Why the CBA Should Be the Province of Lawyers
On Tuesday, Joe Sheehan wrote a typically thought-provoking piece addressing, in this case, the problem of service-time manipulation, an issue which seems to have reached a tipping point in the 2018 season, a year in which Ronald Acuna, Peter Alonso, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Gleyber Torres, and even Byron Buxton have been subject to extended minor-league seasoning so their teams can get an extra year of contractual control.
While the Major League Baseball Players’ Association hired Bruce Meyer in part to address these issues when the next collective bargaining agreement is negotiated, Sheehan suggests we rethink the entire process, and calls for “a constitutional convention to address the problems that four decades of patching its rules have created.” In the relevant passage, Sheehan suggests that collective bargaining isn’t necessarily up to the task of solving problems ranging from service-time manipulation to pitching changes to the structure of the playoffs.
We’ve relied on Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations, twice a decade or so, to address these questions, but those negotiations have proven inadequate to the task. The fact is, these questions exceed the scope of a CBA negotiation. Answering them needs to be a collaborative process, not a confrontational one. Representatives from the league and the teams and the players should be involved, but so should vested interests from all over baseball.
Historians like John Thorn bring perspective about how the game on the field has evolved. Analysts like MLB.com’s Mike Petriello have a grasp on how technology is changing player evaluation and strategy. Controversies over player behavior have alienated fans; giving visible, insightful women like Fangraphs’ Meg Rowley and Baseball Prospectus’ Rachel [sic] McDaniel a seat at the table would send a message that baseball wants everyone to feel welcome.
Let me start by saying that Meg, Rachael, Mike, and John are all fine people and excellent analysts. I’m proud in particular to call Meg a colleague (it is not, in my view, hyperbole to call Meg Rowley the most talented baseball writer working today), and all would, I’m sure, make fine decisions in a position of decision-making baseball authority. With that caveat, however, I have to [differ with] Joe in two primary areas. First, the only people who should have a “seat at the table” of answering most of these questions are lawyers working on behalf of the two sides (players and owners). And second, answering these questions isn’t beyond the scope of a collectively bargained agreement; to the extent recent CBAs have failed to answer them, that’s a failure of negotiation, not a failure of collective bargaining generally.
Let’s start with that second point, by posing another question — namely, what, exactly, is the purpose of a collective bargaining agreement? A CBA is a contract which determines the respective rights, duties, and obligations of an employer and its employees. But it’s also more than that. A collective bargaining agreement doesn’t just determine pay, benefits, and hours worked — it can also determine workplace conditions and safety, discipline, job parameters, and retirement pensions. So when MLB’s collective bargaining agreement makes determinations regarding, for instance, the Home Run Derby, it’s not just establishing the rules of a contest you and I watch on television. It’s setting the ground rules for a part of the employment of every major leaguer.
It’s easy to forget that for major- (and minor-) league baseball players, this is a career and gainful employment, not a game. So the type of game baseball is to be should fall under the province of a collective bargaining agreement, because the very questions Sheehan wants answered impact players — and their work conditions — more than anyone else. To show why, let’s address each of five questions Sheehan poses.
- How long should a baseball game take? In other words, what should be a baseball player’s working hours, and for how much time should he work each day?
- How long should the season — and postseason — be? In other words, for how much of the year should players work? Should they receive three months off per year? More? Less?
- What’s the right mix of balls in play and Three True Outcomes? Under what conditions should baseball players work? And what skills should be rewarded? Should pitchers throw harder, thereby increasing injury risk? Should hitters focus more on power or contact to get paid?
- How many pitchers should be allowed to pitch in a game or a series? How much injury risk should a pitcher assume in his job? And how many pitchers may a given team employ?
- What pressures should be brought to bear, if any, on teams that fall back on shared revenues to subsidize long periods of losing? If we’re going to penalize underperforming teams, we’re also — by definition — penalizing that team’s players. On the other hand, tanking makes it harder for baseball players to find jobs.
