Players Ask Owners How Much Baseball They Want
Last Tuesday, the Major League Baseball Players Association offered a quick response to an owner proposal to resume the 2020 season that was fundamentally no better than MLB’s first offer. The players reduced the number of games they proposed to play from 114 to 89, offered expanded playoffs for the next two seasons, and made concessions on service time for players who opt out of the season. The offer looked like a step toward compromise. On Friday, MLB responded with an offer similar to its previous two offers. In response, the players have opted to stop negotiating against themselves, and have asked Rob Manfred to set the schedule and decide how many games the owners want to have this season.
The new offer was staged differently than owners’ the previous attempt, but the foundation of it presented the same reductions the owners have been attempting to pass on to the players since it became clear the season can’t be played with fans in attendance. MLB proposed a 72-game season with 70% pro-rated pay, amounting to $1.268 billion in game salaries. If the postseason, which was to be expanded, were completed, the players would receive another 10% of their pro-rated pay — around $181 million plus a $50 million bonus pool — essentially maxing out at $1.5 billion. Let’s compare the three offers made by MLB to the likely a 54-game season with full pro-rated pay as stipulated by the March agreement:
| Playoff Scenario | Sliding-Scale Salary Cut (82 G) | 50%/75% Pro-rated (76 G) | 70%/80% Pro-Rated (72 G) | 54-G Pro-Rated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Playoffs | $1.03 B | $0.99 B | $1.27 B | $1.36 B |
| With Playoffs | $1.23 B | $1.44 B | $1.50 B | $1.36 B |
The first offer didn’t pay as much as 54 games even with a potential playoff bonus. The second offer’s guarantee was less than the first’s, and the total possible payout was just $80 million more and heavily contingent on completing the postseason. The latest offer by MLB still guarantees players less than a 54-game season would (it’s about $60 million higher than a 48-game season with pro-rated salaries), with the potential to go a total of $140 million higher if the postseason is played. Let’s be optimistic, and say there’s a 85% chance that the 2020 playoffs are completed. That means that the $230 million in potential playoff pay in the owners’ last offer is worth more like $196 million, while the total value of the 72-game season is about $100 million more than what the players would receive in a 54-game season.
In exchange for that $100 million above the owners’ threatened plan, MLB wants:
- Expanded playoffs, which come with television rights that might far exceed $100 million
- 18 regular season games, which would have paid $453 million to players under the March agreement for pro-rated pay
- The elimination of a potential-billion dollar grievance from the players over violating the March agreement’s provisions about attempting to play as many games as possible.
The owners asked the players to lop off half a billion dollars in pay and only offered a portion of the television revenues MLB won’t even receive in the first place without the players giving them expanded playoffs. While some might complain that the players took a hard-line stance and refused to budge, the owners have not made a remotely compelling offer in the course of these negotiations. Let’s turn bullet points above around, and assess a hypothetical 82-game season with pro-rated pay that would pay the players $2.06 billion, or $700 million more than a pro-rated 54-game season.
In exchange for $700 million more in pay than the owners’ threatened 54-game season, the players could have potentially offered:
- Expanded playoffs for 2020 and 2021 worth hundreds of million of dollars in TV rights. Per the AP’s report on MLB’s presentation to the players, postseason games currently average $30 million per guaranteed game; even getting half that would mean $420 million over two seasons.
- Twenty-eight games of local revenue amounting to $412 million in television money plus another $23 million in revenue above the cost of putting on a game. (Again, these numbers come directly from MLB’s presentation to the players, without accounting for national television revenue or shares of local RSNs).
- Increased regular season content to satisfy national television contracts with ESPN, FOX, and TBS, and the revenue that accompanies those games (if pro-rated, that amounts to around $200 million for 28 games).
- Eliminating the potential for a billion-dollar grievance for delayed negotiations and failure to try to play as many games as possible.
We can move around the numbers a little to account for a 48-game schedule, but the owners offered only player concessions while the players offered value in exchange for their services. If we want to have a discussion about bargaining in good faith or economic feasibility (this is certainly not the space for the entirety of that discussion), MLB offered far less in value than they wish to receive, while the players offered considerably more in the way of economic benefits to the owners than they were asking for. There’s more to an economic offer than just pay cuts. The players offered value while the owners fiddled around with the same numbers over and over again. After publicly indicating it was necessary to renegotiate the March deal, it took MLB 41 days to make its first economic offer to the MLBPA. The players responded in five days; the owners then took eight more to mull things over. After that second MLB offer, the players responded in a day; they waited three days for a response.
The owners seem to be worried about a potential second wave of COVID-19 preventing the playoffs and the money that comes with it, but they aren’t offering compelling financial incentives for the players to finish the season if there are safety concerns come October. An 82-game season starting at the beginning of July seemed like it could meet the owners’ goals of ending the season more or less when it would have under normal conditions. They offered such a timeline just three weeks ago; they offered a 76-game season a week ago! By not meeting the players’ demand to honor the pro-rated pay agreed to in March, they might have lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of player concessions. Let’s take a look at how much the owners claim they will lose playing games per team in local revenue, without factoring in national TV money or shares in RSNs, by season length:
| Number of Games | Local Loss Per Team | Change from 48 Games |
|---|---|---|
| 48 | $15.4 M | 0 |
| 54 | $17.3 M | $2.1 M |
| 72 | $23.0 M | $7.6 M |
| 82 | $26.2 M | $10.8 M |
For just under $11 million per team (or just under $9 million per team if the season is 54 games), baseball could’ve had an 82-game season with expanded playoffs. Those 30 or so games probably represent somewhere between 2% and 5% of most players’ lifetime earnings. For the owners, it’s an extra hit of about three percent of revenue in just one normal year, and only one half of one percent of a franchise’s value.
The owners made a demand. The players offered compromise. What followed were similar demands from ownership despite more attempts at compromise from the players. There were certainly two parties in this negotiation, but only one was willing to make meaningful concessions. Any other view ignores the events of the last four months. The players were left to ask the owners when and where they should report to resume play. MLB might have one shot left to make a reasonable offer, as the potential schedule has been reduced by delays from ownership. Soon, we’ll know just how much baseball team owners want to play this season. Their answer might determine how much the game’s fans want to watch in the future.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
There were certainly two parties in this negotiation, but only one was willing to make meaningful concessions. Any other view ignores the events of the last four months.
How arrogant. Just absolute, unabashed arrogance. Do you realize the echo chamber you’re writing from? Do you understand how many people disagree with you? Do you understand the lack of objectivity that goes into writing a piece like this?
Here’s your Alexa site traffic data. I hope for your own sake that someone at Fangraphs is at least considering how much damage you’re doing to be this arrogant, and one-sided, and blind to reality around you.
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fangraphs.com
And I’d wager greatly that the decline in site traffic here isn’t even dispersed between those who agree and disagree with your position. You’ve chased away a larger amount of people on one side of that argument, and reinforced your own echo chamber.
Let me also be clear – the reason it’s so frustrating is because all of you are BRILLIANT baseball minds. I love your analysis of my favorite sport. But for some people (many?), you’ve squandered or eliminated that goodwill by being as obstinate towards the owners position as you claim they are being in the labor discussion. I trust the irony isn’t lost on anyone.
I’m curious as to what your perspective is on how the owners have made constructive proposals to the players (not trying to attack your comment, just curious for your perspective). From my perspective, it sure feels like the owners are behaving similarly to a fantasy sports (or business) trading partner who consistently counters your offer with responses that don’t address your points (i.e. they really just keep making the same offer, but in different forms). That’s frustrating in any context, but especially when you feel like you’re being reasonable. That said, I’d welcome a different view of things.
I don’t think the owners offers have been great.
I do think the owners offers were an entreaty to start a negotiation. The Union never came to the table. That’s my whole point. This is not 100% on the owners, no matter how much Fangraphs tries to push that narrative. Someone wants to make it 50/50, fine. 60/40 one way or the other, eh, that’s a matter of opinion, whatever.
But this statement:
The owners made a demand. The players offered compromise. What followed were similar demands from ownership despite more attempts at compromise from the players. There were certainly two parties in this negotiation, but only one was willing to make meaningful concessions. Any other view ignores the events of the last four months.
I mean, shoot. What real “compromise” did the players offer? One side moved 25% on their financial offer. The other side moved zero point zero, and said they didn’t even think there was any merit to the discussion. And the Union is the one who compromised?
How did they compromise? By offering a 40% longer season to an ownership group that claims it will lose money on a per-game basis, which requires stretching the season into November, when ownership has said that medical advice is against it and the TV revenue would change because the national TV partners have rights to October baseball based on their own schedules? That was less of a slap in the face than the owners’ offer?
By the way – for all the commentary of how greedy the owners are (and they are “greedy” in an overall sense, for sure, but I’m talking about RIGHT NOW) – if the MLBPA’s position is correct, then the March 27 agreement is the single most magnanimous agreement that sports owners have ever signed in a labor negotiation. To read it the MLBPA’s way, the doc says “We’ll pay you prorated salaries no matter what, and we can negotiate other conditions if there aren’t fans in the stands, but under no condition are we required to discuss salaries because that piece of the discussion is conclusively settled at pro rata no matter what you show us. I’m sure that is what the MLBPA wants it to say. But it’s not what it says. And to read it that way means the owners willingly gave the players a salary advance of $170M and guaranteed them pro rata no matter what, for absolutely nothing in return. You really think that’s what the owners signed? Does that pass the smell test?
(As noted several times, the written agreement is a horribly written document, at least in terms of the excerpts posted, and anyone involved in the drafting of that agreement from either side of the table should never be allowed to work in contracts again.)
The owners signed a conditional offer. “Of course we agree to pay pro rata salaries if fans are in the stands. But anything else requires a negotiation.” The Union disagrees and says that no negotiation is required. And they’re the party offering compromise? No, they regret what they signed in March, they welched on it, and they pivoted in April to negotiating the post-2021 CBA now, in the midst of a pandemic, instead of trying to negotiate today’s deal today.
Thanks for staying on the site and writing such a strong rebuttal.
The end result was predictable: MLB signaled that they only had $1.45B to offer and it’s natural MLBPA took the minimum number of games. Craig is an MLBPA activist so he followed MLBPA’s talking points to color this obvious result as something nefarious. There’s still an open question about whether we’ll have extended playoffs this year, isn’t there? This doesn’t interest Craig as much as writing a manifesto.
Funny, I thought fans and writers were mostly against expanded playoffs back in February, since we didn’t want a diluted regular season like the NBA & NHL. Now that the MLBPA is using them as a bargaining chip, Fangraphs writers and readers are for them. Whatever serves the union, numbers and previous preferences be damned.
Yeah, I do think it’s shocking how much people have blindly adopted the idea of expanded playoffs as good for the sport long-term. It’s not. What’s the point of a 162-game season in normal times if 14 teams make the playoffs?
I also think it’s a bit of logical fallacy to count expanded playoff revenue as a windfall for the owners when their primary concern about losses is the loss of postseason revenue overall. I mean, none of us know what the owners income or losses will actually be, and my thumbnail math suggests large losses without playoffs and small losses to breakeven to small income with playoffs… but all along, this whole attempt at a negotiation has been about two things: salary costs, and the potential that the playoff revenue doesn’t happen at all. Because the playoff revenue is relatively binary. So the additional revenue helps the owners in one setting, but it doesn’t help one bit in the max-downside-risk setting they are most worried about.
So you’re saying you never watch NBA, NFL, nor NHL playoffs ever? Because a larger proportion of teams from those leagues make the playoffs every single year
I despise both the NBA and NHL for this very reason. Why even bother with a regular season when over half of the teams go to a play-offs. I also loathe the NFL’s recent decision to expand the play-off field to 14 teams. Everyone will have their own opinions on the matter, but I think the ideal play-off field is 1/3 of the league’s teams. As the MLB was sending 10 of its 30 teams to the playoffs, they were right in the sweet spot. Further expansion of the post-season will damage the on field product.
I suspect the owners have concluded that it is better in a business sense for them to not sponser baseball until spring. Too many complications, seen and unforseen. Perhaps they see getting a leg up on the players as well. But I think it will go badly for them if baseball is not played. As for the players, like any large group they don’t know what to think except what they are being told. Any union that leaves Tony Clark in charge can’t have the sense to know where to turn for solid opinions. Tony is a swell guy, but really?
Players research too. Owners can’t stand the fact that sites like FG and BP exist now and level the playing field opening the curtains behind the owners nefarious motives.
“No, they regret what they signed in March, they welched on it”
But the MLBPA isn’t the party asking to re-open the topic of pay, it’s the owners who are. What part am I missing? (sincere question).
My read on this is that it’s the *owners* who aren’t happy about their agreement on pay: it requires two-party consent to open pay in collective bargaining (which I learned on Effectively Wild), there is an agreement on this (both the existing contract and the March amendment), and the players’ position is that it’s a done deal, it’s the *owners* who are trying to re-open the agreement.
It’s actually a little worse: the owners say the March agreement’s pro-rated pay item is void without fans; but, they also say the players are bound by the terms of the March agreement the owners like.
How anybody can hear owners-who claim to be broke while sitting on $1B franchises, and who refuse to publicly disclose their finances-say the players are shady, is beyond me. People here to rep for owners must really hate the idea that baseball is fan-driven entertainment. I guess now we know who keeps voting to give billions away to owners for their stadiums, while cities starve.
I guess now we know who keeps voting to give billions away to owners for their stadiums, while cities starve.
Not me. I’ve consistently argued against not only public financing of stadiums, but – more broadly – public incentive for business expansion and/or relocation. State and local governments are horribly inefficient and ineffective with the dispersal of tax incentives, grants, or/or financing for private projects.
Now, I don’t fault baseball owners for participating in that economic-benefit regime that exists. But I have consistently argued against that system, both in the Fangraphs comment section, but more importantly in real life.
The owners are indeed the ones asking to re-open the topic of pay. Modifying pay does indeed require two-party consent.
The Agreement says that MLB and the Union “will discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators.” Not “what should salaries be” but whether to play at all. The Agreement also says that “the parties will meet regularly to bargain over application of, and any appropriate modification.”
I believe what I’ve said thus far is pure fact and not opinion.
The March agreement is poorly written, ambiguous, leaves way too much open to interpretation, and may go down in history as an example of how NOT to make progress. (Personally, I believe the March agreement was ultimately counter-productive to this process, and both sides would have been better in the long run if there weren’t a March agreement, but that’s irrelevant now.)
Both sides have a point. The Owners read the March agreement to say that no fans in stands means we bargain again, and bargain means negotiate pay. The Union has said that salary reduction of any kind is a nonstarter, seemingly meaning that “bargain modifications” is limited to things like service time, the playoffs, etc. but not, under any circumstances, compensation.
Which, to me, is nonsensical.
But the owners aren’t asking the Union to reopen the CBA on pay, They’re asking the Union to honor the terms of the March 27 agreement and come back to the table to discuss “modifications,” while the Union has said “we’ll talk all kinds of modifications, just not salary.”
And Andrew Zimbalist’s take, from Forbes, with direct quotes of portions of the Agreement, can be found via google (but FG is moderating an attempt to post the link)
Also, here’s a different FG blog that Craig wrote on April 22 that is much more even-handed in acnowledging the two parties’ different interpretations:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-fans-no-deal-between-players-and-owners/
The March amendment specifically says these negotiations would be opened if fans aren’t in the stands. The players have not tried to negotiate in good faith yet so that deal is pretty much null and void.
The CBA itself says players won’t get paid for games they don’t play during an emergency. So the prorated salary part is just restating the CBA.
You seem completely confused about what piece of the negotiations you are upset about. Is it the March agreement? You’ve said you stan the owners. I get that, loud and clear. But what’s your argument against the players? That they took a small salary advance? That they keep offering to play more baseball? That more baseball potentially makes more money for owners? I can’t tell if you just hate the players or if you don’t understand what’s happened over the passage of time.
I don’t think you know what the word “hate” means.
