Mailbag: Looming Strike, Free Agent Issues, Pitch Clock

It seems to me that with the influx of international players which has to be at one of the highest points of all time that maybe MLB is ready for expansion? If you go back 30 years ago there was not this many players from Asia, dominican, etc... So like any market, if the market is flooded with talent then teams really don't have to pay very much for it. Now you add a couple more teams into the mix and I'd bet guys would be getting signed a little quicker? Just an idea that maybe would help the players in the future?

Buxton has 10 RBI in 2 games. That looks nice!

I am really frustrated about all the angst in the Machado and Harper delayed signings.  They are represented by Boras and he always signs late.  It is his strategy to get teams desperate. I am not a fan of the billionaire owners, but I call this the Boras affect.  It is about time these businesses realized that they are throwing money away and everytime Pujols comes to bat it is a reminder (Hughes would be a reminder but he does not come to the mound).  Look at what Machado got - no sympathy for the players on this round, but I do admire how they have taken over the conversation.

Machado isn't a Boras client but I agree, the agents have done a good job of making it look like only the owners are at fault for players signing late.

Yeah, I'm with PDX. You used to be able to take a family to the ball park without it costing $200. You want a beer and a hot dog and you get almost nothing back from a $20. Nobody is worth $350 million

Players are upset because nobody wants to pay them when they are 35 any more.  It's just common sense to not pay someone for their declining years.  A vast majority of these long term contract have been bad if not outright disastrous for the clubs.  If Machado and Harper had been willing to sign 5 to 7 year deals they would have been signed months ago.  It isn't the owners fault that the players have not adjusted their demand to meet the current climate.

I do think that for the top players, if they wanted to sign lower years, with higher AAV, teams would be willing to do this.

I agree this is a ground-up, rather than a bottom-down, problem.    The argument that you need to overpay in years and AAV for veterans because the owners got to underpay for them when they were coming up doesn't make economic sense for the owners.    It is, however, the way that the system currently balances out the division of the pie.   

I think the notions of (substantially) increasing the minor league pay at each level, increasing major league minimums,  and decreasing length of time until arbitration, and length of service until free agency will resolve most of this - especially if coupled with a competitive requirement to spend a certain portion of revenue on salaries for each team, and a sprinkling of anti-tanking measures (throw all non-playoff teams into a total lottery system for first three rounds of draft order, teams that don't spend the "floor" of their revenue don't receive revenue-sharing).    The players have turned the conversation so far, but this is going to be a devastatingly difficult CBA to negotiate.

I'm all for raising the minimum and moving up arbitration/free agent timeline.  Paying minor leaguers more would also help the players in getting the portion of profits that they have earned.  Putting in a payroll floor would help raise overall salaries, although I'm not sure if it would help the baseball middle class, or just the upper class.  I do like South Dakota Tom's idea of a lottery for draft picks to stop teams from tanking.

I wonder what Curt Flood would think about the problems of today's CBA?

I have a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for someone who wants $350m rather than $300m. All MLB players earn very high salaries, period. If there is a problem it is with the minor-league players.

I agree completely.  To be fair, I have very little sympathy for the owners either.

I think analytics are somewhat to blame for the change of approach that ownership has. For instance most players are just numbers now and not names. When a player had developed a name for himself he was paid according to his reputation, some good, some bad. However, now most of these guys don't have names anymore they are just a bunch of numbers. So at one point in time your name got you paid, now it's your numbers and the funny thing is that one person's numbers may be better than another person's, but not significantly better, so then I feel teams just kind of ignore the guys who have good numbers but not significantly better numbers than some kid they can pull out of AAA. I mean why does it seem so hard for a guy like Moustakis to get some sort of deal done. I mean it's obvious that he is one of the better guys at his position, and in the old days someone would have overpaid for his services not only because he performs pretty well but because he is a proven winner and a good guy. But even though he is one of the better players at his position, he is not significantly better than someone they can replace him with. So he toils in these good but not great one year deals.