In other words, each and every question Sheehan poses directly addresses the working conditions and scope of employment for major leaguers. That’s exactly what collective bargaining is supposed to address. Collective bargaining can, and should address the service-time-manipulation issue — it is very much within the ambit of collective bargaining to (a) determine who is covered by the CBA, (b) determine for how long they are covered, and (c) identify attempts to avoid or circumvent payment schedules. The fact that it hasn’t thus far in the context of Major League Baseball doesn’t mean that the concept of collective bargaining is flawed; rather, it instead means that the parties to this CBA perhaps haven’t collectively bargained well. To use a baseball analogy, Sheehan’s argument is a bit like concluding that the idea of hitting is inherently flawed because you saw Alcides Escobar come to the plate 600 times. Bruce Meyer changes that calculus greatly, and I’d honestly be surprised if many of these questions weren’t addressed in the next CBA.
And that brings us to Sheehan’s second point — namely, that historians, analysts, and fans a seat at the table would improve baseball. In a vacuum, I don’t disagree with the proposition. But inherently, any time you bring in outsiders to discuss workplace conditions, you’re going to get a suboptimal result. Look at it this way: most people wouldn’t want questions like “How long should the work day be?” and “How many days per year should you work?” being answered by anyone other than themselves or their duly appointed representatives, whether unionized or otherwise. The mere fact that baseball is entertainment doesn’t change the fact that we are, by inserting ourselves into these questions, opining on others’ workplace conditions. That a historian or analyst thinks baseball should have a Wild Card series instead of a game might very well be a great idea. (I think it is!) But historians and analysts aren’t the ones who will have to play those extra games or pay for those extra games. Changing baseball’s schedule means people working more or less, or being paid more or less. The people who are most impacted by workplace changes are the workers, and that’s why the workers should be the ones with the final say.
Now, Sheehan proposes a collaborative approach to negotiations, rather than a confrontational one. But Major League Baseball is a business, and that means money — a lot of money — is at stake. So whilst such a proposal sounds great in theory, it’s not realistic in an industry where every franchise but one is worth $1 billion or more (the Tampa Bay Rays are at $900 million), and teams are the targets of grievances for their failure to spend money. If MLB owners were interested in a collaborative process to improve the game as opposed to short-term profit maximization, Peter Alonso, Byron Buxton, Vlad Jr., and Eloy Jimenez would be in the major leagues right now.
So who should be at the table? The players, the owners, and their respective lawyers. Lawyers have a fiduciary duty to get the best deal possible for their clients, and here we have a complex relationship with a lot of money. Every change made “for the good of the game” has a cost to be absorbed, whether by players or ownership (but, given their place in this nexus, usually the players). Want fewer pitching changes and longer starts from hurlers? Pitchers then have to assume a greater risk of injury. Want fewer strikeouts and home runs and more small ball? Great, but now players who hit home runs and strikeout pitchers will make less money. Want to cap a baseball game at three hours? Great, but be prepared to lose advertising revenue — a loss that has to be made up somewhere.
There are also legal issues obviously inherent to any collective-bargaining endeavor. Changing the rules can lead to legal challenges. And, unfortunately, it’s my experience that negotiations just don’t work well when collaborative because each party’s incentives and aims just aren’t the same. That doesn’t mean negotiations need be filled with animosity — I’ve had plenty of spirited, confrontational negotiations that were entirely professional, friendly, and amiable — but owners are seeking to maximize profits, and players are seeking to maximize workplace salaries and benefits. Those two goals are necessarily contradictory.
I do personally think that, in a couple of areas, Sheehan’s ideas have merit. For one thing, I agree with Sheehan that baseball needs better representation from women, LGBT people, and people of color. It is not possible to collectively bargain away sexism or racism, for a couple of reasons. While some issues, like the Mets’ decision to employ Jose Reyes for the entire 2018 season (which was dubious for a whole host of reasons) can be solved by collective bargaining (for example, by instituting more significant punishments for domestic abusers), collective bargaining won’t fix the attitudes in baseball front offices that led to those decisions in the first place. Further, MLB’s currently fraught relationship with disadvantaged groups and minorities isn’t the result of poor collective bargaining so much as it is the result of baseball players and teams behaving badly.
In that sense, Sheehan’s point has merit: teams should provide more access and exposure for their players and front-office employees to women, LGBT people, and people of color, particularly given the well-established diversity problem currently plaguing baseball’s front offices. So giving access to non-male voices like Meg Rowley and Rachael McDaniel (as well as Mary Craig, Jen Mac Ramos, Julie DiCaro, Kelly Wallace, Liz Roscher, and Britni de la Cretaz, among many others) would be a pretty significant step. Further, there are ways to accomplish that within the window of collective bargaining. For instance, there are lawyers who are women, LGBT, and/or people of color. I’m one of them!
