A Possible Path Forward for the MLBPA
Over the last couple weeks, I have taken a look at the unenviable position in which the Major League Baseball Players Association currently finds itself. Although the glacial pace of free-agent signings this offseason has helped to highlight the extent to which the sport’s existing economic model increasingly favors ownership, the union is relatively powerless to change its trajectory.
Indeed, because there is currently not much of value that the players can offer the owners in collective bargaining, the union has comparatively little leverage over the owners, and thus presently would appear to have relatively little hope of substantially improving its position in the next round of CBA negotiations in 2021 (although much can, of course, change between now and then).
That does not necessarily mean the union’s position is hopeless; however, securing the sort of modifications to the game’s economic structure that will be necessary to substantially improve the players’ financial position may require the MLBPA to engage in some outside-the-box thinking, at least as compared to its recent operating procedure. And as Buster Olney recently observed, it’s never too early for the union to develop a long-term strategy ahead of the 2021 CBA negotiations.
So what can the union do? Realistically, because the owners are unlikely to voluntarily agree to substantially better the players’ financial position, the MLBPA will probably have to adopt a more adversarial negotiating posture in 2021 than it has in recent years if it wishes to substantially change the current economic structure of the sport. That would mean that players should be ready to head into the 2021 CBA talks anticipating a work stoppage, potentially a rather lengthy one.
And it also means that the union should at least consider preparing to do what for many would have long been unthinkable: disband the MLBPA. While certainly a drastic step, dissolving the union could help provide the players with additional leverage of the sort needed to secure some real concessions from ownership, concessions of the sort that could meaningfully improve the players’ financial position.
Specifically, by dissolving their union, players could pursue an antitrust lawsuit against the owners. As I’ve previously explained, under an arcane legal doctrine known as the “non-statutory labor exemption,” courts forbid unionized employees from suing management under antitrust law so long as the employees are represented by a union. Once the union is disbanded, however, then the players could pursue potential antitrust remedies against the owners.
This has proven to be a popular strategy for players in the other major U.S. team sports in recent years. Back in 2011, for instance, both the NFL and NBA players opted to disband their unions in order to pursue federal antitrust litigation against their leagues. Meanwhile, professional hockey players threatened to do the same during the NHL’s last round of CBA talks in 2012.
Pursuing antitrust litigation against the owners would potentially allow the players to increase their leverage over ownership in several ways. Perhaps most importantly, by dissolving the MLBPA, the players would remove the antitrust immunity currently shielding many of MLB’s labor policies from challenge under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Because MLB is considered a collection of 30 competing businesses under antitrust law, any collective decision the league makes regarding its labor policy is presumptively susceptible to challenge under the Sherman Act. However, if the league can convince the union to accede to these same policies in a CBA, then they cannot be challenged under antitrust law due to the non-statutory labor exemption.
So this means that, if the MLBPA were to dissolve, things like the luxury tax, the international amateur signing bonus limits, and the domestic amateur draft itself would all be subject to antitrust challenge and could, ultimately, potentially be declared illegal. As a result, the amount of the financial damage that these practices inflict on the players moving forward would be tripled under the Sherman Act — a potential liability for ownership that could, in turn, give the players additional leverage in their negotiations.
Moreover, in the likely scenario that the owners should opt to institute a lockout against the players in 2021 after failing to reach an agreement on a new CBA, then antitrust law would give the players the ability to challenge the lockout, as well, also potentially undercutting some of the owners’ leverage in the talks. (As I’ve previously discussed, a lockout by ownership is a more likely scenario than a strike by the players in 2021.)
“But wait a minute,” you may be thinking. “Doesn’t MLB have an antitrust exemption? If so, how could the players sue under the Sherman Act after disbanding their union?”
The answer to that question lies in a rather obscure law passed by Congress back in 1998, known as the Curt Flood Act. Following the devastating 1994 players’ strike, Congress agreed to partially repeal baseball’s exemption so that MLB players could file antitrust lawsuits against the owners during future work stoppages.
While MLB players have never relied on the Curt Flood Act to date, by the time the 2021 CBA talks come around, the time may come for the players to use the Act to acquire additional leverage over the owners. Indeed, given the lack of meaningful concessions the union can currently offer to ownership in exchange for significant changes to the sport’s economic model, the players may find the disband-and-sue strategy to be an attractive option during the next round of CBA talks.
