MLB Lockout Off-Season 2021

[Kinsm]

Unlike other sports in which players are ready to compete when signed, baseball requires several years of development for most players. Is the team which develops the player not entitled to some assurance that the player will remain with the ML team for some length of time?

Sure they are, as long as the players are assured that they'll be up when ready and service time manipulations aren't played on them.

[M2]

Unlike other sports in which players are ready to compete when signed, baseball requires several years of development for most players. Is the team which develops the player not entitled to some assurance that the player will remain with the ML team for some length of time?

I'll echo Kinsm, paying them what they're worth during that "we get to keep you" phase should be part of the deal.

[Ron Madden]

MLB commissioner 'Bud Light' imposes player lockout as preemptive strike

The collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball owners and the MLB Players Association expired at the end of Wednesday, or at the start of Thursday, depending on one’s view of “midnight.” Three minutes later, at 12:03 a.m. Dec. 23, commissioner Rob Manfred posted a “letter to baseball fans” to explain why MLB was “forced” to impose a “defensive lockout.”

Manfred writes, “Delaying this process further would only put Spring Training, Opening Day, and the rest of the season further at risk — and we cannot allow an expired agreement to again cause an in-season strike and a missed World Series, like we experienced in 1994. We all owe you, our fans, better than that.”

Manfred rushed to beat the union into the court of public opinion. It’s good PR. Conjuring the strike of 1994, which notoriously scuttled the World Series, hit the perfect note. It suggests that millionaire strikers are villainous while billionaire owners are nothing but benevolent custodians of the game.

The lockout is leverage. The owners believe they can break the union and maybe even make the players swallow a salary cap, like they tried to do in 1994. They believe that by striking fear of a strike into the hearts of baseball fans, they will have public opinion on their side.

Strikes are evil. That is what 1994 teaches us, right?

Let’s harken back.

Bud Selig, who had a documented history of colluding to suppress salaries while owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, was the interim commissioner. He was the poster boy for bad faith. He was collective-bargaining poison.

Story Continues Here:
https://news.yahoo.com/michael-arace...111957404.html

[Playadlc]

MLB commissioner 'Bud Light' imposes player lockout as preemptive strike

Story Continues Here:
https://news.yahoo.com/michael-arace...111957404.html

“Baseball’s biggest problem is there hasn’t been a real commissioner acting “in the best interest of the game” since Faye Vincent was fired in 1992. Manfred is just another Selig, but with a better haircut and no mustard stains on his neckties. He’s Bud Light.”

[RED VAN HOT]

I'll echo Kinsm, paying them what they're worth during that "we get to keep you" phase should be part of the deal.

No argument there. In an earlier post i proposed a pre-arb scale increase as one of the measures to get around the impasse.

[Ron Madden]

I haven't seen any articles favoring the owners in this lockout

LOL, Maybe that's because Rob Manfred and the owners are damn near impossible to defend in this situation.

[Ron Madden]

“Baseball’s biggest problem is there hasn’t been a real commissioner acting “in the best interest of the game” since Faye Vincent was fired in 1992. Manfred is just another Selig, but with a better haircut and no mustard stains on his neckties. He’s Bud Light.”

I had to laugh when I read this part of the article.

[Big Klu]

“Baseball’s biggest problem is there hasn’t been a real commissioner acting “in the best interest of the game” since Faye Vincent was fired in 1992. Manfred is just another Selig, but with a better haircut and no mustard stains on his neckties. He’s Bud Light.”

I think he's worse. At least Bud liked baseball.

[RED VAN HOT]

I think he's worse. At least Bud liked baseball.

What would you have a strong commissioner do? Other than the usual platitudes of bringing the sides together to hammer out a deal.

[Kinsm]

I'd start with not writing that letter.

[RED VAN HOT]

I'd start with not writing that letter.

Fair enough. The letter clearly revealed a siding with the owners. We all knew that anyway. What measures should he take to move the process forward.

[OldFashionedRed]

What would you have a strong commissioner do? Other than the usual platitudes of bringing the sides together to hammer out a deal.

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.

[westofyou]

I'd require the pitcher to wear a sombrero and if it falls off his head the batter is awarded first base. All players named Tyler or Austin will need to change their names to Gus and Ethan, when a player has his foot on a base a light will light up on the scoreboard, 1b-3rd will be Red, White and Blue... because America.

I'd limit the amount of pitchers you can carry on an active roster and I'd allow 4 extra slots for that roster that would act like the NHL's not playing tonight list, it would be a good place for short term injuries and a place to stash pitchers. The Players love the extra slots, but will need to return something

[WrongVerb]

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.

Username checks out.

[Ron Madden]

I won’t mince words: Some of the most prominent baseball writers in the industry are heavily biased towards ownership and front offices, and their articles and arguments aren’t neutral, even though they’d claim the opposite.

(((EugeneFreedman)))
@EugeneFreedman
Here is a damning admission. A writer covering this issue admits on his own twitter thread that he is on the owners' side - because - wait for it - have you seen the contracts over the past few days.

He covers this for a living and has missed the last decade of revenue growth.

https://mobile.twitter.com/EugeneFre...-one-primer%2F

There are entire other books and articles to be written here about access journalism. Broadly, there is a trend in how major news is reported. National writers like Jesse Rogers, Buster Olney, Jayson Stark, Ken Rosenthal, Bob Nightengale, Tom Verducci, and Jon Heyman—and plenty of old-guard local writers with nationwide footprints of the likes of Joel Sherman, Paul Sullivan, Dan Shaughnessy, Bob Klapisch, and Marc Topkin—are highly dependent on their league and front office sources to break news. As a result, they often take dubious claims and unfiltered perspectives given to them from the ownership side and present them to readers as if they might be statements of fact.

That might seem like an exaggeration if we didn’t see it so clearly in the summer of 2020. Remember when Rosenthal was transparently pushing ridiculous ownership proposals fed to him by league sources and passing them off as his own ideas? Or when Olney wrote articles from the literal perspective of Rob Manfred and scolded players for refusing ridiculous offers from ownership without spending a word on why they were being rejected? It amounted to promoting ownership talking points without disclosing that that’s in fact what they are.

Read Article Here:
https://www.pitcherlist.com/lockout-...ek-one-primer/