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2020 General MLB off-season

Mo Horn

By Mo Horn
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ss13
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I will personally thank the very first player to kneel solely for this...     

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Am I taking crazy pills? Mr. “thin blue line” cop defender himself is crying about injustice? The same arrogant fuckface who assured everyone that HPD and Art fucking Acevedo’s actions in the Harding

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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On 6/14/2020 at 2:26 PM, TonyTexas said:

#3 is what they are fighting over. This isn’t all on the owners. They have essentially been negotiated with themselves. The players haven’t really negotiated at all. Both of their offers were worse than the March agreement which assumed fan attendance. 

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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"Garry Bettman" was trending on twitter for a while, literally because there were so many people tweeting that he was no longer the worst pro sports commissioner ever.

There's a pretty decent chance that Bud Selig would have handled this better than Manfred.

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This is no longer about the greater good of the nation, or the admittedly pie-eyed notion that baseball could ever really have been a salve for the deep fissures and fractures that plague us in these dreadful days of worry and uncertainty. That was a nice notion, a throwback to a time when baseball was a pastime.

And not passed its time.

That is what baseball is now, a pitiable wreck, an irredeemable embarrassment. We wanted so much more from the game but, then, we always want more, we always expect more, we always hope for more, and we always get kicked in the teeth when there are real stakes on the table. Why we expected more this time around is on us, and maybe illustrates just how badly we wanted stolen whispers of normalcy. We thought baseball could give us that. Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me nine times since 1972?

Shame on us.

Of course, no one bears a greater burden of the shame than Rob Manfred, baseball’s loudest carnival barker, who speaks now with a tongue so forked it is all but impossible to keep track of his spinning and his shucking and his utter contempt for the people — you, me, us — for whom he would tell you he is a safeguard. Nonsense. He does the bidding for the owners, for the 30-man cabal of billionaires who cry poverty even as television networks line up to refortify their coffers with still more billions. That’s fine; technically he is their servant and they are his collective master. So enough with the notion that he shepherds the game. Enough with the hoary old chestnut that a commissioner exists to protect “the good of the game.”

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Rob ManfredAP

Not this commissioner. Manfred has proven time and again that he views the sport with all the reverence of a highway pit stop, and the fans with all the respect due a litter box. That’s who he is. That’s what the job is to him. From here on, never forget that.

This isn’t to grant a pass to Tony Clark, the fundamentally overmatched head of the players union, who ought to have the moral high ground here and yet has allowed a quorum of chatty agents and angry players to sully his message. Every day he is on the job is a sad reminder that Marvin Miller — due to be enshrined in Cooperstown this year before COVID-19 altered everyone’s summer schedule — isn’t walking through that door. Miller may still annoy hard-line, old-time fans who yearn for the game’s simpler days (also known as days when the owners could do whatever and however they pleased) but he would’ve had his way with a lightweight like Manfred. He would’ve gotten his message across and he would have beaten the owners, again, without them feeling as if they’d been mugged on the street. That was Miller. That’s not Clark. That’s never been Clark.

But, then it is also not Clark’s duty to safeguard and shepherd the game, only to be steadfast to the union and its rank and file, to honor decades of hard-line leadership that has allowed baseball players their various freedoms and riches. His is a specific constituency.

Manfred? It’s his stated mission to grow the game, to make it more appealing to a wider audience, to keep it healthy, and yet in his time and on his watch the game’s reputation has continued to sink and its interest to a younger generation has practically vanished. He specialized in half-measures during the Astros mess. His various and sundry “fixes” — most still in the proposal stage — have done little to attract new fans but have done much to try at all costs to alienate existing ones.

SEE ALSO

MLB threatening to cancel 2020 season

But his performance during this alleged “negotiation” has been especially galling. He has allowed his people to leak inflammatory letters in a half-baked attempt to secure the side of the angels. For someone who came to the job so deeply schooled in baseball’s labor history, he has shown an appalling lack of understanding just how seriously the union takes its mission. He has shown a profound ineptitude in rallying owners to understand that they are in a business that prints money every year, that is being asked to take a haircut this one year which will hurt but be plenty offset by the fact that many of them have already gotten close to 1,000 percent returns on their original investments.