That having been said, disbanding the MLBPA would carry some potential disadvantages for the players. Indeed, by dissolving the union, the players would temporarily have to forgo the benefits they typically receive from the MLBPA, such as the union’s regulation of player agents and its management of the players’ health-care and pension systems.
Ultimately, however, these disadvantages would likely be short-lived, as the players would presumably move to reform the union immediately upon reaching a suitable agreement with the owners on a new CBA. As a result, dissolving the MLBPA would likely have relatively little short-term downside for the players, especially during the course of a work stoppage.
At the same time, however, it’s important not to overstate the potential leverage that the players could gain by disbanding their union. Given the increasing use of this strategy by the players unions in other U.S. professional leagues, the owners would likely anticipate that the MLBPA could dissolve during the next round of CBA talks and plan their negotiation strategy accordingly. Thus, at least some leverage the players might gain from disbanding their union may already, in effect, be baked into the existing negotiations.
Nevertheless, should the players decide to get serious about trying to better their financial circumstances in the coming years, then doing what for many has long been unthinkable — disbanding the MLBPA — may prove to be one of their best options for securing the additional leverage they’ll need to compel the owners to give them a larger share of the game’s ever growing economic pie.
Nathaniel Grow is an Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics and the Yormark Family Director of the Sports Industry Workshop at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. He is the author of Baseball on Trial: The Origin of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, as well as a number of sports-related law review articles. You can follow him on Twitter @NathanielGrow. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not express the views or opinions of Indiana University.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a real strategy one could use, but it is the nuclear option. It’s way more damaging and riskier than a strike.
It just seems to me that if you have the organizing capacity and willingness to disband the union and destroy the entire economic model of the league, you probably have a lot of other tools available (including a strike).
I agree this idea while fine as a method of filling content space here would be a disaster if chosen as the path forward. The players problem is their abandonment of the function of a union and turning over their fate to others. The people who they have delegated their future to have had other motivations that have systematically destroyed the gains won in the past under the leadership of Marvin Miller.
The players should indeed develop a strategy for 2021, but that strategy should be to fund a strike that lasts up to one and half seasons. Only by planning for a strike that goes on for one and half seasons can they gain the necessary leverage to win fundamental changes that will swing the revenue sharing in favor of the players. That should be the goal, to give the players 60% of all revenues.
The players can best accomplish this by funding not only the players in the union but by extending benefits to players who have reached double-A in the minors as well. They need to work to either abolish the draft or quadruple the slot bonuses paid to players in the draft and make those slots the minimum required payment. The players could make everyone who is drafted in the first three rounds automatic members of the players union and give them some minimum benefits that are substantial enough to provide living expenses when combined with minor league pay. This would work against the owners trying to make strikebreakers out of minor leaguers.
The Federal courts are extremely political. Look at some of the ridiculously unqualified individuals currently nominated to the courts for a lifetime appointment. Political hacks are on the courts and they represent both corporate parties that are aligned with the business backgrounds of those who own MLB teams. Those owners are very connected both politically and judicially. MLB owners have access to the best and most powerful attorneys who know judges and know how to corrupt judges. The players should do all they can to stay out of the courts.
How do you figure the players are owed 60% of revenue? What’s wrong with 50/50?
the problem is the strike option really isn’t an option. MLB- or any other sports league- will NEVER again open a season without a CBA.
Yeah, there will always be a pre-emptive lockout but…that kind of gets you to the same place.
The bigger point is that if you can collectively get your membership to dissolve the union and reform it later, you have the organizing power to also establish a work-to-rule/slowdown/strike. And none of those have anywhere near the same level of risk as blowing up your union on the potential chance you can blow up the entire economic model of your industry in on the potential you can get a better deal without totally destroying the entire industry you’re in.
For some reason, the author seems to think that this is somehow more of an option than a strike (based on his prior posts) but this is about three times the magnitude of difficulty on the organizing side (once to dissolve the union, double to get it back together again). It also has waaaaaay more risks. It is what you do when everything else has failed.
