A season of AAA guys?

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, atomic said:

You were also against the Adam Jones extension.  But that worked out very well. 

I don't believe I was.  That is the type of extension I am for. 

If you can find proof of me being against it, or if other trustworthy posters can vouch for you I cede the point.

I recall being in favor of the Jones, Hardy (1), O'Day (1) and Markakis extensions.  Of course the Schoop extension I would have agreed to wouldn't have turned out that well.

[Tony-OH]

17 hours ago, spiritof66 said:

The players have contracts that specify the amounts they're entitled to be paid per season. In March, the union agreed that the players would not seek more than those contracted-for amounts times the percentage of the season that is played. (I haven't seen the exact language.) That's the amount the deserve to be paid. You certainly could say, for instance, that Chris Davis deserves to be paid very little because he's played so badly. But he's got a contract that specifies the amount he's entitled to be paid. I would say that's the amount, as modified by the March agreement, that he deserves.

Hey, you just brought up one good thing in all of this, Chris Davis is not collecting that pay check he hasn't earned in three years. There's a little justice in this world afterall! "D

[Tony-OH]

6 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If this were to go on for a while, for example if this segued into the new CBA negotiations and there was a long stoppage, and the owners tried a replacement-player season there's a possibility that the real players (especially those out of contract) would try to start some alternate league of some sort.  The owners would have the uniforms and the stadiums we're familiar with but low-A talent.  The players would have new uniforms and who knows where they'd play, but they'd have MLB players.  I think the players would win that battle.  Who would you watch, Jomar Reyes or Mike Trout?

Are we talking BP? Because Reyes could put on a show at times in BP! 

[spiritof66]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

Hey, you just brought up one good thing in all of this, Chris Davis is not collecting that pay check he hasn't earned in three years. There's a little justice in this world afterall! "D

True, but for every Chris Davis there are plenty of new major leaguers who want to play, would be underpaid under normal circumstances, and probably need the money. 

[survivedc]

5 hours ago, osfan83 said:

I dont know......most people root for the uniform and not the player. 10 years from now most of the "major leaguers" will have names most people are now unfamiliar with. I'm much more likely to watch the Baltimore Orioles, with a bunch of young new talent, than watch the Annapolis Seaman featuring Chris Davis, John Means, Austin Hayes, and 23 other guys from around the league. 

I think people root for a bit of both. New players are phased into the league, it doesn’t all happen at once. It allows fans to adapt to the guys that now represent their team. 

[survivedc]

8 hours ago, GuidoSarducci said:

And if the owners decide that playing the season isn't worth it if they aren't getting any stadium revenue?

I’m not sure what your point is but then probably the PA would sue.

Would be a very poor business decision on the part of the owners.

[GuidoSarducci]

14 minutes ago, survivedc said:

I’m not sure what your point is but then probably the PA would sue.

Would be a very poor business decision on the part of the owners.

Its not a poor business decision if the owners can't turn a profit 

If you own a business and suddenly conditions change where its no longer profitable without your employees taking a temporary paycut, does it make sense to continue operating if they won't?  Or does it make sense to suspend operations until economic conditions improve.  

[Can_of_corn]

7 minutes ago, GuidoSarducci said:

Its not a poor business decision if the owners can't turn a profit 

If you own a business and suddenly conditions change where its no longer profitable without your employees taking a temporary paycut, does it make sense to continue operating if they won't?  Or does it make sense to suspend operations until economic conditions improve.  

It can be if trying to maximize one year's worth of revenue causes long term damage that could have been avoided.

[survivedc]

13 minutes ago, GuidoSarducci said:

Its not a poor business decision if the owners can't turn a profit 

If you own a business and suddenly conditions change where its no longer profitable without your employees taking a temporary paycut, does it make sense to continue operating if they won't?  Or does it make sense to suspend operations until economic conditions improve.  

Think of how many more people won’t care about baseball if they don’t play for a year because they couldn’t get their act together.

