Yes, although those numbers do look better. Do we know if they’ve regressed in other areas?
The Mainboard MLB Lockout Thread
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I hope the MLBPA is insistent on being paid and accrue for an entire season if/when it's shortened. That's the only thing that can convince the owners to negotiate in good faith, IMHO.
I don't really understand what you're saying here. This is hardly legislative brain surgery. The bill that got introduced last year (by Senators Cruz, Hawley, Rubio and Blackburn and 29 House Rs) is two pages long and really only requires eleven words to be operative: "Professional baseball clubs shall not be exempt from the antitrust laws." Done.
Baseball's antitrust exemption is not only stupid, it's stupid in a kind of obvious and apolitical way that means pretty much everybody in Congress knows that it's stupid and that it's something Congress can use as leverage over the sport if and when they choose to do so.
People in this thread keep complaining that neither the owners nor the players have the interests of the fans at heart. What people really mean is that the representatives of the people should be part of this decision. Where are they?
(I see you there Bernie).
Hey, look, David Ortiz agrees with me but you probably know more about the Dominican system than him:
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1501605449208115209
Bad math?
Also, revenue is not the right comparison. You need to look at profits, and you can't exactly find out what the percentage it is without opening the books.
And in any case, owners are not sharing in the increase of the open revenues.
Wild ass guess estimated math perhaps.
There are a bunch of Ortiz quotes in that thread, this is the most relevant:
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1501605546851450880?s=20&t=VU_4kwHPxaxMyRpy2sJUHA
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1501605546851450880?s=20&t=VU_4kwHPxaxMyRpy2sJUHA
And to be clear, the current international system is pretty disgusting, getting kids to commit when they are 12 or 13 and sometimes backing out on promised money at the last minute. Ideally MLB would crack down on the system currently in place but they have not done that because they prefer to save money via a draft.
Would a draft possibly be better than the system currently in place? Definitely possible, even likely, depending on the specifics, but as Ortiz said (and I said upthread), it is too important to just be rammed through as a last-minute bargaining chip, as seems to be happening here.
Would a draft possibly be better than the system currently in place? Definitely possible, even likely, depending on the specifics, but as Ortiz said (and I said upthread), it is too important to just be rammed through as a last-minute bargaining chip, as seems to be happening here.
If you're serious, I'm really surprised you don't understand. I mean I'd guess that you know that baseball's antitrust exemption isn't statutory - it's common law, right? And you also must know that all of the other professional sports leagues, while each not having a exemption specific to its sport like baseball does, collectively enjoy special ("relaxed" is one way of putting it although not strictly correct) status viz-a-viz the antitrust regime, right?
I think you would agree that any legislation that is two pages is done mostly for show. Even if any two-page piece of legislation were to be passed (not a chance), it would likely simply overturn Federal Baseball and its progeny which would mean that baseball would simply have the same status as the other professional sports leagues. Which doesn't seem to be a bar to the way the NBA, NHL, or NFL does business.
Overturning Federal Baseball wouldn't have any effect on baseball. If anyone really wanted to deal with baseball, they'd have to deal with all case law dealing with all professional sports. That's definitely not going to happen.
This article says a lot of the above in a different way: https://promarket.org/2021/05/06/eliminating-baseballs-antitrust-exemption-georgia-boycott-republicans/
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that the other leagues CBAs are based on profit, not revenue?
One of my points all along has been that perpetuating a system where you have no idea what share the players are getting is quite risky for them, especially given how the owners interact on this stuff. The question WBCD asked was what the impact of a NBA-style system would be on MLB and all we have to assess that are imperfect public-market analyses.
In addition, I would imagine that many of the draft eligible kids in Latin America are already under contract or some sort of agreement. Even if a draft were implemented next year or 2024 or a couple of years down the line, it's going to take a while before the old system can run its course.
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Just to be clear, David Ortiz did not agree with you about the only part of your post that I commented on.
You suggested (and I quote) "The international draft is hugely complicated and should have been broached months ago if MLB wanted it included".
I said (and again I quote) "MLB has been talking about the international draft for literally years" That is demonstrable through a ton of articles.
I made no comment at all about whether the international draft was good or bad. I only noted (as is demonstrably true) that the issue has been on the table for literally years between the parties and this is not some last-minute thing (as you incorrectly suggested).