The problem is for a work-to-rule scenario is that a lot of things that would be removed are things that are extremely fan friendly which if you take out would put the fans squarely on the owners side.
It’s not even a real option. MLB players need the overt existence of a cartel even more than the owners do since all they can negotiate for is a piece of the publicly visible part of the iceberg. The owners get the rest – the tax shelters, the extortion of municipalities, and especially dictating the terms under which non-MLB leagues can operate.
Just re the latter, the Curt Flood Act explicitly authorized both the denial of standing and exemption from anti-trust laws of MLB’s control of ‘National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues’ (which actually pre-exists MLB). So much so that that organization could now rename itself a couple years later as ‘Minor League Baseball’ – making itself explicitly subordinate to MLB and no longer even pretending rhetorically to be ‘independent’.
The Curt Flood Act was a typical act of Congress. Naming itself one thing when in fact it enables the opposite in all the important ways.
Isn’t “we won’t strike” an enormous “meaningful concession” that the players can offer?
Yes. The time for “give and take” bargaining is when both feel the overall framework is fair enough. The true give and take is the threat of strike or lockout.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-threat-of-a-strike-might-not-help-the-mlbpa/
is it possible for amateurs and/or minor leaguers to file an anti-trust complaint?
afaik, that Curt Flood Act specifically said minor leaguers are screwed. The head of both MLB and Minor League Baseball is the Commissioner of Baseball (now a complete puppet of the owners since Fay Vincent was ousted) and it would probably take an act of Congress – not a judicial decision – to force the separation of that office and the ‘sports federation’ functions from the teams themselves. That would be good for the sport – but my guess is that Congress too is now completely bought and paid for by the team owners. Those groups that might be interested in restructuring that – fans, taxpayers, younger athletes, prospective owners – are too disparate and disorganized to present a legislative alternative (eg a congressionally-created interstate compact ‘sports federation’) to the status quo.
No, not unless they can convince a court to overturn MLB’s antitrust exemption. The Curt Flood Act only repealed the exemption to allow current MLB players to file suit, not minor league or amateur players.
This is an interesting overview of the tactical options available to the MLBPA. However, I’m curious about the intersection between the tactics and the actual policy change the players would pursue. I suppose the bottom line issue is simply getting back to the players receiving a greater slice of the economic pie. However, I suspect that a major barrier to this is debate among the players over how that slice should be distributed.
It seems to me that the FA slowdown is not just a function of the owners being cheap writ large, but their particular ability, actually near-requirement to build competitive teams on the back of insanely cheap young talent. Accordingly, if the players want to fix the problem of FA slowness, they need to bring the salaries of older FAs more in line with their on-field value — and to do the same with younger players.
This brings us to what I think is the structural problem at the heart of the MLBPA. It only represents major leaguer players when the holistic economic system of baseball is entirely inclusive of minor leaguer players. This exclusion of minor leaguers leads to a power imbalance within the MLBPA that encourages them to sell out young players and focus more on the lived experience of the veteran major leaguer, creating the very dynamic that now has them so upset.
The players absolutely ought to pursue a commitment of a certain fixed minimum percentage of revenue to spent on the players themselves. However, I suspect that until and unless they expand their membership to include the minor leagues (perhaps with a voting system that balances interests appropriate), the internal dynamics of the MLBPA will continue to lead them to put in place economic incentives for team building that works against veteran major leaguers in the marketplace.
This is excellent, RedsManRick. They “need to bring the salaries of older FAs more in line with their on-field value — and to do the same with younger players.” Indeed.
I think part of how you do this palatably is to shift significant money from salaries to pensions.
Yes. I really hope that the MLBPA makes minimum wage for minor leaguers a non-negotiable point of the next contract. The players are suddenly very concerned that Darvish might get “only” $150M (vs. his expected $180M), but don’t seem that concerned about the $7M/year/team it would take to give minor league players $8/hour.
I’m assuming including minor leaguers in the union would be a non-starter for the current union membership since there are more minor leaguers than major leaguers and the major leaguers would not want to wrap in a new group that could outvote them.
The structural flaw you identified is real, but is a flaw for all unions and including minor leaguers only somewhat alters the dynamic, it doesn’t fix it.
