Official CBA Negotiation Thread

[chop2chip]

As I understand the players side, their desire is to get money to more players at earlier ages, so those lower salaries for younger players may very well go away.

Why would you ever commit to long contracts with free agents when every offseason will be filled with players that weren’t offered arbitration?

I’m sure the union would accomplish the goal of increasing average AAV, but the high end players will suffer from this model.

[Russ2dollas]

As I understand the players side, their desire is to get money to more players at earlier ages, so those lower salaries for younger players may very well go away.

I think it makes sense for everyone to get more money to younger players.

For the union it should help prevent below marked extensions. It raises the salary floor organically. De-incentives loading up on young guys. Maybe middle and lower tier vets have more spots if the delta between their cost/value and lower end young guys cost/value is tweaked.

For the teams it puts the money where most of the production is. The problem will be cost certainty and budgeting if an Austin Riley break out can break your bank. So they will have to have something on the plan to still make young guys below market, reasonably anticipate their salaries for budget planning and not put a small market team into a position where the "have to" trade a young star based on a breakout performance.

The question is how do you do it.

[cajunrevenge]

If they want more money going to young players limit long term deals to 5 years of guaranteed money. I think that would go a long way to fixing all the problems. It's not so much that some teams cant afford big free agents. It's that they dont want to do the amount of years. I would also like to see teams get an option to pay a player 50% of owed money to release them. Players could cry about it but if you sign a team would rather pay you half of the rest of your contract to not play for them then that's on the player for significantly underdelivering on their contract.

[Russ2dollas]

If they just raised the team control years to 1 million, 2 million, 3 million then good things happen. Young guys get more money and less likely to take cheap extensions. More money to the people providing the most value. Low to mid level vets are more likely to get jobs. Young guys that are blocked are more likely to be moved to somewhere else.

Bad news is teams might be less patient with young guys.

[Russ2dollas]

If they want more money going to young players limit long term deals to 5 years of guaranteed money. I think that would go a long way to fixing all the problems. It's not so much that some teams cant afford big free agents. It's that they dont want to do the amount of years. I would also like to see teams get an option to pay a player 50% of owed money to release them. Players could cry about it but if you sign a team would rather pay you half of the rest of your contract to not play for them then that's on the player for significantly underdelivering on their contract.

Makes sense but players will never agree to that. Essentially that makes less than 100% of the contract guaranteed.

[thewupk]

If they want more money going to young players limit long term deals to 5 years of guaranteed money. I think that would go a long way to fixing all the problems. It's not so much that some teams cant afford big free agents. It's that they dont want to do the amount of years. I would also like to see teams get an option to pay a player 50% of owed money to release them. Players could cry about it but if you sign a team would rather pay you half of the rest of your contract to not play for them then that's on the player for significantly underdelivering on their contract.

I like the idea of a cap of the amount of years you can sign for. Salary cap, being able to cancel contracts, the players are going to have to give up something if they want the younger players to get paid more.

[jpx7]

Capping the length of contracts becomes sort of a "soft" salary-cap, but for the players I think it's a better half-measure than a full-on salary cap, if that's the chip they trade to get more money to pre-FA players.

[DirkPiggler]

Makes sense but players will never agree to that. Essentially that makes less than 100% of the contract guaranteed.

Then they need to accept the current system. Ownership isn't going to make drastic changes without concessions.

I would make it extremely difficult to cancel contracts. MLB has supposedly broached the idea of tying arbitration values to fWAR. I would say that a team could buy out a player's contract for $0.50 on the dollar only if that player finished in the bottom 10% of fWAR at his position for consecutive years. Think Chris Davis or B.J. Upton. That would take out the possibility of teams pulling a Marlins fire sale and cutting all their expensive vets for the sake of selling the team or tanking for a draft pick. It would truly only enable teams to get out of the worst free agent deals. Giving owners the ability to limit downside risk in this manner would almost certainly increase the value and length of contracts offered to free agents.

[Southcack77]

Why would you ever commit to long contracts with free agents when every offseason will be filled with players that weren’t offered arbitration?

I’m sure the union would accomplish the goal of increasing average AAV, but the high end players will suffer from this model.

The union has never really been a spread the wealth around organization. More like a robber baron culture.