But all in all, the idea of a grand constitutional convention to redraft baseball is, I think, more trouble than it’s worth. Writing constitutions is hard. And, at the end of the day, when we watch a baseball game, we’re watching people at work. It should be up to those people to decide how their own workplace runs.
Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
If we’re going to celebrate voices like Rachael McDaniel’s (and we should), then we should probably do them the courtesy of spelling their name right. The error was in Joe’s piece at BA, too, of course.
It has been updated. Thanks!
I have a proposal to fix the service time manipulation that MLB teams have been doing. One that I’ve not heard mentioned, so wondering if is feasible.
Any system with written rules can be manipulated, as we’ve seen. Whether we make it 100 days, or age-based, teams will find a loophole. So, why not insert humans into the process?
Hire 3 independent baseball people, maybe writers or ex-front office people, or even ex-players. Or even lawyers who know a bit about the game. They get 1/2 their salary from MLBPA, and 1/2 from MLB, so they can truly be independent.
Once or twice per season, a player and his agent can plead their case as to why the player should be promoted to the major league club. The team could present their counter case. Something similar to the way arbitration works now.
And just as in the current arbitration process, the recommendation of the panel is binding.
Could this work? Has anyone else heard a similar proposal, because I have not.
How could you possibly game an age-based system? You can change a player’s service time, you can’t change his age. (Yes, there used to be issues with this in Latin America, but it doesn’t seem to happen anymore, and anyway lying to say you are younger would put you further from free agency)
What’s the proposal? Not every minor leaguer of a certain age deserves to be in the majors.
Something like:
Ages 0-25: League Min Salary
Age 26: Arb1
Age 27: Arb2
Age 28: Arb3
Age 29: Free Agent
Age is determined as of opening day.
Players give up Super 2 in exchange for earlier FA.
Now the Jays rush Vlad Jr. up so they get more years at League Min.
Winners: late bloomers like Josh Donaldson, who would have gotten a crack at FA before hitting his decline.
For less talented players, perhaps they get more time in the majors as opposed to the minors.
Losers: players who come up early. Bryce Haper, Juan Soto, etc has to wait several extra years to reach FA. But then again, is anybody worried about these players cashing in at some point? They are, perhaps, more likely to sign an extension and lock in their earnings before they get injured.
Probably fringe veterans since they can call up fringe young guys without worrying about service time. I suppose this would be the biggest sticking point in negotiations, since fringe veterans are well represented and minor leaguers are not.
For a fringe player who gets called up at, say, 27: So he gets to go to arbitration the next year, probably won’t get much more than league min anyway.
This isn’t incredibly well thought out and researched, the exact parameters could be negotiated, but making it aged based removes the incentives to delay bringing someone up.
That’s why Manny Machado and Bryce Harper have lawyers at the table and not you. Age is a terrible way to pay anyone.
This would be needless.
The ‘service time manipulation issue’ is a bit of a false dilemma. If the union and league want to solve the issue, they easily can- standardizing length of contract is a very simple thing. Both sides could put a value on the difference between (1) the current service time rules and (2) a proposed alternative that could not be manipulated (i.e. having service time accrue based on calendar, regardless of professional level or status). Let’s say the league valued the current rules at +150m per year, and the union valued the current rules at -200m per year. The parties could then negotiate the issue- with the union likely having to surrender something else with a value in the neighborhood of 150-200m per year in order to expect the league to agree.
There would be no reason to introduce a committee approach- the current professionals (including women, minorities, and all others) involved in the negotiation are handling the issue fine: no matter how much the ESPN/Fox/Fangraphs/Boras/CAA agenda pushers voice the anti-Clark, ‘crisis’ meme.
Nevermind
I dearly love the internet, but one of the worst things it has done for us as a society is convince people that a few hours of googling make them as much of an expert in fields like law or medicine as lawyers or doctors. You’re absolutely right – writing the rules should be left to lawyers.
