Initial CBA talks: MLB proposes salary floor (100M), service time structure change

[DeadlySplitter]

https://theathletic.com/2777830/2021/08/18/sources-mlb-proposes-salary-minimum-funded-by-new-tax-on-teams-spending-180-million/?source=emp_shared_article

Sharing just first paragraph here, since it is a paid site...

In a face-to-face collective bargaining meeting in Denver on Monday, Major League Baseball made its first proposal covering core economics to the Players Association. The plan included a new tax on team spending, one that would both effectively lower the first luxury-tax threshold in the sport to $180 million, and charge teams who exceed that first mark a higher percentage than they pay today. One trade-off, people briefed on the league’s proposal said, would be a salary minimum of $100 million in the sport.

This is likely just step 1 of a long CBA negotiation process

 

[scottyno]

Love this idea, we talked about this a few weeks ago in another thread, really no reason why every team can't spend $100m when the league as a whole has as much revenue as it does and has revenue sharing.

That said, I'd be shocked if the players go for it if it looks like the $180m has enough non monetary penalties attached to it to become a defacto cap. From the non subscriber part that I can see it doesn't look like any of those are listed.

 

[CarolinaBeerGuy]

This is stupid and will lead to a lock out. The cheap teams will be incentivized to spend less because they rich teams will pay the difference. This is basically a de facto salary cap of $180 million and the players will never agree to it.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

So basically, the Rays will be forced to keep a couple of their good arbitration-eligible players instead of dealing them away for prospects, and the Sox and Yankees get to pay for it. Sounds right.

 

[DeadlySplitter]

As I just edited in my post after further thought, its' just an initial offer to kick off CBA talks. Will never get accepted, but shows they are starting to think about a salary floor for the first time.

As a Red Sox fan, effectively some of my favorite team's payroll going to the Rays sounds awful.

 

[Kliq]

Very much pro Salary Floor in some way. It's great the Rays can win by barely spending but baseball will be better if more teams are invested in retaining their best players.

 

[Ale Xander]

This is awful as a Red Sox fan(although possibly worse as a Dodgers or Yankees fan).

don’t want to now compete with the Royals and Pirates for talent, also. Hits on both ends
Thia is kind of what a NY Rangers fan kebabs feels

I would feel different as a have not fan though

I think labor strife is now inevitable

one saving grace is we have Chaim who has experience with a constrained budget

 

[Diamond Don Aase]

Very much pro Salary Floor in some way. It's great the Rays can win by barely spending but baseball will be better if more teams are invested in retaining their best players.

If you think that this proposal has anything to do with competitive balance rather than redistributing and shrinking the salary pool so that owners and owners alone can enjoy the benefits of revenue growth, I have a used car that can comfortably sleep six minor leaguers to sell you.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

This is likely just step 1 of a long CBA negotiation process

this post could be used as the reply to most of the replies here already.

this is a preliminary offer. It reflects the final deal like my slider reflects Chris Sale’s slider

 

[54thMA]

this post could be used as the reply to most of the replies here already.

this is a preliminary offer. It reflects the final deal like my slider reflects Chris Sale’s slider

How does your slider compare to starters 2-5, they can use all the help they can get at this point.

 

[Jimbodandy]

How does your slider compare to starters 2-5, they can use all the help they can get at this point.

Can someone please overlay Lose's slider with Tanner Houck's? Tia.

 

[brandonchristensen]

Salary floor I like.

Penalties on higher I dislike.

Put in a pitch clock.

 

[nvalvo]

I don't think a salary floor funded by a tax is a great idea if the aim is to forestall tanking/improve competitiveness. I think that would just lead to stylistic changes in how bad teams tank. Likely, more bad teams would buy prospects by taking on rich teams' bad contracts, because they need to clear a certain floor anyways in years they aren't expecting to be good, and the rich teams are paying for it anyway. That may free up the contending teams to spend more by laundering their sunk costs through the books of another team, but it feels inefficient to me. And you'd just end up with weird bad teams with, like, Chris Davis and Pablo Sandoval lumbering around with a bunch of pre-arb guys spending the necessary money.

If you want to improve the incentives, the most relevant lever is quite simple: raising the major league minimum. It attenuates the cost differences between pre-arb and veteran players, and thus reduces the incentives to some of the most cynical kinds of roster building. That would, practically speaking, mean a salary floor of 26x whatever the major league minimum is.

But when you provide teams opportunities to spend other people's money on players, you open the door to all sorts of chicanery.

edit: to be clear, I get that that isn't really the aim: the aim is to control labor costs. But they have to *pretend* that that is the aim.

