

It's exactly out of the Bill James quote I provided a few weeks ago.  The owners, at least in the pre-1990s timeframe, didn't know anything about labor law, didn't care to know, and only hired council that patted them on the backs and said "don't worry, we'll stick it to these ungrateful players and get rid of this silly free agency."  And at every single turn Marvin Miller and the MLBPA beat them because they had the law on their side.

Nobody forced owners to sign the CBA.

[Moose Milligan]

3 hours ago, Frobby said:

Good thing for me that I’m old and stodgy.  

I wouldn't call you that.

[HowAboutThat]

3 hours ago, Mr. Chewbacca Jr. said:

It's not illegal to refrain from signing guys to long-term contracts because you think its a bad idea. It is illegal when George Steinbrenner pulls his offer for Carlton Fisk after Jerry Reinsdorf asks him to - in a secret, coordinated effort amongst all of the owners to keep player costs down. That's collusion.

Well I don’t remember reading that in your original post, but yes that would be the very poster child of collusion.

However, publicly saying, “it is stupid to sign a washed up veteran for too much money,” Is neither wrong, nor wrong.

And it would be not wrong to publicly say, “the owners shouldn’t spend so much money on free agents”

And it probably wouldn’t be wrong to say, “I’m going to have a meeting of all the general managers and tell them that they shouldn’t pay so much money to free agents because they aren’t worth it.”

 After all, if they are free to do business as they wish, and they all agree that high dollar free agents are overvalued, that may be a fine line between “collusion“ and “good business practice.“

I’m not attempting to argue against what happened, just Wondering if it would still have been collusion if the owners had publicly explained that it was bad business?

[wildcard]

20 minutes ago, Philip said:

Well I don’t remember reading that in your original post, but yes that would be the very poster child of collusion.

However, publicly saying, “it is stupid to sign a washed up veteran for too much money,” Is neither wrong, nor wrong.

And it would be not wrong to publicly say, “the owners shouldn’t spend so much money on free agents”

And it probably wouldn’t be wrong to say, “I’m going to have a meeting of all the general managers and tell them that they shouldn’t pay so much money to free agents because they aren’t worth it.”

 After all, if they are free to do business as they wish, and they all agree that high dollar free agents are overvalued, that may be a fine line between “collusion“ and “good business practice.“

I’m not attempting to argue against what happened, just Wondering if it would still have been collusion if the owners had publicly explained that it was bad business?

It would be wrong to call a meeting of the general managers and tell them they should not spend so much money on free agents:

1) Each GM should be able to figure that out on their own for each FA player.

2) Telling all the GMs that is grounds for the Union to file a grievance.

[Mr. Chewbacca Jr.]

26 minutes ago, Philip said:

Well I don’t remember reading that in your original post, but yes that would be the very poster child of collusion.

However, publicly saying, “it is stupid to sign a washed up veteran for too much money,” Is neither wrong, nor wrong.

And it would be not wrong to publicly say, “the owners shouldn’t spend so much money on free agents”

And it probably wouldn’t be wrong to say, “I’m going to have a meeting of all the general managers and tell them that they shouldn’t pay so much money to free agents because they aren’t worth it.”

 After all, if they are free to do business as they wish, and they all agree that high dollar free agents are overvalued, that may be a fine line between “collusion“ and “good business practice.“

I’m not attempting to argue against what happened, just Wondering if it would still have been collusion if the owners had publicly explained that it was bad business?

If they're coordinating together, it's collusion. Having a meeting and creating some type of agreement qualifies as that - so the bolded sentence would definitely be that.

They're also not free to do business however they please - they agreed to a collective bargaining agreement with the players. And they're also beholden to national anti-trust legislation like the Sherman Act that doesn't allow that sort of thing.

[HowAboutThat]

15 minutes ago, wildcard said:

It would be wrong to call a meeting of the general managers and tell them they should not spend so much money on free agents:

1) Each GM should be able to figure that out on their own for each FA player.

2) Telling all the GMs that is grounds for the Union to file a grievance.

 Would that be true even if it’s public? I suppose the question has already been answered, and the owners stepped over the line, but how fine is the line?

Was there any punishment for an owner who defied the directive and signed a high dollar free agent anyway? Was it even a directive, actually a direct order, a command or majority vote of the owners? Or was it just, “I don’t think you should do this because it’s not financially wise“? 

If the very act of discussing the issue is itself grounds for agreements, that seems a little draconian.

[HowAboutThat]

33 minutes ago, Mr. Chewbacca Jr. said:

If they're coordinating together, it's collusion. Having a meeting and creating some type of agreement qualifies as that - so the bolded sentence would definitely be that.

