Official CBA Negotiation Thread

The "two different balls" story is outrageous.

Honestly, this sport needs to be blown up and started over.

Worst run league in the world by far.

This lockout will finish off what 1994 didn't.
 
Do casual fans even know/care who Manfred is, though?

I'm a little more than a casual, though not much more for non-Atlanta matters, and I don't really know what folks have against Manfred and probably couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

I don't care about the All Star game and the rule changes to me are perfectly reasonable things to explore and experiment with.
 
Players want bigger share of the pie, less team control, salary floors, and no salary caps. Also they want to bitch about random players not making as much money in free agency as they hoped they would.

There are more demands I'm sure. Maybe draft compensation for QOs, not sure.

The most egregious treatment of players is minor league ball and I've never seen the Union give much of a **** about them before.

The only major thing I've seen reporters say the owners ask for is expanded postseason, which I hate, but is hardly automatically detrimental to player interests. I'd like to see more on owner asks, I guess.
 
Players want bigger share of the pie, less team control, salary floors, and no salary caps. Also they want to bitch about random players not making as much money in free agency as they hoped they would.

There are more demands I'm sure. Maybe draft compensation for QOs, not sure.

The most egregious treatment of players is minor league ball and I've never seen the Union give much of a **** about them before.

The only major thing I've seen reporters say the owners ask for is expanded postseason, which I hate, but is hardly automatically detrimental to player interests. I'd like to see more on owner asks, I guess.

I'm all for the universal DH, expanded playoffs (2 WC teams each league), and a draft lottery system.

A salary "floor" doesn't seem like it would do much. Your teams that want to tank or reset, will just sell off to that level.
 
I'm all for the universal DH, expanded playoffs (2 WC teams each league), and a draft lottery system.

A salary "floor" doesn't seem like it would do much. Your teams that want to tank or reset, will just sell off to that level.

Right. But in the end Scherezer and co. really don't care about that. Players are still getting paid more overall and that's the goal.

Expectation: A tanking team with a 40 million payroll obviously can't compete. If we make them go out and spend 70 million then the extra 30 million they spend in FA will make them better.

Reality: A tanking team will trade their only good player to a team with a bad player and a horrible contract plus prospects. Tanking team is still spending lots of money but in reality is worse overall.
 
The "two different balls" story is outrageous.

Honestly, this sport needs to be blown up and started over.

Worst run league in the world by far.

This lockout will finish off what 1994 didn't.

This will be fun to revisit a few months from now.
 
Players want bigger share of the pie, less team control, salary floors, and no salary caps. Also they want to bitch about random players not making as much money in free agency as they hoped they would.

There are more demands I'm sure. Maybe draft compensation for QOs, not sure.

The most egregious treatment of players is minor league ball and I've never seen the Union give much of a **** about them before.

The only major thing I've seen reporters say the owners ask for is expanded postseason, which I hate, but is hardly automatically detrimental to player interests. I'd like to see more on owner asks, I guess.

MLBTR did a pretty good breakdown of the numbers that actually matter: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/12/how-the-mlb-luxury-tax-thresholds-have-changed-by-year.html and https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/12/how-the-mlb-minimum-salary-has-changed-with-each-new-cba.html

The players' union failed epically the last couple CBA negotiations, and will be looking to make up for it this time.

They want a luxury tax threshold at $245 (probably with a ~5% annual increase) with no ties to draft picks, and the owners want a cap at $214M with a raise of like $1M per year. This seems like a pretty basic negotiation with a reasonable gap, and it would be idiotic to delay the season over this amount of money.

The players should be pushing for a minimum salary of close to $800k, and stop accepting 5% raises like fools.

The idea of letting players hit FA earlier are likely non-starters with the owners, and everything else is just window dressing. There's no reason they can't hammer out an acceptable cap number, an acceptable minimum salary number, institute the DH full time, expand the playoffs, and call it a CBA.
 
I'm all for the universal DH, expanded playoffs (2 WC teams each league), and a draft lottery system.

A salary "floor" doesn't seem like it would do much. Your teams that want to tank or reset, will just sell off to that level.

The NFL has a salary floor but you just have to average it over 5 years. If MLB did something like that it could allow for mid season selling while forcing teams to save up to make pushes
 
I don't see a floor without a cap. Floor and cap come together with a partnership to share income. Neither side wants that. Owners will be worried about a floor given uncertain landscape of older fans, changing revenue streams etc. I think they'd have to win big lots of places to give up a floor.

I still think raising controlled player costs is the way to get more money to the players without using terms that scare people like salary floor. Minimum salary is 500k guaranteed if you play in MLB, 1 million if you are up more than X days, 2 million for second year, etc.

Manfred's letter is a bunch of noise and I hate it.

I do not want to see baseball like every other sport where half the league gets in the playoffs. Fundamentally changes how you do team construction and changes the sport. Ruins the regular season. I know it is a way to bring in more money, but I hate it. I thought the expanded playoffs two years ago was bad for the trade deadline b/c too many people were in it.
 