Every union has the incentive to help its members over its non-members. Even if you include minor leaguers, the union would still have the incentive to strike a bargain that will benefit all its members at the expense college, high school, and international players who are not yet members.
There are probably long term, good governance reasons that unions should pay more attention to striking a good deal for future members. It’s just hard to push too far in that direction if that means redistributing wealth from current members to future members.
A MiLB minimum wage could be negotiated without actually giving MiLB players a voting membership in the union.
But, more to the point, younger players on league minimum contracts and in arbitration are already union members! Increasing salaries for younger players can be accomplished simply if the MLBPA has the institutional will to do it.
There may be some issues with negotiating for a higher salary for non-union members, including whether that would be binding on a non-party to the contract. But let’s say MLB agrees to raise the MiLB wage and follows through even though it might not be legally obligated to do so and the minor leaguers might not be legally bound to forego any separate legal challenges.
You’d still have the structural problem that ownership will want money taken from somewhere else to redirect it to the minor leaguers. You would have a hell of time convincing the major league union membership to accept a distribution of wealth to non-members that could be going to members.
On the second point, you are correct that younger pre-arbitration players are union members, but they are vastly outnumbered by players who have hit their free agent years or are in their arb years and looking forward to their free agent years. You might get some agreement on a better distribution to the newest players, but you’re not going to get some radical re-allocation.
I’m curious on the numbers re: veterans to youngers. I suspect it’s more a matter of veterans occupying more leadership positions in the union, and the fact that they are more persistently members than younger players that might not be around long enough to care much about labor deals, or be able to accomplish anything even if they do.
I definitely agree that older players won’t want to do anything that limits their FA payday. But the really big money guys are a smaller population that the larger population mostly just dreams of becoming. Better union leadership would be able to convince the rank and file that getting more money for middle-tier guys is a worthy fight to fight.
There is no way MLB would negotiate with MLBPA with regards to any MiLB player, MLB has always let MLBPA know that there position on MiLB is presona no grata. MLBPA has a lot of problems on the MLB side of things that need to be addressed first, specifically getting money to the newest entrants.
My hope is that MLBPA recognizes that free agency shouldn’t be the focus, nothing is wrong with free agency teams have just caught on. I have to assume they will focus on getting things like less team control – I don’t think they will get this – but they may be able to get the owners to agree to things like arbitration starting sooner, no more unilateral contract renewal, some type of restricted free agency in the latter years of team control, ect. If I had to look in my crystal ball I also see a hard cap and soft floor.
My point is that the MLBPA ought to realize that their exploitation of current non-members is actually a primary source of the problems being experienced by current members.
I appreciate the numbers issue and that’s why I added the parenthetical weighting of voting rights. Unless it’s against the law (perhaps it is), you could have something like fractional votes for minor leaguers or voting rights that only vest after 3 years of minor league service or something like that.
I’m with you on the basic dynamics at play. One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of people choosing to burden others to enrich themselves. I’m hoping that the players can realize that the lack of a mandatory revenue share is only part of the dynamic at play.
It’s not just that owners are being cheap. It’s that the MLBPA’s unwillingness to stand up for non-member players created an environment in which their labor is not competitively priced.
To draw a rough analogy, it’s the same as auto-workers demanding massive pension and benefit packages and then crying when their jobs moved overseas. One reaction is to simply demand tariffs to limit access to the cheap labor. Another is to demand that any company who wants to sell cars in America has to pair a fair price for the labor they employ.
You and I are actually on the same page. I think it’s nothing short of a moral imperative that minor leaguers get more fair compensation for their services. AND I think it would bode well for the long term health of the major league union to address that issue.
I just can’t figure pit how you sell something like “Ok, we negotiated for more money for minor leaguers, better travel accomodations, nutrition programs and in exchange we [pick your giveaway – salary cap, more arb eligible years, etc]” to a bunch of guys who stand to lose out in that proposition.
“One reaction is to simply demand tariffs to limit access to the cheap labor. Another is to demand that any company who wants to sell cars in America has to pair a fair price for the labor they employ.”
A fair price of course being whatever price causes the relatively poorer overseas workers to lose their jobs in favor of the high paid domestic workers, and NOT the price willingly agreed to by the parties involved.