But his worst calamity has come in the last week. Then, he guaranteed a season with 100 percent certainty. Now he says he’s not so sure. He is worried that if he enacts a season — which is his right — the players will file a grievance. That’s his issue now? Did it just occur to him? At best that’s malpractice. At worst it’s sheer incompetence. The job started out too big for him and the last few weeks it has fit him more and more like David Byrne’s old white sports jacket.

Meanwhile, his sport burns, its future withers on the vine, fans who endured the last work stoppage 25 years ago are prepared to see two or three years of no baseball, and good luck ever getting the old-timers back, let alone the millennials. Many will blame greedy players and, sure, that is their right, and the players are no virginal victims here.

But the real victim is baseball itself, which entrusted its future in the hands of Rob Manfred who was supposed to be a master of future thinking and has, instead become a magician: Look closely and watch as a whole sport disappears.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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4 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

He has shown a profound ineptitude in rallying owners to understand that they are in a business that prints money every year, that is being asked to take a haircut this one year which will hurt but be plenty offset by the fact that many of them have already gotten close to 1,000 percent returns on their original investments.

This is the part that stuck out to me the most.  I mean, the fucking KC Royals just sold for a BILLION dollars.

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Bartles

Bartles 769

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I don't get the accusation of owners stalling at this point. Or if they are stalling, I don't see the purpose of it.

It's mid June and they would need at least a month between striking a deal and playing a regular season game. MLB could easily have a 54-game schedule ready to go from like July 20-September 27. Build in extra off days for mass testing and deep cleaning the facilities. Also need off days down the stretch for rain makeups since there could easily be teams tied for playoff spots.

No arbitrator would blame MLB for doing that, even if their true intention is to limit number of games played. But MLB doesn't seem to have a card to play right now, simplest explanation is incompetence.

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Js1

Js1 85413

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15 hours ago, Bartles said:

Wonder if that means virus claims, or simply can't sue MLB for revenue (or both)

Virus claims. There’s an overall push to clear employers of all liability if you get COVID by being forced to go back to work.  

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10516

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42 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Virus claims. There’s an overall push to clear employers of all liability if you get COVID by being forced to go back to work.  

Wrong. Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reported that MLB sent the MLBPA a letter threatening to cancel the season unless the players waived any legal claims (e.g., a grievance asserting that the league had not bargained in good faith over the season length) against MLB.

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Pig Bellmont

Pig Bellmont 8719

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https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/06/resolving-this-player-owner-dispute-should-be-easy.html
 

Good and objective article about the negotiations.

The MLB Owners and MLB Players Association have been unable to reach an agreement for the financial terms of the 2020 season, and at this point they may not reach one at all. Both sides have focused publicly on the morality of their case, each believing they have the ethical upper hand. Neither has made proposals that reflect their actual negotiating position. That the arguments have primarily focused on morality is perhaps not surprising, but it doesn’t create fertile ground for an actual substantive negotiation. I studied bargaining theory, and I don’t remember anything about how to win a moral argument. The ethics are what they are, and any reasonable person could make either side’s case if they really tried. The union seems to be winning the PR war thus far, as fans seem to mostly blame owners, but supportive tweets from fans are not convertible into currency.

At its core, what we have is the following set up: The presumptive default position, if no agreement is reached, is that commissioner Rob Manfred will order a roughly 50-game season with full prorated salaries. If the sides do reach an agreement, they may play as many as 80 games, and be able to split the associated revenue. They also may be able to add revenue through other avenues like expanded playoffs, and they could split that revenue too. Those are the gains from a negotiated agreement. They can be split in a way to make both parties better off.

Both sides have accused the other of not bargaining in good faith, but neither side has offered the other side anything they would plausibly accept. Instead we have seen the owners repeatedly try to offer players only slightly more than the same salary total as they would with a 50-game season, effectively asking for all the gains that would accrue from a negotiated agreement while leaving the players to absorb greater output and greater risk (both from the usual risk of playing baseball and the additional risk attendant to the global pandemic). The players similarly have failed to offer the owners anything that would lead to more profit than they would accrue in the event of a 50-game season with unexpanded playoffs. It is not surprising negotiations have gone nowhere.

At this point, an agreement for a better, longer season in 2020 is doubtful. But 2021 is right around the corner, and there is no vaccine for COVID-19 yet. We may not see fans in the seats in 2021, or at least we may not see stadiums filled to capacity. So we may see a replay of this argument in 2021 as well. It’s imperative that both sides recognize their position and negotiate accordingly. This acknowledgement could easily flip the script and lead to an expedited deal for 2020 already.