[Russ2dollas]

Then they need to accept the current system. Ownership isn't going to make drastic changes without concessions.

I would make it extremely difficult to cancel contracts. MLB has supposedly broached the idea of tying arbitration values to fWAR. I would say that a team could buy out a player's contract for $0.50 on the dollar only if that player finished in the bottom 10% of fWAR at his position for consecutive years. Think Chris Davis or B.J. Upton. That would take out the possibility of teams pulling a Marlins fire sale and cutting all their expensive vets for the sake of selling the team or tanking for a draft pick. It would truly only enable teams to get out of the worst free agent deals. Giving owners the ability to limit downside risk in this manner would almost certainly increase the value and length of contracts offered to free agents.

Maybe. Depends on leverage. Usually the teams have more leverage b/c they are willing to look over decades vs years.

[jpx7]

The union has never really been a spread the wealth around organization. More like a robber baron culture.

I don't really think this is true. Like, at all.

They deserve a fair, heaping share of criticism for not advocating more (or, really, at all) for minor-league players. But they've done a lot to spread the wealth amongst their constituency of major-league players. And my biggest critique there is that, during the past couple rounds of CBA negotiations, the union didn't extract nearly enough from the owners, in the way of concessions (especially regarding pre-arb players). That's why we're in the mess we're in currently (well, that, plus the deep, abiding, unrepentant avarice of owners).

[Enscheff]

Yeah, the players got silly things like travel days, start times, and other things that don't really matter. Now they want to make up for all their past weak negotiations, so it may get very ugly.

[CrimsonCowboy]

Well, this isn’t ideal

[striker42]

There are no good guys and bad guys in these disputes. You have millionaires squabbling with billionaires and everyone ends up looking ridiculous and out of touch.

[thewupk]

There are no good guys and bad guys in these disputes. You have millionaires squabbling with billionaires and everyone ends up looking ridiculous and out of touch.

If there is any kind of lockout that causes the season to be shortened. I wonder if Glavine will have any comments on it during broadcasts once the games start back up.

[MadduxFanII]

There are no good guys and bad guys in these disputes. You have millionaires squabbling with billionaires and everyone ends up looking ridiculous and out of touch.

I side with the millionaires who astonish me with their spectacular displays of athleticism and talent and provide the very reason I watch the game, as opposed to the billionaires who are often the sons of people who accomplished something and still insist that cities pay for their stadia.

[Mad Dog Murph]

I side with the millionaires who astonish me with their spectacular displays of athleticism and talent and provide the very reason I watch the game, as opposed to the billionaires who are often the sons of people who accomplished something and still insist that cities pay for their stadia.

And if it wasn’t for the billionaires, the millionaires would be thousandaires driving Amazon delivery trucks or working at their dads landscaping business.

[jpx7]

And if it wasn’t for the billionaires, the millionaires would be thousandaires driving Amazon delivery trucks or working at their dads landscaping business.

The old "benevolence of billionaires" canard.

Those billionaires (or, often, their parents) simply but extensively exploited some other form of labor to get enough money to buy the baseball team. I'm always going to root for the players to claw back whatever they can—though it'd be nice if players negotiated some concessions for the concessionary workers, too.

[Mad Dog Murph]

The old "benevolence of billionaires" canard.

Those billionaires (or, often, their parents) simply but extensively exploited some other form of labor to get enough money to buy the baseball team. I'm always going to root for the players to claw back whatever they can—though it'd be nice if players negotiated some concessions for the concessionary workers, too.

Oh, I’m definitely on the players side. Just laugh when people try to make villains out of owners who pay these players hundreds of millions of dollars. They are all greedy f***s. Players included.

[Southcack77]

Oh, I’m definitely on the players side. Just laugh when people try to make villains out of owners who pay these players hundreds of millions of dollars. They are all greedy f***s. Players included.

I'm pretty sick of being told athletes are exploited. I wish everyone who uttered the phrase was dropped in a volcano.

If you're unsatisfied with your generational wealth or your full ride education then you don't have to play a child's game for your livelihood.

Of all the unfair societal bargains out there, professional or student athlete is near the top end of fairness.

I can't be bothered to worry about that bull****.