It’s also a reason why I, for one, find it difficult to adopt a pro-player stance. For better or worse, the MLBPA holds the interests of amateurs and minor-leagues in trust, yet they have consistently failed to honour that obligation. I’m not sure how others feel, but I wonder if MLBPA actually defended the interests of its non-voting “members” whether it would obtain greater fan support.
Steps that destroy competitive balance will ultimately doom players to winters like this one. Many of the consequences you describe will likely further erode competitive balance in both the short and long term.
If a software company fails to hire comparable people to its rivals, it loses sales, goes bankrupt and both the owner and CEO suffer. If a sports team that plays in a publicly-financed stadium, has a local monopoly and receives a huge share of its revenue from decades-long media contracts fails to hire comparable people to its rivals, it loses some ticket sales and saves some payroll. It may be a little worse off in the short term, but in the big picture it is doing just fine and can get lucky and win every once in a while. These situations are very different.
The players union needs the owners to be competitive with their on-field product since the current system does not compel them to do this. The union has found that squeezing new players ultimately makes them a better value for teams than free agent or 6th-year veterans. Everyone has found that concentrating the best players on the best teams does not lead to on-field competition before October, even if a few players maximize their earnings this way. To achieve competition, apparent “steps back” such as a hard salary cap may cause short-term loss but could ultimately increase both the share of revenue going to players and overall revenue growth, both of which are in the best interest of players.
How would a salary cap increase the share of revenue going to the players? A salary floor maybe.
Because it promotes a level playing field.
Why would any team commit to $X in free agency to try to catch the Dodgers when the Dodgers can be expected to retaliate by spending $3X?
That’s the sort of logic that got the MLBPA in this trouble in the first place. They agreed to a soft salary cap (luxury tax) that is depressing their salaries, but didn’t get any sort of guarantee that the lower spending teams would increase their payrolls to pick up the bottom end.
To expand further:
In the NFL/NHL/NBA capped structure, nearly all teams operate at or near the salary cap. Occasionally you get an outlier rebuilding team that’s way low, but for the most part the players are getting every dollar available to them.
In MLB you’ve got a handful of teams above the luxury tax who are refusing to spend because they are effectively capped out, but something like 2/3 of the league chooses to operate on a budget that is not particularly close to the luxury tax threshold. While it may be true that these other teams might improve their chances of winning by spending more, clearly they don’t believe that they must. That, or they just aren’t that interested in committing to winning.
Sure. This may indicate that the luxury tax threshold is too high to be an effective salary cap. And it might be. But while it’s existence is absolutely limiting the ability of the big spenders to spend, it’s doing precious little to encourage the small spenders to do so either.
Having all teams operating at or near a salary cap is not in and of itself a good thing for a union. That suggests to me the cap is too low.
#Don it might be. But that’s a discussion for some NotBaseballGraphs type place.
And, of course, every other league has CBA discussions about just high the cap should be every time they open it up.
The luxury tax does not prevent “retaliatory” spending. Sometimes a compromise measure (debate between no cap vs. hard cap led to “luxury tax”) is the worst option, as it appears to be in the case of MLBPA.
For those who like poker analogies, when you are debating between raising and folding, it is often true that calling is significantly worse than either, even though it is a middle ground. The world is a nonlinear place.
Yeah, thats why the same 8 teams make the super bowl every year.
I don’t think the players are going to get a floor without agreeing to a hard cap.
Two ways: first, it would have to be negotiated, and the standard concession for a hard cap is a floor.
Second, if you look at for instance the NHL cap, it operates in a way that is very strange to baseball fans and most other people: player salaries only ever really matter in relation to each other. Their dollar value is purely notional. At the end of the year the players’ share of league revenue is calculated and divided by the total salary number, and then players are paid out based on that. So no matter what any team chooses to pay its players, the players as a whole get the same percentage of leaguewide revenue, fixed by the CBA.
Strong public opinion in leagues that calculate salaries in that way has led to the players’ negotiated percentage consistently being in the neighborhood of 50%. As far as I can tell the perceived fairness of that number is completely unsupported by evidence, but there’s no denying it would be a major victory for the MLBPA at this point.
Good luck detangling the books with complex local baseball contracts, closed books and a revenue structure that is local versus national.