I wonder what Curt Flood would think about the problems of today's CBA?

I knew Curt Flood when he was running a disco in Majorca, Spain. What a great guy! I am sure he would have a lot of really interesting things to say.

The players and player's union were fine with this system (which rewarded veteran players much more handsomely at the expense of younger players) as long as there were teams that were willing to make signings that were loaded with risk and based more on prior production than future performance. As franchises have gotten smarter and more analytical about projecting performance and fewer franchises have reckless ownerships willing to throw extremely long and risk-laden contracts at veteran free agents, their discontent with the system has grown.

This is not news, and it's one of the reasons why it's challenging to have sympathy for the players: they're extremely wealthy and have been totally comfortable with screwing the next generation of players in order to protect the current generation.

Ownership, of course, is even wealthier and deserves no real sympathy either: their membership is filled with bad actors who don't treat their franchises as a community trust. They're drawing ever increasing amounts of revenue even with fan interest wavering, and work incredibly hard to conceal their true costs of operation so they can claim poverty whenever convenient.

A strike would probably be a very poor outcome for both sides, but the players seem to be feeling more militant. But it's hard to have sympathy for the players when their primary argument right now is "how dare you operate systemically and intelligently to mitigate risk!" They're going to need to reframe things pretty significantly and quickly (and there are plenty of better arguments to wield against ownership) because going into a labor war over Bryce Harper (who hasn't been an all-star caliber player in 2 of the last 3 season) not getting paid for 10 years as if he's 2015 Bryce Harper doesn't really play well...and the owners know it. This isn't like the 80's when FA weren't getting offers from anyone other than their own clubs.

They might need to re-structure how they pay each draft slot sort of like the NFL does? But then owners could end up paying big for players that go bust in the night. AKA Ryan Leaf etc....

I'd be all for increasing the minimum salary and letting players get the free agency faster, but only if they would be willing to give up guaranteed contracts.  That will never happen.

Would something like a guaranteed minimum based on serivce time + performance based on an agreed upon WAR calculation make sense? That way when a player performs under team control, he still gets paid.

This is the key, for me. There are few players who are legitimately "difference makers," either on the field or in terms of attracting attendance. For everyone else, a rising prospect is a "cheap" and close substitute, so it's not worth paying a lot more than the basic wage. This is basic economics and I think that some of the analytics have demonstrated this to GMs. The players can rant and rave, but they can't really change the economic laws of nature any more than Ford or Chrysler can return to the days of the 1960s when there were no substitutes for their unreliable gas-guzzlers.

You are correct, about the only thing the older players have, or at least had say 10 years ago was name recognition, you could say this guy was going to put more people into the seats than some unknown, but the unknown may perform just as, or close to as good as the guy with name recognition. Now I feel in the steroid era that the older guys did play better because they were less injury prone and they had greater experience. But that isn't as much the case now.

However, I'm not sure your analogy flies, as all of the 1960 vehicles that I see all seem to be more expensive than the new ones.

Players are upset because nobody wants to pay them when they are 35 any more.  It's just common sense to not pay someone for their declining years.  A vast majority of these long term contract have been bad if not outright disastrous for the clubs.  If Machado and Harper had been willing to sign 5 to 7 year deals they would have been signed months ago.  It isn't the owners fault that the players have not adjusted their demand to meet the current climate.

The problem with this way of looking at things is the reality that many of these players are underpaid* prior to free agency.  There was always an unwritten understanding that while the players would not make full value prior to FA, they would be able to make up for it on the backend of their career.  Teams are now wising up to the approach, and not securing the long term contracts like before.

If you are a player, wouldn't you be upset with the system?  The problem is that even fixing the issue for the younger players (faster to arbitration, faster to FA) does nothing for the current veterans.

*Underpaid is relative -- I understand they all make more than most of us could dream of.