Yep.
Looking Ahead - The 2020 Offseason Thread
- Thread starter clvclv
- Start date
Yep.
People are paid what the market values them at. There is absolutely nothing wrong about players wanting a bigger share of the pie. Why should the players allow the owners more revenue from an expanded playoff if there isn't incentive to do so? How does potentially playing more games for the same pay benefit them?
Players who were in danger of being non-tendered and agreed to deals for far less than they would've gotten aren't being paid "market value". Camargo accepted ~ $700,000 less than he was expected to get had he gone to arbitration because he realized that if he didn't take the deal he might not be an MLB player next spring - if he'd have been a free-agent in this environment the absolute best he could have hoped for was that someone offered him a minor league deal with an invite to spring training and a chance to make a roster. There's no way he'd have received guaranteed money from anyone when teams cut guys like Travis Shaw/Hanser Alberto/Danny Santana/Daniel Robertson.
Russ2dollas
10 yr, $185 million Extension
They are 100% the villians.
They are billionaires who are acting miserly. The players are the league.
The owners are watching franchise values skyrocket and revenues increase but they are unwilling to lose any money elsewhere. In other business you ride out the good and the bad. They have billions of dollars but don't have enough stored away to deal with one down year.
They won't make a decision for the good of the game without getting something in return.
Southcack77
Well-known member
Yeah, no. Not at all.
.......But sure, I don't really feel sorry for the MLBPA or think they're the good guys. They're just a different group of fairly wealthy people that are trying to get more for themselves without doing a whole hell of a lot for the little people.
I don't see the point in taking sides.
The Braves are part of the market and that is the rate at which they valued him. So he absolutely was paid market value. Your opinion on whether it was too much or not is irrelevant.
PawPawMaxwell
Called Up to the Major Leagues
Yep. Musicians, actors, artist, politicians (most of them) and professional athletes. Bestowed with a unique talent and are enabled to cash in. Who can blame them? Same can be said for the owners and their wealth, who can blame them?
DirkPiggler
Well-known member
Maybe 75%.
Yes. That's what rich people do.
If every current major leaguer magically disappeared, and the next level came up to take their places, the sport's popularity would remain close to the same. It's the level of relative competition that fans want to see, rather than the individual prowess.
The owners as a group are being short-sighted. Any money they save right now will be given up in greater animosity during labor negotiations. The 1994 strike damn near killed the sport. It's worth it to take a little bit of a short term loss to avoid the chance of that happening again.
Nor will the players. When was the last time they willingly gave up something altruistically? MLBPA is just another corporation trying to maximize value for its shareholders at the end of the day...same as the owners. Neither side holds any moral high ground to anyone except for those who like to engage in class warfare.
this is not even close to true.
Southcack77
Well-known member
Yeah, I'm not mad at the players and owners for acting like people.
If the MLBPA was out trying to make life better for guys in the minors or draft picks or dudes that will spend their whole career under team control, I guess I would think better about them.
But mostly what they're trying to do is pad the wallets of the guys that are already getting paid.
Which is fine. That's what I expect.
But don't ask me to choose sides between wealthy people grubbing over money. That's just business.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
Agreed. Both guys would have a team take a chance on them.
50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
Good points but I disagree with the comment I've bolded. Mrs. 50# and I go the St. Paul Saints' games more than Twins' games. Cheaper. Nice atmosphere. But the quality of play is so noticeably different than what you witness in a major league/upper minor league game and you see it across-the-board. Players are markedly slower. Defense is shoddy with few spectacular plays. Pitchers' velocity mirrors 1970s MLB. Sure, the kids don't notice and if you went through a whole generation of fans, it probably wouldn't make a difference. For the semi-serious fan and above, there would be a considerable drop-off in interest. And if young fans think the game is boring now, watching that level of baseball would drive them to watching televised chess.
Bottom line for me. All labor negotiations boil down to a simple equation: Capital's "but for" against the Labor's value added. I generally side with the players because the owners have been subsidized heavily by local governments, which while not guaranteeing income, certainly has bounced the wealth aspect of a franchise upward. The DH will become universal and that could hike payrolls, but it's more likely going to push the salaries down for the last couple of guys in the bullpen and the last couple of guys on the bench. Additionally, we are already seeing a contraction of the minor leagues (which I am pretty sure the Players' Association does not lose a wink of sleep over) and that will boost bottom lines. It may take a year of additional recovery from the inability to put people in the stands, but there's going to be money sloshing around at some point.
PawPaw and Dirk have already addressed this, so there's not much else that needs to be said. Name the last "decision for the good of the game" the players helped make that didn't benefit them in some way. I'll make it easy for you - you can't find one.
The players have less wealth than the owners just like in all other areas of our society where workers have less than managers who have less than owners. It's always much easier to side with "the little guy" and complain when the "haves" are doing everything they can to keep as much of their wealth as possible rather than simply giving it away to the "have nots" - that's human nature. It's much easier to take the easy way out and scream that they have so much that they should be the ones to sacrifice so that things are easier for the rest of us. The question is "why?" The owners didn't create this virus so they could shorten the season and pay players less money any more than they created the arbitration process or put the DH rule in place - all these things were collectively bargained, so why should the owners bear more responsibility or pay players to play games when there are no fans in the stands?