 

[Murderer's Crow]

It all starts with how players get their first real contracts. 6 years of control is too long and by the time those players reach the market, small market teams can't/won't take risks on 30 year olds wanting 8 year contracts. If players reached the market at a younger age more often, more teams would bid for their services and they would get paid more.

They can adjust the luxury tax and create floors, it's not going to change the fundamental problem which is that young superstars are stuck for 6 years and usually longer because of manipulation.

 

[The Gray Eagle]

This is stupid and will lead to a lock out. The cheap teams will be incentivized to spend less because they rich teams will pay the difference. This is basically a de facto salary cap of $180 million and the players will never agree to it.

Are you sure? Tony Clark and the players agreed to the last CBA and let the owners make out like bandits.
The owners are so greedy and self-interested and Clark so inept that most of next season will probably be canceled, and then the players will give in to some stupid deal that only benefits the owners and the very wealthiest players.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

It all starts with how players get their first real contracts. 6 years of control is too long and by the time those players reach the market, small market teams can't/won't take risks on 30 year olds wanting 8 year contracts. If players reached the market at a younger age more often, more teams would bid for their services and they would get paid more.

They can adjust the luxury tax and create floors, it's not going to change the fundamental problem which is that young superstars are stuck for 6 years and usually longer because of manipulation.

Is 30 the average age for first year of free agency? I thought it was less.

and a floor just means more Marc Sullivans on low budget teams getting big contracts.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

Is 30 the average age for first year of free agency? I thought it was less.

and a floor just means more Marc Sullivans on low budget teams getting big contracts.

If it's less, it can't be much less. The average age at which a player makes his debut is around 24. Add six years of service to that and you get 30.

 

[TheGazelle]

It all starts with how players get their first real contracts. 6 years of control is too long and by the time those players reach the market, small market teams can't/won't take risks on 30 year olds wanting 8 year contracts. If players reached the market at a younger age more often, more teams would bid for their services and they would get paid more.

They can adjust the luxury tax and create floors, it's not going to change the fundamental problem which is that young superstars are stuck for 6 years and usually longer because of manipulation.

I agree that this is the big issue the players need to address. The service time/arbitration system doesn't work and is way too owner-friendly.

 

[mikeford]

Remember when player's unions had actual labor lawyers head their unions instead of ex players?

seemed like that worked out a lot better for the players!

 

[Max Power]

100% on the years of control issue. I've been saying for years that arb awards have to be closer to free agent salaries. You can still have a player for 6 years, but you have to pay him what he's worth to do it.

Without seeing the details of the tax and floor proposal, it's hard to say whether it's any good. Under the old revenue sharing system where there were no draft or signing penalties for exceeding the cap, rich teams routinely blew by it. The Dodgers and Yankees didn't think twice about going over the limit year after year if it just cost them money. It's only now that going over the limit has young talent acquisition costs, literally nobody does it. If it's just money, then it could work out really well for the players.

 

[snowmanny]

I never understand why the "big market" teams go along with these proposals. According to Wkiipedia the Royals were sold in 2020 for $1Billion and the Mets were sold the same year for about $2.5Billion. Wouldn't spending caps and taxes and revenue sharing devalue the Mets investment and raise the value of the Royals? How is that fair?

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

I don't think a salary floor funded by a tax is a great idea if the aim is to forestall tanking/improve competitiveness. I think that would just lead to stylistic changes in how bad teams tank. Likely, more bad teams would buy prospects by taking on rich teams' bad contracts, because they need to clear a certain floor anyways in years they aren't expecting to be good, and the rich teams are paying for it anyway. That may free up the contending teams to spend more by laundering their sunk costs through the books of another team, but it feels inefficient to me. And you'd just end up with weird bad teams with, like, Chris Davis and Pablo Sandoval lumbering around with a bunch of pre-arb guys spending the necessary money.

If you want to improve the incentives, the most relevant lever is quite simple: raising the major league minimum. It attenuates the cost differences between pre-arb and veteran players, and thus reduces the incentives to some of the most cynical kinds of roster building. That would, practically speaking, mean a salary floor of 26x whatever the major league minimum is.

But when you provide teams opportunities to spend other people's money on players, you open the door to all sorts of chicanery.

edit: to be clear, I get that that isn't really the aim: the aim is to control labor costs. But they have to *pretend* that that is the aim.

With regards to the first bolded, you've basically described the NBA.

With regards to the second bolded, I've said it before and will say it again - so long as losing is incentivized, teams will tank.

