Will we have a season in 2022?

[LA Vikes Fan]

On 1/5/2022 at 8:52 AM, Dave The Dastardly said:

I'm going with half a season because that's how the usual negotiation strategies/errors/dumbness, whatever, play out. As an experienced contract negotiator my goal was to always hold the other side (I've worked for both sides) down to what they want. The first few rounds of negotiations will be "pie-in-the-sky" talks; each side will try to get everything they can imagine into the talks whether or not they really want each "improvement" they're asking for. That will take a couple of weeks. The secondary rounds will evolve into demeaning the other sides' "unreasonable" position. That will also take several weeks, maybe a month, as each side will leak stuff about the other side in an attempt to win the public relations battle. That will add another 2-4 weeks in order to do a little polling to see how their story is playing out in the press. Then both sides will want to break off talks, "officially" in order to cool down but in reality to tamp down the hard-liners on each side who are still insisting on shooting for the moon. That's the third step. We'll know when they reach the fourth step, actually negotiating, when each side names a few key members that will be taking the lead in the talks. Plenty of stories will surface in the press how these guys are secretly very good friends and actually play golf together, have lots of respect for each other, hell, even had picnics at each other's homes over the past few years and how they all love baseball, apple pie and America.

These heretofore unknown "good friends" will hammer out a deal over a couple of Bud Lights, a steak at Mannie's and a massage. But then they have to take the deal back to the rest of the owners and players for approval. That means they have to give the hard-liners time to display their "toughness" and vent their nonsensical objections while the reasonable guys have to sit and pretend to listen to them while they cut their fingernails and nod wisely.

Another week or two of that and then each side will finally get around to a vote. If both sides are ready to admit they're losing money without an agreement and if they're taking hits in the press and from their season ticket holders they'll vote to approve.

Upshot: two months from the date they announce their first official meeting they will approve the new contract, both sides claiming they gave up the most in order to save baseball, apple pie and America and those were the only reasons that guided their decision to concede to an unfair contract.  Oh, and season tickets and your favorite player's jersey are now available, but at a higher price than last season. Hot dogs and beer? Well, they'll have to go up, too. You know, only because of the coronavirus.

So watch for that first  public announcement and set your calendar accordingly.

I love it. As a lawyer and a managing partner of a mid size law firm, I think you've encapsulated negotiations perfectly. Mine usually playout a little more quickly but you have got the stages down. The sad thing is, there are a few who know how this will come out but we have to go through these steps t get to the eventual result we all knew was coming 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Once money comes into play, (ie. lost revenue from missed games) I suspect things will become far less antagonistic and something will be done quickly.

Which helps ownership, as the rest of free agency will be a slapdash cluster****, which will almost certainly result in many players receiving less than they would in a regular offseason.

What pisses me off to no end is that as of right now, it appears there has been no good-faith attempt to negotiate and prevent this from happening. While I suspect ownership has a slightly larger slice of the blame for that happening (it's more in their interest to stall than it is the players), I think the players are contributing quite a bit to this mess as well.

[Cap'n Piranha]

On 1/5/2022 at 2:04 PM, Squirrel said:

I just disagree. The owners didn't have to call a lockout, but they did. They'd have a stronger leg to stand on if they didn't because then they could say, 'See? The door's open but the players won't walk through it.' They closed the door and it is up to them to open it. If they do and the players don't walk through, then I sing a different song.

They did open it.  They had the meeting in TX.  The players walked out after 7 minutes because they weren't willing to rank the importance of their issues, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  If they're worried they'd be giving up leverage, why not ask for one day to prepare their list, but insist the owners return at the same time with their own list as well?  It is incontrovertible that the players ended the last discussion.  Why would it still be on the owners, simply because they engaged in a legal formality prior to the players walking away?  To use your analogy, sure the owners closed the door, but they left it unlocked, and the players walked all the way up, were told "come in", but decided to turn on their heel and walk away.

[Cap'n Piranha]

On 1/5/2022 at 3:13 PM, Sconnie said:

There is much precedence of having a season without a CBA or with major disagreement about what should be in a current agreement. The season would have occurred status quo.

the owners lockout of the players is to take away leverage from the players.

the players would have most certainly waited to strike until opening day or later, to exert pain on the owners. With the owners locking out the players in December, there is now a deadline to hit.