I think the players have a great case based on the long-term track record of success in baseball to make tremendous financial gains in the next CBA negotiations, if COVID is in the rearview mirror and the world is back to normal. If not, I think they have that case as soon as things ultimately are.
I think the MLBPA – their Union – used this pandemic as an attempt to start that negotiation. I think the Union signed a deal in March that Scott Boras puked all over after the ink was dry, and the Union has been backtracking since that day. I think the excerpts of the March agreement that have been posted are so poorly worded as to make the document really open to interpretation, which sucks for everyone. I think both sides have equal culpability in that poor document. But I also think the owners have offered contemperaneous evidence of their intent, and MLBPA has not.
I think that people who expect the owners to open their books have unrealistic expectations because the Union has made this about the post-2021 CBA rather than the current season.
So, no, I don’t hate the players. Don’t even dislike em. Kinda love a lot of them as athletes, and hope they get rewarded financially in the future.
None of that changes the fact that I think their Union has behaved poorly, and that I think it is entirely disingenuous to lay 100% of this on the owners.
And that I think it is incredibly arrogant for someone who feels otherwise to call that opinion invalid.
Except the March agreement doesn’t say there would be renegotiations, its a false argument. If it really said that, owners would have leaked the language right away.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-06-10/why-mlb-players-will-prevail-on-getting-full-prorated-salary
@aklang Scroll down a little bit.
The “Resumption of Play” section of the agreement sets three criteria: no restrictions against fans attending games
That one ^ is a clear miss
And scroll a bit further you get…
Nonetheless, “discuss in good faith the economic feasibility” is not the same as “discuss the amount by which salaries shall be reduced.”
Are you a child? Yes, “economic feasibility” is not EQUIVALENT TO a “salary discussion”. Amazing observation. Player salaries, however, have so much to do with the economic feasibility of conducting a baseball season that a negotiation without player salaries on the table makes no sense at all. Sure, there are plenty of other cost considerations, but like many (most?) industries, labor is the primary cost.
And the March agreement very clearly states the need to renegotiate pay if the outlook of the pandemic changes. Go read it again.
@demiurge i’m quoting from the latimes, I believe the writer there is an adult. Where did you get a copy of the March agreement?
It’s baffling to me that the LA Times article would quote as much of the Agreement as they do, without also quoting this phrase:
“the parties will meet regularly to bargain over application of, and any appropriate modification”
That’s the phrase the owners are citing. No fans, we bargain again. The Union responds, nah – we don’t bargain on salary.
BTW, Baseball Prospectus is now holding this position on behalf of the Union. The Union agrees that the “bargain” language is there and applies – but only with respect to playoff length, additional media commitments, ways to add revenue, etc. but not with respect to salary.
So the Union isn’t arguing that the “bargain” language is not there, at least according to BP.
Re: meeting regularly
The Union has come back to the table much more quickly than the owners have at every opportunity, though. In a very clear actions-vs-words way, I at least am inclined interpret them as being very willing to bargain over the whole of the agreement (with only one firm stance). Given the great disparity in time they take to propose any counters, the owners have comparably been highly unwilling.
Unfortunately, I can come to a conclusion based on the snippet you could provide there. I would’ve liked to go into what was in the LA Times previous article they linked in the article provided by @aklang, but it was behind a pay wall. Anyone have a reliable link for it?
“And to read it that way means the owners willingly gave the players a salary advance of $170M and guaranteed them pro rata no matter what, for absolutely nothing in return. You really think that’s what the owners signed? Does that pass the smell test?”
Yes it does pass the smell test, because in the players minds agreeing to pro rata salary was already a HUGE concession. Their standard contracts are structured based on pay for a championship season, with no regard to number of games played on the schedule. At any point for the March agreement the players could have said “pay us our full salaries, or we dont play at all.” Agreeing to pro rata salary for whatever number of games the owners wanted to play was already the huge concession. Why are we glossing over that?
Players weren’t owed a DIME once a national emergency was announced. It’s in MLB’s bylaws. This wasn’t a concession. THEY GOT MONEY, not lost it!
I don’t know this for certain, but other folks elsewhere have written that the CBA calls for pro rata satisfaction of contract responsibilities in the event that a national emergency shortens the season. I’ve seen the language in the Uniform Player Contract under “National Emergency” but I don’t think this would be it, because suspending the operation of the contract (i.e. holding future salary payments until play resumes) is not the same as prorating salary in the event of a shortened season due to specified acts beyond the control of MLB.
Governmental Regulation–National Emergency
11. This contract is subject to federal or state legislation, regulations, executive or other official orders or other governmental action, now or hereafter in effect respecting military, naval, air or other governmental service, which may directly or indirectly affect the Player, Club or the League and subject also to the right of the Commissioner to suspend the operation of this contract during any national emergency during which Major League Baseball is not played.
you’re correct, however we’re looking at this from hindsight. At the time the president could have easily rescinded the national emergency order at any given time (memorial day or before) which would have allowed the players to collect back pay on games not played then.
It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where the president rescinds the national emergency proclamations while states allow baseball to be played but with no fans in the stands. Things could have been a mess from a locality standpoint as well with a patchwork of rules and regulations as soon as that national emergency is rescinded. The players would then be able to sue for back pay absent an agreement, and who knows what the courts would say. In addition to these concessions the owners maintained the ability to impose a season of whatever length they would like with allowances to unilaterally change the postseason format to access revenues the players would not see a dime of, (With a possible increased workload for a large portion of the unions constituents) in return for full pro rata salary.
I simply think it’s fairly disingenuous to say the owners got nothing out of the original March Agreement.
Point taken. They got something out of the March Agreement – they didn’t “get nothing.” But I stand by my point that – absent an agreement to further negotiate salaries without fans in the stands, the owners got very little in return for giving up a very lot, in terms of a written Agreement. And I don’t think they are quite so magnanimous as to do so.
What I mean by that – despite others now calling for “hazard pay,” etc. – pro rata is the most that the players could realistically have expected to receive. It was always the proverbial ceiling. So if it were being set as an absolute ceiling, with or without regard to fans in the stands, I’m pretty sure the owners would demanded other concessions.
If they didn’t, they were the opposite of greedy in that one particular instance.
And it’s because I believe them “greedy” as to read the March Agreement as I do. In other words, I don’t think there’s any way the “greedy” owners give up what they gave up for what they got. They signed a deal requiring additional “bargaining” (negotiation) without fans in the stands.
i would also say that i think from the the players point of view given that they had agreed to prorated salaries and given that the owners had the ability to impose any length season they wanted and that there was no explicit language otherwise, it’s pretty reasonable for them to infer that “other economic considerations” would include everything but salary and i read the agreement to say the players don’t have to negotiate on salary one bit. It is in fact up to the owners to offer up more to the players if they dont want to them to play for a pro rated salary over a given number of games, since the owners have the right to stipulate such number of games, even if it is zero. I can’t understand any other reading of the agreement whatsoever? Tell me where im wrong and this isnt an owner problem? Why should the players give more for nothing in return?
“if the MLBPA’s position is correct, then the March 27 agreement is the single most magnanimous agreement that sports owners have ever signed in a labor negotiation. ”
Really? Suppose, as a result of a major storm, earthquake, flood, or other natural disaster, a stadium was severely damaged to the point that either it could not accommodate all fans until lengthy repairs were made, or that the team’s games had to be moved to another stadium, which likewise could not accommodate all fans. Would the owners demand that the players take a pay cut in order that the owners could avoid the financial loss? Maybe they would if the players were considered joint owners of the team, but of course they aren’t, and the owners don’t want them to be. The players are simply employees. Since when are employees expected to shoulder the losses of the owners?
If you work in a large office building, and that building is damaged in some way, are you supposed to take a pay cut so that the building’s owner, your employer, doesn’t have to pay for the repairs? How about an apartment building? Are the renters/tenants supposed to pay for repairs? What I see here is a situation where owners, who have always drawn a firm line between themselves and their employees (or tenants), suddenly want to blur that line, to avoid financial responsiblity.
Maybe you think that a pandemic, which affects every business, is different from a localized natural disaster. But in what way is it different that makes it relevant to the owners’s claim? When someone buys a sports team, there is no guarantee that fans will regularly attend in any numbers. If they don’t, that’s on the owner. Maybe it’s because of poor performance, in which case the owner can make changes in personnel. But if lack of attendance is in no way the fault of the personnel, how can the owners ask them to pay for the loss of revenue? That implies a “we’re all in this together” view, which emphatically is not the attitude that the owners ever take in any other situation.
Imagine if, as a result of some other major social event, people suddenly started attending baseball games in much greater numbers than before. Would the owners share the increased revenue with the players? Of course they wouldn’t. If the increase became permanent, maybe the players would use it as a bargaining tool in future salary negotiations, but if it were just a one time benefit? The owners would raise player salaries beyond their previously negotiated level? Of course not.
Your example of one stadium affecting one team and, perhaps partially, one division is not analogous to what we’re all anxiously debating amidst a pandemic which affects all 30 teams (somewhat) equally.
“Since when are employees expected to shoulder the losses of the owners?” Is that a serious question? How many people have lost a job in the last few months and/or seen a reduction in salary? I know more than a few in the service industry who have voluntarily taken a temporary wage reduction or some such equivalent to help their business survive. This is a pandemic which no business could have reasonably anticipated.
People have lost jobs because the business was closed. If MLB had closed (as it still could, e.g., if it resumed, and spread of the virus among players made continuing the season untenable), players would have lost a job, and would not be blaming the owners. But MLB hasn’t closed, yet.
Yes, some people have voluntarily taken a pay cut, but as I pointed out in my post above, that is a “we’re all in this together” situation. People who work in the service industry frequently have this attitude towards their employers. Baseball players do not, and they don’t specifically because the owners discourage that kind of thinking. Some service businesses treat all their employees as family. Owners have never treated players like that.
I agree with most of WARrior’s points but this one:
” Since when are employees expected to shoulder the losses of the owners?”
Do you even America? Socialization of risk and privatization of profit is what it’s all about.
Thanks for taking the time. There was never any chance of your comments being received decently here, but they are appreciated by many unseen.
Unfortunately the group think is just as bad at most internet baseball sites. I have already decided not to support BP anymore. I think there is hope here, there are quite a few that write here without an agenda. The key is just ignore any pieces here about the business of baseball, the bias in any of these articles make them nothing more than propaganda pieces.
Yup, canceled my BP membership, plus here and the EW podcast. Folks who write brilliantly about the analytical side of baseball are not necessarily capable of writing rational posts about the business side of baseball. Especially when some of the key players talk openly of their disdain for business in general, their own experience on Wall Street, etc. It’s just a complete lack of objectivity. Having a long-time axe to grind against the owners – which may be warranted; that’s a matter of opinion – has blinded a lot of people to the actual facts and events at hand.
I’m still willing to support Fangraphs. David Laurila, Eric Longerhagen, Mike Podherzer, and Jay Jaffe make the site worth the price of admission, to me. They are enough to counterweight the opinion pieces that masquerade as articles about the business side of the game. Wouldn’t be shocked that they feel the same as Edwards but they at least keep it out of their writing for the most part.
Bye!
Who died and made you the arbiter of objectivity? How do you decide what is objective and what is biased? Do you have expertise or graduate level education in this field? How do I as a reader know that you don’t have a personal axe to grind with this (or any) particular writer? How do I know that advancing a political ideology via popular websites/social media isn’t one responsibility of a paid position you may or may not hold?
In my opinion, we live in a world with absurd bias towards big business. After all, this often looks like a ruthlessly individualistic place that insists upon maximizing raw profit, at the expense of anything else, including human capital.
Perhaps society itself has a pro big business bias, and therefore any well reasoned critique of it is dismissed out of hand as biased. I’m sure that this view makes me a radical leftist statist socialist communist, but all I’d say is, the Panama Papers can get leaked in our world, and virtually no one implicated in them, for crimes including tax fraud and tax evasion, faces any consequences. Meanwhile, I might get thirty or forty years from stealing some shit from a convenience store, at least if I’m the wrong Crayola.
I am writing a biased comment. Your rude comments are so biased – this writer is more responsible for a baseball site losing traffic than no baseball being played (?!) – that they don’t warrant responses.
They don’t warrant responses, and yet you responded. I’ll try to enjoy that logic pretzel.
You don’t know that I don’t have an axe to grind. (I don’t, but you don’t have to take my word for it. I appreciate skepticism as much as anyone.) But I’m not the one asking people for money to support my dissemination of my views, or providing the seeds of re-tweets with half-truths, recreations of acceptable definitions and highly biased analysis. (The cake-taking was last week, where Craig wrote a post about revenues and salaries and called it “profit,” and then tried to caveat that it’s not really profit – ’cause it’s not – and then the next day another FG writer talked about profit in absolute terms referencing Craig’s work… you don’t have to look too hard to call that out as blatant.)
I don’t claim to be the arbiter of objectivity. I’m expressing an opinion, and it’s one that may be in the minority, but isn’t alone by any means. I’m providing feedback in a comments section, from a place of logic and reason, rather than emotion.
I’m not sure what the Panama Papers or white collar crime have to do with anything, nor your thoughts on petty theft. I mean, I’m an active (ACTIVE) advocate for criminal justice reform, with my time as well as my dollars, but that’s irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
As far as my points on website traffic… well, again, since this is a website based on statistical analysis, I’ve looked at the actual data. See the comparison between FG and BR, which is not one that I made, but one that I responded to. That may not isolate all variables, but it at least makes the point in comparison to another baseball site – and one that doesn’t even generate content. The user engagement of FG has fallen farther., and sharper. It also has contended to trend down over the last six weeks while BR leveled off at May 1. Unless I’m reading the simple data wrong – which I may be – I think it makes the point.
“I’m providing feedback in a comments section, from a place of logic and reason, rather than emotion.”
I had to LOL at this sentence coming in the middle of your extended tantrum-slash-meltdown all over this comments section today.
Not a tantrum nor a meltdown. Just sitting with a cup of coffee, lamenting the fact that I’m so disappointed in my favorite website.
If you think that’s a meltdown you don’t have a clue what a meltdown is. It was a clear, concise rebuttal. The only troll here is you
Yeah…. I mean, I have a six year old. His meltdowns don’t involve logic, cites, etc. But again, some folks think it’s a “meltdown” or “tantrum” or “trolling” to disagree strongly. That makes me sad for different reasons than the baseball discussion.
The best boss I ever had stopped a leadership group meeting once and said, “I didn’t hire any of you to agree with my blindly. Your job is to challenge me and stand your ground. If you agree with me blindly, then you don’t make us better and we don’t need you.” I never forgot that.
Look at the world today. It’s the lack of respect that people have for every else’s POV that we are in the times that we are in. Agree, disagree, you can make up your own mind. Just don’t force somebody else to conform to your views.
So just calling a rebuttal a tantrum is enough now? Have you actually read tomerafan’s comments here? There’s nothing reactionary or even ideologically motivated in his or her opinions. These are all well-reasoned comments that you are free to disagree with. You should try actually listening to someone and responding like an intelligent human being rather than shooshing with an arrogant, limerick-length dismissal.
Re-read the quote that you yourself quoted. It appears, from what I’ve seen here, to be accurate.
This is not an airport. You don’t need to announce your departure.
Biggest down vote ever
I don’t base my own opinions, or my own self-worth, on upvotes or downvotes or popularity contests. Your mileage may vary.
py2sl, feel free to point out any errors in tomerafan’s analysis instead of engaging in the downvote circle jerk game.
He claims that the “players never came to the table” which is laughably false. The players have offered numerous concessions to the owners. The owners have made the same offer three times. And once I read that sentence everything else he had to say was rendered irrelevant, because he started with an outright lie. I strongly suspect that he’s on the payroll of MLB or a team in a social media/marketing capacity, because if he’s just spouting that nonsense for free he needs a new fucking hobby.
What were the concessions the players made?
Oh, you’re one of those internet answer bros, James Parks.
“Explain everything to me or I’ll consider myself the winner!”
Hard pass.