I know the rationale for ordering the draft used to be that bad teams should get the benefit of the higher pick but in this day and age, it seems like teams that want to get better have avenues that didn't use to exist. If we want to reward trying, what better way than to give the non-playoff team with the most wins the first pick?

 

[nvalvo]

With regards to the first bolded, you've basically described the NBA.

With regards to the second bolded, I've said it before and will say it again - so long as losing is incentivized, teams will tank.

I know the rationale for ordering the draft used to be that bad teams should get the benefit of the higher pick but in this day and age, it seems like teams that want to get better have avenues that didn't use to exist. If we want to reward trying, what better way than to give the non-playoff team with the most wins the first pick?

I hear that, but what we really want to avoid — even more than tanking — is individual markets being mired in irrelevance for *so* long that they start to do considerable damage to the sport.

 

[Petagine in a Bottle]

Would we be better off if the draft was just completely randomized each year? Or maybe just the first round is?

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

I hear that, but what we really want to avoid — even more than tanking — is individual markets being mired in irrelevance for *so* long that they start to do considerable damage to the sport.

Seems like individual markets being cosigned to irrelevance for multiple years is more of a choice - or a product of bad ownership - than involuntary. And I know it looks like the City of Houston shrugged off its tanking years, but doesn't a team that doesn't try to win for five or so years have to do some damage to the game?

It will be interesting to see what happens when the Os are good again.

And I'm not saying tanking doesn't make sense. If any of us were running a franchise, that's what we would do. Baseball's problem is that anyone with half a brain can see that the worst place for a team to be is to win 85 games. Either win 95 or win 60. To me, that's the problem.

 

[nighthob]

I know the rationale for ordering the draft used to be that bad teams should get the benefit of the higher pick but in this day and age, it seems like teams that want to get better have avenues that didn't use to exist. If we want to reward trying, what better way than to give the non-playoff team with the most wins the first pick?

Personally I don't think that tanking is really a problem in an environment where teams are using top ten pick to select underslot guys in order to sign more lottery tickets in rounds 2-10. Although I'm happy with how that worked out for Boston this past year. Except for round 2, I bet Josh Baez would have signed underslot to play for his favorite team.

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

Personally I don't think that tanking is really a problem in an environment where teams are using top ten pick to select underslot guys in order to sign more lottery tickets in rounds 2-10. Although I'm happy with how that worked out for Boston this past year. Except for round 2, I bet Josh Baez would have signed underslot to play for his favorite team.

Have you watched the Os lately? I'm sure there are a lot of fans being turned off by the team. I guess the theory is that they will come back when the Os start winning and so far theory has stood up with other teams that have tanked.

 

[OCD SS]

The salary floor is PR window dressing that makes team's limiting spending on labor seem like a move towards competitive balance, but as presented (with a lower CBT threshold) will ultimately suppress the amount of money spent on player salaries overall. Most teams will treat $180M as a hard cap, and most of the teams that will go over that number will have to figure out how to duck back under once in awhile to reset the penalties. It seems like this is getting some traction in the media (because greedy players getting paid to play a game! and it's always hard to get your average sports fan to interested in the overall math, especially the difference between millionaires and billionaires), so the PU is going to have to counter the spin with their own offer.

 

[scottyno]

The salary floor is PR window dressing that makes team's limiting spending on labor seem like a move towards competitive balance, but as presented (with a lower CBT threshold) will ultimately suppress the amount of money spent on player salaries overall. Most teams will treat $180M as a hard cap, and most of the teams that will go over that number will have to figure out how to duck back under once in awhile to reset the penalties. It seems like this is getting some traction in the media (because greedy players getting paid to play a game! and it's always hard to get your average sports fan to interested in the overall math, especially the difference between millionaires and billionaires), so the PU is going to have to counter the spin with their own offer.

If the only penalty is money and nothing competitive then I don't think you'll see teams constantly resetting the tax, unless the penalties are at an NBA level where a $10m signing could actually cost you $50m. The teams that would treat $180m as a hard cap weren't going to spend $180m anyway.

 

[Murderer's Crow]

If they are going to try to institute a cap or a soft cap, they probably need to start thinking about exceptions. E.g. Franchise Tag for 1 player whose salary won't count toward the cap, trade exceptions, exclusions for salaries under $1-2m...etc.

 

[DeadlySplitter]

https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mlb-makes-new-service-time-proposal-to-players-union-sherman/

Major League Baseball, as part of its proposal to the players’ association last month, offered to curtail the impact of service time by creating a formula to disperse $1 billion to all arbitration-eligible players and make free agency universal at 29 ¹/₂ years of age, The Post has learned.