The NHL and NBA have those same issues with local TV contracts. For that matter, baseball already has a very similar issue because of the local revenue sharing plan. Those issues can be complicated to work through, but they’re not impossible to figure out.
Well reasoned, but I think perhaps doesn’t take into account that the probabilities of a favorable hearing before any regulatory bodies, or an increasingly conservative Federal Judiciary, have decreased markedly. And this Congress and this President certainly aren’t going to rush in to help labor. That’s not intended as criticism, but rather an expression of reality.
Another way forward would be to fire Tony Clark and hire someone who is actually qualified for the position.
Nathaniel- would the individual uniform players’ contracts survive a decertification action? I know that the UPC’s are incorporated by reference into the CBA, but if the CBA expires, do the individual players still have contractual rights under their own UPC?
And if so, and if the owners lock them out, are they still entitled to collect their salaries, since they are willing to uphold their end of the contract?
Anyway, remember when the owners wanted a salary cap with a guaranteed percentage of baseball related revenues going toward players’ salaries and benefits? The players would love that deal today.
Great question. The NBA owners made the argument that the decertification of the players union effectively terminated all individual player contracts, but the matter was resolved so quickly the courts never rules on it. My guess is that the NBA’s argument would not have prevailed, but it’s not settled either way.
Didn’t NFL players argue the flip side? That the owners had to pay them during the lockout, but that didn’t fly with the 8th circuit?
When millionaires fight against billionaires we all lose.
If I’m the MLBPA here are the platforms I’m fighting for (because they matter AND it’s a much easier road from a PR perspective):
— Fix minor league player compensation
— Raise league minimum wage
— Reduce team control from 6 years to 5 years (and remove all incentives for teams to manipulate service time)
— Introduce a floor that is tied to revenue
The first 3 are all tied to improving the situation of the “lower class” of players. I’m guessing that the general public would generally side with players on that. Then you make the pitch that owners continue to receive a larger portion of the pie while they suppress payrolls. Tickets, parking, concessions all go up while the quality of the product on the field goes down. You’d have a lot of sympathetic fans in many markets.
The players lose when they start pitching that Bryce Harper may not get his $500M contract due to owners not wanting to spend. As much as I like Harper, the average fan isn’t going to shed a tear for the guy if he doesn’t land a half a billion contract (even if he deserves it).
Good luck on reducing team control. That is a major, major concession for the owners.
The other three will be much easier for the owners to swallow, since the first two are changing numbers, and the last one is something that MLB has a tacit agreement with the MLBPA on anyway (and is officially implemented in revenue sharing already).
Let’s say that the average team has 12 players earning near the minimum salary, plus 8 players in their arbitration years, plus 5 who are in their free agent years. Of course this will vary by team. 15 more players are optioned to the minors.
The point is that most of the union members, by far, are on the lower end of the scale and stand to immediately benefit from increasing the minor league pay for those on a 40 man roster (which IS covered by the CBA), or the MLB minimum wage. And increase in the minimum salary of 50 K would cost each club about 600K for 12 players. An increase of 20K for AAA players who are rostered would cost 300 K per team.
They would also benefit from advancing the super 2 date for arbitration from about 2 years, 120 days to 2.5 years or something. That’s a more expensive bump.
Now, advancing free agency might not be as big as it seems. Several players in their final year of arby make as much as they’d get in free agency, except they get a one year deal. This would be a big deal to teams.
The problem for players at the top of the scale are
1. the tax threshold has not nearly kept pace with MLB revenues, so more teams are pushed to the limit or over it, and
2. the penalties in the form of lost draft picks, lost bonus slot money and international pool money
These factors have caused at least the Yankees, Dodgers, and Tigers to get under the cap to reset the penalties. That has a chilling effect on the whole market this winter.
Increase the tax threshold
Eliminate all payment of compensation for signing free agents (which the owners offered in exchange for an international draft)
Increase minimum salary
Take care of minor league players not on rosters (they took care of non members for the international draft)
Push back the super 2 threshold
I’m with ya. I also think the PA and the rank and file needed this wake up call. I think things have been headed this direction for a while now.