To the degree you are trying to say that it is complicated to implement, I agree with that and certainly never suggested otherwise....that the parties have been engaging on it for a long time does not mean it is easy to do. To the degree you misunderstood what I said, I'd ask you to be more careful.
I would also caution the whole "jamming things in at the end" narrative. We're a bunch of people on the internet reading tweets, we have no idea when ideas were presented or discussed or at what length. Maybe there are certain groups discussing certain issues and not everyone is privy to the details of each piece.
Just because something has been broached in the past does not mean it was previously broached in these negotiations, and it certainly doesn't mean it was discussed in depth between the two sides recently. The concept of 'stealing first base' has been discussed previously too (https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/07/10/atlantic-league-experimenting-with-batters-stealing-first-base/), that doesn't mean it should be brought in as a bargaining chip to negotiations when there are so many other issues that need to be agreed upon.
It seems fairly clear to me that the owners did not expect the MLBPA to push this hard on other issues, so in return one of the things they have brought back is their long-time request for an international draft. The MLBPA is generally happy to sell out anyone not already in the majors and their union (the previous CBA probably cost Shohei Ohtani $200M as compared to if he'd signed a year or two earlier) so I'm sure it'll happen in some form.
Is there any reporting that the above is true, or are you just making up that possibility?
What I have seen in articles is that the details of the MLB proposal were first made public recently. That is, of course, different than it not having been raised. One article characterized that the international draft was "still" a requirement, implying it has been there for some period of time. Even beyond that, both of these parties are sophisticated and it is ridiculous to suggest that they were not aware of the possiblity of the international draft being a topic at any point in the negoitation. So the fact it has been commented on by both MLB and MLBPA for literally years makes it pretty hard to argue it is some last-minute thing---these sides have both prepared elaborate negoitation strategies, scenarios, and sets of tradeofs on all sorts of issues and there's essentially zero chance the international draft was not amongst them.
So, I will say that while I see no facts to support this, I do think IF the parties agreed on a set of issues to work through earlier in the process and THEN either party added a new issue late that neither was on the list, NOR related to a concession made on those identified issues, that would be considered bad form by most negotiators. If you are asserting that happened here, I'd be curious the basis for saying so. As others wisely noted, our visibility into what's been discussed is really, really limited and so there's a huge difference between "hasn't been publicly reported" and "hasn't been discussed between the parties"
We can go back and forth all day, there will be more comprehensive and detailed reporting about the process once it's settled and then we'll see.
Thank you for finding and posting this helpful article. It's written by Ben Lindbergh, which to me gives it even more credibility.
The gist is that about 60 percent of league revenues went to players in the early 2000s (peaking at 63 percent in 2003), but that had dropped to around 50 percent by 2010, where it remained pretty much unchanged until 2017. The piece was written in 2018, so 2017 was the last year of data. The numbers come from MLB, of course, but the MLBPA did not object to them, and as PKB notes, the piece includes interviews with a few top sports economists who essentially vouch for the accuracy of those splits.
Unquestionably, then, the players lost a substantial share of league revenues between 2003 and 2010. However, my reading of the piece is that, far from being bamboozled by ownership--as the players arguably were in 2016--the union made strategic decisions in the 2002 and 2006 CBAs to recalibrate the revenue split to something like 50/50 in exchange for a long and prosperous stretch of labor peace. As league revenues went up, so did players salaries, since the players were holding steady at around a 50 percent slice of the pie up until at least 2017. 2022 presents us with something entirely different--league revenues going up, but player salaries going down.
Perhaps---I'm not sure that is anything other than a heroic assumption.
What I would say if I were a player is that MLBPA, with no doubt good intentions and with a tough counterparty, chose a strategic path that led to a major reduction in share of revenue in exchange for a conceptual thing (no cap) which did not actually benefit me personally. Labor peace is then less a goal than a product of a strategy that gave away a lot of actual value for almost nothing in return (just a conceptual benefit of 'no cap')...it is pretty obvious the owners will be happy continuing on that path.
Others may be more sympathetic to MLBPA than I, but as I noted pages ago I think the idea that they've done a great job strategically is largely a function of support for the players, not a real assessment of MLBPA's approach or their results. A cynical person might even suggest that the fawning stuff about Orza you cited was to some degree a function of reporters who wanted to keep their sources happy (and sometimes, expert economists who wanted to keep getting hired).