“It’s easy to forget that for major- (and minor-) league baseball players, this is a career and gainful employment, not a game.” No it’s not easy to forget and yes it still is a game and how long it takes should have no bearing on “labor” questions. And as far as keeping a guy like Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. for more “seasoning” they are potentially keeping a guy that appears to be so talented from starting a possible record breaking career to save money later on. That’s a heck of a trade off that favors the owners. And out of curiosity I wonder if the MLBPA ever brings up in negotiations of the tremendous welfare the owners receive from taxpayers and politicians to the detriment of people living in those states and immediate areas where the stadiums and sports complexes are. In my humble opinion 2 and 5 are the only legitimate areas of concern. First of all the season could go back to 154 games which would keep the postseason from extending so far into football season, though the always greedy owners would never stand for this. But I’m watching a lot of empty stadiums right now even when playoff competing teams are playing. The announced attendance of 39,000 for the Pittsburgh-St. Louis game yesterday is obviously inflated. The most crowded section watching that game isn’t even in the stadium but is across the street. Well good article anyway but as always happens time after time when these labor negotiations are finished in professional sports it’s owners are winners and players make a a few gains and the fans lose!
I am not a lawyer, but couldn’t the parties agree to have a committee (or different committees) that are not made up of lawyers look at these issues and then propose some solutions to the parties involved? And then have the lawyers take it from there?
I agree mostly with Sheryl. However, baseball is not JUST a business: as mentioned, it is also entertainment. Plus, it is even more: with it’s long history and anti-trust exemption, it is an important part of American life. Just as businesses need to be forced to act in the interest of the larger society (e.g. hire minorities, not pollute, not create monopolies), sometimes businesses NEED outside voices to come in.
Businesses are like children, in that they care nothing for the long term. Even the MLPBA is guilty of this: they don’t care at all about minor leaguers. The owners and union care nothing for the long-term health of the game: owners want to maximize profits NOW while they own the team, and players want to maximize earnings NOW while they themselves are playing and in the union.
This is where I think some outside voices are needed: to consider the future of the game, for owners who are currently still selling lemonade outside their homes for 50 cents, and for players who are still just gleams in their parents’ eyes.
Baseball encourages customers to be fans, to feel like they own a piece of baseball. The team is “us”, the fan is loyal through bad years. The flip side of that is the fan feels owed a little consideration by the lords of baseball. The emotional attachment is in fact one-sided, but that’s hard to accept.
But even from a cold marketing perspective you could see the value of having people in the room who could be the future the one-sided community you hope to foster and profit from. A dressed up focus group, you might say, that you’ve let out of its box a little. There’s value to loosening your grip on control when the whole point is letting someone else at least feel involved. I’d even argue for some real openness.
Dear heavens, amateurs should not direct any details of the contract terms, though. That will simply not play out at all like their intent.
Creating a solution to current service time manipulations that sufficiently satisfies all parties involve will be a daunting and resource consuming task. Given the MLBPA’s past and current indifference to players not directly represented by their union, I question their resolve in pursuing the issue with the dogged determination it will require.
Now, my wholly unqualified proposed solution. The minimum number of days necessary to qualify for a year of service time is reduced to one day over half a season. Additionally, and arbitration committee if formed to hear service time challenges. A player is granted two challenges. If he issues a challenge, the committee can rule if his lack of promotion is due to service time manipulation. If the committee determines it is service time manipulation, they are empowered to award the player up to two years of completed service time, depending on the severity and blatant nature of the manipulation.
Why not just give the teams 7 years of control but make the 7th an option year attached to the QO? The 7th year would be at the top 15%? of league average.
Meg’s points are strong enough on their own (she’s as strong a writer as anyone with any set of gonads), but for all the people calling for committees/ind. panels, two recent memories should deter you.
The first is HoF’er Bug Selig’s (ugh) “independent” Blue Ribbon panel on baseball economics, which recommended an annual “competitive balance draft,” under which the eight clubs with the worst records could draft players not on the 40-man roster of the eight playoff teams (yes, that’s as poorly thought-out as it sounds). In a fantastic turn of creative accounting, it claimed that only THREE MLB teams turned a profit between 1995-99 (a claim ridiculed by Forbes, Financial World, and anyone with access to the internet) as part of its desperate plea . Even its one, good idea (let teams trade draft picks!) was ignored. Let’s remember that no commission on baseball is going to happen that isn’t substantially, if not directly, managed by the commissioner’s office.
