Brock Beauchamp

A floor is needed but it needs to be high and MLB's offer of a floor came with some pretty big strings, IIRC. I think they wanted a CBT way down at $180m with draconian penalties, and a host of other changes including expanded postseason. The thing about a salary floor is that it needs to be high - I'd argue for $120m - and it needs to come with substantial revenue sharing, which only owners can agree to implement. The players have limited ability to "force" the owners to share their revenue, the owners need to do that of their own accord. If the owners agreed to increase revenue sharing to the point the Pirates can afford a $120m payroll, they could then ask for a $220m salary cap in trade. And if the players rejected that offer, they'd be absolutely in the wrong for doing so. But talking about a salary floor without mentioning required revenue sharing - which will be substantial and fought fiercely by 6-8 clubs - we're only talking about symptoms while ignoring the problem itself.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/friday-night-baseball-on-deck-for-apple-tv-subscribers/ The Friday night baseball is kinda meh whatever but I’m more interested in the 24/7 highlights and commentary.

I'm not the editor, I'm the community manager. I'm not really involved with the news section of the site other than the code that powers it. And the poster you're referring to had been warned by at least four separate moderators over the past year previous to my post so let's not pretend this is anywhere close to the same thing. Feel free to disagree with Ted's assertions all you want - pick them apart piece by piece if you like - but I'm not going to get involved.

I don't have revenue numbers but around that time, Cleveland had an absurd sold-out streak going so their revenue was probably very high. I also know the Diamondbacks were similarly popular, having just won a World Series and had feel-good vibes throughout that region. And Phoenix is a very large metro.

The problem I see right off the bat is that it appears you're applying 2022 definitions of revenue to the past. Cleveland and Arizona were big spenders 20 years ago, both were top ten in payrolls.

I think you're downplaying how good Ryan & Co were at identifying talent during that first stretch. They routinely won trades, often pretty spectacularly, and they drafted and signed well. They didn't accidentally fall into developing good pitchers with such regularity, even if their "pitch to contact" mantra ran its course to diminishing effect as time wore on. But I agree any attempt to replicate that success without analytics would result in spectacular failure in today's game.

Wait, I know the answer to this. It's not scientific but it's almost certainly true. The Twins all-time homerun thief is almost surely Torii Hunter. Why? Because Puckett played almost his entire career with 10' high plexiglass surrounding the outfield wall of the Metrodome. I bet you all forgot about that damned plexiglass, didn't you?

Excellent piece!

Welcome to the board! I have no answer for your question but I'm also curious if anyone has ever done a study of this...

Also a distinct possibility.

Yeah, I'm less confident in the third bullet point. And whether or not it's nostalgia, the aesthetic of baseball is just better with something close to its standard alignment. Watching a ball get past the dirt only to be scooped up by an infielder standing 10 feet into the grass makes for a bad spectating experience. It's so boring. And this is a spectator sport. If the sport changes to become more boring, just fix it and move on. The current implementation of the shift simply wasn't possible before the StatCast era and there's absolutely nothing wrong with making rule changes to thwart technology in sports. If hitters suddenly found a way to create a bat that added 10mph to their exit velo, wouldn't we be screaming about making changes to their bats to compensate? Obviously, we'd advocate for that change to happen immediately so why is there so much pushback on eliminating the shift, which has also been driven by advances in technology? And while I acknowledge that hitters should take a more rounded approach and mitigate the shift on their own, it's simply not happening. Part of that is due to the hitters but a significant part of that is also due to the unholy velocity of modern pitchers. This situation isn't entirely due to "lazy" or "incomplete" hitters.

I think the rule should have three parts but I'm wishy-washy on the third. But I think the first two are incredibly simple and easy to enforce: 1. Infielders must be in the dirt when the pitch is released 2. Two infielders on each side of second base 3. Divide the OF into three zones, one OF must occupy each zone, put lines on the OF walls so the home plate umpire can make the call Teams will still be able to shade hitters and "shift" but the amount they're allowed to move would be greatly reduced. One side effect of this happening would be that second base would once again become a premium defensive position. Over the past five years, we've seen players like Mike-****ing-Moustakas play second base because the position just doesn't matter anymore if the "second baseman" spends 50% of his time as an additional outfielder.