The groupthink is strong with this one…
Stuff that actually benefits the players themselves, but somehow has turned into something important. You know like “micing up players” “offering additional access” and an offseason Home Run derby. If those are the “concessions” but the additional 200-300 million the owners offered isn’t than I must be in the twilight zone. Getting your name and exposure out there not only benefits the game and the owner but also THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES.
Yeah, but like, getting COVID definitely is not a benefit. IDK, it’s a balance…exposure for fame balanced against exposure to fucking deadly disease that might fuck your lungs up to the point of requiring a transplant even it doesn’t kill you.
Absolutely true, which is why you don’t have to play if you don’t want to or if you deem the risk too great.
That’s a good impersonation of Daniel Day Lewis’ character from “There will be blood.” “Get your ass in that oil well for $2 or go home with nothing to eat. The choice is yours, not mine!”
The owners have made the same offer three times.
The owners increased the salary offer by, I think, 25% over the course of their offers. The Union budget on pay zero point zero.
I am not saying the owners budged enough. But only one side budget on comp, and it’s not the Union.
It’s because the number of games has gone down in every proposal. I wish they would mention the PER GAME gains that they have made SOMEWHERE. Pushing the # of games down as time elapses makes sense because it pushes spring training and the season back more and more. I’m sure that was the plan of the owners plans. I don’t begrudge them at all. You use what you have while bargaining. Everyone is OK with the players standing firm, but they argue until they are red in the face about the playoff start date. It makes no sense.
Oh, yeah. I’m sure site traffic is down because of politics. There can’t be any other reason a baseball site’s traffic would be down during a summer with no baseball.
Who made this about politics?
What could possibly be driving a downturn in traffic on a baseball related site? Clearly it must be entirely Craig’s opinions, I’m sure the lack of actual baseball happening has nothing to do with it at all.
Those two things don’t have to be, and aren’t, mutually exclusive.
Oh, but you think owners-vs-players labor negotiations aren’t political?
You’re not very bright, tomerafan. Or else you’re a liar.
I don’t think I’m either of those things. Unproductive today, sure, and damn if that isn’t going to hurt later. But oh well.
What I definitely, am, though, is a person who doesn’t need to hurl insults at you to try to make a point.
“How arrogant. Just absolute, unabashed arrogance. ”
*Narrator voice*
He was.
-insert “Why not both?” gif here
So what’s your explanation of why The Athletic, ESPN, SBNation, Baseball Reference, and MLB.com have sustained similarly shaped declines in traffic over the same time period?
If you seriously think the site’s editorial viewpoint has more than a negligible, impossible-to-measure effect on traffic when the site is also dealing with the cancellation of the event that it is devoted to covering, you are stupid.
I never knew there was an MLB owner lurking amongst the Fangraphs commentariat!
That’s exactly what I was thinking! Lol. Arte is that you? I think the players share a little blame, but the owners own most of this mess.
You joke, but it is entirely possible that the owners are paying social media companies to go out and try to advance their arguments on the internet.
Wow. Just, wow. And people wonder where conspiracy theories come from. “I don’t agree with you, so you must be part of a coordinated information campaign!” Wow. (Besides, their grammar and spelling are much worse, though do make the occasional typo.)
It is a possible motive for how aggressively you’re taking the owners’ side of this issue, and there is a very long track record of large companies (which MLB teams are, whatever else they might also be) paying people to manipulate discussions on social media.
If you don’t like someone raising that as a possibility? Too bad.
Personally I don’t think it’s likely; I think you’re much more of a generic ‘no such thing as bad attention’ troll.
Please see my response above on the players, and what I hope for them in the next CBA negotiation. This ain’t that.
I can separate my hopes from the players getting a bigger share of the pie in the future from my belief that their Union has behaved poorly and that, this time, there is overwhelming information to say this isn’t 100% on the owners. I can hold both of those thoughts simultaneously.
Maybe the definition of a troll has changed tremendously over the last decade or so, but I don’t think the definition fits. It doesn’t mean “someone with whom I disagree.”
My definition of a troll is someone who takes a contrarian position and attempts to dominate a conversational space in order to garner attention.
I do not believe that you hold the positions that you are arguing in favor of, or at least, not as strongly as would merit the level of defense you’re giving them.
You get to show up, say ridiculous things, and play the victim when people point out that you’re saying ridiculous things.
As someone in a finance department at a university (which gives me laughably less expertise than someone in the accounting department, but I still have to teach this stuff)… I think Tomerafan’s established that he knows more about debt covenants and corporate finance than the author here. The stark ignorance from the author and the painfully one sided nature of the discussion in the article has meant that the discussions in the comments are way more useful for understanding these issues.
I don’t claim to know a lot, but I know a little. And I read a lot.
One of the things that has surprised me most is that Fangraphs hasn’t acknowledged the difference between exponential effect and lineal effect in any of their attempts at financial models. I’ve put that information here in the comments section for multiple blog posts, but it’s been ignored. But it’s simple – if EBITDA flips from positive to negative, or falls from above a certain specified range to below a certain specified range, the cost of existing debt becomes significantly more expensive (or calls for a greater collateral post, or partial principal prepayment, etc.).
The effect of debt covenants presents an exponential, non-linear change to modeling when EBITDA fluctuates greatly. And I can’t imagine anyone is arguing that – whether or not the owners turn losses – EBITDA won’t fluctuate GREATLY absent the fan & concession revenue. And it’s part of why the owners are so concerned about locking in salaries but not earning the postseason revenues. But it’s also why their models aren’t linear, despite Fangraphs (and Passan and BPro and 538 and others) running all kinds of linear assumptions on what happens at different salary points. So people keep running linear models – including on the national TV revenue – without understanding that paying full salaries but losing the playoff revenues likely creates an exponential negative impact to either cash flow, profit, or both.
Again, the posting of this fact will be met with “who cares, screw the owners and their debt” responses. I get it. But people who make claims about the owner’s losses, or likelihood thereof, should at least understand and acknowledge the scenario modeling in general that underlines the assumptions. And I’d expect that of a place so steeped in analytics and modeling as this place is.
Tomerafan hit the nail on the head.
It is not just Craig Edwards (who only seems to write bitter political Editorials that are loosely anchored to the actual sport)… Fangraphs has created an extreme echo chamber and a hostile environment for anybody whose views do not conform to the narrow views of the editorial staff.
Fangraphs was so different when Dave Cameron was steering the ship. Those days are gone.
Once you go down this road, you can’t get your lost audience back. I canceled my membership, and I encourage people to do the same. The brazen begging for money is embarrassing when you consider the $ goes to pay writers to publish propaganda.
In 2 years I will be surprised if Fangraphs is much more than a small blog with a fringe audience.
I love Ottoneu. But Fangraphs as a whole is just sad now.
Why do you keep coming back and commenting on articles?
I will… I paid for my membership… reupped it in the last couple months… canceled it from renewing… but who knows, maybe the site will turn back around.
Change doesn’t happen without protest. My protest here doesn’t matter a hill of beans compared to what’s happening in the real world, but I’m still gonna do it.
Keep fighting man.
Why not?
He backed up his statement with facts and arguments. You backed up your disagreement with nothing. Well, you did cite internet traffic right before declaring a “popularity contest” to be worthless. Well, which is it?
A popularity contest on one person’s opinions is pretty different to me than site-traffic data measuring internet users in general and the way they vote with their eyeballs and engagement… one is opinion and the other is based in data… again, your mileage may vary.
Yes, there is ironclad proof that people who read your comments don’t like them. And then there is your conjecture that Fangraphs has some sort of bent that turns people off (claims of which have been fairly consistent in pace if not entirely identical in content for at least a decade-plus that I’ve been reading this site). This, despite the fact that there not only isn’t a season, but there aren’t even other baseball things to talk about aside from a micro draft and when baseball might return. You have a baseless theory. You have provided no nexus to connect the reason you’ve conjured to reality. You say it is based on data but you clearly don’t know what that means.
Right.
Tomerafan: “FG is wrong because site traffic is down, which means nobody likes their opinions!”
Also tomerafan: “I’m right because I get all the downvotes, which means nobody likes my opinions!”
Genius at work, people.
Neither of those are remotely things that I have said. The fact that you interpret them that way says more about you than it does me.
It’s always harder to make an argument about something than agree with the masses. If you want to follow what everybody else tells you than best of luck in life @TKDC
Being contrarian for the sake of it is not a virtue. Most of the disagreement with this piece boils down to “this is pro-players and that’s why Fangraphs sucks.” I know that it is “harder to make an argument” than just go along, but it is not harder to just sling insults and accusations. “This is why no one likes Fangraphs” is in no meaningful way an argument. In my time reading Fangraphs, the writers and commentariat have generally been welcoming of an opposing viewpoint. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are less open to baseless and childish insults on their character and motives. On top of that, turning unfounded accusations into a self-given badge of honor and droning on about how much better you are than others also is not a good way to make friends and influence people. Even some people who maybe kind of agree with tomerafan think he presents his points poorly.
I love fangraphs. I don’t love these pro-player fluff pieces that Craig has been throwing out here for the last few weeks. They are so obviously one-sided and bias that I’m glad I’m not the only one with the same thoughts. Also you should double check who exactly is calling who names here. Everything tomerafan has laid out is his opinion and snippets of quotes. The name calling has been AT him quite a bit (although it seems to have been cleaned off recently).
Hi Rob! /waves
It’s tragic that FanGraphs’ blatant politicking is also dragging down Baseball Reference with it! Their visitor stats are even worse than FanGraphs’! https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/baseball-reference.com
Clearly the vile, liberalism of Fangraphs has invaded the cold, hard stats of BRef too. Such a shame.
Um, you realize that basic comparative analysis can be applied to your BR example to prove my point, right? Look at the decline in site traffic of FG vs BR. Graph ’em against each other on the same axes and see which is steeper between March 15 and today, as a comparative analysis.
FanGraphs “traffic & engagement rank” dropped from 13,674 to 23,989 over the last 90 days. BR dropped from 5211 to 7267. And then realize that only one of those sites generates content, and it ain’t BR.
BR’s drop was sharp and then flattened off on May 1. People are using the site similarly, six weeks later. Fangraphs drop is a steady downslope. People are engaging with the site 43% less than they were six weeks ago. I mean, maybe I’m reading this data wrong and if so, I’ll have a ton of egg on my face, but that’s what the numbers look like to me. So, if you wanted to grab an example, I think you picked the wrong one. If I’m reading the data incorrectly, please tell me and I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong.
I finally got a paid membership last month because Fangraphs has been a welcome home for me for 10 years now, but your comments of late have really put in relief the problems that exist here these days. Their best writers were all gone by 2019, but I thought Fangraphs was still worth my attention. I’m not sure about that anymore due to articles like this one.
You aren’t read it wrong @tomerafan. Good take!
You’re making the assertion that FG’s viewership numbers are dropping because of an editorial shift (that you admit happened well before March). For someone to argue as much as you do about presenting dishonest “facts”, you sure do your fair share of presenting distorted “facts” to make an argument.
BR, who do nothing to editorialize, but are generally the authority on baseball statistics, dropped precipitously (though not as much as FG appears to). However, MLB.com has dropped from 1425 to 3103 (a significantly larger fall compared to FG). MLBtraderumors.com has dropped from 13,288 to 33,970. MILB.com dropped from 28,538 to 52,731 (buoyed recently by the draft). Those are just the biggest MLB websites I can think of. Expand it to ESPN.com (108 to 184). NFL.com (1057 to 1944). NBA.com (637 to 2787). I could go on and on.
FanGraphs viewership from March to June is not declining because their writers’ views differ from yours. They are declining because there is no baseball. Just as every other baseball or sports site.
Linking to a chart showing declining readership does not establish a correlation between its editorial opinions and its readership base becoming alienated. It’s because of COVID.
Your argument is a poor one that suffers from the exact same faults you vilify FanGraphs for.
Interesting analysis, and thanks for that. I only pulled BR because that was the one that, you know, you put on the table first.
MiLB isn’t analagous because the belief is that there won’t be any minor league baseball at all, even if there is MLB action.
MLB trade rumors… well, there’s a transaction freeze in place, right?
BR and FG both have stats, and FG also generates content. I think that’s a more apt comparison than MiLB and MLBTR… but, again, your mileage may vary, and that’s cool.
Linking to a chart showing declining readership does not establish a correlation between its editorial opinions and its readership base becoming alienated. It’s because of COVID.
My point in response to your initial BR comment is that one site (BR) that only shows stats and a couple of aggregated player links saw readership plateau around May 1 and hold steady, while a site that houses stats and also generates content has seen its readership continue to drop over the last six weeks. That’s the most apt comparison in the data set, and it’s interesting to me. Why would engagement of unique content on top of stats fall sharper than BR stats-alone “because of COVID”? Relatively speaking?
MLBTR isn’t just transaction news. While it’s largely known for that, they have had more original posts and content recently.
Interesting – honestly, thanks, because I didn’t know that, and need to check it out.
Since, as you note, BR doesn’t have articles like FG, the people who go there do so mostly for stats. There’s been some drop because of the stalled season, but many people (I’m one of them) go there for stats of prior seasons. So at a certain point, when the people just going for current stats stop visiting the site, traffic plateaus. There’s always been a solid base of users for historical research, and no reason that shouldn’t continue even if no baseball is being played.
People go to FG, in contrast, for the articles, to a large degree. Most of the articles, in the past, during the season, have been about the season. Since we don’t have a season, writers have been challenged to write about something else. This is not what most of us want. It’s better than nothing, but as time goes on, and there still is no season, people get tired of the articles about other things that the writers are forced to write. They lose interest, something that’s maintained among historical researchers at BR.
This is just my speculation, of course. But I think it explains the situation just as well as your theory that FG is losing traffic because visitors don’t like the politically-biassed views of the writers. I know that I myself have visited FG much less often, not because of disagreement with views of the authors–which I might often have–but because the further we get into a no-season, the less relevant the articles are to me.
And since you keep accusing those of us who disagree with you about owners vs. players of being biassed, I’ll add that I think your theory is more biassed than mine, because it’s formulated specifically to support your view that FG is not discussing the stalemate fairly and objectively. Whereas my theory doesn’t take a position on this at all, but is simply based on the different reasons people tend to go to the two different sites.
I agree 1000% with you Tomerafan It’s sickening the bias these writers operate with. Shame on Fangraphs for not reigning that garbage in. We saw that same bias in their “COVID” reporting as well. It’s disgusting. Keep politics and bias OUT. EDIT: I just cancelled my membership from renewing as a result of the continued BIAS that is shown.
I am going to say five things that I think are true, and are not mutually exclusive.
1) I actually have learned a lot from tomerafan during this process, so I’m glad he stuck around.
2) I think that Craig does have a tendency to sometimes make and stick with very, very bad takes over several weeks at a time. So I understand where he is coming from.
3) Craig’s math has been excellent in this series, and has been very well done.
4) I also think that Craig stepped over the line with hyperbole here, even though his math is good. This really is an editorial, and probably didn’t need to be written this way.
5) All that said, I think tomerafan’s comment is factually wrong in at least a few ways and rather nasty. I’m not a fan of how his comment was worded either.
I appreciate your point of view as a super reasonable commenter who can agree to disagree and approach things from a factual rather than emotional perspective.
I would gladly appreciate any remarks on where my comments are factually wrong. It was not my intent to be nasty (as opposed to firm). But I stand by my use of the word “arrogance,” if that is indeed what you’re referring to. It is arrogant to write opinion pieces and then say “disagreeing with my POV has absolutely no merit,” which is what Craig did here. (There were certainly two parties in this negotiation, but only one was willing to make meaningful concessions. Any other view ignores the events of the last four months.) Sorry, but that is the definition of arrogant writing.
Yeah, sorry, it was nasty and incorrect. It came off as wishing ill on the site. And traffic is down because there is no baseball and nearly nothing to write about. If anything, these hot-take things that inspire lots of clicks are probably driving the traffic here right now. That’s how the click-based internet world works.