For those with more optimism than I in that area, the total failure of the recent Commission on College Basketball should be another reminder that “independent” (or, worse, “celebrity/professional fan”) committees like these are essentially ways of punting on the problem and absolving primary parties of responsibility. Don’t like teeangers being exploited for money? Got a problem with student-athletes getting away with activity that other can’t? Sorry, Dr. Rice wasn’t able to suggest a solution (willfully-ignorant shrug emoji).
The benefit of having advocates for the ACTUAL parties involved (and not just fans, which is a heterogenous group that can’t even be adequately represented by 435 congressional representatives) is that they’re forced to make and take responsibility for demands and concessions and must reach a resolution. Yes, it raises the possibility of a strike/lockout, and that’s bad, but if a 6 week stoppage resulted in minor league pay increases, or the ability for teams to trade draft picks, wouldn’t that be better than inevitable, Bob-Costas-Blue-Ribbon Committee on Making Baseball Great Again talk about bat flips?
Punting to a 3rd party is going to result in a toothless set of meaningless ideas 2 years from now; the people who have something tangible to gain/lose are best-equipped to work this out.
Also: the CBA isn’t the reason civic leaders make stupid decisions about how to spend public money
Service time manipulation often benefits fans, if the purpose is to hold a player for a future year when the team hopes to be better. Twins fans will be much better off by having a full year of Buxton a few years from now, when the Twins should be more competitive, than they would have been by getting a month of him at the end of a terrible season. Having him for one fewer year before he goes to the highest bidder in free agency is bad for Twins fans.
All things have good and bad components. It seems like it is becoming more common to identify how someone is harmed from a certain system and then argue to overhaul the whole system, without taking a bigger picture view of how well the complete system is working, as well as failing to identify who will be harmed by a change while focusing on the individuals who benefit.
Going back to Buxton, he’s not an innocent victim, either. He has received major league jobs out of spring training several years in a row. The only reasons he was even in this position this year are his failures to hit and stay healthy. These are long term problems for him. If he had solved them enough to just be a little worse than average, he would be in the majors today.
Service time manipulation tends to benefit one fanbase out of 30.
Neutral fans are losing the opportunity to see Bryant, Acuna, Guerrero Jr, etc. in the majors.
In the long run, majority of fans would absolutely like to see service time manipulation go away.
Depending on the division of the have seen and have nots, under your valid thought, it’s more like 50-50 as to how many fan bases benefit, because many teams are less likely to retain their players. Further, among the teams with less concern about their ability to retain their players, their fans are much more focused on and take much more interest in the success of “their” teams than they care about what the White Sox or Twins do at the end of the season. It’s probably just a few players, like Kris Bryant, who more than the most passionate fans care about.
FanGraphs and FanGraphs readers are great, but they aren’t representative.
The level of arrogance in this post is amazing. A lawyer stating essentially that lawyers are the only ones who are capable of representing workers and their conditions. handle working conditions. I have read a lot about Marvin Miller and none of it mentioned his time in law school, guess they all have forgotten about that.
Yes all the above issues have to do with working conditions but many of them require exert knowledge beyond what attorneys have or have shown to incorporate into the collective bargaining process already. Many of the above conditions require medical expertise, and while attorney consider that they are not experts and don’t actually know the answers to have much travel is detrimental, or how hard should a pitcher throw.
What Sheehan is proposing is a big picture conversation about baseball. As any student in comparative law understands, while in the American tradition the Constitution is a firm document and “law of the land” a constitution in other countries (extreme example Russia) can be aspirational and look to set a blueprint of what is desirable for baseball.
Sheehan’s suggestion is to take that out of the hands of people who a single minded looking at the clients goals, to make these issues not just about who splits up the money, and trading money for benefits in the bargaining procedure. Sheenhan’s proposal allows for some say to come from those affected by baseball but who don’t have a say. Minor League and amateur players for instance should have seat at this table, something the collective bargaining process completely leaves out.
A convention to lay out what baseball should be, to produce a document that says this is what baseball should be, and this is where we want it to go, with input from many different groups of interested people is a worthy goal, and certainly not the province of attorneys only.