Let’s start with what should be obvious and unarguable.

Unarguable Point A: 

Any agreement should see the players earn substantially more than they would have in a 50-game season.

Unarguable Point B:

Any agreement should see owners make more profit than they would in a 50-game season.

Nothing floated publicly has even come close to meeting these simple criteria.

The starting point here is actually fairly simple. Forget about inching towards a middle ground when neither side is willing to budge. Instead, begin by figuring out just how much extra revenue is associated with 30 extra games and an expanded postseason. Then, split it in half. The players’ salary total is equal to that half plus their prorated salaries for 50 games. Both sides may try to argue for a bigger piece of the pie, but either side would be crazy to say no to half of this revenue—which is much more than the zero extra revenue they would see otherwise. The players don’t need the owners to open their books on any more than is necessary to estimate this amount. The owners don’t need to ask the players to sign any waivers or anything else that isn’t already negotiated. Anything on top of this baseline can be negotiated after setting the above in writing and shaking hands (but not actually).

Offers could get more complicated and cover more territory. This is especially true with the risk of no fans or fewer fans in 2021, and with the CBA expiring after 2021. But the essential 2020 issue can be resolved in a fairly simple manner that makes each side better off in the short term while limiting the long-term damage to the sport. In subsequent pieces, I’ll discuss the fundamentals of baseball’s free agent market and how players might want to approach the inequities that have arguably developed over the last couple years. But for now, let’s just agree that owners, players, and fans can all be made much better off very quickly. Get it done before dinnertime.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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5 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Let’s start with what should be obvious and unarguable.

Unarguable Point A: 

Any agreement should see the players earn substantially more than they would have in a 50-game season.

Unarguable Point B:

Any agreement should see owners make more profit than they would in a 50-game season.

 

Neither of these is "unarguable," because 50 is an apparently arbitrary number chosen by the owners who have already made an agreement to "play as many games as possible."

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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5 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

Wrong. Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reported that MLB sent the MLBPA a letter threatening to cancel the season unless the players waived any legal claims (e.g., a grievance asserting that the league had not bargained in good faith over the season length) against MLB.

If the players agreed to waive any legal claims, one of the 6-8 owners who wants to completely cancel the season could decide not to pay his players and the players would have no legal recourse.  I suspect MLB would step in if that actually happened, but shit, not even Barry Zuckercorn would advise someone to waive legal claims in the absence of huge concessions.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54254

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13 hours ago, Bartles said:

It's mid June and they would need at least a month between striking a deal and playing a regular season game. MLB could easily have a 54-game schedule ready to go from like July 20-September 27. Build in extra off days for mass testing and deep cleaning the facilities. Also need off days down the stretch for rain makeups since there could easily be teams tied for playoff spots.

That would be playing almost exactly 5 days a week.  Not even the Koreans are needing 2 off-days every week.

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Bartles

Bartles 769

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Not a big deal, MLB changed terms too when they demanded no grievances. Players probably know they can get a few more games if they agree to that point. It's happening, they basically fucked us out of two weeks of regular season but apparently expanding playoffs a bit.

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10516

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28 minutes ago, Rockethorn1978 said:

I don't get it. They said make a plan and we will show up and play and now they did and they want to counter? wtf either show up and play or don't. 

There is a big difference between a negotiated deal and a schedule set by Manfred. More money from expanded playoffs and legal ramifications to name a couple. 

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Rockethorn1978

Rockethorn1978 6093

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1 hour ago, TonyTexas said:

There is a big difference between a negotiated deal and a schedule set by Manfred. More money from expanded playoffs and legal ramifications to name a couple. 

Yea guess I'm not following as closely. I thought they already went back and forth and the the players said fuck it just tell us when and where so I thought we were done with the negotiating part.

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

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Talked about it before, but family legend is my great great grand-uncle or some shit was lynched by the Texas Rangers. There's a famous corrido written about it. Definitely lots of animosity and violence between the Rangers and the Tejano community back then. Like, lots of it. But hey the Rangers aren't as feared an agency anymore and hispanics still have a massive presence in the state, I'd say we won in the end. Even I'm not really offended by their name and don't care if they keep it. If there's a big pressure to change the name, it won't come from most in the hispanic community. 

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