I wish we had more articles like the one Craig wrote on the per-game losses and fewer ones that are primarily editorials like this one, and I empathize because when Craig gets going like this he is impossible to dissuade (he had a string at one point where he inappropriately drew conclusions from data in nearly a dozen consecutive articles…it was mind-blowing). I think I did one of these “you are wrong about everything” comments on one of Travis’s interminable and overstated “swing change revolution” posts too, so this is as much for me as it is for you, but I think you should have considered doing some deep breathing exercises first. It’s like that xkcd comic, which I’ll post in another comment since otherwise it’ll block the whole thing here.
EDIT: hey, it went through! https://xkcd.com/386/
First off, the comic is hysterical, and I’ve not seen it before. Thanks.
I don’t wish ill on the site, or on anyone. That’s not in my nature. I can disagree vehemently and separate that from any personal feelings.
I do, however, think that those who appear to exist in echo chambers of any kind need to be reminded of the value in engaging other perspectives, and considering them. As always, those individuals or organizations are free to ignore that call.
As far as your comments on traffic being down because there is no baseball and nothing else to write about… look, I stand behind the simple (imperfect but simple) comparison of FG traffic and engagement to BR. One site has stats and content. The other site has stats. The latter saw engagement plateau on May 1 and hold steady since. The former – with content – has seen its traffic and engagement drop. I’m not wishing ill on anyone to point out that factual comparison. Some folks may not like that I’ve posted it, or drawn attention to it, and that’s their prerogative.
But if FG is going to make multiple entreaties for memberships, merch sales and outright donations to keep the site going, then someone has to at least point out the possibility that they are self-endangering that very proposition.
Thank you so much for posting this tomerafan, and supporting your argument with logic, reason and facts. Particularly Continuing to do so in the face of such hostility from other commenters..
The fact that you are being so reasonable and analytical and still receiving so many downvotes makes me think there is a bot voting you down. Either that or a lack of logical reasoning skills in this thread.
Take the message of the comic to heart. You can put this energy to more productive things than insulting a baseball blog.
It’s a bad thing when the commenters are consistently more correct than the authors. I work in a nasty, aggressive field, so tomerafan’s comment read fine (you want nasty? Go hang out at EJMR). I do expect more from people who do financial analyses. The issue hasn’t been that the articles on the negotiation are all bad- I would just skip them if they were. The issue is that the more editorial ones get mixed in with the reporting/financial analysis.
Here it is: https://xkcd.com/386/
Friendly reminder that in the US this past decade, basically everything besides the Fox News and the Daily Caller and the like got slandered as biased, and then as “fake news” – you know, the “mainstream media” is bad, an umbrella term used to classify every media organization except, conveniently, ones I personally select.
Before long, tens of millions of Americans don’t trust any news or media organizations at all. That’s okay, because everything turned out just peachy and sunshine and puppies. Everything is under control.
Information that doesn’t reaffirm my biases or advance my political objectives hurts my feelings 🙁
One can’t as easily control a population that agrees on a common set of basic facts coming from an independent source.
The reason that the proposals are similar is because MLB kept pushing the # of games down. Because you know, the CALENDAR. The PER GAME pay keeps going up. But absolutely no-one here wants to listen to that. If you want to argue they should have started talking early fine. I will give you that. But the PA nuked the first “offer” they were going to propose without so much as a discussion. That’s all they continue to do. No one on either side actually wants a discussion, it’s all this is my position and I’m not moving. THAT IS NOT A NEGOTIATION.
Hi, Bud Selig. Nice of you to join us. You racketeer, you.
As someone who generally tries to see things from both sides, I think I understand where you’re coming from. But I think that here, as in many places, what you’re perceiving as arrogance is a strongly-held conviction– one that has underpinned the writing here for as long as I’ve been reading it. I may not always agree with the editorial bent of this site, but I don’t expect this site or any other media not to have one. If they were to back away from what they believe in for the sake of more hits, I think the site would ultimately be the poorer for it. If people, including possibly you, stop reading, then maybe this isn’t the site for them. I think it’s great to question and challenge them on assertions you think are inaccurate or unfair, and it’s certainly stoked a great conversation here- but waffling on their core beliefs is a big ask.
Is this Arte Moreno’s burner account?
These kind of comments are just so sad. Heaven forbid somebody doesn’t have the same opinion as you and decides to post it.
Pretty sure it’s for laughs. Most of us recognize that for every 100 readers, there are going to be a few who are corporatists and highly sympathetic to the agenda of big business.
Yikes. Maybe take a break from commenting for a few days (/weeks/months/years)?
How is Craig Edward’s influence on site traffic germaine to the conversation?
How do the boots taste?
Congrats. You may have accomplished the most down votes ever on a single post and collectively in a thread. This is purely observational, not a comment on the content.
wtf?
It appears that the owners strategy was to stall until there was only time left to play 50 games. That’s the very definition of bargaining in bad faith and when the players realized it, they were right to call them out publicly. Just get it over with and file the inevitable greivance.
Meanwhile, while the owners claim to be losing money faster than MoviePass from their horribly unprofitable baseball teams, TBS is increasing their rights fees for less then half the postseason from $325M to $470M from 2022-28. They get one WC game, 2 DCS, and one LCS. That’s a 11 – 18 games for nearly half a billion dollars a year.
Good luck with the next CBA negotiation after all this. The players were already pissed over service time manipulation and free agent contract suppression (real or not, justified or not, they perceived it that way), this isn’t going to make them happier.
No, I don’t think that’s quite right. I think the owners’ strategy was predicated on the idea that the players were desperate to play and they could squeeze some concessions out of them and turn what would be a neutral-to-slightly-positive scenario (playing games) into something that would be better for them.
I think there is some idea out there that there are overriding principles in negotiations beyond “we deserve more money” and “I have leverage and I’m going to use it.” There are, but they’re not big ones. The owners thought they had the players by the throat and went for it.
Where I do think you’re right, and you were the first person I saw who clearly said this, is that the players see this as the beginning of the CBA negotiations. And I think that for a union that has screwed up repeatedly over since Clark took over this was the first thing I think I can say they’ve done right. They were not right to give up anything that could be used in future negotiations in order to take a per-game paycut. That just doesn’t make any sense and would hurt you in the next round of negotiations on both ends.
I sort of think that is a distinction without a difference. The owners decided they were willing to pay out only so much money, roughly $1.4B or so based on every offer they have made. If the players wouldn’t take that amount for more games, they figured they could stall till there was only time to play a number of games that resulted in them paying out about $1.4B in pro-rated salary. Maybe they would have rather played more games, but they weren’t going to pay more money no matter how many games were played. Once they got to mid-May when negotiations started and they postulated a 3 – 4 week “spring training,” they knew they could refuse to play November baseball and the clock was on their side. They weren’t going to get any concessions out of the players in exchange for more money since, as you said, money and leverage were number one through one hundred on both sides wish list. Any concessions from either side really get back to how much money and leverage it gives them. Both sides talk about health a lot, but I think most players and the owners care a lot less about that then they say. Not all, but most.
Basically, the owners started with their last, best, and only offer and were willing to work it any way the players wanted, as long as it didn’t cost them more than that $1.4B.
With regards to the next CBA, I know I’ve been beating that drum for a while, but it jut makes no sense not to think that what happens today won;t be remembered in a year and a half. I think the players realize that anything they give up now for “emergency reasons” could become the new baseline starting point for the next set of negotiations. There are probably things they are willing to give up for changes in service time rules (which I think is their biggest concern because it affects salaries in so many different ways), but they don’t want to give those things up until they are getting something big for them.
“Basically, the owners started with their last, best, and only offer and were willing to work it any way the players wanted, as long as it didn’t cost them more than that $1.4B.”
No, the owners started with an idea revolving around revenue sharing, which the players rejected before it was even proposed on the dubious grounds that it would set some irrevocable salary cap precedent for future CBA negotiations. Which it wouldn’t have. That was a total fiction. Revenue sharing would have given the players upside — which they always say they want but never actually negotiate for — while sharing risk across the entire MLB community (the downside possibility comes with the upside).
From then on the players have been taking pointless stand after pointless stand, accomplishing nothing except costing themselves money (and angering fans who want to see games).
Revenue sharing is not an unreasonable framework, especially if some guarantees could have been built into it, which is why every other major sports besides MLB does it. It also would have allowed the MLBPA to go after the playoff tv money, which is the only money the sport is generating, plus be creative about ways to increase tv revenue streams (“skills” competitions, reality shows, whatever). But MLBPA rejected it pre-emptively, which forced this entire conversation to revolve around pro rata vs adjusted salaries.
The problem with that is that MLBPA had zero leverage to win on salaries over a long schedule without fans. Not just because of the March agreement… because the player salaries are *not guaranteed* during a state of national emergency. It’s called “Paragraph 11” of the “uniform player contract” and, as far as I know, not a single author at this site has ever mentioned it, which means that they are either too ignorant to be paid to write on this topic, or have actively misinformed their readers about the true nature of these negotiations during this entire process. This is not true of, e.g., ESPN, where Passan was pointing out the significance of Paragraph 11 back in March and April (and since). Paragraph 11 is not some mystery. It was reported on early in this process in SI and other high-profile outlets too. But not here, to my recollection (and a quick site search).
Then, after misinforming us, they lecture us about what views are acceptable to have. Hilarious.
This means that the March agreement was a *major* concession from the owners to the players, and not the other way around. In exchange the owners asked only for good faith negotiations once the Covid picture became more clear. And the MLBPA never really did that, because they took an extreme oppositional stance from day one. Which is their right. But they also then “own” the breakdown in negotiations that has happened since.
Ironically, both the MLBPA and their PR people in the media have spent most of the time since the players rejected any form of revenue sharing arguing that revenues are much higher that what owners claim. In which case the players should’ve be willing to split revenues! Under the numbers Craig and others have been working from, the MLBPA are going to cost the players perhaps $1bn, and minimally hundreds of millions, by refusing to countenance any form of revenue sharing. No matter who you want to “win” this bargaining process that’s just really bad negotiating. And all for a nebulous principle of “no salary adjustments” when salaries are being adjusted no matter what (it’s just a question of what mechanism is being used).
Epic fail by the MLBPA. Epic fail by the “analysts” covering this situation. The owners are going to get more of what they wanted that what they offered initially. And the players are going to go into an important CBA having lost TONS of salary (both this year and in free agency next year), with a completely inept union head, having just sold out their colleagues in the minor leagues and draft, and having pissed off their negotiating partner who will — once again — have far more leverage than them.
I’m not even pro-owner. I want the players to get as much money as they can. But they’ve chosen the complete opposite strategy to achieve that goal, while folks here and elsewhere in the baseball media have been cheerleading their drive off a cliff.
Amen. Although, I remain confused whether Paragraph 11 reads the way you describe or not. It says the Commissioner can suspend the contractual performance (the need to pay salary) during a national emergency. But suspend in and of itself does not mean prorate if the season is shortened. And there’s also a “no salary diminishment” clause for anything other than failure to report. So, I’m still not sure that Paragraph 11 alone says what you describe, though maybe there is other language elsewhere that amplifies it.
Here’s Paragraph 11:
Governmental Regulation–National Emergency
11. This contract is subject to federal or state legislation, regulations, executive or other official orders or other governmental action, now or hereafter in effect respecting military, naval, air or other governmental
service, which may directly or indirectly affect the Player, Club or the League and subject also to the right of the Commissioner to suspend the operation of this contract during any national emergency during which Major League Baseball is not played.
The only “ratable” language in the contract is as follows, which doesn’t apply here:
“If the Player is in the service of the Club for part of the championship season only, he shall receive such proportion of the sum above mentioned, as the number of days of his actual employment in the championship season bears to the number of days in the championship season.”
I didn’t say that Paragraph 11 established anything about pro-ration, although I think it implicitly does.
But what it means is that the owners have never been under any obligation to pay the players a single cent this year, nor to grant them service time. Thus, the players’ argument that they are owed X amount, for any X, is just wrong.
The whole narrative of the “negotiation” hinges on understanding the bargaining space. The MLBPA (and FG writers) either truly don’t understand it or they are being willingly misleading in order to stack the deck in their favor. That’s pretty much the definition of bad faith argumentation.
I don’t really care if the MLBPA does that. I think it’s a really poor negotiating strategy, but ultimately that’s just going to hurt them. But FG is an analytical media outlet. Their credibility depends on them getting these things right.
Ah – gotcha. Thanks. And agreed. I misread originally, as others have posited that Paragraph 11 itself calls for prorating in the event of a national emergency.
I don’t really care if the MLBPA does that. I think it’s a really poor negotiating strategy, but ultimately that’s just going to hurt them. But FG is an analytical media outlet. Their credibility depends on them getting these things right.
Yeah, you just made my point better than I did today. So thanks for that.
If the PA knew that was the strategy then there first counter of 114 games is even more laughable now that it was when they originally made it.
Here’s an example of a horribly selected fact, chosen in retrospect to support a complete strawman:
After publicly indicating it was necessary to renegotiate the March deal, it took MLB 41 days to make its first economic offer to the MLBPA.
This is a true but incomplete statement. It is indeed necessary to negotiate (I think the term in the Agreement is “bargain over the appropriate modification of. the Agreement” or something similar, which means “negotiate”) if there are no fans in the stands.
You think the owners should have crossed that bridge on April 1? No, I would assume that – like the rest of the world – they spent a giant chunk of April trying to learn and understand and figure out whether further “bargaining” would even be required. So the 41-day time lag is largely a strawman when presented appropriately, in context.
When you’re willing to play this fast and loose with actual events and facts – and there are numerous examples in every Craig Edwards blog post – the validity of your argument begins to crumble. And the irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this is a site with a foundation in advanced analytics. Fangraphs can and should and does know better.
Oh the poor players. 1200 guys only getting to split up about $1.2B this year… a million a man for two months’ work.
My heart bleeds.
You do realize that the owners who are crying poor in these negotiations are far, far wealthier, right?
Silence is violence. Staying silent on social injustice is unacceptable.
My state – New York – is named to honor James, Duke of York in the latter half of the 17th century (later his royal highness James II). As Duke of York, James led the ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY – largest exporter of slaves from Africa to the new world during the entirety of the African Slave Trade.
In what possible way is it acceptable to keep the name New York attached to NY City or NY State? Let alone to sports teams who play in NY (or in the case of football in New Jersey)?
James, as Duke of York and later as King James II, did more to destroy race relations and to injure many generations of African people, than almost any other individual in history.
Please add your voice to mine in demanding change. There are so many people who deserve the honor of having our great state and city named for them.
I propose we rename NYC as ROBINSON CITY in honor of Jackie Robinson, and rename NYS as the STATE OF EQUALITY.
Do you at least agree with me that States and Cities should not be named after people who supported and perpetuated Slavery?
That is not asking much.
Is this like the Mets having a Jackie Robinson wing? Because that whole Wilpon thing is just very…. sad.
York, btw, existed as a place long before it was a duchy
I’m about 90% convinced that all of the posturing by ownership about keeping the playoff schedule confined to October has nothing at all to do with concerns over a second wave (other leagues are moving forward with their regular seasons at that time). What it’s really about is the TV networks not wanting to reconfigure their broadcast schedules. I wouldn’t be surprised if the shiny new TBS deal was in part contingent on a guarantee from MLB that this year’s playoff schedule would be unchanged.
The owners have stated publicly that both are indeed a factor. Broadcast partners don’t want to show November baseball, and value it significantly less than October baseball. It has been intimated that at least one of the national partners may have the ability to re-open negotiation on what they’ll pay for the broadcast rights if the date ranges for the playoffs change materially.
This makes sense to me for the owners. Other leagues don’t really have a choice to finish by late October. Hell, there were at least rumors of college football trying to start early so they could get done before a possibly devastating second wave.