Sports of course aren’t start-ups but IMO there should be somewhat of a startup mindset here. Accept the fact you aren’t going to make as much as you want this year in an attempt to solidify a fan base and maximize profit next year.

[spiritof66]

I wrote this yesterday. It appears that MLB may have decided that it’s pushed things as far as it wants to, or safely can from a litigation risk perspective. Anyway, here’s where I was yesterday.  

I’ve paid little attention to these negotiations. It's been hard for me to be interested in who did or said what, or which names each party is calling the other or why. But over the last couple of days I realized that I didn’t understand why things were occurring the way they were. And so, almost against my will, I’ve tried to figure out what the hell is going on. I think I've mostly got there. Here goes.

By early March, it became clear to everyone that the season wouldn't open on time. The owners were going to lose money (or not make as much money as they expected to make) because there would be fewer games and less revenues, and because at least for a while it looked like they would be unable to sell tickets even to the games that were played. The pandemic also would impose additional costs on them in the form of things like testing and quarantine expenses.

The impact on the players’ salaries was less clear; I am pretty sure I read nothing about that at the time. Now I’ve looked at the collective bargaining agreement and the uniform player contract that the CBA requires form the basis for all MLB player contracts. The uniform contract obligates the team to pay a stated salary, and it obligates the player to do (or not do) a number of things, including that he “agrees to” render his “skilled services as a ballplayer” during spring training, the regular season and the post-season. (That’s bad contract drafting, but I digress.) I didn't find anything that would relieve the clubs of their full payment obligation if some or all of the scheduled games weren't played while the players were ready and willing to render their skilled services. If there were a dispute over that obligation, MLB could argue that it was a fundamental assumption of the contracting parties that there would be a full major league season, and that the complete or large-scale failure of that assumption should change its payment obligation. I think, subject to my having missed something in the CBA or the uniform contract or my just not having thought this through right, the players would have the better argument about their right to be paid. But you never know, and the fact that any such dispute would be decided by labor arbitrator clouds that issue further.u

By the time of the March agreement, everyone knew that a good-sized chunk of the schedule would not be played, but the details of how many games would be played, when, where, or how were up in the air. The players must have understood that if they insisted on being paid in full for games they wouldn’t play due to the pandemic, they would cause real financial hardship to some teams, probably kill the season, and look bad in the process. (I’m making that up, but it’s gotta be close.) So the union and MLB entered into an agreement that put that problem behind them. The agreement has not been made public, and those to whom it has been leaked have described it inconsistently, but the key term is the union’s agreement not to seek player salaries higher than 1/162 per each game played of their full, contracted-for salaries. (In return, MLB agreed to fold on a few issues such as counting 2020 as service time.)

The March agreement put the players and the owners on a collision course, with diametrically opposed incentives, that they have been unable to get off of. Ordinarily, if a professional sport loses part of a season, you figure that the owners and the players share the goal of playing as many games as possible and salvaging as regular a season as possible. They might disagree about lots of things -- the time needed to get ready to play, salary adjustments, playoff format, etc.-- but they all should want to play as many games as collect as much revenue as they can. 

The March agreement, together with the increasing likelihood there would be no (or little) ticket revenues changed all that. The salary issue was largely resolved: the players would get 100 percent of, or a slight discount from, their proportional salaries. (The owners made a brief run at a revenue-sharing approach and at a deep discount from 100 percent, but died quickly.) The players have acted in a way that’s consistent with their wanting to get out there and play as many games as they could, subject to safety concerns.

The owners have a different set of incentives. They have two possible goals, both of which involve minimizing the number of regular-season games. Each regular-season game that is not played saves the owners 1/162 of their payroll (ranging from almost $1.4 million a game for the NYYs to $340,00 for the Orioles), plus the other expenses of opening up and operating a ballpark, hotels and meals, etc. The per-game revenues from local media that teams lose (and revenues lost by the RSNs where the team owns controls them) appear to be considerably less. By contrast, playoff games have great value to the owners, given the substantial revenues from national media, and under the CBA the players receive only a share of the gate receipts for post-season games (with a floor for each series).