I can't see why they can't:
1. Raise controlled player's salary-These guys are still a steal if you triple the money before arbitration.
2. Allow trading of all draft picks
3. Remove black outs
4. Add DH
5. Eliminate draft pick loss for FA signings, keep draft pick gain for losses
6. Players become free agents at 6 years or age 28, whichever comes first
7. Negotiate some mechanism to raise the tax threshold. I'd prefer they just drop it and make it up in revenue sharing.
8. If they have to expand the playoffs
a. decrease the regular season to 150 games
b. Only add a couple of teams
c. Keep the division winners out of the mess. Make the WCs play a tournament and winner gets into the real playoffs with the division winner. Top seed gets to pick their opponent.
d. Worst 10 teams play a playoff to determine the top 10 picks in the draft
e. Teams 11-last team not in the playoff play a tournament for something else....winner gets a Comp pick?
Tournaments with stakes make money
 
I don't see a floor without a cap. Floor and cap come together with a partnership to share income. Neither side wants that. Owners will be worried about a floor given uncertain landscape of older fans, changing revenue streams etc. I think they'd have to win big lots of places to give up a floor.

I still think raising controlled player costs is the way to get more money to the players without using terms that scare people like salary floor. Minimum salary is 500k guaranteed if you play in MLB, 1 million if you are up more than X days, 2 million for second year, etc.

Manfred's letter is a bunch of noise and I hate it.

I do not want to see baseball like every other sport where half the league gets in the playoffs. Fundamentally changes how you do team construction and changes the sport. Ruins the regular season. I know it is a way to bring in more money, but I hate it. I thought the expanded playoffs two years ago was bad for the trade deadline b/c too many people were in it.

They could make it like the NFL does with the salary cap. Raise/lower it based on the league revenue.

The problem with that is it would require the league/teams to open up it's books completely. And that's one of the problems right now imo. It's not that the players want a larger share of the pie. They don't know how large the actual pie is.
 
The owners, near as I can tell, are basically in a defensive/maintenance posture and don't particularly want to change anything. No reason they should -- they've cleaned the players' clocks in the last couple CBA negotiations, as Enscheff said, and they've got a pretty good thing going right now. They want to expand the playoffs because that's more revenue for them that the players don't have much of a claim to, and the players aren't particularly enthusiastic about expanding the playoffs, because they believe if you make it easier to reach the postseason then teams will be less motivated to spend money -- if you can make the playoffs as an 85-win team, and the postseason is a crapshoot, why spend serious money to improve yourself to a 90-win team?

But that's a relatively minor change, and the controlling dynamic here is the players trying to push for major changes while the owners try to hold things where they stand. That's not a great position for the players to be in, but it's their fault for handling the last couple negotiations in such a short-sighted manner.
 
Another good writeup detailing what the players want with respect to service time and getting players paid at younger ages: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/12/collective-bargaining-issues-service-time-structure.html

Assuming Scherzer is representing the consensus: “unless this CBA completely addresses the competition (issues) and younger players getting paid, that’s the only way I’m going to put my name on it.”

So, get them money sooner, and eliminate teams tanking.

Players want "players to reach free agency after six years of service or after five years of service and 29.5 years of age", which is a fairly meaningless change. Since it's a non-starter for the owners, just drop it.

Instead, get a meaningful increase in the minimum salary, which can be compounded into higher arbitration salaries. Perhaps increase the minimum salary based on service time ($700k for rookie, additional $100k per year of service). That satisfies the goals of players getting paid sooner.

The competition issue is much more tricky. Getting teams to stop cutting payroll while rebuilding is going to be very hard, and the players may be barking up the wrong tree there.
 
I swear - I hate unions.
I’m almost at the point of the owners saying **** you, and if anybody wants to play a child’s game for more money than most fans make- by far- then they can come sign up. If not, go do something else. Would the product on the field look like high school baseball for a few years ? Yep. Would fans still come to the battery and cheer for the Braves ? Yep. This crap would never happen again. Fans would understand ....
Or am I crazy ?
 
I swear - I hate unions.
I’m almost at the point of the owners saying **** you, and if anybody wants to play a child’s game for more money than most fans make- by far- then they can come sign up. If not, go do something else. Would the product on the field look like high school baseball for a few years ? Yep. Would fans still come to the battery and cheer for the Braves ? Yep. This crap would never happen again. Fans would understand ....
Or am I crazy ?


you are crazy. Nobody is gonna pay to watch high school level quality baseball.

you’d basically see Sean Newcomb everyday throwing out there.
 
I swear - I hate unions.
I’m almost at the point of the owners saying **** you, and if anybody wants to play a child’s game for more money than most fans make- by far- then they can come sign up. If not, go do something else. Would the product on the field look like high school baseball for a few years ? Yep. Would fans still come to the battery and cheer for the Braves ? Yep. This crap would never happen again. Fans would understand ....
Or am I crazy ?

Lol. Nobody would come out to watch that garbage product.
 
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