There may be a contrary case to be told, but the results for MLB players are a whole lot worse than other sports in the same timeframe---at least, than NFL and NBA, I don't follow NHL closely enough to have an informed opinion.
This is almost certainly not true, and I just don't understand how you can make comments like this with such certainty. The author of the very piece you linked to, after weighing all of the facts and evidence I presented earlier, characterizes things this way:
"And in light of the market’s stability over the past dozen years — a period of financial prosperity and little labor unrest — the only hard evidence that the players (and by extension, the sport) are facing an existential crisis that could cause a work stoppage as the CBA approaches its 2021 expiration date is one odd offseason in which several free-agent courtships have stretched into spring training." (Lindbergh was referring at the end there to the notoriously slow FA market following the 2017 season.)
The players exchanged a smaller slice of the pie for a still-healthy one and also labor peace. And to make the point explicit: The players absolutely benefited because salaries were going up each year. The game was healthy, revenues went up, and player salaries went up with them. You are straining credulity in an attempt to make a case that the union has been run by buffoons--though well-meaning ones!--for decades. How far are you willing to go?
1. That "fawning" stuff that I cited was written not about Gene Orza but about Don Fehr, who is universally regarded as having been an excellent executive director of the MLBPA.
2. You know what kind of sources you have to keep happy? The kinds that can give you hot scoops like who a club is looking to sign or which manager is on the hot seat. You don't need to stay on good terms with the head of a labor union, whose job is to trumpet to the world his workers' concerns and priorities. This is actually laughable.
3. This is how you introduced the Ringer article that we've been talking about: "Found this a pretty sober assessment of baseball's economics, in part because it cites legit experts like Zimbalist." And here is the fawing expert economist who said nice things about Fehr simply because he wanted to keep getting hired: "Fehr is also, quite simply, smarter than the owners and their lawyers. Possibly “brilliant,” says Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College and an expert in sports economics."
If I were you, I would find this embarrassing. After two days of going back and forth with you, it's my feeling that you are simply throwing unsupported and occasionally absurd opinions against the wall in the hope that something will stick. You keep making these wild statements and then when presented with evidence to the contrary--yesterday it was your contention that the union has been poorly run since Miller stepped down, after which I posted the Slate article with glowing comments about Don Fehr from people qualified to make them--you simply fling new ones against the wall. With that in mind, I am going to bow out of this conversation and leave the final word to you.
Or maybe it won’t take that long.
View: https://twitter.com/dplennon/status/1501652078049083392?s=21
Steve cohen seems to be putting his fellow owners on blast
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1501655723784220679
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1501655723784220679
I think its impossible to argue that MLBPA didnt make pretty significant mistakes either in their strategy or the implementation of the strategy over the last twenty years. Primarily:
1) The thought that the CBT wouldnt operate as a de-facto cap and was a significant win to avoid a hard cap. I suspect the players were expecting a tax in the manner of the NBA tax where somewhere around 25% of the teams exceed it any given year... not 10%. They underestimated the ability of the owners to maintain rank, which given the history of how the owners operated in the 80s and 90s seems like wishcasting.
2) If you believe MLBPA the implicit negotiating assumption was that the CBT would grow in line with league revenues. Not making that explicit in the CBA that the thresholds would be tied to league revenues was a massive misstep.
Now they began with a negotiating position that was much stronger than any other league as others have mentioned good estimates had the players share of revenue in the 60% range in the 90s, falling to 50% (consistent with other sports leagues) in the 2010s and extrapolating from the lack of player compensation and league revenue growth to somewhere in the 40-45% range recently (i.e., 20% revenue growth since 2017 with no compensation increases). That said, I dont think its fair to say the players have been worse off than other leagues for most of the history - it is really just the past two to three years - through 2017, they had a bigger share of the pie then any of the other leagues.
They may be thinking that they can regain that early teens share of revenue on a COVID rebound - Id think of that as similar wishcasting, but it seems like that is their playbook right now - perhaps because any NBA/NFL style deal that might be acceptable to the owners would be back breaking given where they are (i.e., would lock in all of the losses of the past 10 years and perhaps more).