They're also not free to do business however they please - they agreed to a collective bargaining agreement with the players. And they're also beholden to national anti-trust legislation like the Sherman Act that doesn't allow that sort of thing.

Although I don’t disagree with anything you said, for clarity sake, if I buy a team and I publicly announce that I am never going to sign any free agents, on the Grounds that my business plan involves drafting developing and then trading for purposes of replenishing, Would I be subject to a grievance merely because I decline to sign any free agents?

[DrungoHazewood]

28 minutes ago, Mr. Chewbacca Jr. said:

If they're coordinating together, it's collusion. Having a meeting and creating some type of agreement qualifies as that - so the bolded sentence would definitely be that.

They're also not free to do business however they please - they agreed to a collective bargaining agreement with the players. And they're also beholden to national anti-trust legislation like the Sherman Act that doesn't allow that sort of thing.

Other sports, yes.  Baseball, no.  Since they've had an exemption to that since the Baltimore Terrapins Supreme Court case in 1920.

Frobby or someone with better legal chops should probably weigh in here, but my understanding is that the CBA says that the teams have to act independently when making decisions on signing players.  It's fine to have an individual team say they're not going to sign any free agents this year because they're all out of cash.  But it's not fine for the owners to get together and say they're going to collectively not sign anyone to anything remotely like market rates, in an attempt to circumvent the market established by the CBA.  That's what they did in the 1980s, when peak Hall of Famers like Tim Raines weren't offered a contract by any team until after the season started because the owners collectively decided they weren't having any more of this free agency stuff.

If the owners didn't want to pay the going rate for players they should have refused to sign the CBA and insisted on one where players were paid $25,000 a year.  The MBLPA would have laughed, stayed locked out or on strike until such time as the owners gave in or the players decided to form their own league.

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, Philip said:

Although I don’t disagree with anything you said, for clarity sake, if I buy a team and I publicly announce that I am never going to sign any free agents, on the Grounds that my business plan involves drafting developing and then trading for purposes of replenishing, Would I be subject to a grievance merely because I decline to sign any free agents?

No.  But if you got all the other owners together to collectively decide that for the league you would.  And if all of the other owners and GMs all "independently" decided to never sign any free agents I'm guessing they'd be treading on very thin ice. 

And if somehow that didn't get them all a $5B fine, I'm going to assume that the players would eventually form a new league, since MLB has shown that it's financially viable to run a league where Mike Trout makes $35M a year and the average player pulls in $3-4M.

[Redskins Rick]

33 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

No.  But if you got all the other owners together to collectively decide that for the league you would.  And if all of the other owners and GMs all "independently" decided to never sign any free agents I'm guessing they'd be treading on very thin ice. 

And if somehow that didn't get them all a $5B fine, I'm going to assume that the players would eventually form a new league, since MLB has shown that it's financially viable to run a league where Mike Trout makes $35M a year and the average player pulls in $3-4M.

Not to mention, when the baseball commish is also signing the same song and dance at their annual meeting, sure wasnt hard to prove collusion.

 

[Frobby]

Last year MLB posted this job description:

Key Responsibilities:

• Complete valuation analysis of player contracts and other analysis related to baseball labor markets
• Monitor trends in Club and Player strategy to assist in setting on-field policy and rule changes
• Oversee all duties related to Uniform Employee Contracts and the Employee Permissions process
• Serve as business customer to Commissioner’s Office baseball IT systems, ensuring data accuracy across baseball applications, managing vendors and assisting to set departmental IT strategy
• Provide analytical support to Clubs in negotiations and hearings with salary arbitration-eligible players
• Other projects as assigned by Senior Director, League Economics & Strategy.

As I said at the time, you might as well call the job “Director of Collusion.”

[HowAboutThat]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

Last year MLB posted this job description:

Key Responsibilities:

• Complete valuation analysis of player contracts and other analysis related to baseball labor markets
• Monitor trends in Club and Player strategy to assist in setting on-field policy and rule changes
• Oversee all duties related to Uniform Employee Contracts and the Employee Permissions process
• Serve as business customer to Commissioner’s Office baseball IT systems, ensuring data accuracy across baseball applications, managing vendors and assisting to set departmental IT strategy
• Provide analytical support to Clubs in negotiations and hearings with salary arbitration-eligible players
• Other projects as assigned by Senior Director, League Economics & Strategy.

As I said at the time, you might as well call the job “Director of Collusion.”

Who did they hire?

[bobmc]

11 hours ago, Philip said:

Who did they hire?

Not a grammar specialist but shouldn't you have used "whom"?  . I'm here for being reprimanded by "TEECHUR".