The players’ counteroffers were tone deaf. Networks weren’t going to allow baseball to move into November. This is an election year, plus you have the NFL to contend with. Networks will happily pay for playoff baseball in October, they flat out don’t want it in November. The players making “offers” centered around extending the season into October and the playoffs into Thanksgiving is the equivalent of your wife offering you a threeway but only if it’s with Jennifer Aniston. They knew full well they were offering something that was never going to happen, but the media is happy to spin it as the players trying to negotiate in good faith.
I’m a former labor union president, and negotiated three CBAs from the union side before my career path took me across the street into management (where I ultimately assisted in negotiations on two CBAs from the management side). I’m as happy as anyone to jump on the “blame the rich people” bandwagon. But this is a time where the union is the side that isn’t bargaining in good faith. They got ridiculously large concessions from the owners in the March deal, including billions in free service time had the season been canceled, and that deal was contingent on a good faith renegotiation to follow if seats were empty, including further salary reductions. But Scott Boras wound his clients up and sent them out marching to battle to hold the line at full prorated salaries. Something that makes little sense in an environment where 44 million Americans have lost work, and millions more have taken pay cuts to keep the jobs they have.
This isn’t the 810-game CBA. That’s next year. This was an agreement to cover roughly 1/10th that many games. And there would have been no dangerous precedent set by taking a cut. Oh no, you’ve set a precedent that you’re willing to accept less than full pay any time there’s a global pandemic and 25% of Americans lose their jobs. I think that’s a precedent you can live with going into future negotiations. Had the players taken the cut, and played 80 games this season, they could have easily played it in the media as “we are willingly taking the worse end of this deal for the good of the game and the good of our fans… we owe it to them to be out on the field, and we will take less money to do that”. Had they done that? And then showed up at the CBA next season? You think there would be a single person ready to take the side of the owners? They could have gotten whatever they wanted for 810 games by martyring themselves for 80 games now.
One of my union mentors, who negotiated contracts for 62 years, told me “No one wins at the negotiating table. You win during the course of your previous contact, and you show up at the table to cash the check.” No one is some magic negotiator that pulls a Perry Mason at the table. Your actions during the previous contract, and how they are perceived by the public, that’s what determines who wins. The players could have been cashing one heck of a fat check next year. But instead the public sees them as whiny millionaires ready to join Gal Gadot’s next mansion singalong.
“New York” is named for a White Supremecist who ran the Royal African Company. The RAC was a huge part of the African Slave Trade.
Renaming NY will be a big part of the wave of social justice that will wash over the world and make life better for most of us.
As a black man in NY, I am living under a flag that literally bears the name of a person who ruined my ancestors’ lives.
Can we all just agree on one small issue? States and Cities should not be named after White Supremecists who exported slaves from Africa?
Amazing. Thanks for your perspective.
I believe you are being sarcastic. That is cruel. And there is no good reason to be cruel to people.
I am black and I have been silent too long. I post something important to myself and millions of Americans. And you respond with cruel sarcasm. I hope you are nicer than that normally.
I was neither sarcastic nor cruel. I was responding to RunningFrog’s comment, and not yours.
Very interesting comment. Please write more here. (Until I disagree with you, of course, haha.)
RunningFrog with the take to end all takes!
Really good stuff, i feel like I learned something reading your comment. Thanks for your take!
A few questions, if you do not mind?
1. At no point did MLB equip the union with the information to make an informed decision. How can the union know, unequivocally, that November was untouchable? What would the union have to go off of? Especially if the owners were unwilling to open their books or understand the requirements and preferences of their playoff tv deals?
2. What does, “billions in free service time” mean? You’re saying that the value of shuffling players forward one year of service time costs the owners billions, how so? Can you explain this? This concession was made in exchange for the players not suing their full 2020 salaries. The players made billions in concessions also. Or am I off base?
3. You mentioned Scott Boras winding his players up. Boras works with approximately 135 union repped players. The union is not run by Scott Boras. I am curious where you drew the connection between Scott’s voice (by the way, he wanted to play 135 games up until Christmas) and the unions’ most recent reply to MLB’s most recent offer?
4. David Justice was married to Halle Barry. For some players, they may truly believe Jennifer Anniston is on the table.
“But this is a time where the union is the side that isn’t bargaining in good faith. They got ridiculously large concessions from the owners in the March deal, including billions in free service time had the season been canceled, and that deal was contingent on a good faith renegotiation to follow if seats were empty, including further salary reductions. But Scott Boras wound his clients up and sent them out marching to battle to hold the line at full prorated salaries. Something that makes little sense in an environment where 44 million Americans have lost work, and millions more have taken pay cuts to keep the jobs they have.”
How in the hell does runningfrog get such a positive response and tomerafan not at all when the raison d’etre seems a bit different but the substance of their arguments so similar? I guess no one actually read beyond the first paragraph. Or is it simply the claim of being a former union labor president that makes you all swoon?
Tom Boswell, the famous Marxist agitator (/s), absolutely ripped the owners today in the Washington Post. He called out Lerner for watching the local franchise value increase $1.5 BILLION in about a decade then refusing to lose marginal revenue (he figured the gap at ~20M per team) in the short term. The handful of comment trolls here aside, the owners are not doing as well on the PR front as they usually do.
If Tom Lerner listened to every idiot journalist heckling him from the stands, pretty soon he’d be sitting up there with them watching someone else run his team
Congrats on having a Marxist aboard I guess?
Missed the (indicated in print, no less) sarcasm?
Are we sure the journo really is not a Marxist…
The dude is a famous baseball columnist. So I mean, I suppose he could be a Marxist? But I think he has given literally no indication that he is lol.
Okay so he is probably not a Marxist (probably). And I take your larger point, that not all who disagree with me are (maybe some on here?) But on the other hand, not all who disagree with the union party line are “comment trolls” either
I think this piece misreads one key part. It’s true that the owners have basically offered the exact same money, just spread out over different numbers of games, and that I don’t think the owners have negotiated in good faith and the numbers they have offered are incredibly misleading. So, I’m in agreement with Craig here.
Meanwhile, the players do not want to set any precedent for pay cuts on a prorated basis, period. I think that’s fair.
But the key to this whole thing is that the owners make way, way more money on the playoffs and they have every right to be concerned about getting there. But this gets to the real problem: The owners make way more money in the playoffs partly because they pay the players way, way less there. In fact, the players get all of their playoffs shares from the gate, which is not going to happen. And the owners were not willing to give on anything in order to make up for that.
This whole thing was avoidable, and it was the owners’ fault, and the owners’ unwillingness to budge from the total $ number really put this in jeopardy as well…but I think the owners’ concerns about not making it to the playoffs is legitimate. It’s the only thing that I think they got right, amidst everything else they got wrong.
And this is where the players were giving something: more play off games. That’s why Craig’s point makes sense. The only thing the owners were willing to give was on the qualifying offer that will likely matter almost not at all this offseason as Mookie Betts might be the only player to get one and it really won’t affect his market.
The owners were negotiating as if they were benevolent dictators whose role it was to dictate the number of games to be played and how much players would be paid (ignoring that in normal times renegotiating pay is a third rail and especially given recent history). I guess the players could have jumped out with a first offer before MLB did, but otherwise I’m not sure what they could do other than roll over and take it in the rear.
MLB makes about a third of its entire seasonal profit in the playoffs. Just like MLBPA doesn’t want to set a precedent for pay cuts (which they should because that’s what employees do in a massive revenue drop in the absence of layoffs), MLB doesn’t want a precedent for playoff profit cuts. Maybe they could offer these for some other concessions from MLBPA in the next CBA, but we aren’t at the next CBA yet.
I like your comment above where you say Craig’s numbers aren’t good but his editorial here isn’t worthy of the site.
I was reading something by Eugene Freedman the other day and it opened my eyes a bit. He seems to think that ownership will impose a 50 game season, and the players will file a grievance against the league because the agreement says that the commissioner has to schedule as many games as possible and the owners have already proposed a season with more than 70 games. And while Freedman definitely has a particular opinion about this, he seems to think that the union can win that grievance, and potentially also force the owners to open their books as part of it.
If both those things come to pass–which, I don’t know, that’s two things and so the joint probability isn’t great–then I think the players can come out of this in a stronger position for the CBA negotiations. They didn’t give in on salaries, they didn’t give in on the playoffs, and there’s a chance they can find out exactly what is going on. I’m pessimistic about this going completely their way but I don’t think this is the end of the story.
I think that’s true, and part of my point that the Union made this current discussion about the post-2021 CBA as much as, if not more than, finding a way to get back on the field of play right now in a mutually agreeable way that provides a meaningful season.
Said differently – all the support posited for the Union’s position is entirely valid and good in the next CBA negotiation. But this ain’t that, and the owners have been scratching their heads trying to figure out how to negotiate with a Union that turned this into that. Again, the owners are not blameless here. But they’re also not entirely to blame.
Update on this: Manfred is now claiming he doesn’t want there to be a season unless the union waives the right to file a grievance over what Manfred imposes, being upset about the possibility of a grievance that would direct more money the players.
I find this statement extraordinary. The league has been leaking the “nuclear option” of unilaterally imposing a 50-some game season for a couple weeks now. Now the players told them to go ahead and use it and Manfred is balking. I don’t think the league expected the players to do this–they really thought the union would eventually bend to the league’s will on this. They do not look prepared to actually do it.
I’m not sure what this means, exactly. Perhaps it indicates that the owners’ walk-away point was a whole lot further away from where they said it was, or maybe they think the chances of losing the grievance is high enough that they don’t have the stomach to fight it. Maybe there are enough owners who, seeing as how they will lose money per game in the regular season, refuse to greenlight the original plan of just getting to the playoffs. I don’t know. But it’s downright shocking to me that the union called the league’s bluff and the league isn’t just going ahead and doing it. It looks…weak.
As I’ve said before, I think possibly there is a great deal of guilt on the part of Fangraphs writers for the role analytics has played in revealing how grossly overpaid many major league baseball players have been since the advent of free agency. Also, unfortunately for the sanity of all of us, it is another awful election year in America. Hence all this whining and public virtue signaling from the site.
Union idolaters neglect to consider that no one would be anywhere near good enough to play in the major leagues on their own without the substantial investment in time, coaching, and medical care placed in them by their teams. Just as the success of the league depends on the labor of players, so the personal success of players depends in every case 100% on investment from the league.
I despise Rob Manfred and several of the owners as well. But if Scott Boras is allowed to continue on his current trajectory unchecked, then MLB could become just like professional boxing.
It would be super fascinating for Fangraphs to take on the “player salaries have decreased” narrative from an objective, analytical standpoint. It seems to me that analytics have helped front offices (many of whom employ alumni of analytically-minded websites) determine that a more efficient payroll spend is to jettison mid-level vets in lieu of much less expensive replacement-level talent.
I despise Rob Manfred
Yeah, let me be clear, I think Rob Manfred is bad for the sport of baseball. I could list a couple dozen reasons, but the thing is, they aren’t germane to the discussion at hand. Dude is bad for baseball, in my opinion. But that doesn’t change the fact that the MLBPA had a duty to negotiate here and didn’t. I can dislike my adversary while acknowledging that we need to get to the table together and figure something out.
“Union idolaters” don’t take into account the investment. Pointing out the obvious (maybe you are different) but no amount time, coaching, or medical care could have ever enabled me to throw 98MPH or hit a ball 450 feet. It’s important to recognize that these players have talents few do, and over and over again in professional sport, when teams try to field replacement players, scrubs, AAAA players, or even start up new leagues with lesser talent, the fans don’t buy it because the quality of performance just isn’t worth the price of admission. Literally.
A valid point! Nonetheless you have in no way refuted mine. If Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer had never had any professional coaches or medical staff to help them, would you really want to pay the same amount of money to watch the resultant efforts?
But this is true with virtually any skilled job. Doctors are trained in hospitals, scientists in graduate programs and with lab work, lawyers on the associates’ grind, musicians at conservatories. They owe those who train them best efforts, but not necessarily a career at below market. And players do “pay” for that training, through low salaries while in the minors and MLB minimums (and then arb-controlled salaries).
How would you define “below market?”
This is an interesting hypothetical. I think it’s possible that you wouldn’t mind what you were not aware of. For example, would a fan in 1930 watching what they believed to be the best 200 players (top tier of baseball), they wouldn’t feel cheated by the strong probability that those players could have been much better had they received the training and coaching that players in the 21st century do.
“Union idolaters neglect to consider that no one would be anywhere near good enough to play in the major leagues on their own without the substantial investment in time, coaching, and medical care placed in them by their teams. ”
This is a silly take. There is no set “good enough” bar for the major leagues. MLB signs what they believe to be the most promising players and develops them for their own benefit to try to end up with the as many of the top several hundred players in N. America. And for the sole purpose of maximizing their own team’s ability to compete with the other 29 teams. They aren’t developing players out of altruism. It’s about competition, which is relative. Universities also develop players. If there wasn’t an MLB-sponsored minor league collective, you would see more guys playing in independent leagues. Would the quality of baseball decline due to lessened development? Possibly but personal success would still be about which players are the best relative to one another, not to some theoretical standard. So no, the personal success of players doesn’t depend 100% on investment from the league as you say.
Just fascinated by the comment tantrums from triggered folks because FG posts articles that are consistently on the side of the players, like FG pretty much always has been…
It’s really easy to call opinions you disagree with “tantrums” without actually saying anything substantive.
I’m surprised at the ferocity of some of the responses. The piece obviously isn’t intended to be purely objective, just to work with the numbers in the public sphere. Yes, it’s pro-player, but Craig’s core point, that the owners have made three different offers that basically end in the same place, is correct. The owners clearly need as much playoff money as they can get, and want the players to absorb costs by agreeing to play fewer regular season games, and at a lesser rate. I don’t think that’s disputable. I’m not accusing the owners of bad faith, just of hard bargaining.
You go to a baseball site like this, which provides a great deal of innovative writing and material (including draft coverage that was very good) and you decide you are so outraged by what is, at worst, an editorial opinion that you won’t support it–and won’t even read it anymore. I don’t understand the logic.
This isn’t Fox/OAN/MSNBC where most of the content is aimed at a particular audience. It’s a baseball site with 90% baseball content and 10% this. Read the baseball content, don’t read the 10% if it enrages you.
Probably because there has been no actual baseball yet this year, your 90/10% splits should probably be reversed. Those of us who disagree with Craig and the direction the site is taking have a right to speak up about it. That way, when baseball comes back, the tiresome pro-union political blather can go back to its deserved isolation on the site!
It’s not 90% articles about negotiations, and any count would show that. My thinking is I can read the Wall Street Journal without agreeing the any of editorials. If there’s content there I want, I’ll go there. If the site is so permeated with bias that I can’t stand it, I won’t.
I subscribe to the WSJ as well! I often disagree with their editorials. Which of the articles written by Craig are “factual”, and which are “editorial”?
Craig has 952 posts….I suspect that more than a few are purely baseball.
Look, I write about history and politics (and occasionally other things) for a couple of websites. There are some readers, who, in a largely or entirely apolitical post, will bore in and find some connection between something I’ve written about that occurred in the 19th century….and an implicit criticism of their favorite politician. It’s the nature of the beast. We are genetically inclined to be argumentative.
Indeed I agree , certainly it seems at least that you and I are inclined to be argumentative. Why then would a traditional media outlet bother at all anymore with dividing “factual” from “editorial” sections? I’d suggest that one reason might be because the intent of pieces can be different. One piece to inform, another to persuade. And it can be seen as disingenuous to hide one intent in the other. We start off expecting shinola and are served s**t instead in the service of some political nonsense ideology. That is what Craig can be accused of doing here. Do you see how some of us who disagree might not respond to well to that?
Having worked for a newspaper and a network (as a freelancer) in the very (very) distant past, I can tell you that the better ones want the ideal of the “Chinese Wall” although most would acknowledge that they don’t manage to achieve it. You and I don’t actually disagree all that much on one point….when a media outlet lets too much of their airtime/space get turned over to the “opinion” folks, then they are playing to a specific audience and lose general interest. While I generally agree with Craig’s take on this issue, these types of pieces are not why I come to Fangraphs. I suppose Fangraphs could label the article “opinion” but this is a website, without a formal division.