I don't know what you see in that article but what I see is a clear articulation that: (1) the antitrust exemption is stupid, and indeed based on comical notions about the nature of professional sports; and (2) that getting rid of the antitrust exemption would not shut down the sport or require really radical changes in how it operates but would (3) modestly move the sport away from anti-competitive practices. And therefore (4) if a bunch of Congressional leaders got together and plausibly threatened to take away the antitrust exemption unless the owners bring this lockout to an end, the lockout would come to an end, right away.
I don't understand. What am I missing?
Nevermind, he "liked" the post. That's not putting them on blast, though.
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They are pretty close on the CBT at least, if MLB backs off some of their last minute demands, we might have a deal soon.
View: https://twitter.com/bnicholsonsmith/status/1501663619200790531?s=21
View: https://twitter.com/bnicholsonsmith/status/1501663619200790531?s=21
Well, sorry that's your take BringBackMo---I believe I've been really consistent for many pages and over many weeks in this thread (not at all reactive or wild) and also that my take has held up pretty well---both historically and about the current negoitation and it's trajectory. But each of us has their own filters and yours are rather strong, so you will interpret what's been said as you will.
I thought I alluded to this in my post, but it has been reported that Zimbalist has been hired by MLBPA in the past. That is specifically why I noted that one possible reason he has nice to things to say about the parties is that he wants to keep getting hired. He's without question an expert, and his assessment matters. But that does not mean I always agree with him, either. I think the data supports my view on MLBPA leadership, and you've seen several other people land at similiar conclusions (including, eventually and in part, yourself).
Whether or not you respect how I got to my beliefs, my assessment of the baseball labor negotiations has been formed over many years, in past cycles (not this one, as I think I've been transparent about) a very deep engagement on the topic and sometimes with subject-matter experts on some of these topics. That certainly doesn't mean I'm always right (I surely am not) but I'm also not simply googling to form an opinion today. While you don't have to agree with where I land, I think it's really inapprorpiate to suggest otherwise.
I thought I alluded to this in my post, but it has been reported that Zimbalist has been hired by MLBPA in the past. That is specifically why I noted that one possible reason he has nice to things to say about the parties is that he wants to keep getting hired. He's without question an expert, and his assessment matters. But that does not mean I always agree with him, either. I think the data supports my view on MLBPA leadership, and you've seen several other people land at similiar conclusions (including, eventually and in part, yourself).
Whether or not you respect how I got to my beliefs, my assessment of the baseball labor negotiations has been formed over many years, in past cycles (not this one, as I think I've been transparent about) a very deep engagement on the topic and sometimes with subject-matter experts on some of these topics. That certainly doesn't mean I'm always right (I surely am not) but I'm also not simply googling to form an opinion today. While you don't have to agree with where I land, I think it's really inapprorpiate to suggest otherwise.
Unclear? I think those are the kind of details still under debate.
Not sure if we talked about it yet in this thread, but both sides are back to 12 playoff teams, so that’s good at least.
We'll see---there is reporting it has been discussed between them since January, so I think it is more likely that what is going on here is a set of players reacted very negatively to it being in a proposed deal and MLBPA is now backing off---Rosenthal has leaned "player" in his sourcing on CBA stuff. You'd have expected the 'MLBPA will never agree to this' to come out right away, not after players were on twitter complaining about if otherwise. But neither of us knows whether it came up in January or the context for today.
I also noted earlier that it would fit for MLB as a 'fake' ask designed to extract a concession from the players at the end. It remains unclear to me whether they can truly impose an international draft, and MLB may well see it as an issue to tee up for purposes of getting value elsewhere. You may think that is somehow unethical, I think both sides likely understand that is all part of the overall give and take process.
Regarding the international draft, it seems like MLB is really pushing for it and MLBPA is resisting, perhaps in exchange for other concessions.
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1501669957712687110
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1501669957712687110
Ken makes a good point why the MLBPA are opposed to that
View: https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1501678902913413122
Its in essence an option but for the CBA rather than a contract...
After this shitshow do we really think that if the owners re-open the CBA its not going to get ugly like these negotiations?
Split the difference is actually difficult in mediations -- especially emotional ones. It's tempting when numbers are close to think that it should be somewhere around the midpoint and get done, but this is sometimes when mediations are the most fragile.