Given the March agreement on salary, it makes sense that the owners are trying to minimize the number of regular-season games and maximize the number of post-season games. Presumably, they have in mind a minimum number of regular-season games that will legitimize, to fans, the post-season competition. According to reports today, that number appears to be 60 right now. Maybe it will change.

At times it has looked as if the owners may have another strategy, either instead of or as alternative to the one just explained: no regular-season games and (I assume) no playoff games at all, entitling them to pay no salaries. It’s not hard to believe that the owners have been stalling these discussions until it’s just too late to have a season. We’re probably just a few weeks away from that.

The owners’ position appears to be that if things that don’t work out between MLB and the union, that’s too bad for the players. If there are zero regular-season games, under the March agreement the players’ salaries will be capped at zero. The union recently called MLB on that, asserting that under the March agreement MLB has an obligation to negotiate in good faith to put in place as long a baseball season as possible, and that the owners will have violated that agreement if they sought to defer the season to a length that it prepared, or even ton no games at all. It’s hard to evaluate that argument without seeing the March agreement, but it certainly got the owners’ attention, and led to the demand that the players waive that argument in any deal.

The situation explains, for me, the union’s recent communication that MLB to set a date to get started. Translated, the union was saying, “We’re ready to play. We want to play and get paid for playing just as soon as you can get a short season planned and organized. Let’s get started and fit in as many games as we can. You’re gonna pay us 1/162 of our salaries for each game. Stop the crap that’s just putting off the start of the season and reducing our pay.”

The more facts I learn and the more I understand what’s going on, the more I know what side I’d be on if I were interested in picking a side.

 

[VICIOUS]

23 hours ago, Philip said:

One thing about the players association union is that a whole lot of very good baseball players are not members, because they aren’t allowed to be yet.

That means that if the players association decides to sit on their hands, MLB can field teams consisting of guys from the high minors. They aren't crossing any picket lines because they’re not members of the union because they’re not good enough( or for whatever reason.)

if the owners would lower ticket/concession/parking costs to reflect teams making major league minimum, I think that would be exciting and fun to watch. Tony Clark and Scott Boras would scream and I would point my finger and say,” hah hah.”

What  am I missing?

Why wouldn’t this work?

Ok the problem everyone keeps bringing up is the union.   Why not call it like it is.  Play your best team of minor leaguers, get a tv deal and call it what it is. Minor league baseball on TNT or whatever. Might as well play minor leaguers that you can pay like always and have some damn baseball. They need to play to get better, and your not stepping on toes of big leaguers...at least you wont be calling it major league baseball. The damn KBO is on tv 

 

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, Mr. Chewbacca Jr. said:

I think before it got to that point - Congress would have already threatened to revoke MLB's anti-trust exemption.

And I don't know if that would make any difference.  None of the other leagues have one, and they do fine.

[SteveA]

5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I was against the second Hardy deal, against the Davis deal, against the Cobb deal (halfheated since they'd backed themselves into a corner), against the second O'Day deal, against the Jiminez deal, against the Gallardo deal and against the Trumbo deal.

Really?   I never realized you were against those deals.   Thanks for sharing this information for the first time.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, SteveA said:

Really?   I never realized you were against those deals.   Thanks for sharing this information for the first time.

Shrug, blame Atomic for mentioning them.

Obviously since he thought I was against the Jones contract he must not have been as aware of my prior positions as you are.

[GuidoSarducci]

24 minutes ago, VICIOUS said:

Ok the problem everyone keeps bringing up is the union.   Why not call it like it is.  Play your best team of minor leaguers, get a tv deal and call it what it is. Minor league baseball on TNT or whatever. Might as well play minor leaguers that you can pay like always and have some damn baseball. They need to play to get better, and your not stepping on toes of big leaguers...at least you wont be calling it major league baseball. The damn KBO is on tv 

They can try to do that, but then get sued out the a$$.   MLB cannot just unilaterally cancel players' contracts.  Otherwise they would do it all the time.