Don’t worry the nuts and bolts of how to do baseball will still be there to be collectively bargained, and if you are worried about jobs for attorneys, well any student of American Government will tell you constitutions don’t hinder that much either.
“What Sheehan is proposing is a big picture conversation about baseball.” No… He’s proposing a collaborative effort between MLBPA and MLB to develop rules for baseball that benefit both parties. AKA a CBA…
The point of this article is that using specialists in baseball who have no idea how to bargain in the legal sense doesn’t work. that’s how we got to this flawed and frustrating CBA – MLB used lawyers and MLBPA used former players…
Trying to scrap the CBA and start new is idiotic in that what incentive does either side have to do that? Most MLB players like their salaries, and slight increases in pay or work conditions aren’t worth risking everything (holdout for a revised CBA, which is much more likely, may be worth it though). Owners have no incentive, as they like the current CBA and are making millions.
This is like saying George Washington didn’t need a formal education to lead so why should someone in 2018 need to know things he didn’t? It’s not arrogant to suggest that a medical doctor is more qualified to perform work in that field than is a carpenter (and vice versa). What does strike as arrogant is denying the value of expertise in an ever-changing, developing, and adapting world.
I don’t agree that service clock manipulation has resulted because “the parties to this CBA perhaps haven’t collectively bargained well.” The Union only negotiates for its members, which doesn’t include the minor leaguers, So the Union isn’t going to fight in any meaningful way for service time integrity. The minor leaguers need a seat at the table in order to advocate for themselves and their own distinct interests.
This. We need to recognize that there’s an unrepresented party, and that MLBPA is part of the problem, not part of the solution, in this respect.
To Joe Sheehan’s first point … his five questions. Well, those are actually issues between the fans and the game. They have to do with the CBA only in as much as rule changes need to be agreed upon. But his problem, as it were, is that neither the players nor the owners seem to care as much about these issues as he does.
As far as service time, in particular, is concerned. Of course it’s a lawyers issue. The entirety of the problem is management dancing around the legal definition of the same. To tighten that up, you need lawyers of your own. AND, for that matter it’s mostly an issue of prioritization. If service time was the #1 thing that the MLBPA cared about then it would be fixed. It isn’t, and that’s an MLBPA internal issue.
The paraphrasing of Sheehan’s points is disingenuous at best. For example, restating “How long should a baseball game take” as “What should a player’s working hours be” is hilariously shortsighted and misses the point entirely. To begin with, the actual game does not represent the majority (or even close to it) of the time a player spends “at work.” And then we’re to think that lowering the average game time from (let’s just say) 3:05 to 2:58 (a grand total of 7 minutes) represents some sort of material alteration of a player’s working conditions (and of course, we’re discussing a reduction in the time players spend working–yet this is supposed to be controversial to the players?). And regardless as to the specifics of this, it’s clear that Sheehan is discussing the time a FAN must outlay to watch a game (be in TV or in person). There are many ways to skin that cat (cut the advertising, introduce pitch clocks, etc.). Yes, of course the time a fan spends watching a game is related to the time a player spends playing it. But to represent the issue as one which is fundamentally about players’ “hours” misses the point entirely.
Similar arguments could be made for the remaining items.
Do you think customers should have a say in the hours you work?
Sheryl is approaching this from a different perspective. She’s talking as a player’s rep. You’re talking from a fan of the game perspective, which doesn’t seem to account for the fact that playing professional baseball is, first and foremost, a job and career. Thus, labor law applies, even if it’s not the first thing a fan thinks of when they contemplate the game.
Given the complexity and passion that labor law involves, I think it’s entirely appropriate for attorneys to run the show. They understand the many rules of engagement, whereas laypeople really have no idea how to form a strong contract.
Actually customers do have influence over people’s working hours. Customers determine, for example, whether or not a business is open weekends, nights or 24/7. Some businesses ignore the customers and set their own hours regardless of customer desires, but most who do this are going to lose market share to other businesses willing to go “the extra mile.”
The point of my post was to say that Sheehan’s bullets were from the point of the fan/customer. And the poster below is correct that any business which does not put the needs of its customers first is not acting very smartly.
