MLB Lockout Off-Season 2021

[westofyou]

They come from the Newspaper game, they have been promoting the game for a free lunch for a century.

No surprise there really

[M2]

They come from the Newspaper game, they have been promoting the game for a free lunch for a century.

No surprise there really

Though, unfortunately, the independence of newspapers has been thoroughly eroded to the point where the reporters in many cases are getting paychecks from the league to play talking heads or they're beholden to the league for the access on which their jobs rely (in the past the media could just demand access). Doesn't surprise me that Evan Drellich is one of the reporters calling BS on Manfred as he was not given to fanboy reporting when he was covering the Red Sox. Seems like The Athletic might be the outlet that spends this lockout exposing the fabrications in MLB's carefully constructed narrative.

[westofyou]

Though, unfortunately, the independence of newspapers has been thoroughly eroded to the point where the reporters in many cases are getting paychecks from the league to play talking heads or they're beholden to the league for the access on which their jobs rely (in the past the media could just demand access). Doesn't surprise me that Evan Drellich is one of the reporters calling BS on Manfred as he was not given to fanboy reporting when he was covering the Red Sox. Seems like The Athletic might be the outlet that spends this lockout exposing the fabrications in MLB's carefully constructed narrative.

His podcast with Ken was good

[MikeS21]

The media pretty much has to be favorable to the owners and front offices. Those are the sources of all the scoops that appear on social media and general news. If reporters want to get stories, they will need to keep on the good side of the folks providing the stories.

[Bunting Bad]

I'd ban the shifts, for starters. Take out the 'ghost runner', and require everyone wear stirrups, and that Topps produce baseball cards again in smaller quantities, and have real sticks of gum in the card packs.

And a game of Pepper should be reintroduced as the preferred warmup.

[Ron Madden]

Today’s guest columnist is Joel G. Maxcy, professor and head of sport business at Drexel University’s Lebow College of Business.

MLB Lockout Likely to Leave Players With a Worse Deal

The last quarter of the 20th century saw American professional sport unions utilize labor law to make considerable advances in compensation and working conditions. Notwithstanding, the 21st century has seen an about-face. Union gains are hardly erased, but owners have been able to exploit labor laws, and the use of the lockout in particular, to roll back considerable union gains of the last century. The trend of rolling back those advances will likely continue with Major League Baseball’s current lockout, as owners will settle their differences on sharing the spoils at the expense of the players.

The MLB lockout follows the pattern of labor negations in American professional sports since the 1994-95 baseball strike, where every work stoppage has been an owner-initiated lockout. And every lockout—three in the National Hockey League; three in the National Basketball Association; and one in the National Football League—has culminated with significant union concessions. The resulting CBAs have reduced the players’ share of revenue across the board

Read Column Here:
https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-lockout...135003100.html

[Chip R]

lol MLB.com and all the team sites have removed any and all traces of any active players

So, it looks like there isn't any hard and fast law making MLB do this.

https://theathletic.com/3002495/2021...that-decision/

[RedsManRick]

Faced with the prospect a) losing money for a portion of a season until the union relents on their demands or b) entrenching financial losses relative to the status quo for the next 5+ years (and likely longer) due to making real concessions to the union in the CBA, the owners are likely going to take the short-term hit of lost games.

I think this is going to get ugly, especially among the players. At best I think they get a small bump to the CBT threshold and a change in the way service time works such that any appearance during a given year gives you that year toward your service time, possibly with some sort of late season carve out. They aren't getting less than 6 years service time to FA. They aren't getting a system that ramps up young player salaries more quickly. And they won't get any changes to the rules that would limit the commissioner's ability to unilaterally change them given a years' lead time.

[mth123]

Faced with the prospect a) losing money for a portion of a season until the union relents on their demands or b) entrenching financial losses relative to the status quo for the next 5+ years (and likely longer) due to making real concessions to the union in the CBA, the owners are likely going to take the short-term hit of lost games.

I think this is going to get ugly, especially among the players. At best I think they get a small bump to the CBT threshold and a change in the way service time works such that any appearance during a given year gives you that year toward your service time, possibly with some sort of late season carve out. They aren't getting less than 6 years service time to FA. They aren't getting a system that ramps up young player salaries more quickly. And they won't get any changes to the rules that would limit the commissioner's ability to unilaterally change them given a years' lead time.

Agreed. The owners are rich without baseball. The players are rich because of baseball. The sense of urgency will set in with the players a lot sooner than it will the owners. Quite frankly, none of the owners actually need baseball. Other than a minority who have already made enough to set them up for life, the players despereately need baseball. Look at the Reds, Joey Votto could walk away, maybe Moose, Suarez and Gray as well. Most of the others need to make money while they are young and healthy. The longer this drags out, the more likely the players are to cave.

