Rob Manfred's Public Arguments Framing the MLBPA's Desires As Harmful to Fans Make Little Sense

Actually, Lucas, both sides are villians in this matter.  Take your three issues.  The players want to reduce revenue sharing.  Who would that benefit--players like Scherzer, Correa, Ray, etc.--in other words, the top 5% of players who would benefit from large markets having more money to spend.  The "ordinary joes" will not see this help them much at all as the additional revenue will all go to big name players, like Scherzer, who can make 48 million dollars a year rather than 43.  How about the reduced reserve period?  Who are the big winners again?  The same super rich big name players who will make more money earlier.  The average players are not going to see a huge jump in their salaries. Why don't the players make increasing the minimum salary by 200 thousand as a top 3 priority to help those average players at a time when they most need the income?  Why don't they act as powerful advocates for how minor leaguers are paid, housed, etc?  Why?  Because it does not affect the powerful element in the player's union--we all know that a majority of the players on the negotiating committee are Boras clients and he brags to prospective clients how much pull he has with the union.  Boras does not represent many ordinary joes.  Finally, earlier arbitration would be the one part that would help everyone, so I could definitely see how this might help all players.  Overall though, this is a battle between spoiled billionaire owners and the spoiled millionaires in charge of the players union.  This is not to be taken as support for the owners.  I just think your analysis was too one sided and showed your bias.  Great article though.  Made me think.

In my mind Manfred isn't completely wrong.  If that is what the Players union truly wants I would counter propose contracting all teams that currently need revenue sharing to be competitive.  That would allow the other 20 teams to be closer in revenue and then compete at a closer revenue level which would allow for what the Players union wants in terms of player movement and flexibility. All teams would have close to the same amount of money to compete for FA's so there wouldn't be as large a disparity.  Granted the players would lose around 300 jobs but they can gain the flexibility they require.

Otherwise the players union needs to understand there needs to be a cap of some kind and greater revenue sharing to allow teams to compete in the FA market fairly.  So for me yeah what the players union is proposing is likely the death of my team maybe not right away but most likely eventually. It would strengthen the larger revenue teams and those fans would be happy.  It would also cost the players lots of jobs but increased pay for the ones who remain. 

With less revenue sharing and a shorter path to free agency teams like Tampa, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Miami really shouldn't be included in MLB anymore.  It would take a miner miracle for them to compete.  They are able to now only because they control players just long enough to make a run and or can sometimes trade their way back to relevancy.  What the Players union is proposing is their certain death.

So to me yeah I think Manfred is right their proposal will help the rich teams get richer and the poor teams get poorer.  Eventually teams won't be able to draw fans when all their good players move on after 3 or 4 years to teams that can pay them more in free agency.  I just don't see how this works without more revenue sharing and a cap or contraction to keep spending at a fairer level.  IMO I don't think it will be good for baseball but who knows maybe getting rid of the weaker teams will make the sport stronger?

The difference between where things should be to have a fair competitive system is too large to get there in one step. The owners don't want to give up what they have, they are making too much money. But to me they are being a little short sighted, granted the pie is of finite size and they don't want to reduce the size of their portion. But if they make the game fairer and level the playing field for all teams, the size of the pie would grow and even if they had less of a portion, they would make more money. Start making moves to get to a more level playing field for all teams-increased revenue sharing, hard max. salary cap,, min. salary level for teams, I would like to see a salary max. contract like in NBA, doubt if present player reps would be in favor of that.

Sorry, but Manfred's arguments are logical, even if inflammatory. I agree the letter is nonsensical, but not because it's inaccurate. The letter is nonsensical because it will undoubtedly anger the players and make them less interested in resolving the dispute.

Equally nonsensical is believing the players are heroes or saints or champions of righteousness fighting for the little guy (fans). Players don't care, at all, about the fans in these negotiations. It's not a knock against them. The MLBPA's job is to secure the best compensation they can from MLB owners and the owners job is to prevent the compensation from exceeding viable team operation. 

7 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Sorry, but Manfred's arguments are logical, even if inflammatory. I agree the letter is nonsensical, but not because it's inaccurate. The letter is nonsensical because it will undoubtedly anger the players and make them less interested in resolving the dispute.