I’d also add that the particular bent on this article is silly. Yes, the players have a union. No, it’s not rational to focus on the same concepts such as “working hours” and “vacation time” that your local CWA or steel worker union is fighting for. Just as you wouldn’t see the CWA fighting over some percentage of their share of an enterprise’s revenue. Apples to oranges. All of which makes this entire article (aside from grossly misrepresenting the original points Sheehan makes) ridiculous.
Well, it is both, it’s entertainment and it’s a job. Labor conditions certainly matter in ways the fan can’t even imagine, but if delivering fun baseball involves some changes to work conditions, I don’t think it’s controversial to say there’s a balancing.
The player has the most skin in the game per capita, but the fans exist in much larger numbers.
I view MLB teams how I view my government representatives. Given that tons of ballparks are funded by taxpayers like me, and MLB only exists because it’s entertaining to fans like me, and due to antitrust laws no other competing league could be started by disgruntled fans like me, I think they owe me a little fucking input.
Start by voting out the idiot politicians giving away the farm to these businesses.
I think Joe Sheehan might be more wrong on this than the usual “I will propose a solution using clickbait”–and Sheryl outlines why very, very clearly.
I have two relatively small quibbles with Sheryl’s piece:
1) Lawyers absolutely do need to be involved with this process (at some point), but there are lots of effective union models that don’t let the lawyers do all (or even most of) the negotiating. I think that the headline might oversell the importance of lawyers a bit, although the piece does a better job of outlining what their role might be.
2) Anyone who claims that someone other than Jeff Sullivan is the best baseball writer today is incorrect. No offense to the many other talented baseball writers out there, but you’re competing for #2.
It is TOTAL hyperbole to call Meg Rowley “the most talented baseball writer working today.”
Get real. I wouldn’t even list her in the top fifty.
CB is a sausage-making process. Lawyers are sausage-makers in suits. Of course they need to be central to the process.
Every time in my life when lawyers have gotten involved in anything they have always made a mess of it. I wouldn’t trust any them to ever do anything right; I am firmly convinced that none of them have any principles (and I have known a number of them who were disbarred for exactly that).
This is a baseball negotiation, and it should be negotiated between baseball people who have actual skin in the game and who care about it and not by a pack of mercenary sharks in suits who don’t give a damn about the sport itself and who are only in it for the money and prestige.
If you know “a number” of lawyers that have been disbarred, I think that says more about the general company you keep than it does about lawyers. I literally know hundreds of lawyers and none of them have been disbarred and to the best of my knowledge none of them have ever even been sanctioned by a state bar.
Agreed (except about knowing hundreds of lawyers, more like a dozen or so): Lawyers who are disbarred or sanctioned are being punished by other lawyers for violating ethical principles lawyers are supposed to follow.
Using this happening to claim that lawyers are inherently unethical is somewhat bizarre.
Hell yeah. Great work as always
Not very relevant to the point of the article, but I must point out that Forbes is not a good source of information in general and its valuations of sports teams have been proven drastically wrong again and again. You shouldn’t lend credibility to what can best be described as “somewhat educated guessing” by citing them in your post.
IIRC Forbes tends to be low in their valuations of sports teams, partly because they don’t include value for “and the owner gets to play fantasy baseball with real ball-players” which seems to add 30% or so to the actual sale prices.
Their values are typically educated guesses as the teams don’t make their financials public, but even given better information, they’d still be low due to neglecting the ego issues in multi-billionaires wanting to own a team.
Is there a better source?
I have no idea, but you can make the point that MLB teams are worth a lot of money without citing what has proven to be bullshit time and again. I just don’t understand why people take Forbes seriously? If People Magazine published MLB team values, would you think it was a good source? Why would you trust Forbes more than People? There really isn’t a deserving reason.
The idea that Meg Rowley is the best sports writer is merely pal-promoting nonsense, unserious branding.
By all means, please feature more female and minority content- particularly supporting the efforts towards the paradigm-shifting, information-rich, scientific insights for which fangraphs is famous.
But please, spare us the barrage of the self-serving agenda-speak. Meg isn’t known for having any particular take or insight or model or method, nor any notable prediction or perspective. If anything, she has really played up the zippy-magical, everything-is-sunshine/nogrumps angle, which is a bit tone-deaf/regressive imo: as far as how it undermines the seriousness of female contributions to an otherwise scientific site. Please, more serious minded contributions from Meg and all others with unique perspectives, less FOX-style fake diversity.