Its a hard situation. The players are getting shafted in my opinion, but I see the owners viewpoint. They are a bunch of rich guys financing an endeavor that makes most of the players incredibly wealthy. Its kind of hard from an owners standpoint to understand what the players would have to complain about. At the end of the day, I think the players need the games more than the owners do and its why this will settle without a ton of radical changes.

[Sea Ray]

MLB players have the best deal in professional sports as it is right now due to 2 reasons: no salary cap and guaranteed contracts.

[RedTeamGo!]

MLB players have the best deal in professional sports as it is right now due to 2 reasons: no salary cap and guaranteed contracts.

Nah. It’s easily NBA players.

The top 5% or so of MLB players have it great. Next 10-15% ok, and rest don’t have it good at all. And the minor leagues are basically getting **** on.

[M2]

The players will have one advantage on their side in that they ultimately will be the ones who are willing to continue negotiating while rolling over the existing CBA. They could even throw in a promise not to strike if the owners make formal counters or agree to arbitration over their various offers. The sticky wicket for the owners is the luxury tax disappears if they just roll over the CBA. They have to negotiate to get it renewed and any sensible person should recognize the thresholds should move up (due to the growth in league revenues and player costs) rather than down. Yet they aren't negotiating.

Eventually, when this begins to threaten ST and then the start of the season, the players can position themselves as the side willing to play baseball and negotiate while they do it. The owners are going to be the ones who called a halt to things and won't let it start back up.

[757690]

The players will have one advantage on their side in that they ultimately will be the ones who are willing to continue negotiating while rolling over the existing CBA.

This is the key fact. The players have no desire to strike. They are willing to negotiate and the issues that they are negotiating are rather minor and they are rather close. If there were negotiations on both sides, this could be solved well before spring training starts.

There is no need for the lockout. To me it’s clear this is just another attempt by the owners to break the union. I can’t see it working this time either.

[Ron Madden]

Cubs union representative Ian Happ said Thursday that players hoping for substantive dialogue on core economic issues found it “disappointing” that the MLB owners’ negotiating team included no economic proposals among the changes they proposed for a new collective bargaining agreement in the days before MLB locked out the players.C

“I think it’s important to clarify some of the mixed messages out there,” Happ said during one of his regular appearances on WSCR-670 on Thursday, apparently alluding to reports that suggested owners had made economic proposals to players leading up to those meetings.

“One of the most disappointing parts about the trip to Dallas … is the owners didn’t make one economic proposal the entire time we were there,” Happ said, adding that players brought an economic proposal the second day of those meetings that “looped in” some of the non-economic issues owners had proposed the day before — including draft details and expanded playoffs.

“And we didn’t get anything back,” he said. “We didn’t get anything that said, ‘OK, here’s our proposal in the same realm; here’s how we get to a conclusion and move forward.’

“The difficult part about being in the negotiating room is that as people take things off the table, there’s just no negotiation there,” Happ said. “There’s core principles and core foundations that are work-stoppage issues for both sides, but if every issue is a work-stoppage issue, then you can’t negotiate. That’s not how it works.

“That’s a horrible way to negotiate."

“The big thing for players, the big thing we’re discussing, is a way to make the system more competitive, a way to do away with service-time manipulation, to have penalties for manipulating service time so that fans are getting to see the best players in the league as soon as they’re ready,” he added, “so that teams are competing all the way throughout the season, so that teams are trying to win games in August and September instead of a race to the bottom to get draft picks. So that teams are trading for good players at the deadline, teams are going out and competing in free agency to put good team out there and not losing three, four, five seasons in a row."

“You should get penalized for being a bad team for that many years in a row and not trying."

“That’s what the players want, and I think the fans can really understand why the game needs to trend in that direction instead of [annually having] 10 to 15 teams that are trying not to compete and competing for draft picks.”

https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/cu...-way-negotiate

[mth123]

The players will have one advantage on their side in that they ultimately will be the ones who are willing to continue negotiating while rolling over the existing CBA. They could even throw in a promise not to strike if the owners make formal counters or agree to arbitration over their various offers. The sticky wicket for the owners is the luxury tax disappears if they just roll over the CBA. They have to negotiate to get it renewed and any sensible person should recognize the thresholds should move up (due to the growth in league revenues and player costs) rather than down. Yet they aren't negotiating.

Eventually, when this begins to threaten ST and then the start of the season, the players can position themselves as the side willing to play baseball and negotiate while they do it. The owners are going to be the ones who called a halt to things and won't let it start back up.

I think this is all true, but it only maters if the owners care. I think they want the win in the negotiation more than they care about the optics. I think they'll wear the black hat if it gets them the deal they want. At the end of the day, Money is the leverage, The owners have it in bundles without baseball. They players need to play the games to get theirs.