As to the current “crisis,” this is what the players bargained for… to be able to get to the free market. Most of the time it has worked out very nicely for the players. Now that they are running into difficult market conditions, it feels kinda weird that they are crying foul. This is in part data-driven which in the big picture has shown that money spent on players over 30 is buying diminishing returns at top dollar. I don’t think that’s really a revelation to most people who have followed the game for the past 20 yrs but now that most people who occupy the GM seats fully buy into this, we are seeing it play out.
So the players are going to have to ‘accept’ this market correction (tho it may be a shock to their systems) until the next cba comes up for negotiation. At that point, they’re going to have to fight for reducing control years while at the same time fight for some mandated minimum Arb salaries as well as higher rookie level pay. That’s where the teams are making out like bandits. The players were heretofore willing to give up early career earnings because they thought post-control years $ would be there for them. If it isn’t, they’re going to have to firm up their stance on the early career giveaways.
“remove all incentives for teams to manipulate service time”
That doesn’t happen unless there’s something that changes the whole notion of eligibility for free agency and arbitration from “major league service time” to something such as “years since drafted” or “age”. While that’s theoretically possible, either would be a huge change and could have some unintended consequences on the relative desirability of high school draftees, college draftees, and amateur IFA’s. There’s simply also going to be some motivation for teams to manipulate service time right around the cut-off for free agency.
Ideas like restricted free agency or greater eligibility for arbitration don’t really address the underlying issue, because then there’s simply manipulation around those new cut-off lines. We already see some manipulation around the Super Two cutoff date.
I’ve come around to the view that we could at least get rid of some the worst manipulation – the Kris Bryant-style call-ups 15 or 20 days into the season – by changing to a 5.5 year cut-off rather than 6 full years. Within the broad current framework, it would be an incremental move that gets rid of teams having almost seven years of team control of prized prospects, and a half-year cutoff should still be enough over a full year that teams would still do September call-ups and injury call-ups.
I disagree – the players have all kinds of leverage right now, should they choose to use it. They could ‘wildcat’ strike/slowdown for every game, right now. CF walks to his position from the dugout at the end of every commercial break. Batter gets a new bat from the dugout and wipes it down with pine tar after every pitch. One or two superstars on each team suddenly develops a fear of flying leading to travel chaos.
They just need to unify around a set immediate goals…
They could do that, sure, but they would lose public support very quickly.
I’m sorry, but this needs a reality check.
This is a business, and one in which both the players and owners are making boatloads of money. I’m all for players getting what they can, but I’m also keeping in mind that the owners have a huge financial investment in their teams. And I’m not going to cry if someone who thought he was worth $20 million a year has to settle for $10 or $12 million. That’s a lot more than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.
Maybe instead of crying collusion, we ought to recognize that a the industry that supports a site like Fangraphs has finally made its way into the offices of major league teams? I’m seeing high priced players being cut in my fantasy league because no one wants to carry the salary at the expense of the rest of the team. I think we’re seeing the same thing in professional baseball. Maybe we ought to recognize that, remembering that there are a lot of stat heads who were oh so critical of clueless GM’s because they didn’t know how to evaluate player talent the way “we” do.
I’m guessing your league has a salary cap and that your fantasy team’s revenue isn’t increasing every year.
My point is that players are evaluated differently than they used to be and that owners – especially small market teams that do have budgets – are going not going to pay Mike Stanton money and fill the rest of their rosters with scrubs, Obviously this isn’t fantasy baseball. But I see some – some – parallels in the way teams approach building a winner. Some players are simply unaffordable to many teams.
“Some players are simply unaffordable to many teams.”
Citation needed
Do you honestly think that every team in major league baseball can afford to give Bryce Harper $500 million over the next ten years and still adequately compensate the rest of their players?
“Once the union is disbanded, however, then the players could pursue potential antitrust remedies against the owners.”
Is this really a sure bet? I thought when the Eighth Circuit passed on the issue in the context of the NFL, it was only Judge Bye in dissent who agreed that de-certification definitely marked the end point of the non-statutory exemption. In fact, the majority opinion from their 2013 decision expressly said that they didn’t reach the decertification issue. And as for challenging a lockout by the owners, wouldn’t the players still have to contend with the Norris-LaGuardia Act?