And, I do like arguing.
If I knew how to use emojis I would post a “thumbs up” sign now
Im looking for some perspective on what ‘concessions’ the players are actually making. Not saying they’re not, but I don’t really view it that way and hoping someone replies changing my mind.
1. Expanded playoffs: Not a concession as players make more money due to increased TV revenue that the owners are sharing a small portion of when they’ve never shared it before
2. No salary/Service time for players who opt-out: (Sarcasm) Oh, how noble of them to concede that they don’t deserve money/service time for not showing up to work. Not saying their aren’t risks with the virus but every laborer in the world is facing that same risk right now.
3. Being Mic’d up during games, Post season HR Derby, extra fan interactions: Again, players would benefit here in revenue and exposure. Owners also benefit too, don’t get me wrong and they’re not the ones doing the extra work here. But the players who already like doing this stuff are going to be the ones doing it.
These are the ‘concessions’ I keep hearing about, but there may be one or two I’m forgetting. If you have a logical statement about why these are truly concessions, I’m ready to hear you out. Please prove me wrong.
I was not previously aware of how much of the profit MLB gets from the playoffs. But money is fungible. The players getting next to nothing (or nothing!) for the playoffs is not a big deal if they are getting their full pay for all/most of the season. The players were not only giving the owners more playoffs in 2020/2021, they were basically asking for nothing in return as far as the playoffs themselves are concerned. $50 million for the playoffs is a minuscule fraction of what comes in.
There are two pies in baseball. One is the regular season and it is shared by both the owners and the players. The other is the postseason and it is mostly the owners with the players getting very little. The players were offering to expand the size of the pie that owners get almost everything from because the players we’re getting a bigger share of the regular pie (how much bigger being impossible to know). That is a real concession. That is taking tome in the season that could be used for more regular season games with every player getting paid and converting them to games where the owners get practically everything.
They haven’t made any substantive concessions, and indeed it has been their stated position from the beginning that they will not make any concessions.
This is Tony Clark’s style, throughout his tenure as MLBPA chief. He starts off right away with a brinksmanship strategy, every single time, whether he has leverage or not. And once he’s done that he can’t back down: he’s painted himself into a corner. So far this strategy of his has been a complete disaster — and not just this year: in all previous years of his leadership too.
You don’t have to bargain this way. It’s a choice. It kind of makes sense that a former player would act this way, but it treats these negotiations as a competition. But skilled negotiators don’t behave this way, because it hardens the other side, reduces opportunities for mutually-beneficial agreements to be found, and generally makes agreements harder to reach. And if you don’t have the leverage you get really screwed.
Whilst I don’t agree with the wording of Tomerafan, I think that he/she does have a valid point.
The union has been burned so badly in the past by poorly negotiated deals with the owners, and wanted to take a stand in this negotiation. However, the owners are holding all the cards in this.
Neither side really wanted to give an inch; neither made an offer to the other which would be acceptable. Public statements by Boras and some of the owners haven’t helped.
I do think that making the annual accounts public would be a good start. As a Englishman, I do find it unusual that player salaries are public, yet club finances aren’t. Over here, it tends to be the opposite for sports.
I think the players clearly made an effort to move towards compromise – to which the owners responded by offering the same deal in different clothes (and, in a key point Craig makes, took much longer in each round of negotiation that the players did – a baffling fact considering their offer is basically the same each time). The owners have held up negotiations, in both substance and timing, and I really don’t think there is much room for debate on that point. Of course, reasonable minds can differ, but I just don’t see it.
The 114 game proposal was so outlandish, that yes, the 89 game proposal seemed to head towards compromise. It was still more costly than 82 games at pro rata that the owner said they couldn’t do.
The latest MLB proposal basically offers 58 games of pay for 72 actual games for completing the playoffs (90% likelihood?). The backup is 48 games, but Craig decided to use 54 games in his analysis to show that the owners weren’t offering anything better than the backup. The players don’t have to accept it or even negotiate, but the proposal as-is offers more money to the players than what they would earn in the backup plan. It’s absolutely better than 48 games and the earlier proposals, but the narrative is more important than the math.
pretty much every organization in the UK has to file with HMRC and it’s public info. You can even get nonprofit and charity data.
That being said- I think the union realizes that different owners need different things. Boras’s letter says as much, with regard to debt. Frankly, if they don’t have a season, some of the weaker/dumber owners could be in deep trouble (this is conditional on the terms of their debt, obviously).
The biggest problem here is that teams are going to lose a whole bunch of money no matter what happens, right? Some owners benefit from more games. Others benefit from less. But since more games disproportionately benefits a bunch of cheapskate teams (Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh) and the Angels (whose owner is inexplicably one of the biggest hardliners in this whole thing) I feel like there are some silver linings to a rather dark cloud.
The Mets are screwed either way, which is why Wilpon is definitely selling this time around.
Wow, I just read the lazy, un-researched “both sides” take from my local paper’s sports columnist that didn’t include a single actual number. Then I read this. It was way more informative and also much better! Thanks!
I’m not smart enough to give a detailed breakdown of the various offers, but I think the owners’ seemingly low-ball offers to the players are an acknowledgement of the importance of the revenue generated by fans attending games. The irony is, this continued squabbling will turn off fans en masse (see 1994) and cost them billions of dollars of future revenue from fans, rather than the millions they are fighting over now.
The Wiscon Supreme Court tossed out all restrictions in Wisconsin. Isn’t it just a lock out for the Brewers? Unless the county passed a regulation on mass gatherings, it’s just low ticket sales that would be the issue.
a) The Brewers don’t only play in one state; b) there are bans on mass gatherings at the local and county levels; c) the players don’t want fans, because that increases their chances of getting sick and dying, or at least they haven’t said that they do.
Thanks Craig, as always, for helping to penetrate the owners’ intentionally dense (perhaps at times even fictional) accounting and misleading PR campaign.
I am certainly not on the owners side here but holy cow this author certainly seems to have it out for them. I’m more pro-player than anything but even I can see that they could have been doing more to compromise here.
They players moved toward compromise. The owners did not. At no point did an offer by MLB indicate that they were really interested in negotiating, only that they wanted what they wanted and would not concede an inch. The tone of this article only reflects that reality.
If they wanted to move toward compromise they would have offered a cut. 5%, 10%, or a significant portion of their salary upon on the completion of the playoffs. The things the PA offered- an off-season “home run derby” “micing up players” “additional player access” is laughable when you’re talking about salaries totaling BILLIONS of dollars. Those are things that the not only benefit MLB and the owners, but also the PLAYERS THEMSELVES!!! If you consider that compromise, but not offering your employees an additional 200 MILLION DOLLARS from playing LESS than I think there might be some fault to your logic.
I mean, the table kinda shows numbers that increase with each offer, does it not?
I will grant that there is a way to read their subsequent offers as slightly better than the (incredibly low) bar that they set initially, but they are all the same in spirit and still worse than (or at best roughly equal financially to) the supposed fallback plan of 50-ish games at prorated salaries. So the owners stance of asking to pay the players less money for more games, and therefore more risk on the players’ side of injury or illness, never changed. The owners did not negotiate. They just put out unreasonable offers that the union could not in good conscience accept and then proceeded to attempt to paint the union as the party at fault. There was no true back-and-forth, no give-and-take, no actual compromise offered from the owners, but rather just a naked, shameless attempt by the league and the owners to strongarm their employees into working in, to put it charitably, unfair conditions. That type of behavior should not be accepted, or even acquiesced, in any industry from any employer, let alone one that claims to be the “national pastime”.
“I will grant that there is a way to read their subsequent offers as slightly better than the (incredibly low) bar that they set initially, but they are all the same in spirit and still worse than (or at best roughly equal financially to) the supposed fallback plan of 50-ish games at prorated salaries.”
“At best roughly equal”? We’re talking about over a 10% increase. I don’t get this narrative at all that the owners won’t negotiate and won’t compromise. It seems like the complete opposite to me. Each offer from the owners is improved significantly, while each offer from the players offers essentially nothing. I mean, asking for more games at pro-rata is like reverse compromise, right? It’s asking for even more than you asked for initially.
Thank you. Craig spends an entire article talking about how the owners haven’t budged at all while simultaneously using multiple graphs that blatantly contradict that stance. And then lauding the players for negotiating in good faith!
That’s assuming a 100% chance of the playoffs happening, which is an incredibly naive stance to hold. We haven’t even gotten through the first wave of covid yet, and judging by how this country has collectively handled things so far, I would almost say there is a less than 50% the playoffs are completed in full in the face of a potential second wave (which would take the total money offered to players well under the fallback plan). Additionally, the owners are proposing an extra 20-ish games, plus expanded playoffs, to to get to their number, which, as I mentioned above, confers a good deal more risk of injury and illness onto the players, which is hard to quantify financially as a whole, but is certainly not negligible.
I’m not sure what the owner’s endgame is here. Secure funds in 2020 in any way possible to end up with diminished revenues in the future from how badly this has been handled. MLB assumes that fans will just come back like nothing happened, almost as if 1994 never happened. This time though, there won’t be steroids and home run records to help bring people back (inb4 the ball gets juiced even more)
Owners are heterogenous agents, some will win if the season happens and some will lose. I don’t think there’s ever been a case where all the owners didn’t marginally benefit in some way (some certainly more than others) from a labor negotiation, but in this case some owners could very much be staring at bankruptcy/losing their teams conditional on different outcomes of the negotiations. Indeed, it might happen no matter what result happens.
With his 28 posts and 15,000 words on just this one article, which not coincidentally exposed the greed of MLB ownership, I cannot help but conclude that Tomerafan is employed by the owners of MLB.
Who else, without getting paid by the word, would bother sucking up to them on such a grand scale? Who else would argue against the indignation of nearly a hundred real readers of Fangraphs? Who else would make such a lame argument in favor of the billionaires, and who else would pay him to do so?
Yo, Fangraphs, can we ban this bozo, Tomerafan?
I am not tomerafan. I agree with him entirely. I am not the only one here. I disagree vehemently with you. You are a coward for asking him to be “banned.’
Coward? Where in this nation can a man not speak his mind? You sir, are a clown and perhaps an ignoramus for your faulty take on who is at fault for our lack of baseball. Grow a brain and read now and then.
Apparently you become so afraid when someone “speaks his mind” that you need him to be “banned”. Pretty weak. Or did I somehow misunderstand you?
“Where in this nation can a man not speak his mind?”
According to you, the answer is Tomerafan, on fangraphs dot com. Grow a brain yourself, my dude.
I have the day off today (a perk of owning my own company) but was going to get some work done on the side. This did kinda derail that for me; I’ve not been productive and I will pay for that later. Fortunately, I answer to me and me alone on that front. I’m paying myself to do it, I guess, in a strange way. But it’s not hard while listening to podcasts, etc. today to also have a window open and write about something I feel passionately about. The weather ain’t great, so here I am.
Not sure what I’ve done to be banned other than disagree with you. Plenty of other folks agree with me. I’m not sure how many times I have to say it, but you can both root for the players in the next CBA while believing their Union was grotesque in these current labor discussions. Those two thoughts need not be mutually exclusive, unless you are starting from a pro-Union-bias-at-all-costs, which I am not.
Some disagree with how I came off in my first post this morning, but this has been building consistently over the last couple of weeks. Either way, though, I believe in what I’ve written. My thoughts are genuine, and I don’t long for a place where someone wants to silence dissenting opinion with a ban-hammer solely for the concept of dissent itself.
I also don’t get words like “liar,” “bozo,” etc. But for each his own. If you need to stoop to insults, so be it – your choice, no skin off my back.
(I am too wordy, as you noted, a flaw that has followed me my whole life. So, apologies for that. I come by it honestly.)
Excellent points, Tomerafan.
It is helpful to hear challenges to the biased and repetitive viewpoints of Fangraph writers, and nearly all baseball writers. I have always enjoyed the website, and also the Effectively Wild podcasts, but they have lost their appeal when all three hosts just repeat the MLBPA talking points. Phrases like “I would rather root for players than laundry” are repeated to justify bashing the owners.
While I think owners have been short sighted in many respects, the players and their agents deserve equal blame in this failed negotiation. A compromise is reachable that could provide 60-70 games at 100% prorata salary in exchange for expanded playoffs with deferred or reduced salary in the event playoffs are not completed. Both sides would need to give up a little, but expanding playoffs would create more revenue to share overall.
Hopefully a season can still be salvaged, but it will take compromise on both sides.
or your school could give you a year for paternity leave, like mine does, and you all of a sudden have way too much free time.
I side with tomerafan too. If you don’t like what he has to say don’t read it.
Tomerafan is pretty clearly wrong for anyone paying close enough attention, but he has expressed his opinion (and spawned actual meaningful discussion at that). Wanting to ban someone who has a different opinion than you is not the right reflex at all – nor, for what it’s worth, is calling into question the ethics of an author or website who write or publish an article that has a (well-reasoned, evidence-supported) conclusion different from the one you want to see.
Someone has to have the worst ideas in the comment section. I for one support Tomerafan filling that role.
I think I made my point pretty clear up above, but I absolutely do not agree with tomerafan on this point and aside from the first post on this article (which was ill-advised) he has been great. I appreciate him being here.
Craig, I agree the owners have not negotiated at all. They have dressed their offer in a number of different costumes. After the first offer, I feel they know that offering a lower total amount is not only unlikely to be refused, but an insult to the MLBPA. I recently reread the Stephen Keeney article from 2016 about the Roster Depreciation Allowance. Perhaps the owners claims of losses are based on this accounting sleight of hand. Any look at the increased value of franchises makes it clear that baseball is a profitable business
Each time they offer more money and that’s not negotiation?
Here is another independent analysis of who is conning whom in the baseball industry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/15/dont-let-mlb-owners-cry-poor-they-can-afford-do-whats-right-baseball/
I side with the players overall, but you can’t really argue that MLB didn’t improve their offer at all when there are higher numbers with each offer right there in the first table.
The players budged more from Offer 1 to Offer 2, for sure. But it’s an indictment on Tony Clarke that the average FG commentor could’ve negotiated a better deal for the players.
The first offer from the players was so insane that of course they had to move much more. 114 game schedule with December playoffs(likely to be cancelled), huge salary advances, conditional salary deferrals WITH interest.
100% agree. It was comical. On one hand say that the players are really worried about catching the virus, then turn around and ask them to INCREASE their risk of infection by scheduling 40% more games from the MLB’s originaly offer while having the season end after Thanksgiving. That was the biggest joke proposal out of anything offered by either side.
Yet it was framed as a good faith compromise position. A step in the right direction. In reality, it was a giant middle finger to ownership. That’s the MLBPA’s right, but it’s ridiculous framing to paint that offer in a good light.
FWIW, Thomas Boswell, a respected baseball writer for 40+ years has an opinion similar to Craig.
Overall, I think both sides come across as tone deaf arguing over billions while many Americans are sick, mourning the death of loved ones and/or unemployed. Both sides needed to come together sooner to provide a little bit of divergence and joy to people.
But overall I think the owners are more to blame because they are overlooking two major points, first, the players are risking more than money in agreeing to play, they are risking their lives and their families lives or at least their health. Second, the draw to baseball is the players. They are the product and the league and franchise values will suffer from a lost season even if the owners lose less short term.
Finally, I think the recent announcement of the leagues deal with TBS for a billion, a 40% increase kind of poisoned the negotiation waters and made the owners financial claims look less than honest.
Still, given the major, existential issues our nation faces right now, my conclusion is a pox on both houses.
Let’s keep in mind that for people the age and health of a professional baseball player, covid is substantially less deadly than the regular flu
But what about the coaches, scouts and other non playing staff? They are likely to be older, less fit and have more health conditions. What about their families?
Sure, but the negotiations are between the players and owners, right? Not the non playing staff? Wasn’t the point that I was responding to that playing is very risky for the players?