It can be anti-progressive for mainstream ESPN/fangraphs/Fox style media to only promote females in zippy-fluff roles. This stereotyping can then be made worse when the shiny-fluff content/adminstrator/face types are then hyper promoted, drowning out more serious-minded contributions. It’s the Fox-blonde equivalent of cheapening the concept of female journalism.
Meg’s work has been particularly disappointing and blah-corporate in exactly this way: simply pushing a shallow, tone-deaf, campaign against Tony Clark, carrying the water for agents who want to push free agency issues front and center. Meg’s even promoted striking. And none of Meg’s suggestions have actually been designed to help the non-rich: nothing for minor leaguers, nothing for MLB staff, nothing for kids in dominican camps, nothing for health & safety etc., – only (1) more $ on Free Agents; (2) quicker path to FA for obvious big-money stars. Meg’s ideological peers are Scott Boras and Hal Steinbrenner.
Very transparent agenda-pushing by this group of writers. In contrast to this agenda: a genuine, female-promoting perspective would take note of the female attorneys who are already working on the CBA negotiations. Instead, these articles simply promote the writers’ colleagues, under the fake guise of being progressive, but actually overlooking and thereby insulting the minority and female professionals who are actually providing the perceptive that is pretended to be lacking.
What an extremely unserious, anti-progressive and self-serving proposal.
Your comments are bad.
“Let me prattle on angrily for 800 words because one woman writer paid another a compliment to show you all what REAL progressivism looks like!”
I suggest you try reading before idiotically insulting.
There’s opinion, then there’s fact. This is fact: you have no clue what you’re talking about.
It is eccentrically narcissistic to decide: I don’t like Meg’s writing therefore it is bad and furthermore my opinion is relevant to some larger, convoluted point about women in the workplace instead of just a totally uninteresting statement of my own biases. You pulled it off, though! Congrats
Minor leaguers. It’s their working conditions too. Actually in total professional hours worked, it’s more about them than anybody else. In any ethic other than pure power ethic, they should have a real voice in the negotiations about their future.
The parties with the power *can* dispose MiLBers’ futures without input from them, but then they shouldn’t be surprised if they’re trailed by some resentment and disdain.
Serious question,
Why should a woman’s opinion matter that isn’t asked to be in negotiations. They make up 0% of the workforce and never will.
An effort to force an equilibrium that does not exist is going to require the game of whack-a-mole that the CBA process has become. The equilibrium will eventually find its level no matter what regulations people who think they are clever come up with.
Front offices have figured out that a sustained run of a good team is the best formula for success and that having good players at a low cost provides greater flexibility and a larger margin of error to fill in the gaps. In the case of Jimenez, the White Sox have a better chance to be good in 2025 (or whatever) than they do in 2018. The White Sox improve their chances to be good in 2025 if they then have good players at a good value, which includes future veteran free agents and maybe Jimenez depending on whether he even pans out.
Teams will try to get players at a good value (Moneyball) no matter what clever rules some supposed smart person comes up with. You just do not yet know what the next work-around will be that will require another clever band aid.
Question for some one smarter than me, what is the maximum amount of team control, including minors, a team can have over a single player if they maximize the current CBA as it is currently written, assuming they protect the player in the rule 5 draft and the player accrues no service time for the first 3 years they are on the 40 man?
My guess is below.
– Player would have to be 18 year old or younger on June 5th, so they are not eligible until 5th Rule 5 draft from the year they were drafted (5 Years Team Control)
– Added to 40 Man roster when eligible for Rule 5 draft , accrues no service time for first 3 years. (3 Years Team Control)
– 4th year the player is out of options so it starts the service time clock (6 Years Team Control)
My guess is 14 years Max, but my logic may be flawed.
You could add in a suspension for domestic violence or PED to get some more time as you don’t accrue service time when serving those.
I think they need to focus on just 1-2 big things and not take many small things like extra off days or whatever they got last cba. Just pick one or two big things and tank the rest.
Oh, the tough nut is minor leaguers don’t have a seat at the table as they aren’t in MLBPA.
I don’t think there’s a failure of negotiation; it’s a difference in priorities.