Equally nonsensical is believing the players are heroes or saints or champions of righteousness fighting for the little guy (fans). Players don't care, at all, about the fans in these negotiations. It's not a knock against them. The MLBPA's job is to secure the best compensation they can from MLB owners and the owners job is to prevent the compensation from exceeding viable team operation. 

I don't love the owners either and I agree with you that this is about money for both sides.  To me it looks like the players union is cozying up to the richer more powerful teams owners as this proposal benefits them as it weakens their competition and strengthens their pocket book.  The owners of the top 10 to 15 revenue generating teams have nothing to fear in this proposal absolutely nothing. 

The bottom 10 teams have much more to lose. As a fan of actually one the better lower end teams it stinks that we can't compete in the FA market.  How many revenue sharing teams came out with the winning bid for one of the big FA signings this year?  Any?  I can't think of one.  Things are skewed enough as it is and they expect us as fans to hang onto hope every year?  The players association wants to make my team even less competitive?  Yeah they will never have me on their side with proposals like this, never.

38 minutes ago, jmlease1 said:

Eh. he's doing a little PR work since the owners locked out the players and it's being reported that way (accurately). He doesn't care if it makes the players mad, they already hate the owners and management anyway. He's just trying to get some people riled up against the players so it's not all "the owners are greedy bastards!" If he can get people to be as mad at the millionaire players as they are at the billionaire owners, he wins this round on PR games.

The owners are a bunch of contemptible greedheads, generally, who give zero Fs about the fans or even "the franchise", really. They also know they can wait longer than the players, because they are very very rich especially if they stop paying the players. They'll even start furloughing the rest of the staff and blame the players for that too. Despite being frequently despicable, they won't be entirely wrong about everything. But everything that Manfred says will be carefully wordsmithed so that it framers the players in the worst light and the owners in the best. everyone involved will care deeply about the game and the fans...right until it costs their side money.

The fans have no friends in this fight; we will be lucky to have allies of convenience, on occasion.

The fans are definitely going to hate Major League Baseball as a whole if the lockout drags on and games or spring training gets canceled. That's why I say Manfred's letter is nonsensical. It doesn't actually accomplish anything except making negotiations tougher, haha.

The MLBPA association are hardly saints in this process. Look at how the sold out on the minor leaguers, negotiating their salaries and conditions but not letting them be part on the union so they can actually vote. The MLBPA resistance to drug testing was one of their larger disgraces. 
 

There are proposals that would seem to make a more competitive balance. Increased revenue sharing in return for a salary floor. Such a proposal would be popular with the average to below average players as it would mean higher salaries for the none elite. They get to vote on the contract as well. Correct?  I realize the opposite has been presented in the Manfred discussion.  But why would the average player agree to a provision that means fewer opportunities for them  

 I think a form of restricted free agency (as in football) would be useful. A player can be controlled by one team for upto 14 years. This is too long. 
 

3 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

The players would never accept a cap and they want to decrease revenue sharing.

In 2019 MLB payrolls totaled just over 4,000,000,000 averaging somewhere around 134.000,000 per team. If they set the min. payroll at 125,000,000, and max at 225,000,000, the average would surely be higher than 134,000,000 and more money going to the players. Players want to reduce revenue sharing because they think owners are cutting payroll and pocketing the profits, if have min. payroll would help solve that. Revenue sharing is only way to help level playing field for teams, Pittsburg will never be able to generate the revenue Yankees do. Is this realistic at this point, probably not, but hope things at least move in this direction this CBA.

5 hours ago, bean5302 said:

The fans are definitely going to hate Major League Baseball as a whole if the lockout drags on and games or spring training gets canceled. That's why I say Manfred's letter is nonsensical. It doesn't actually accomplish anything except making negotiations tougher, haha.

I don't think it makes negotiations tougher lets be honest the owners hold all the cards here.  They can hold out forever and move to use MiLB players.  The players are not going to risk losing all that money over a strike.  It won't work and the owners will come out ahead one way or another.  Players will start to cave one by one.   There is too much at stake especially for the highest paid players.