The problem with splitting the difference is that both sides always want to say "split the difference" after the last side has made an offer. So many arbitrations crater over mis-timed "split the difference" approaches that a good mediator stays the hell away from talking about midpoints until he or she is very sure that the midpoint is within both side's authority.
Consider the following simple offer and counter offer scenario. A is the plaintiff and B is the defendant.
A. $40 million
B. $1 million.
A. $30 million.
B. $5 million.
A. $22 million
B. $7.5 million
A. $18 million
B. $10 million
A. $15 million
B. $12 million
This is a really good mediation so far. If you're the mediator, you're happy. Now, imagine A says, let's split the difference -- Call it $13.5 million. B is like "no fucking way -- we just came up $2 million and now you're basically asking us for another $1.5 million without giving anything back." What B wants is A to come back at $14 million so B can then say "split the difference."
Could this really productive hypothetical mediation crater over $500,000? Absolutely. Happens all the time. A comes back and says, "but we made the first offer, so we're on track." B starts saying things like, "but that was a completely bullshit offer -- $40 million was never real, so we basically made the first real offer." Etc. Now feelings are bruised.
The numbers on CBT are close enough that it seems time to move on to other issues and see if they can get resolved. If I'm a mediator here, I put a bookmark on CBT and I hold back the last $5 million gap on CBT until I see whether one side is being asked to give something big on the other issues, and then I go back to it to give one party the extra round on CBT to make up for whatever else they just gave up.
To be that close on each set of those numbers and not be able to look across the table and say, "OK lets finish this." stupid.
We also - and I know your post intentionally simplifies this for the sake of the illustration - do not know if ‘resolution’ of issues are linear, ie, if the sides seemingly agree on the CBT thresholds, that could suddenly become contingent on favorable resolution of ANOTHER issue.
These things are fluid, and the sides cannot be taken at their words, which are in turn filtered through reporters, some of whom are virtually mouthpieces for one side and/or are obscuring (or not asking about) the complexity of the negotiations because they’re sloppy or love presenting any given negotiation period as potentially THE definitive moment to attract clicks.
Ultimatums seem like not the right approach to negotiating.
View: https://twitter.com/MikeSilvermanBB/status/1501691345781817344
View: https://twitter.com/MikeSilvermanBB/status/1501691345781817344
What a bunch of BS. Just get this deal done and that goes for both sides.
View: https://twitter.com/martinonyc/status/1501700375530909700?s=21
View: https://twitter.com/martinonyc/status/1501700375530909700?s=21
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1501702438440652800
Here is why I will blame the owners for this regardless on what happens,Manfred locked out the players on Dec. 2: in a letter to fans he wrote
yet, the owners did not even make their first proposal until SIX WEEKS later
Those six weeks of the owners sitting on their Tuchus before even sending the MLBPA an offer would have come in real handy right now, if the goal of the lockout was to "jumpstart the negotiations and get us to an agreement that will allow the season to start on time."
The players' last offer was ENTIRELY reasonable. Owners are guaranteed to get one of the the things they want, and the owners don't even respond. That's ludicrous and just show the owners want a pound of flesh in some way.
The worst thing is, the international system is bad, and if the sides truly agree to play ball and negotiate until November, they could come up with a deal that is fair to the players but eliminate the shady deals cut unofficially when players are 12.
The worst thing is, the international system is bad, and if the sides truly agree to play ball and negotiate until November, they could come up with a deal that is fair to the players but eliminate the shady deals cut unofficially when players are 12.
The past two days make me more confident in a deal sometime in the next two weeks. But it's hard to tell what's real and what's not in the Twitter smokescreen game.
I doubt it. They start missing games players are gonna cry about getting paid and the owners won't wanna pay them. Its gonna get much worse now.
The owners will remain billionaires while the league is locked out. They have lots of other ways to make money, and losing a year of baseball won’t hurt them that much. The hundreds of players in the union are a much more diverse group. I certainly think the players are more right, but they’ve got a lot more to lose…and every game that gets cancelled is a bigger loss for them. I think the owners are betting on the players cracking, and they probably will, eventually.
Yes and no.
The owners offers are based around the international draft as a main point of contention. They are saying "give us an international draft in the next couple of years or we're willing to have another labor stoppage." The players are saying "we emphatically don't want an international draft so let's completely take it off the table."
What this really means to me is that the QO issue isn't important to either side and they've been waiting to use it as a trade chip.
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