Interesting, so a season could have happened.  That said, is there anyone who thinks the players would have actually gone into the year without a new CBA, and instead played under the current one?  As Bean pointed out, the players have little to no upfront costs to a season (all I can think of is paying to get to spring training sites, as teams offer housing during spring training), but owners have massive costs.  Why should the owners spend tens if not hundreds of millions to get the wheels turning for a season that could be cancelled one day before it starts?  Unless each side promised in good faith that they would not call a lockout/strike until after the 2022 World Series (at the earliest), it would be illogical to invest much, if anything, in a season that could be cancelled for reasons outside your control at any time.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 minute ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

Interesting, so a season could have happened.  That said, is there anyone who thinks the players would have actually gone into the year without a new CBA, and instead played under the current one?  As Bean pointed out, the players have little to no upfront costs to a season (all I can think of is paying to get to spring training sites, as teams offer housing during spring training), but owners have massive costs.  Why should the owners spend tens if not hundreds of millions to get the wheels turning for a season that could be cancelled one day before it starts?  Unless each side promised in good faith that they would not call a lockout/strike until after the 2022 World Series (at the earliest), it would be illogical to invest much, if anything, in a season that could be cancelled for reasons outside your control at any time.

absolutely it could have, but the cost of doing business through spring training was a very small part of the calculation. It was 99.99999999999999% leverage based decision making for CBA negotiation. A few million per team on flights and coordination of ST is very small, compared to a bad CBA that takes effect for 5-10 years that can be hundreds of thousands to millions per player per year. if half your roster is effected by ML minimum, 20 roster spots * 300k*30 teams * 5 years is $900 million. There's alot at stake. 

Having a promise in good faith not to strike/lockout is a CBA, Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

I for one feel that the players would have chosen to start the season, and start the strike somewhere just before the all-star break to really put pressure on the owners to get the season restarted to stop the bleeding on lost All-Star revenue and the longer it goes on, the more likely it impacts post season revenue, to really pressure the owners to cave.

The owners, under the same assumptions locked-out the players as early as possible, this takes away the player's leverage, and gives a relatively long deadline where they can be patient and let the players come to them. Now the players would try to be patient as well... the longer it takes the higher the likelihood it eats into the owners checkbook

My guess is there won't be any movement until February at the earliest 

[bean5302]

4 hours ago, Sconnie said:

absolutely it could have, but the cost of doing business through spring training was a very small part of the calculation. It was 99.99999999999999% leverage based decision making for CBA negotiation. A few million per team on flights and coordination of ST is very small, compared to a bad CBA that takes effect for 5-10 years that can be hundreds of thousands to millions per player per year. if half your roster is effected by ML minimum, 20 roster spots * 300k*30 teams * 5 years is $900 million. There's alot at stake. 

Having a promise in good faith not to strike/lockout is a CBA, Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

I for one feel that the players would have chosen to start the season, and start the strike somewhere just before the all-star break to really put pressure on the owners to get the season restarted to stop the bleeding on lost All-Star revenue and the longer it goes on, the more likely it impacts post season revenue, to really pressure the owners to cave.

The owners, under the same assumptions locked-out the players as early as possible, this takes away the player's leverage, and gives a relatively long deadline where they can be patient and let the players come to them. Now the players would try to be patient as well... the longer it takes the higher the likelihood it eats into the owners checkbook

My guess is there won't be any movement until February at the earliest 

It's not Spring Training that's the issue. It's the threat players could walk off the job on April 5th or May 2nd when the team has hundreds of employees they're paying, a stadium they spent millions on to get ready, millions in advertising costs, millions in travel bookings, tens of millions of seats sold they need to potentially refund (even if it's not "profit" this is cash flow and revenue and that matters to teams because investments are not all sitting in money market), television contracts which they need to repay, it goes on and on and on. Each team would be in a position to lose at least $25MM if the players walked on April 1st. It'd be too late to book the stadiums for other events, etc. You're talking about hundreds of millions if not billions of actual, real losses by moving ahead to watch the players walk and the owners are already going to lose enormous revenue and profit by canceling games once it becomes necessary, just like in 2020.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

It's not Spring Training that's the issue. It's the threat players could walk off the job on April 5th or May 2nd when the team has hundreds of employees they're paying, a stadium they spent millions on to get ready, millions in advertising costs, millions in travel bookings, tens of millions of seats sold they need to potentially refund (even if it's not "profit" this is cash flow and revenue and that matters to teams because investments are not all sitting in money market), television contracts which they need to repay, it goes on and on and on. Each team would be in a position to lose at least $25MM if the players walked on April 1st. It'd be too late to book the stadiums for other events, etc. You're talking about hundreds of millions if not billions of actual, real losses by moving ahead to watch the players walk and the owners are already going to lose enormous revenue and profit by canceling games once it becomes necessary, just like in 2020.

Advertising is on the revenue side of the ledger, but yes that is the leverage players are trying to wield, and why the owners locked out the players. All that non-player cost listed… it’s only on average about 10% of the cost of goods sold. On average 90% of the cost of goods sold is player salary. The CBA is critical for both sides.

[Vanimal46]

Cool. Wasting more time by not negotiating in good faith. Thanks baseball!