If players were truly being paid "market value", there would be no such thing as guaranteed or multi-year contracts, much less arbitration. You want to make money playing baseball? You become a free-agent at the end of every season and every team can bid on you. Change to that situation and you'll find that market value is quite different than what it has always been perceived to be. Small sample size or not no one played a full slate of games in 2020, Johan Camargo is coming off the worst season of his career, and he's been spiraling substantially downward since his career year. As Enscheff likes to point out, we know who Camargo is - and that's just not even an average MLB player.
The fact that he signed and snatched the contract the Braves offered so quickly is all the evidence we need to prove that he knows that as well and that his representation had already told him that there wasn't going to be a better offer out there. The arbitration process consistently requires teams to offer below-average players more than they're worth to the market if they want to keep them around to stash on the bench, and the worst part of it is that they have to keep them on their roster. I'm not sure the figure is tracked anywhere, but it would be really interesting to see how many millions of dollars are paid to players who are performing terribly (negative WAR) but they get to keep their job because their contracts are guaranteed.
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Russ2dollas
10 yr, $185 million Extension
i'm not sure what neo libertarian argument is going on.
There is little in life that is a total free market. Teams do not want player resigning every year. They want control. Players would make a ton more money in that system because young guys like Acuna would already be making 10s of millions.
Players played last year. That was good for the game. Yes they got paid. But they said they'd show up and do whatever to play.
Not all organizations have adversarial relationships with labor on every issue.
The billionaire owners are the ones using the pandemic as an excuse to lay off office staff.
Not all rich people act miserly. There is a difference between miserly and conservative.
There is little in life that is a total free market. Teams do not want player resigning every year. They want control. Players would make a ton more money in that system because young guys like Acuna would already be making 10s of millions.
Players played last year. That was good for the game. Yes they got paid. But they said they'd show up and do whatever to play.
Not all organizations have adversarial relationships with labor on every issue.
The billionaire owners are the ones using the pandemic as an excuse to lay off office staff.
Not all rich people act miserly. There is a difference between miserly and conservative.
Interesting question since they're discussing him on XM right now...
With the DH - and Waters - on the horizon whether this season or not, isn't giving Brantley 3 years/$45-$50 million a much better idea than giving Ozuna 4 years/$70-$75 million. There's the left-handed OF bat you need without the stress that comes along with Ozuna potentially playing defense for a year.
Signing Brantley (and moving him to DH whenever Waters is ready) leaves you with ~ $5 million for Melancon/Greene/etc. (dumping Jackson), ~ $5 million for Duvall, and a couple million to bring in a LH caddy for Riley (dumping Camargo). Payroll would be right around that $140 million we're hoping for, and you'd STILL Have all the arms for depth meaning you could push some of the members of the Touki/Newk/Ynoa/Davidson/De La Cruz group to the pen full-time to groom them as cheap replacements for Melancon and Martin for 2022.
With the DH - and Waters - on the horizon whether this season or not, isn't giving Brantley 3 years/$45-$50 million a much better idea than giving Ozuna 4 years/$70-$75 million. There's the left-handed OF bat you need without the stress that comes along with Ozuna potentially playing defense for a year.
Signing Brantley (and moving him to DH whenever Waters is ready) leaves you with ~ $5 million for Melancon/Greene/etc. (dumping Jackson), ~ $5 million for Duvall, and a couple million to bring in a LH caddy for Riley (dumping Camargo). Payroll would be right around that $140 million we're hoping for, and you'd STILL Have all the arms for depth meaning you could push some of the members of the Touki/Newk/Ynoa/Davidson/De La Cruz group to the pen full-time to groom them as cheap replacements for Melancon and Martin for 2022.
MadduxFanII
Swallowed by Mark Bowman
On how many occasions has the Players' Union admitted to illegally colluding against the owners?
Ahh, the age old debate of labor vs the ruling class.
While I agree that players deserve their fair share of the revenue pie, let’s not act like players could just exist on their own as a marketable product.
Someone has to build a stadium. Someone has to pay expenses. Someone has to pay support personnel. Someone has to take on all that risk before a single ticket is sold or game is televised.
So yeah, owners are greedy, but that’s why they are rich in the first place. They hoard money the same way other people hoard boxes.
While I agree that players deserve their fair share of the revenue pie, let’s not act like players could just exist on their own as a marketable product.
Someone has to build a stadium. Someone has to pay expenses. Someone has to pay support personnel. Someone has to take on all that risk before a single ticket is sold or game is televised.
So yeah, owners are greedy, but that’s why they are rich in the first place. They hoard money the same way other people hoard boxes.
JohnAdcox
Brian Jordan's New BFF
I'm going to guess zero? That's what a union literally is, right?
What in the world are you babbling about?
Southcack77
Well-known member
Being a billionaire or having an unrealized appreciation of your franchise value doesn't have anything to do with not laying people off when you have a 100m dollar drop in revenue.
Any business that sees a huge drop in revenue is going to cut staff even if it expects that revenue to return at some point. And they'll typically cut the staff that is most replaceable or overpaid as opposed to higher value staff.
Over time staff gets more expensive, often to the point where they are paid beyond what is reasonable in the market or banding. Revenue downtimes is when those folks get purged.
That's just business.