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

[billhatf]

Purely greed on the part of the players, especially the ones making 10s of millions of dollars each year.  At this point I would much rather see minor league players this season.  At least they wouldn't be whining over how many more millions they want.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

I blame the players.

Historically speaking, I think the players were absolutely correct and right to unionize, to get free agency, etc.  I think the owner's collusion of the mid 80s is a worse blight on MLB than the Black Sox scandal and the worst thing in MLB history outside of keeping African-American's out of the game.

But when it comes to other labor disputes, when it comes to strikes...the players are wrong.  Every single time.  Especially in a time right now where every day people are losing their jobs and there's civil unrest.  I'm not blaming them for the interest of getting more money...I think everyone should want more money.  But the way they go about it, how it looks...I hate to use the term "optics" because it's so cliche and overused today, people think it makes them sound smarter when they say it...but the optics of how they appear...it's just never good.

 

I think the owners could win public opinion, or the optics of the situation, by offering up a CBA proposal that restructures how money is divided up in baseball.  Today we have situations where one or two players a team often get close to 10% of the revenues of the entire organization, while rookies make 0.2%.  Even though in a lot of cases the rookies contribute as much to the winning as the guy with the giant contract.  The owners should propose a system that's more like a lot of companies where the veteran big performers make more, but only two or three times as much.  Have a setup where the salary floor is $2M (per player), but nobody can make more than $10M a season.  And minor leaguers with more than a year's experience get at least $40k.

Sell it on equity and fairness and the fact that it's no longer tenable to have the MLBPA use laws designed to keep miners and factory workers from making 25 cents an hour to make sure David Price gets $30M a year.

[Philip]

People like to talk about “the 1%” but where is that more blatant then in baseball? The one percent is the owners, but also the players. But not all the players, only the elite players. I suppose Frobby  has already determined what percentage of major leaguers make $1 million or more a year, and $1 million is a career at a normal salary. You make $1 million, you can retire. You’ve got to be careful with your money, but you can still retire. $2 million And you don’t have to be as careful, and so on. But the financial elites in this discussion are completely and utterly ignoring the players who really need assistance, that’s the minor leaguers, and they are completely ignoring the hotdog vendors.

Tony Clark is not necessarily an idiot, but he is completely shortsighted. And he is greedy. The owners are definitely not idiots, but they are also greedy.

Manfred IS an idiot. That is a little bit irrelevant to the discussion, but it remains true.

[Moose Milligan]

4 minutes ago, Philip said:

But the financial elites in this discussion are completely and utterly ignoring the players who really need assistance, that’s the minor leaguers, and they are completely ignoring the hotdog vendors.

 

Some of the financial elites in this discussion (players) will claim that they're looking out for future players rights and earning rights.

They don't care about hot dog vendors.

[atomic]

The players are definitely worse in this situation because they haven’t once agreed to take less than full prorated salary.  I mean take a 25 percent reduction and play ball. Seems fair to both sides. 
 

The fact that they keep coming out like they have been wronged somehow by the owners. The owners didn’t make the pandemic. They didn’t say no fans are allowed at games.  

[weams]

 

[Philip]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Some of the financial elites in this discussion (players) will claim that they're looking out for future players rights and earning rights.

They don't care about hot dog vendors.

They don’t care about future players rights either. Every minor leaguer is a future player, but MLBPA ain't sayin a word about them. They only care about their own individual positions.

If you want to change things, you Have to change things for everyone, and not just yourself. If you change things for the better for everyone, you will also improve “future players” 

Of course that also applies to the owners, and it is easy to make them look worse because they already have the money. The players want the money, but only for themselves. If they were really concerned about future players they would be addressing the needs of the minor leaguers. And yes, I know minor leaguers are not members of the union and they’re not allowed to be, but who won’t let them join? The major leaguers?

hmmmm, like I said...

[Philip]

17 minutes ago, weams said:

 

The Texas Rangers ownership just managed to get to city of Arlington Texas to tear down a perfectly good old stadium and build a wildly expensive new stadium. It’s astounding. They just went to the city and said, “pay for our new stadium” and the city said “sure thing.”

idiots...

The city, not the owners.

But let’s not have any claptrap about lack of profitability, shall we?

[Moose Milligan]

5 minutes ago, Philip said:

They don’t care about future players rights either. Every minor leaguer is a future player, but MLBPA ain't sayin a word about them. They only care about their own individual positions.

If you want to change things, you Have to change things for everyone, and not just yourself. If you change things for the better for everyone, you will also improve “future players” 

Of course that also applies to the owners, and it is easy to make them look worse because they already have the money. The players want the money, but only for themselves. If they were really concerned about future players they would be addressing the needs of the minor leaguers. And yes, I know minor leaguers are not members of the union and they’re not allowed to be, but who won’t let them join? The major leaguers?

hmmmm, like I said...

Yeah, I was going to write a reply but...honestly, I just don't care.

[SteveA]

21 minutes ago, weams said:

 

I'll admit to being not very smart when it comes to economics.

Is it possible for this statement to be true even though the value of most franchises has gone up at a pretty good rate for many, many years?   Can a business that is barely eking out a process still grow in value that fast?

[Philip]

10 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, I was going to write a reply but...honestly, I just don't care.

I respect you. If I’m wrong sure let me know. If you disagree, I’d like to know your reasoning as well.

If you just miss baseball, no need to say a word.

[weams]

11 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, I was going to write a reply but...honestly, I just don't care.

They aren’t future players until they are. 800 players. 

[weams]

13 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I'll admit to being not very smart when it comes to economics.

Is it possible for this statement to be true even though the value of most franchises has gone up at a pretty good rate for many, many years?   Can a business that is barely eking out a process still grow in value that fast?

I think you can build value of a brand without having a strong cash flow. 

[weams]

Just now, weams said:

I think you can build value of a brand without having a strong cash flow. 

But that’s fake money until you sell. 

[DrungoHazewood]

9 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I'll admit to being not very smart when it comes to economics.

Is it possible for this statement to be true even though the value of most franchises has gone up at a pretty good rate for many, many years?   Can a business that is barely eking out a process still grow in value that fast?

I think that DeWitt is talking in the language of a large business owner, parsing his words very carefully to improve his position. 

I'm guessing that, for example, the Royals make very little reportable, taxable profit in any given year.  So their owners would be correct in saying that the industry isn't very profitable, in that sense.  But 20 years ago the Royals franchise value was something like $100M.  The team was recently sold for $1B.  If you bought an asset at $100 and sold it 20 years later for $1000 that's 12.2% a year, which beats the long-term average returns of the S&P 500.  To me that's pretty profitable.