Opening Day 2020 Thread

[The Chosen One]

The day is here everyone. Best day on the calendar.

Should be a national holiday. Plaaaaaaaaay ballllll

[bravesfanMatt]

The day is here everyone. Best day on the calendar.

Should be a national holiday. Plaaaaaaaaay ballllll

F U

[Carp]

Odds of a 40/40 season for Acuna? I'm putting it about 4/1.

[UNCBlue012]

Someone ban this chump ASAP.

[MadduxFanII]

Still can't believe the Angels traded us Trout straight up for Bryse Wilson.

[UNCBlue012]

Still can't believe the Angels traded us Trout straight up for Bryse Wilson.

We were shammed into trading our best pitcher ffs.

[bravesfanforlife88]

Happy Opening Day....

As if it weren't bad enough missing baseball, former Braves owner Bill Bartholomay has passed away.

[thewupk]

I have waited for this day my entire life

[thewupk]

Braves hosting the Dodgers at 3 eastern. I'm ready.

[Hulavol]

Good start. 9-0.. - 1 and 0 boys !
Riley and Acuna with atom bombs. And man Soroka looked sharp- 8.1 innings, one flukey hit.

[Hulavol]

Also, nats and Phillies both lose.
Great start all around !

[sturg33]

Anybody know if mlb.tv will issue refunds?

[jpx7]

Anybody know if @The_Chosen_One will issue refunds?

Fixed for more pertinence.

[clvclv]

Pretty obvious some things will never change...

More than a little bothersome to see Borass whining about the changes being made to the draft and international signing periods and *itching about how it will cost some PROSPECTS money.

Someone please explain to this *ucking idiot that if there are no games, the owners are going broke too. Considering the fact that the players hold truly non-essential jobs, I'd be interested to see what happens if the owners decided to lay them all off. Wonder what their unemployment checks would look like?

[MadduxFanII]

Pretty obvious some things will never change...

More than a little bothersome to see Borass whining about the changes being made to the draft and international signing periods and *itching about how it will cost some PROSPECTS money.

Someone please explain to this *ucking idiot that if there are no games, the owners are going broke too. Considering the fact that the players hold truly non-essential jobs, I'd be interested to see what happens if the owners decided to lay them all off. Wonder what their unemployment checks would look like?

The owners are going to be just fine. They certainly don't need the money from their draft bonus pool to keep the lights on over the next few months.

[50PoundHead]

Good start. 9-0.. - 1 and 0 boys !
Riley and Acuna with atom bombs. And man Soroka looked sharp- 8.1 innings, one flukey hit.

I hope they don't retaliate for Flowers stealing second and third in the 8th inning up 9.

[Skeeter31]

The owners are going to be just fine. They certainly don't need the money from their draft bonus pool to keep the lights on over the next few months.

Yeah, this is one of those odd moments where I actually find myself agreeing with Boras. You will now have a class of kids that have been looking forward to being drafted and the signing bonus that accompanies it and it’s being taken from them. A lot of these kids need that signing bonus to keep them afloat during their first few seasons in the minors where they’re earning less than minimum wage.

[50PoundHead]

Yeah, this is one of those odd moments where I actually find myself agreeing with Boras. You will now have a class of kids that have been looking forward to being drafted and the signing bonus that accompanies it and it’s being taken from them. A lot of these kids need that signing bonus to keep them afloat during their first few seasons in the minors where they’re earning less than minimum wage.

I wrote earlier somewhere that I think you're going to see a lot of high school kids--especially those who hadn't emerged prior to this season--opt for junior college, which would allow them to be drafted again in 2021. But that may glut the market with prospects and push kids beyond the top tier who would ordinarily be high-round guys into lower bonus slots. The baseball draft is the toughest draft for both sides of the equation because the projected development curve for a prospect can be really iffy. As for 2020, I don't see the owners opening their pocketbooks.

[clvclv]

Yeah, this is one of those odd moments where I actually find myself agreeing with Boras. You will now have a class of kids that have been looking forward to being drafted and the signing bonus that accompanies it and it’s being taken from them. A lot of these kids need that signing bonus to keep them afloat during their first few seasons in the minors where they’re earning less than minimum wage.

That's the problem - and to an extent the short-sighted way of looking at things. Sure, the overall amount ownership spends on the draft each year doesn't seem to be a big number in the overall scheme of things. While the driving force behind revenues isn't ticket sales anymore, the loss of AT LEAST 2 months worth of gates has easily cost owners what they spend on draft pools - if not significantly more.

Owners - and the league as a whole - will never be able to make up for the revenue lost from people not attending games (as well as the money that's eventually going to have be prorated from existing TV/internet deals when all the lawyers get involved and decide that the networks/websites only owe MLB 67% of what they were contracted to pay since they only played 4 of 6 months). Attendance dropped by ~ 1 million fans in 2019, and that was with a full schedule, and that followed a year in which total attendance dropped to the lowest level in 16 years.

If a "guaranteed seat" generated $125 and subscription fees are $30, MLB is losing $95 every time people choose to stay home on their own. That $95 million lost in 2019 more than pays for the draft pools during a full season of games - assuming everyone that didn't go to the park spent $30 on an MLB-related subscription of some sort.

You have to remember that ownership/MLB revenues are about to drop substantially too, and that's even IF they can maintain the attendance numbers from last season and they get to prorate players' guaranteed contracts that have absolutely nothing to do with the total number of games played or attendance in most cases. How many people do you imagine are going to simply choose not to attend games this season because they can't exactly practice social-distancing at the ballpark if they do play games at some point?


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/29/s...ttendance.html


If Borass believes that the players/prospects deserve to continue to get paid because this mess "is no fault of their own" (to quote Trump's most-recent favorite saying) how do the owners/MLB ever get made whole since they didn't cause the cancellation of the games either?

If owners/MLB lose $100 million, that's $100 million they don't have to pay signing bonuses to college and high school kids - no matter how good a prospect they might be, and as of today those kids have nothing to do with MLB or MLB's revenues.

[jpx7]

Except they do still have $100 million to spend, even with lost revenue during the quarantine months; they’re just avaricious, and always looking for an excuse to claw an extra dime.