The pitch clock is absolutely necessary. I'm in favor of banning the shift but it's not going to make a huge difference either way. I just happen to find the shift incredibly annoying and boring, as it reduces the importance of athleticism in the infield. I don't understand why we're constantly talking about increasing the size of the bases but I also don't really care so whatever. But I am generally happy that the owners and players stopped hitting each other over the head with foam mallets long enough to agree that the game needs to change and speeding up the process of how those changes can be made.

It’s certainly not the only needed fix but it’s the easiest to implement. I’m not sure how to coax more balls in play but that needs to be the over-arching goal. One thing about a pitch clock is that I wonder how it will impact velocity. A starter won’t be able to go max effort on every pitch if they only have 15 seconds to recover. A side effect of a pitch clock may be a slight increase in balls in play.

I watch at least parts of a couple of hundred baseball games a year. The intrigue of nothing happening on-field wears off quickly.

Well, they're back at it and at managed to stay in the same room for over an hour. I'm considering anything good news at this point.

The pitch clock a no-brainer, literally the most obvious change they can make to the game to improve it without drastically altering the rule book.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Owners aren't going to put their TV money into a pool and all take equal shares but if the owners had the will, I bet they could implement a TV "gate share", which baseball teams have done forever. The Dodgers get their $250m contract, fine. But they give up 50% of that money to the teams they play, just like teams do with gate money. It doesn't create a perfect balance but I don't know if a perfect balance is the right solution anyway. But it gets us a hell of a lot closer to parity, which could then allow ownership to approach the MLBPA with a hard floor and cap proposal that isn't about being cheap, it's about competitive balance.

Oh, no worries at all, I wasn't angry at your response, I was just outlining our policy. I'm sorry if I came across as brusque, as it was not my intent.

There is no slippery slope. We have clearly defined rules on what is allowed in the community and we have no obligation to allow users to run rampant with their own agendas. This is not the town square, this is our private website.

I'm presenting facts from a third party source. You are hypothesizing. And therein lies the problem here. Stop it and right now. This is the last time I'm going to say it. You have been warned by countless mods about how you approach labor conversations and your tone within those conversations. Find a different way to talk about this or I will remove your ability to do so, you've been given miles of rope on this subject and we're now at the end of it.

The players were locked out on December 2nd. MLB gave the players their first proposal on January 13th. At literally the next meeting on January 24th, the players (by your own admission) dropped their free agency request. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-lockout-timeline-of-cba-negotiations-between-mlbpa-and-owners-as-rob-manfred-cancels-regular-season-games/ Again, stop it. You're allowed your own opinions but not your own facts. For those who don't want to click the link, here's the actual timeline from a third party, CBS Sports. I have edited and omitted nothing, this is literally the first three bullet points of the piece. From CBS Sports: Dec. 2: The lockout began shortly after midnight on December 2, or with the official expiration of the previous CBA. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced in a statement that the 30 owners had voted unanimously in support of the lockout: "We hope that the lockout will jumpstart the negotiations and get us to an agreement that will allow the season to start on time." Jan. 13: Despite Manfred claiming they intended the lockout to "jumpstart" negotiations, the league waited more than six weeks to make its first proposal, with that coming on Thursday, January 13. The proposal, which was not received well by the union, included an increase in the minimum salary; tweaks to draft-pick compensation; and adjustments to a draft lottery system that would be implemented to curb tanking. Jan. 24, 25: The two sides met, on consecutive days this time, with the union rejecting most of, if not all of the league's proposal during those sessions. Both sides did concede on various issues during these meetings. The players walked away from asking for age-based free agency and earlier arbitration, and the league scrapped its original request to do away with the "Super Two" tier of the arbitration system.

Indeed, and the level of corruption in the system is very high. A draft would hopefully be aimed to mitigate the exploitation of these kids.

An international draft is long overdue for many reasons.