Personally I am pissed at the players union and hope their lawyer has to choke on his proposal.  He doesn't have the best interests of baseball in mind.  If I was a revenue sharing team I would propose major league baseball buy me out for market value and take 1 billion in salary off the books for all of baseball and see what kind of win the players get.  Let them lose hundreds of jobs and lose millions of fans because his proposal does half of the teams no good.  They might as well not exist and if he thinks less competition for players is a good thing then he has to be one of the biggest fools alive.  If he wanted to make the players look bad he has done an excellent job. No one in their right mind could come to the conclusion that what the players are proposing is good for the teams or the players.  This guy is dumber than a rock.

If the players association lawyer was trying to find a way to make the game more competitive for all that is something I could get behind as a fan but personally I hope he chokes on this proposal.  He has me on the side of the owners right now and I hope most baseball fans see him for the clown he is.  

15 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

The MLBPA is ONLY asking to reduce revenue sharing because overall, clubs are not spending what they should be on player salaries.

If the owners get together, agree to be transparent with their books and as a whole work with the MLBPA on what percentage of revenue should be allotted to the players, the MLBPA wouldn’t care how the revenue is shared.

Revenue sharing was billed one way, and has turned out to be just another variation on collusion.  "You don't spend, I don't spend, and we solidify our profit margins."  From the players' perspective, better to just let the large market teams spend those sums on player contracts. 

I expect this negotiation point to be one the players association lets go of first, because indeed the big-time free agents are being paid well anyway.

I'm ready for another try at the 1890 Players League.  So I'm not feeling too immersed in this present negotiation.

8 hours ago, beckmt said:

Too win the players , there has to be a floor, but MLB must force out the bad owner(s) (Pittsburg, Cleveland) and fix the stadium situations (Oakland, TB).  Then you could afford a floor of like $100, and a hard cap around $225 million.  Increase revenue sharing, but insist the money be spent (not put in the owners profits).  

All you are doing now is squeezing the marginal decent major league player (like programming, you can always find someone cheaper to do 90% of the same work as the player replaced).  If you balance the money clubs have to spend (which floor and cap could be closer, but probably would not sell that to the owners), you at least give the lower clubs a chance to compete, not need lightning strikes or very good player development and management (like TB).  

Doubt any of this will happen, my guess is the mid level and lower level players will fold as spring training nears and they become concerned for their jobs.  

 

Hope I am wrong.

I agree that if we don't want the players association to go just with the big teams the floor has to be higher.  The money has to be spent on the players not just pocketed by the owners.  I do think teams like Tampa, Oakland, and maybe Pittsburgh and Miami need to be moved to cities that can support them or contracted so that the floor can be at least 100M.  

I want to be behind the players believe me but proposing to make half the league less competitive is a non starter for me.  As a fan I really do like caps as it creates a fair playing field. Everyone has the same things to work with they just need to make better decisions than the other clubs.  I get why the players don't want a cap as they have no idea what the owners are making and it seems likely that it is a lot.  I hate this whole thing but as a fan my greatest concern is fairer competition among teams.  I don't see either side as having a proposal I am in complete agreement on but so far the players side with less revenue sharing is where they have lost me completely.

10 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

The MLBPA is ONLY asking to reduce revenue sharing because overall, clubs are not spending what they should be on player salaries.

If the owners get together, agree to be transparent with their books and as a whole work with the MLBPA on what percentage of revenue should be allotted to the players, the MLBPA wouldn’t care how the revenue is shared.

I can agree with this for the most part.  The owners are not showing their books and not negotiating in good faith.  I think there needs to be a solid floor and I believe the owners proposed something along those lines.  I am fine with a floor but what is the players association doing about creating fairer competition for Free Agents?  I want my team to be able to compete in Free Agency and they currently can't.  If they want me on their side they need to work on things like that as well.  Until they do I am sorry but I am with the evil owners who at least afford my team some measure of fairness.  Even if it is small it is better than anything the players association is offering.

It's the teams' collective responsibility to do what's best for the fans, and for the long-term health of the game. 

Each player has just one life to live.  The franchise lives on for generations, if run successfully. 

When the game is healthy and a player retires, the baseball world gives him a hearty handshake and its thanks - maybe even a HoF nod eventually .  When the game is healthy and an owner "retires", he (or his heirs) gets significant capital gains.  So, who has the real incentive and responsibility?

Propaganda equating the two sides is deceptive and pernicious, and comes mainly from the ownership side.  There's a lockout on, and gee whiz, look at which side of the line the majority of PR people stand.