Last week, MLB presented documents to the player’s union regarding the financial implications of playing the 2020 season without fans. In an exclusive report, the Associated Press has revealed a considerable amount of the contents of those disclosures. The main takeaways are in the title — “MLB projects $640K per game loss with no fans” — and the third paragraph, which reads:

Teams say the proposed method of salvaging a season delayed by the coronavirus pandemic would still cause a $4 billion loss and would give major league players 89% of revenue.

That $4 billion figure was echoed by Commissioner Rob Manfred on CNN on Friday, except that he indicated in that interview those would be the losses if no season is played. Given that these documents are an attempt to convince the MLPBA to take less money and to put public opinion on the side of the owners against the players, it is fair to take these figures with a bit of a grain of salt. Let’s try to work through the numbers and answer some of the questions raised by the information in the presentation as reported in the AP piece.

First, the big question.

Are the owners going to lose $4 billion?

No. At least, they won’t if games are played. There’s a graph in the AP piece that shows team-by-team losses from an 82-game schedule played with no fans in the stands. The losses range from $312 million for the Yankees down to $84 million for the Tigers. The total losses come to around $4.4 billion, an average of $147 million per team and a median of $135 million. But this figure is misleading as it does not include MLB’s estimate of central revenues, which amount to $1.35 billion. Even taking MLB at its word, the losses immediately move down to $3 billion.

And depending on how revenues and costs are interpreted, the losses might be considerably lighter. First, there’s the issue of amateur spending. In the March agreement, the players agreed to let the owners defer about $425 million in spending to future years, but that $425 million is still included in the loss figure for this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed the significant disadvantage NL teams will have if the universal designated hitter is adopted for this season and NL teams were then forced to compete with AL teams for playoff spots. I did the best I could to estimated which players might be the greatest beneficiaries of playing time and then looked at how their teams might be impacted. One team jumped out in a negative way — the Mets finished dead last, receiving no benefit at all from Dominic Smith’s increased playing time at designated hitter. I did note that putting Yoenis Céspedes at the designated hitter spot would put the Mets in the middle of the pack in the NL, though that’s still hardly what one might consider a good situation. Still, it’s probably worth a deeper look.

Before we start moving playing time around to potentially maximize designated hitter production for the Mets, let’s take a look at the team’s projections. Below is every player projected to take at least 100 plate appearances in the field (over a full season), how those players project in their expected playing time, and their projections based on 600 plate appearances. Note that the fielding column is at their position and a positional adjustment has not been applied; only their time in the field is accounted for:

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In what is now the fourth time readers have answered questions regarding their expectations for the season, respondents have bounced back and forth a bit on the central question of whether there will be baseball this year. I’d like to thank our readers for their continued participation, as we again received over 1,000 responses to nearly every question. As for the return of baseball this year, readers were very optimistic this round.

Coming in at nearly 72% of responses, last week elicited the highest percentage of “Yes” votes so far, after a huge drop-off in confidence in the results from a couple weeks ago:

With that optimism comes an increase in those expecting roughly half a season of games, though nearly everyone who expects baseball has given up hope of more than 100 games:

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While many have moved on to a potential renegotiated deal between the players and owners to get the season underway, MLB’s decision to stage a five-round amateur draft shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. On Friday, Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel broke the news that this year’s June draft will last just five rounds. The news wasn’t a total surprise given that when the players and owners negotiated back in March, the sides agreed that the draft would be at least five rounds, but would be considerably shortened. However, given the relatively low present and future cost of having even five more rounds, it’s something of a surprise that the owners refused to put down the half a million dollars per team in 2020, with a quarter million dollars more in bonuses payable in 2021 and 2022.

The agreement in March specified that the draft would stick to 2019 slot amounts, saving owners a little over $8 million from what was in the CBA. In addition, teams would have to pay just $100,000 of player’s bonuses now, with the rest of the payments split between 2021 and 2022. In 2020, that means owners will spend around $15 million in signing bonuses, a $300 million reduction from a year ago. Coupled with the delayed international signing date, the owners are seeing $400 million in 2020 savings, with roughly $80 million of those savings permanent. Last year, teams spent $50 million more than their allotted amount on bonuses for players after the 10th round, which won’t happen this year. There’s also $30 million allotted for rounds six through 10, which also won’t happen this year. According to Passan, that decision didn’t sit well with front offices:

There remains a significant divide within the team side on the draft. A majority of front offices were pushing for a longer draft, recognizing the value reaped even in later rounds can be immense. Pushback to keep the draft as short as possible from some owners was strong.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 8, 2020

