Seriously, "rights"? What "rights" are being chipped away? And where are these "rights" memorialized?
Look, the owners are trying to get the players to agree to cost certainty along the lines of the other US professional sports. Those aren't rights. They're just contractual provisions.
If the MLBPA has an inequitable deal, the other professional sports should just stop playing altogether, I guess.
That people are using terms like "rights" and "inequitable" means that the players have won the PR battle but it doesn't get any closer to a solution.
You're probably going to get your lost season, but like in hockey, that doesn't mean that the players are going to "succeed."
My personal opinion is that the owners are prepared for a lost season. The MLBPA may have a "war chest" but IIRC, every time there has been a major labor dispute in pro sports, the union always seems to have a "war chest" but that never seems to be enough. And even if they have a "war chest" to last a season, do they have enough to last two?
I'll just say this once again, if people think I'm on the side of the owners, I'm not. I'm just trying to see the reality in the situation. And even were I to think that the owners are collectively Satan Incarnate, it doesn't matter because a deal still has to be reached. And being able to deal with unreasonable people is the hallmark of being good at business.
In really don't really care how the parties split the $10B pie. One would think that the two sides could figure out how to do this without losing games. But apparently they cannot and my GUESS is that the more games are lost, the more leverage the owners will have.
I know from our past discussion about the lockout in a different thread that you are not reflexively “pro owner.” Your frustration seems largely to be that, in pointing out the owners’ greed, people seem to you to be painting the players as beaten-down heroes. I do think you may be overlooking the degree to which the owners are contributing to this dynamic, and, in fact, may not be operating in a way that respects the value that the players provide to them. And that is going to piss fans off—including me, if I’m honest.
As I pointed out in that other discussion, it has been reported that the owners starting point in negotiations wasn’t just to slow the percentage growth of player salaries, but to actually reduce in real dollars the amount that is paid to players. This reported proposal comes at a time of massive growth in league revenues AND franchise valuations.
The league recently signed national tv contract extensions that are
estimated by Forbes to increase tv revenues by 65 percent, and total local television rights revenues
are estimated by this Fangraphs writer to have increased by a third in the past four years. And we’ve already discussed in this thread the spectacular rise in franchise values since 2000.
So the pie is growing, and the attitude of owners appears to be, “Yes, we have more pie, but we’re giving you even less than you got last time.” In the other thread, a few of us tried to think of another example of a major sports league starting negotiations on a new contract this way. There were examples from I think the NFL of lower overall percentages of revenues going to players, but those still meant more dollars in player pockets because the revenue pie was bigger. There were also examples of player salaries falling in certain years, but those were the result not of negotiated decreases but of dips in revenue during years in which player payrolls were tied to revenues. I think the only example we ended up coming up with was when
@Harry Hooper found that the NHL had successfully slashed payroll by 20 percent back in 2004.
Turning for a moment to the concessions the owners are reported to have made recently—the universal DH and eliminating draft compensation in free agent signings—these are broadly and correctly understood to benefit players in terms of leading to increased salaries. But if the luxury tax threshold is actually lowered, as owners are reported to want, than It significantly mitigates or eliminates the effects of those changes. “We won’t lose a draft pick if we sign Martinez…but we can only pay him this much or we hit the threshold and will lose draft picks and international dollars.”
MLB is awash in money right now, more than it was before. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for fans to expect that the players benefit from that as well. That is why fans are sympathizing with millionaire players right now, and demonizing owners. (Well that and Manfred standing in front of reporters and full-on lying about the rise in franchise valuations.) It doesn’t matter to fans that baseball players have a better deal than other athletes. It matters that they deserve to share in the gains of league revenues. I’m not saying you’re saying this, but do you think the owners should get to keep those gains? That’s how this negotiation posture is coming across to fans.