Craig, your article from a week ago (MLB Owners’ Latest Offer Even Worse Than the Last One), has very different (and higher numbers) than this article does. For example, 48 GM Pro-Rated in that table was $1.43B, while 54 GM Pro-Rated in this article is listed as $1.36B. Also, the 50%/75% for 76 games in that table was $1.17B/$1.65B, while in this table it’s listed as $0.99B/$1.44B.
I don’t see a reason in this article why these calculations are different than when you did them a week ago.
I don’t necessarily agree with the most agitated commentors here, but understand why some commentors are questioning your analysis, and wish for this site that I gave $50 to to have better accountability.
The goalposts were shifted so he could claim “it’s the same offer as before” and that owners are negotiating in bad faith.
The players don’t have to like the deal (70%/80% without/with playoffs), but if they had accepted it as-is, they would get paid the equivalent of 58 games for 72 actual games in the highly likely event that the playoffs complete. It is absolutely more money than 48 games. They easily could have come to better terms within this framework, but decided to send a message to ownership.
If you truly believe the playoffs only have about a 50/50 chance of completing, then Manfred would be crazy to allow the season to happen at all.
There seemed to be some confusion about the numbers in the previous article as I was counting around $200 million from pro-rated signing bonuses, buyouts, and money already owed to players (which I explained in that post). The offers/potential offers remained consistent relative to each other, but seemed to add more confusion than they were worth when comparing season salaries by proposal so I took it out across the board.
Cool, thanks
Craig, do you still stand by the title of your article that $40M less guaranteed while playing 6 less games with $210M more if playoffs are played is a worse deal for the players?
Because if so, I would be more than happy to make a bet where I pay you $40 at the beginning of regular season and you pay me back $210 if the playoffs are completed.
Union doesn’t want to give up what they got in March. Some technicalities in the CBA negotiations give the Union the option to ignore any new offers from the owners about compensation. The owners are upset because they are fitting a bigger bill than what they expected to when they agreed in March. They’ve made a bunch of proposals to bother the union into countering, hoping it nullifies the March agreement which would happen if the Union countered on pay. They haven’t worked because the Union doesn’t want to give up the compensation they’ve asked for. So this stalemate falls down to the owners trying to limit their exposure and the Union trying to get more money by upping the games. Media plays the sides…yadda yadda yadda…
My opinion is the Union is within its rights to keep the March compensation negotiations; however, it is this almost ‘bad faith’ that is preventing the sides from getting the game on the field for the fans. And the Owners are fighting against something they think is unfair, so naturally, they are going to look like greedy bastards when you join in the mud. It is always the second punch that refs see, not the one that instigated the fight.
My hope is they can agree, but it looks really bleak. I hope in the future CBA laws don’t prevent two sides from reaching an agreement over something so easy to fix.
Local man enraged by viewpoint comments repeatedly on “damaging” topic while maintaining status as paying member, ends up increasing traffic through efforts; film at 11
Yes, the irony that I helped the site traffic and engagement numbers today is not lost on me.
If a result of this is that the playoffs don’t have a ridiculous expansion than it is a win.
Now we just need to get the nfl to screw itself over. would love to see their season jacked up.
A few things:
Manfred indeed could have suspended uniform player contracts for the national emergency. He also would need to remove that suspension to have a baseball season. It’s not clear that the suspension means players wouldn’t receive their normal salary when play resumes given. The owners were concerned they would have to pay full salaries if they didn’t have an agreement in March for 2020 pay. That fear caused negotiations that gave players pro-rated pay, service time for partial or no seasons, and a $170 million advance on pay that wouldn’t be repaid if no season. In addition to eliminating having to pay players full salaries, postseason player pool minimum (around $20 M, last year’s payout was $80 M) was eliminated, around $400 million in draft money was either deferred or eliminated, and team debt rules (which if in violation, opens up the entire CBA) were relaxed.
The parties agreed to have good faith discussions on the economic feasibility on games without spectators. They also agreed to try and play as many games as possible, including doubleheaders and would potentially extend the regular season into October.
We can’t now say the length of season or when the season might end being a non-starter, but that a reduction in the agreed pro-rated pay is the thing that needs to be dealt with. The players came down significantly in their demands for games and many double-headers. That’s a concession. Providing potentially hundreds of million of dollars in postseason revenue for the next two seasons is a concession.
Making two offers that are worse than MLB’s threat to have a 50ish game season is not a concession, nor is it advancing the ball in negotiations. Finally coming up with a third offer that guarantees players only as much as a 50-game pro-rated season and provides contingent postseason money equivalent to the value of expanded playoffs is not, to me, a meaningful concession so I said as much. That is my opinion, but I think it is one supported by the facts.
Regardless of the faith of the owners (IMO BAD), everyone fucked up on the March agreement.
Thank for the reply Craig. I think the whole point is the owners want the players to absorb more of the risk. While the guarantee may be the same, the total payout would have been 300 million more on their last proposal correct? And I believe that doesn’t include the 170 million they already paid the players and wouldn’t count towards there pro-rated salary. Now I get this isn’t guaranteed money, but couldn’t that have been a point of negotiation? Ask to squeeze in an extra 10 games, instead of a 40% increase off the first offer? Or ask for more guaranteed and less on the backend instead of picking up your ball and going home which is what the Players Association has seemed to have done.
Also let’s not think that an extra round of post-season baseball doesn’t have benefit to the players. The more exposure they receive the better their brand, the more $ they can make in endorsements etc… It’s good for the entire sport.
That March agreement provided clarity that salaries would resume on a pro-rated basis if the season resumed as normal but on a limited schedule. That’s what Paragraph 11 means anyway (de facto even if not de jure, because the owners could just suspend the entire season if it cost too much due to the national emergency, but likely de jure also), the March agreement just clarified that — it didn’t create it — so that’s not a concession from the players. Neither is relaxation of the team debt rules, since the players actively wanted the owners to go into more debt in order to pay them more. It also guaranteed partial salary ($170mn) and service time (worth probably billions, definitely hundreds of millions), which is a significant concession from the owners that they were in no way forced to make. So let’s say the owners’ concessions in March begin at $1-2bn. Oh, and the owners were going to pay for all health/safety provisions too (while also continuing to pay non-player staff salaries for awhile, which the players don’t give a damn about). With that billion-dollar initial concession the owners were hoping to buy goodwill or, at minimum, good faith negotiation once it became clearer what the Covid world would look like.
So what have the players offered up?
Since March the players have insisted that the changed economics of baseball should have nothing to do with them. Literally nothing: play as many games as the calendar allows at full salaries regardless of what else is happening. So no concession there. That’s certainly a violation of the spirit of the March agreement, if not the letter (and I suspect the owners will file a grievance). There was no agreement at any point about maximizing games with no fans in attendance during a national emergency, so the players have not conceded anything there either. They are not entitled to set the schedule, as they now acknowledge but which was always obvious, so all of their “concessions” over number of games played are fictitious. There was a tiny concession that the players made — after nearly three months! — for a small and temporary expansion of the playoffs, but they would be paid for that so it’s not a huge concession either.
If the players questioned the owners’ claims about the economic viability of playing without fans then a) they should have countenanced revenue sharing, since non-fan revenues are apparently so amazingly high; b) they should have been bargaining for playoff revenue from the start rather than focusing on salaries that they weren’t even owed under conditions of national emergency; c) they should have noticed that the owners didn’t actually want to play many regular season games without fans, and all of their proposals reflected that, which makes zero sense unless they were telling the truth of the economic viability of playing without fans (which the players will never admit because they will not concede that the owners might be telling the truth about anything ever).
So what did the players really “concede”? Draft bonuses and minor league salaries. I.e., *other peoples’ money*. That’s it. They screwed their colleagues over, but otherwise have conceded nothing else substantial this entire time. And keep in mind: they are owed literally nothing!
The owners have increased the financial value of their offers by about 25% over the course of this process. At the start of it the owners proposed revenue sharing, which would give players part of this supposedly-unlimited financial upside. The owners have looked for ways to increase the size of the revenue pie with more playoffs and other events, and have been willing to share to make that happen. The players haven’t been interested in any of it.
And now they’re going to get the worst deal possible, the literal minimum they are entitled to if there is any season at all, because of this disastrous negotiation.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to look at this and conclude that the players are fair and good while the owners are manipulative and evil. It’s one thing to say that you would like to see that players get more money. I would like to see that too! It’s another thing to sling arrows at owners for acting in exactly the same way you would if you were in their position, especially given the enormous financial threat they are currently staring down.
Bingo. Well said.
“It’s another thing to sling arrows at owners for acting in exactly the same way you would if you were in their position“
Three things (besides money) would prevent me from ever being in the owners’ position: 1. I habitually tell the truth. 2. I care about the effects of my actions on others. 3. I’m not lazy enough to sit on my ass all day and watch income roll in the door. I value work.
Quoting myself above: “The end result was predictable: MLB signaled that they only had $1.45B to offer and it’s natural MLBPA took the minimum number of games. Craig is an MLBPA activist so he followed MLBPA’s talking points to color this obvious result as something nefarious. There’s still an open question about whether we’ll have extended playoffs this year, isn’t there? This doesn’t interest Craig as much as writing a manifesto.”
I think you see the MLBPA’s original 114-game offer as somehow responsive to MLB’s fixed offers of $1.45B, so thus you see MLBPA’s next 89-game offer from that as some magnanimous concession. It’s an offer after starting from a ridiculous point. It’s odd that you basically re-printed MLBPA’s press release and added in vituperation, rather than just presenting a summary of offers and letting readers read…and decide to the extent a decision has to be made. I view this like a friend bidding on a bike on Ebay. Interesting to see how the negotiating is going, but I guess you see yourself as an MLBPA advisor, so you make this into some great moral lesson and get everyone whipped up. Try to simply focus on the facts in your writing, trust your readers to figure it out.
There is a laser-like focus on the guaranteed money here that is motivated by narrative rather than the likely outcome. A bonus contingent on a company’s financial performance shouldn’t be such a foreign concept and should be considered a better option compared with 48 games. The backup in this article was set to 54 games rather than 48 to make MLB’s offer look worse by comparison. If we change the backup to 48 games, the guarantee is $1.21B which is….worse than either scenario in MLB’s latest offer. Huh.
To keep ignoring what is by far the most likely scenario (completed playoffs and significantly more money for players) and focus only on the guarantee when comparing to 48 (strike that, 54) games is misleading.
“That is my opinion, but I think it is one supported by the facts”
That’s perfectly fine, except that in your original post you suggested that yours was the only valid viewpoint (“Any other view ignores the events of the last four months”).
IMO, much of the acrimony around these articles stems from FG’s mushy editorial policy, where it’s often unclear whether a post is supposed to be an opinion piece or an analysis, weighing the available evidence as objectively as possible. To put it less mildly: Fangraph’s tendency to publish opinion pieces under the guise of “analysis”, which is what the membership signup promises.
A far more balanced article from Siera creator Matt Swartz:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/06/resolving-this-player-owner-dispute-should-be-easy.html
I am baffled by those who accuse the Union of not negotiating in good faith. So long as the profitability numbers that owners present are pure fiction, the Union CAN’T act “reasonably”–to do so would be to accept a crippled position for future CBA negotiations. Craig mentioned this in an earlier piece, but the league claims that over the past decade it has never had a collective EBITDA greater than $250 million. In 2018 the Braves (Liberty Media) disclosed $94 million. We’re to believe that the other 29 clubs, including all the biggest markets and most successful teams, averaged $5.4, when the Braves were at $94? If the Union negotiates in good faith from a starting point that is already a massive, unwarranted concession to owners, they are failing membership. What could they be doing differently?
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlbs-claim-of-a-4-billion-loss/
The Braves’ $94mn was *before* EBITDA, not after it. And that was a one-year spike related to a new stadium and a team in competition for the first time in more than a decade in a booming local economy; they don’t make that every year, and most teams don’t make that in any given season.
Here’s how we know that the owners are not lying about the revenue numbers: they offered revenue sharing, and they keep proposing fewer non-playoff games (without fans) rather than more. If revenues were high, even without fans, then they would do neither of those two things.
The owners act like their business is what they say it is: not super profitable on a yearly basis, with franchise value appreciation getting them into the black with normal (not extravagant, but similar to S&P500) returns on investment. I’m sure they’re presenting the numbers in a way that is the most beneficial for them, but there is no evidence that they are straight-up lying. Literally zero evidence of that.
I’m confused by your comment–perhaps I’m missing something. I know the $94 million number was earnings _before_ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization–it’s right there in the name. The $250 million MLB number is also EBITDA, so the comparison holds: MLB would have us believe that in 2018 the Braves made a minimum (assuming that was the high point year) of 37.6% of total EBITDA. One club, 37.6%. Also, last year the Braves claimed $54 million, so yes, 2018 may have been a spike, but even at $54 million the claim is that the rest of the league combined for under $200.
As for your claim that there is no evidence owners are lying, that is simply untrue. I wish I could dig up the article that appeared here on FG, I believe, showing that somehow all of Forbes’ numbers on clubs were spot on, except when it came to profits–then the league would have us to believe that the Forbes estimate of profitability was off by several hundred percent. Since I can’t find the article, I’ll make the same point by referencing Forbes directly: they estimate that _average_ yearly MLB EBITDA over the past decade is $800 million, a far cry from MLB’s claim to have never gone over $250.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2020/05/29/mlb-owners-cry-hardship-while-forbes-shows-8-billion-in-team-profits-since-2010/#1dd735904669
Ahh, it was not a piece here at FG, it was at ESPN (Jeff Passan):
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29207203/the-clock-ticking-2020-mlb-season-talks-here-make-deal-work-fall-apart
Relevant snippet:
“The closest facsimile to an independent audit of MLB’s finances comes in the form of the annual Forbes valuations. Now, these numbers are far from the be-all, end-all. They are not sacrosanct. They are the best we’ve got to check against MLB.
Forbes pegged the industry’s earnings in 2019 at $10.5 billion. The league’s figures were closer to $10 billion. Forbes said ticket revenue and other game-related expenses account for about $4.1 billion of that — around 39.3%. MLB says it’s at 40%. Pretty spot on.
To see Forbes’ EBITDA numbers — or operating income, as it says — are staggering. Last year, Forbes said, 29 of 30 teams made a profit. (The Miami Marlins, for the fourth straight year, were in the red.) The aforementioned Angels: $61 million, after years of $19 million, $25 million, $68 million and $42 million. As an industry, Forbes said, MLB teams’ combined operating income exceeded $1.5 billion last season. In 2018, it was $1.19 billion. The year before that, $858 million. And $988 million. And $662 million. The past five years together: More than $5 billion in profit, according to Forbes.
Now, the league has long disputed these numbers, and maybe they are high. But 400% high? At MLB’s no-EBITDA-over-$250 million claim that would mean the maximum number for the past five years was $1.25 billion. The gap there is simply too large to believe that Forbes is overshooting when it’s so spot on with so much of its other math, including its team valuations that have, if anything, undervalued franchises.”
You’re dwelling too much on the $250M EBITDA claim, which I’ve never heard. If you can go to an ESPN URL to find $1.25B in annual profit, so can MLBPA. This is the basis they negotiate on. $1.25B is only ~12.5% of revenue, which doesn’t sound outlandish to me. Maybe the league is saying they’re putting $1B/year into CapEx, which seems dubious and again I’ve never heard the league claim $250M, but it’s irrelevant in terms of MLB-MLBPA negotiations.
No lying, no book-closing, no revenue-hiding is going on. I found Forbes estimates on Statista going back to 2001. It’s all there.
1) It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve heard the figure; it matters that the figure was part of MLB’s presentation to the Union about the financial health of the game. This has been widely reported. It’s in the link to the earlier Craig Edwards piece I included, it’s in the Forbes link I included, and it’s in the ESPN link I included. If you search for “EBITDA has been within $250 million of break-even annually since 2010,” it’s everywhere. The claim has also been cited in some form by Tom Ricketts, who said “most baseball owners don’t take money out of their team. … The league itself does not make a lot of cash,” and Bill DeWitt Jr., who claimed, “The industry isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest.”