Given the $100,000 limit on bonuses to be paid this year, owners opted not to spend half a million per team right now and $1 million spread over the next three years to prevent 150 talented amateurs from turning pro. Teams can sign players after the draft, but undrafted free agents are limited to $20,000 bonuses. The types of players drafted before the 10th round are not the types who agree to $20,000 bonuses unless teams are shifting around money to give other players larger bonuses. The players who would have received decent bonuses in these rounds are now going to stay in school for another year or in the case of high school players, go to college or junior college in the hopes of being drafted in future years. There’s an argument to be made that all of these players will eventually get drafted, so it doesn’t make much of a difference for teams. That argument is not strong. Read the rest of this entry »

Six months ago, few people likely loved the status quo more than MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the group of owners who employ him. Having just completed the third year of a five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players, baseball revenues continued to soar, with estimated profits during those years totaling $3.57 billion even before accounting for the $2 billion windfall from the BAMTech sale to Disney. Players saw their share of revenues shrink over those three years due to stagnant payrolls, and hoped for an opportunity to negotiate a better deal after the 2021 season. After years of huge profits under the current CBA, MLB owners are faced with the threat of potential losses, and according to reports from Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal, and Joel Sherman, the owners appear set to ask the players to subsidize those losses.

According to Rosenthal’s report, MLB wants to introduce revenue sharing for 2020 only:

Because games, at least initially, will be played without fans, the players would be asked to accept a further reduction in pay, most likely by agreeing to a set percentage of revenues for this season only.

The idea behind such a plan, from the league’s perspective, would be to protect the players and owners against the economic uncertainty created by the virus.

The players agreed in March to prorate their salaries in a shortened season. Those salaries cover the regular season only, while postseason shares are based upon gate receipts. If the players agreed to a set percentage of revenue, they also would share any additional national TV money generated during the postseason.

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Last week, I noted how in roughly eight seasons, Mike Trout had already put up one of the best 10-year WAR figures in baseball history. Trout’s remarkable run requires more superlatives than my brain can muster, so let’s just agree that Mike Trout is really, really good. WAR combines the offensive and defensive components of the game, but it should not be shocking that Trout’s offensive numbers alone are fantastic. His career batting line of .305/.419/.581 has produced a 172 wRC+ and over his eight-plus seasons in the majors, Trout has been 511 runs better on offense than the average player. While Trout’s 70-plus WAR thus far puts him in rare company over a 10-year period, putting up more than 500 runs above average is even rarer.

Dating back to the start of 1900 season, 22 players have put up 128 10-year periods that resulted in a WAR at the end of that stretch of 70 or greater. During that same time period, only 16 players have combined to make 99 10-year periods over which the player was at least 500 runs above average on offense. In the last 50 years, only Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, and Frank Thomas have reached that mark. With two more solid seasons from Trout, only Bonds will have put up a better offensive decade than the one the Angels center fielder will finish in 2021. With even modest production, Trout is likely to be the major league leader in offensive runs above average for another half-dozen years on top of the two years he’s already produced.

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Since late March, we’ve been asking readers for their perspective on whether there will be a 2020 season and what it might look like if there is. Every two weeks, we list the same questions and publish the results the following week. This will be the fourth round of questions. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many proposals floating around concerning when and how the major league season will begin. Several such plans include divisional alignments that go beyond the standard American and National Leagues that have been present for more than a century. The main point of difference still in play between the leagues is the presence of the designated hitter in the American League and the absence of the same in the National League. I think most fans would be in favor of tweaks to the division rules if those changes prove necessary for baseball to return this summer. While sticking to the interleague rule where the home ballpark dictates whether the designated hitter is in use might be feasible, given that the standard divisions don’t exist, going to a universal designated hitter might be an easier solution. It also might be slightly safer, helping to prevent pitcher injuries in a shortened season. But should a universal DH be adopted, NL teams will be at a significant disadvantage at the plate this season.

Our Depth Charts currently project National league teams for 291.5 WAR on the position player side, while the American League comes in at 314.3 WAR, a difference of 22.8 WAR. The main source of that difference is the designated hitter, where AL teams are projected for 27.1 WAR and 700 PA per team while NL teams are projected for 8.8 WAR and 300 PA per team. While those 300 PA are deemed part of the designated hitter category, in reality, it is mostly pinch hitting opportunities, which come without the positional adjustment associated with the designated hitter. With the positional adjustment, the NL WAR would actually be below replacement level. Of course, if NL teams were actually using the designated hitter, they would apportion playing time differently and also receive the same 700 plate appearances as the American League (for the purposes of this exercise and to ease understanding, we’ll just go with a normal 162-game season). Read the rest of this entry »