Yes, I am sure that another fan soul murdering strike or lockout is exactly what baseball needs. I’m sure that will get salaries up in no time. And it will work great wonders when fans can not only say that the striking players are overpaid bums but actually have spreadsheets that prove the point.
(Yes, I do realize that this fine article is suggesting something that is not quite a strike, and a lockout and a strike are different things, but to most fans there is a nary a difference. I would not see a meaningful difference.)
Why do you say the spreadsheets suggest players are overpaid bums? This isn’t true esp for pre-FA players.
One can just as easily say the lockout/strike is caused by exploitative owners
I’m not sure it really makes sense to think of professional sports unions as if they were regular unions anymore. A group of employees who make between $400k and $30m annually but who have no real market skills outside of their current employers just has way too much disincentive to take on any risk. Which is probably why we’ve seen the CBAs we’ve gotten in the last few rounds.
I doubt very much that trend is going to change. Complaining about it in the media and making it seem like they might do something is a good tactic, but it’s almost certainly a bluff. These guys know that their skills only play in one place.
This is trivia, not legal advice. This associate’s memo needs to go back in the file.
One day players will come around to the idea of cutting the owners out and setting up their own league with the help of outside investors.
Initially you could have 30 teams playing in as few as 5 parks across the country. Main source of revenue would be streaming games (replacing RSN’s) , national deals advertising, sponsorships and merchandise sales. Attendance revenue is not as important as it once was. 2-3 games could be played the same day at one park. Viewers with subscriptions can stream games at at any time
They could change the current system and draft players in the minors and paying the minor league team for the player they draft. They can expand rosters to 40 and all development from drafted players would come with the team. Perhaps they simply have all raw draftees from all teams play in a winter arizona league to speed development
Stuff like ownership shares for key players in lieu of high salaries, limits on guaranteed contract length in return for FA for all, etc. playerd would be educated that they pay less tax on capital gains than in salary income.
MLB owners can try to compete by bringing Bonds, Clemens and Arod out of retirement and playing 16 yo kids from the DR, and maybe letting Hal and JWH manage to save money. They can have fans umpire in lieu of paying for the ticket. Franchise valuations might lose 1000% + of their current value but they can still be profitable
The MLBPA really needs to think long and hard about how to navigate the various issues regarding the 2021 CBA: What they want, what they will concede, and the ramifications for their actions, both the short-term and long-term.
I often bring this point up when discussions revolve around ratings: we are living in the golden era of television today with many different ways to consume entertainment. Whether that is through traditional television, cable television, premium channels, streaming services, video games, or even web-sites such as YouTube.
The MLBPA currently have the excitement of a young generation of incredible players to market, a string of post-seasons that were amazing viewing experiences, and growing interest in the game. A potential shut-down, with so many more potential avenues for entertainment that did not exist in 1998 or even 2011 could have damaging effects on interest, thereby altering the total revenue percentage for which they are fighting.
Honestly, no one will likely remember this offseason when the CBA is up for renewal, because the big-spending teams will have reset their luxury tax burdens and have signed Harper, Machado and other players to record-setting FA deals. No one will remember Hosmer and JD Martinez, just like people forgot that the same issues affected the final contracts Encarnacion and Cespedes signed.
Mike Trout made $482,500 in 2012. He won the ROY Award and finished second in MVP voting. The Angels rewarded him with a $510,000 salary the following year – a gracious $20,000 over the league minimum.
In 2013, Trout finished second in the MVP voting (again). The Angels renewed his contract for 2014; Trout was given a cool million.
…Instead of fighting for an extra day off every other month, or access to a pre-game lunch spread, the MLBPA (and head Tony Clark) need to fight for the players who are criminally undervalued in the early parts of their career.
To me, that means having arbitration every year (which would, in effect, prevent some teams from holding back players in the early part of the season so as to prevent them from reaching ‘Super Two’ status). To me, it also means players should be able to hit free agency a year earlier – so they’re not on the tail end of their prime years by the time they go on the open market. To me, it means eliminating qualifying offers and the penalties associated with signing the top players. To me, it means eliminating the escalating penalties for blowing past the luxury tax baseline. To me, it means having an escrow system set up to ensure that players receive at least 50% of baseball related income – and every player gets an equal share based on service time that year if the BRI falls below that threshold.