2) In response to these claims, the MLBPA has explicitly accused MLB of hiding revenue, and has explicitly asked to take its own look at MLB’s finances. This request was, of course, denied. I encourage you to take a look at Joe Sheehan’s Twitter, where he expresses skepticism that the league would lose money THIS YEAR, much less that baseball isn’t raking in huge amounts all the time. Joe also notes how unreasonable it is for owners to talk about slim margins and then refuse to open the books. Which leads me to…
3) How on earth could it not be a big deal, at the very least in terms of negotiation, if the league and the MLBPA are hundreds of millions apart on the baseline profitability of the league? That assertion makes absolutely no sense. If players think owners are lying, of course they are not going to accept further pay reductions, which is why MLBPA statements have referred to the “supposed” profitability of the league. And, as Forbes, and Passan, and Sheehan all make clear, yes, the players do have reason to believe owners are lying.
Why would MLBPA sign a CBA in 2016 if the books were cooked? In Ben Lindbergh’s famous article “Baseball’s Economics Aren’t As Skewed As You Think”, MLBPA economists said MLB’s numbers are basically correct. I have read that Trevor Bauer thinks Teams may own parking facilities near the ballpark and are not including that revenue, but I haven’t heard MLBPA at large make this claim. Please send a link that says they are.
Are the NFL’s, NBA’s, NHL’s books also cooked?
This is really an asinine allegation.
Again, you ask for a link on something that has been widely reported. In one of the recent MLBPA-MLB legal exchanges, Union negotiator Bruce Meyer wrote:
“We note that the league frequently claims that it has negative operating profits from playing baseball yet it still puts on baseball games every year. The league has done nothing to persuade us of the veracity of its claims. As an example, the RSN contracts finally produced by the league on June 1 were so heavily redacted as to be essentially meaningless.”
So yes, the Union has accused MLB both of fudging the numbers and of refusing requests for transparency. If you and I disagree on the underlying financial reality, fine, I may be wrong, but it is undeniable that the idea is out there, and that it has well-informed backers (not me). Harvard-trained sports economist Andrew Zimbalist devoted a chapter of his book “May the Best Team Win” to the ways in which MLB hides profits. Related party transactions in particular allow teams to turn profits into losses; Zimbalist gives a specific example of the Cubs hiding $35.4 million in a transaction with WGN (p. 62). He’s also an advocate of removing baseball’s presumed antitrust exemption, as are two Stanford professors who have written on the subject more recently.
I don’t know how to reconcile the Forbes numbers with anything.
There is however this 2-year old piece from Ben Lindbergh where MLB and the MLBPA were in the same ballpark on the numbers at that time. So I don’t think he’d have gotten the quotes he did if the Forbes 2018–and-prior numbers were close to reality in the eyes of the Union.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theringer.com/platform/amp/mlb/2018/2/21/17035624/mlb-revenue-sharing-owners-players-free-agency-rob-manfred
One other thing though – sometimes people use current roster payroll in trying to build a model. But that doesn’t include dead money – E.g., the current payout on the Prince Fielder contract. It also doesn’t include bonuses. But that wouldn’t add up to the billions of expense gap between what Forbes is saying and what MLB is claiming.
Contributions to the pension plan could be another issue. 34k/year for life at retirement for virtually all major leaguers with service time is nothing to sniff at (though pension plan funding rules are very easy to manipulate). Many businesses have been forced to put more money into pension plans in recent years to account for the impact of lower interest rates. (Others are ignoring the issue, which is a financial ticking time bomb, especially and the state level for municipal pensions, but that’s a different discussion entirely.). No idea what the teams have kicked into that kitty.
Finally, I’ve seen a couple of analyses elsewhere that give MLB credit for all of the central office revenue, without accounting for the fact that the central office itself has $1B a year of expenses. You can’t just credit the gross central office revenue – including the national TV contract revenue – without netting out the central office expenses. Not sure if that’s the case with Forbes but if they are building a bottom-up, team by team analysis, they might very well be including gross central office revenue (by assuming it all flows through to the clubs) without the expenses.
These are all possibilities. Some or none may play an impact.
I thought about this a little bit last night. Ben Lindbergh is a great writer in terms of the diligence evident in his work and, typically, a source that writes from a reasonably neutral position. This makes him, for me, a trusted source.
Ben’s article of Feb 2018 was excellent, and I’m accepting of that work as a relatively stable baseline.
So, the question is, what changed materially between now and then outside of COVID?
And how does the current ground-up construction of models compare to Ben’s work in 2018, plus or minus any changes that can be identified since then?
“So, the question is, what changed materially between now and then outside of COVID?”
Basically, one bad FA class that everyone overreacted to. Plus the tanking teams won World Series, so everyone expects more teams to do it.
It wouldn’t be terribly surprising for one team to make up 37% of total EBITDA if many teams are positive EBITDA and many are negative. There could be, for example, 5 teams that each make up 37% or more of total EBITDA. And an equal number making up -37% of the total EBITDA.
That said, it’s reasonable to assume the owners massage the numbers for PR/negotiating purposes
No, you’re right. I was on a rush out the door and got that wrong. The error began because I thought that the owners’ claim was $250mn *after* amortization, depreciation, etc. If they claimed that it was before those things then I’d also be very suspicious that it has never happened, but I’d want to see that in print before I accept it.
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, because it is the players who refuse to have salaries tied to revenues.
The stadium wasn’t new in 2018 and more importantly there stint as noncompetitive was much, much shorter. Do you even follow baseball?
I feel like the discussions here are a really fascinating and depressing look into the state of media criticism and discourse in the year 2020. I think Tomerafan’s comments were a bit mean-spirited but his arguments were logical. It clearly looked born out of frustration.
But on a macro level this whole comments section (and article itself) feels par for the course for the climate we’re in right now. Where there just seemingly is no room for middle ground and there has to be activitism for whatever people percieve the correct answer to be. I’m not talking about protestors – but even media outlets are feeling the need to take activist stands on right vs wrong and pick winners in whatever the topical argument is.
I slightly lean towards it being more the owners fault and more so because they are fighting to protect a bigger piece of the pie than they historically have deserved. But also agree with this sentiment that if you look on the other side of the table, is Boras really trying to find equality or fairness? No, he wants to get paid. Can it be equally possible that the owners are greedy AND Tony Clark is not good at labor negotiating?
No comments on the broader “this isn’t the Fangraphs I grew up with!” arguments (although LOL), but notable that all of the best and brightest fangraphers left town to work for…. the owners.
LOL Manfred now says he’s not confident that there will be a season. An absolute joke. But the owners are the good guys right?
I don’t know, would they be the good guys if they forced a season amid a massive COVID resurgence while losing a ton of money?
My read on this situation is that Manfred doesn’t want to pull the trigger on a 50 game season. The players called the league’s bluff, and the league doesn’t want to do it. Maybe he thinks he thinks the league will lose the grievance and they’ll have to pay for an extra 15-20 games anyway. Maybe that 50-game season wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, and they were operating from a position of weakness all along and just hiding it well. I don’t know, but I think the league just accidentally said they don’t have any more cards to play.
I know it’s unpopular but as a business owner, I feel like I can see things from the owners view point a little more and feel they are being unfairly vilified just because they are rich and made a profit in past years. The majority of them built their wealth by building and running great companies in an ethical manner. To me, the logic of well they’re billionaires and they made plenty of profits in the past so they should just take one on the chin this year, just isn’t right. If these were the owners of Wal-Mart or McDonald’s and you are asking them to sacrifice their profits for the sake of their low income employees, I can get onboard with that, but asking them to operate in the hopes of breaking even so mostly millionaires get their full pro-rated salary while revenue is down significantly is contradictory.
Here are my qualms:
-People are acting like the owners making good profits in previous years was a bad thing and somehow unfair to the players. The last CBA was negotiated with high priced Attorney’s by both parties and was scrutinized every which way. It’s not like the owners put some hidden clauses in it or something. Both parties entered into with eyes wide-open. If the players want to negotiate harder this next time around, that’s fine but let’s not act like they were fleeced unknowingly.
-Yes they made solid profits in years past; however, the owners carry a ton of risk. Many of them paid billions of dollars to acquire these teams. You don’t spend a couple of billion without expecting to a good return on your investment. Turning a profit is not a bad thing.
-Everything I’ve seen discussed assumes that all owners are effected equally. And they’ll all ‘just’ lose $11 M each if they play a full season. I know it’s impossible to write an article like this and account for how each owner will be effected but it’s very likely that there will be a large amount of variability as to how each owner is effected. Some for better but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are teams that would be looking at losses in the $25-50M range.
-Many are suggesting that the owners are reneging on their original agreement which I don’t find to be the case at all. They clearly stated players would receive their full pro-rated salaries IF the season was played in front of fans. Considering there will be no fans in attendance, asking the players to take a reduction in pay (just as the owners will) is completely fair, IMO. They also have given players the option to play as many games as possible. 114 games was never realistic and was just the players first volley in the negotiation. They did offer up to 82 games but that was immediately rejected by the players.
-The owners offers have not just been the same offer in a different form. They have consistently made their offers more appealing while the players have stood firm on wanting 100% of their pro-rated pay. I feel the owners have been more flexible than the players. Players may end up getting 48% of their pay (not including the payout from the original agreement) when they could get 57.6%. I know an additional 9.6% for playing 24 more games may not seem like that much but when you consider they will likely play those games over a relatively similar time period and it’s not like their doing taxes, they’re playing a game they love, getting paid almost 10% more to play more games over a similar time-frame doesn’t seem all that bad.
I’m not saying the owners are right necessarily but I do think they are being unfairly criticized. I also think there is more room to negotiate if the players could come off their stance of wanting 100% of the pro-rated salary. I think there’s a decent chance owners would accept a deal for 100 games at a pro-rated salary of 75% that goes to 85% if the playoffs happen. If that did happen, neither side would be all that happy but that’s how you know a fair deal has been struck.
“-Yes they made solid profits in years past; however, the owners carry a ton of risk. Many of them paid billions of dollars to acquire these teams. You don’t spend a couple of billion without expecting to a good return on your investment. Turning a profit is not a bad thing”.
Only 3 owners have paid a billion or more for their teams. KC 1B…Miami 1.2B…LAD 2B
And apparently they do NOT carry a ton of risk if they do this when something bad happens and expect to be compensated.
Most businesses close if they can only operate at a loss
Most businesses don’t gain $1 billion in value in 10-15 years.
They’re already taking a loss on this year, no matter what. That’s done. So are you saying MLB should close up shop? That doesn’t make sense: There is an obvious medium-term path toward future profitability.
(and even in terms of this year they should want to play because they will definitely make money if they get to the playoffs, which would blunt the losses)
I’m sure there is some good game theory to dissect here. I thought the players had made a great move walking away, but perhaps it was too rash. Manfred just one upped them. In hindsight, getting 170 million up front seemed like a good idea, but now the owners had a floor of acceptable losses. If the owners were still on hook for full salary, they’d likely be begging for games. I thought players should cut a deal because of the commissioner’s power, even slightly less than pro rata. The fact they’ve been negotiating with all provisions for return not even met means in the end it behooves to them to get on the field. I don’t want walking back on past gains but it appears their lawyers put them in a bind with the March agreement. Everyday they are not back they are hurting their future earnings.
Not playing the season would be devastating to the owners as well as the players. The owners, collectively, are going to lose a couple billion dollars no matter what, but losing the playoffs rips out another $750 million. I don’t think the union views this as a credible threat.
So the owners are facing:
1. play a short season for $750mn, subtract from that whatever they lose on the regular season games without fans, and then face a $1bn grievance.
2. just say that none of the terms from the March agreement — on health/safety and on economic feasibility — could be worked out in a way that satisfied everyone, and cancel the whole thing. They lose the $750mn, but almost certainly don’t face a grievance. And, if they do face a grievance, they can win more easily if they have foregone $750mn already.
#2 only makes sense if they think they’ll lose the grievance, and I don’t think anyone thinks that. I think the owners are barking now because they’re pissed at the players threatening them in the media.
If you factor in grievance, doesn’t it makes sense just to do half season prorated and live to fight another day? I’m too lazy to do the math…
I changed my mind though…now Manfred looks silly. Boldly saying definite season; now not sure. If you don’t want a grievance then give a little more and make a deal!
Hmmm. Now I’m thinking about this and I’m not sure about what I said before.
I have absolutely no idea where a one billion dollar grievance comes from. I’ve now seen the owners talking about this but that would require them to establish that the owners could have played 100 games. I think the union would be committing malpractice going for that.
On the other hand,a $400 million grievance could be on the table. The owners made an offer of 72 games, so if they implement a season much shorter than that then that violates the “play as many games as possible” part of the prior language.
And if they think they are going to lose that grievance–and the fact that the league is threatening to walk away from it means that it is possible–then yeah, I think they could get freaked out.
Of course, the easy way around this is to just come to a 65-game solution (which is certainly still possible), because the owners do not appear to make or lose money collectively on a per-game basis.
Overall, the only thing I’m sure about is that the league and ownership is not at all happy with this turn of events. To do that, they must really, really not like the 50-game option they’ve been leaking about all this time. And then they lost the media hard last night because the players called their bluff and they balked.
It’ll get negative votes, but I’m quite confident that the owners collectively will lose money on the regular season on a per-game basis. And that’s because the regular season tv money is less than the player salaries, in aggregate. If we pro-rate everything, as everyone is assuming will happen, then… the tv money is still less than the player salaries, in aggregate.
The billion-dollar-grievance has been mentioned by multiple sources, from both the players’ and owners’ side. Maybe the eventual ask would be for less than that, but that’s the current threat (or at least how it’s being interpreted).
I’m going to take a step back and remember that COVID numbers are not decreasing across the country, travel remains a risk, and the virus can cause long term respiratory issues which wouldn’t be life threatening to a professional athlete, but may severely limit their careers. Cases are increasing in the Florida and Arizona spring training locations where a season would be held under some alternate proposals.
I feel like all of these negotiations are going to be a moot point, but it’s nice to know the owners’ values so I can stop buying junk with my team’s logo on it.
Manfred and the owners can’t mandate a 50ish-game season yet, which is what they really want, since it’s only mid-June. Now that the players have thrown this back at the owners, saying basically just tell us when to show up, Manfred now needs to delay a few more weeks; otherwise, the season would be ending by September 1, which would leave open the door for the players to file a grievance. There will be a season, but we’re going to have to listen to this bickering for several more weeks.
Hi! What’d I miss?
I think Matt Swartz’s piece at MLBTR is pretty good, but the players have already repeatedly said that it’s a non-starter to share revenues. So unless they come wayyyy the hell back from that position it’s not going to happen.
But Swartz is correct about the bargaining space. The truly stupid thing here is that players are treating anything positive for the owners as a concession, even if the players benefit too. So if they create new revenues (new playoffs, new events, etc) and split them, the players view that as a concession while the owners don’t.
I.e., the players aren’t even looking for a Pareto-improving solution. They view this as zero sum, when it’s really positive sum (or could be, anyway) relative to any realistic counterfactual. Well, say the owners, if you’re going to treat this as zero sum then we will too.
Not my preferred strategy, and no surprise that it’s been a complete failure.
In this year of George Floyd and Breonna STewart, et al, the sport of Jackie Robinson must be playing and honoring those who fought to get the game where it is, as well as those who were not allowed to participate. Profits should be secondary and will be made up in the future.
By using current events to leverage long-term advantage while trying to also ensure short-term profit, the owners are proving themselves to be terrible stewards of the sport’s legacy.
Further, people whose business model requires billions of dollars of public financing have an obligation to the public to be there when times are tough.
Arguing about data in this situation misses the forest for the trees.
Yeah man. What planet do you think you’re on right now?
THE planet where many of the absolutely richest people got that way by ignoring short-term financials and focusing on the long-term growth of their businesses and investments. Thirty guys with a monopoly will be able to recover any losses from this year, especially if they manage their public relations well. On the other hand, the careers of most players are so short that they will never recover their losses this year.
What planet are you on?