TheLeviathan

Live shot of the guy who thinks Harper and the player's union is looking out for the little guy. (He's also so happy those poor folks stopped getting taxed on their tips!)

And players in those leagues make a ****-ton of money despite it. I wish more of then had a 55-45 split, but the cap in no way has put them in the poor house.

The Savannah Bananas are going to rake it in while the MLBPA drags their feet.

Ja is definitely more divisive with some serious question marks. Kyrie makes a lot of sense too, I'm just in the market for big swings at this point. They won't get into title contention playing it safe.

I mostly like the deals too. The one I like least is the Varland one which I think is a fairly non-controversial stance. (I hope Rojas works out well. I have some doubts) Roden should've been given the 1B job though, that's where I start scratching my head.

This. This right here is why I'll be ending my part with this post. You're just not being serious or good faith. You are so stuck in this hero vs. villain dichotomy that you aren't having a good faith discussion. You completely glossed over the value a cap/floor have for free agency and go right to this plainly false question. So I'll answer, then I'm out. The owners offered a floor. One that would force half the teams in the league to spend to reach it. A hard floor with no wiggle room. And they offered to pool all resources and give the players a 50/50 split. Would I love for the players to push for 51/49 or 55/45? Hell yeah. But the owner proposal absolutely offered something more than commensurate with the demand. For you to pretend otherwise is just so ridiculous. So I'm done, but look, I'm going to try to help you one last time to get off the "MLBPA are the heroes!" campaign. Once you abandon that plainly ridiculous stance you'll see the CBA for what it is: the necessary step for a league that desperately needs the structure of a CBA that equalizes markets and gives every team a chance. There are no heroes at the negotiation tables. But there is an outcome that is better for the sport and, unfortunately by my measure, the owners are closer to that mark than the players. But hey, let's do a quick hypothetical on your vaunted white knights: How long did your heroic MLBPA fight to keep minor leaguers from voting? For such a gallant crew it seems odd they left those folks to their own devices for so long. The true proletariat....voteless for decades. Odd White Knight behavior right there..... Second question - your oh-so-valiant MLBPA, how do they react if you and I started touring the minor leagues pushing for quadruple the MLB and MiLB minimum and restricted free agency after three years as our main CBA pushes? Clearly those are much more proletariat friendly. Would they rally to our cause? Or would a fleet of high priced union lawers with Bryce Harper as their front face coming barreling down to the minors to talk those players out of our proposal and re-emphasize the importance of "no cap" as the primary push of the union? Yeah. I know which one would happen. You aren't fighting for the little guy. You're just a "no tax on tips" sucker vote at this point. Cheers.

One of the reasons why the league is doing well is because it is burying tired, old BS and being open to a new era. The MLBPA should be doing the same. By putting a floor out, the owners have actually taken the first step to that. I'm as shocked as anyone. I expected some flimsy, stupid "floor" in name only. Instead....we got a real offer. Why is that important and why is cap/floor necessary? The other leagues have implemented a salar cap and floor because they fundamentally drive the league towards equalizing the foundation for competition. They makes it so that a team's success or failure is based on what it can control. No matter what Kansas City does, $80 in KC ain't the same as $80 in LA. Teams cannot control their market, the value of a dollar in their market, or anything related to revenues generated thereby. Just like we don't have 14 kids from the cornfields play Edina on a regular basis, we shouldn't be setting up a similar mismatch in a professional league. Nor have a CBA that enshrines such a ludicrious foundation for competition. The league is national, by definition the markets across the nation are not equal. You cannot create a truly competitive league without addressing that issue. A league without the sense of true competition is a league doomed to failure because fans will see the product as rigged. Revenue sharing is a huge part of that. It has to happen. Consolidating revenues is also better for players, that way they're getting their part of the full pie rather than whatever the owners determine is the pie. Other leagues make sure it's all pooled, thereby eliminating shenanigans. What does a cap/floor do? It forces owners to invest in their product. In current MLB there are basically 5 or so teams that are truly bidding for players. A lack of bidding is, by definition, bad for players. The cap prevents the same teams from always bidding and the floor prevents some teams from always sitting out. What you get as a result is a pretty steady supply of buyers in the free agent market. Buyers that are not just interested in the highest tier of players, but also your Pius Suters. Your Will Fries. Your Myles Turner. Without a cap/floor and limited buyers, players are beholden to whether the few handful with money actually want them. Which is exactly what we see in MLB. It's why the offseason has dried up so much in our lifetimes. Essentially, the cap and floor are the guardrails for a healthy ecosystem of free agency. I'm sure Paul Skenes would not want a cap, but you know some players that would've benefitted much more from it? Bo Bichette. Go ahead and look up the seasons he would've been having in MLB under the NHL program where he would've been paid after year 3. Cody Bellinger comes to mind. A whole host of players who are basically the worst kind of cheap labor you can imagine all at the behest of "no cap". How many players between seasons 4-6 see their value dip enormously when they should be on the open market? All for "no cap" And how do we argue that the current system is "fine"? Oh...right...we use a small sample size in October! Of course! What could be a wiser, more perfect way to diagnose the problem then to zoom in a small two week stretch and ignore all the other data available in larger samples! Dodgers lose 4 out of 7 to the Giants in June? Meh. They lose 3 games in a row to the D-backs in one random week in 2023 and we declare the system is working! No, my friend, that's just the fact that the game of baseball is weird. The outcomes are weird in small samples. On the larger sample the competitive advantage money has is plainly obvious. It's bad for a league long-term for it's foundation to be that poorly structured to allow market sizes to impact competition. It looks rigged. Without a cap and a floor there are no guardrails to keep the game healthy and bidders active. MLB has done so many things well and they have an opportunity to really rocket themselves back into relevancy with this CBA. Another one based on luxury taxes and other nonsense will only damage the efforts made so far. Oh...and taking it to the owners for their tax breaks, team values, and other BS? I'm all for that fight. It just isn't the CBA. That fight is bigger and goes beyond baseball. We can have that one too, but the MLB CBA is the misplaced location to have that fight.

Your solidarity is with the Petite Bourgeoisie. You've just falsely convinced yourself it is the proletariat. Much like the proletariat are falsley convinced that they are one and the same. Bryce Harper ain't Brooks Lee and he has zero interest in making things better for Brooks Lee. His argument serves Bryce Harper. Congrats, you got suckered by the low tier Bourgeoisie. The CBA will do nothing to impact the way the owners manipulate the public. Nothing decided in the CBA will impact those problems. Nothing. Repeating it only repeats your tendency to be off-topic. You don't take on the actual problems, you have a side conversation that you then ham-handedly believe addresses the CBA issues. You actively dodge every salient point making this about "f the billionaires!". Cool. I agree. Now get on topic, because the CBA ain't that. The players should continue to negotiate doubling the minimum. I'm glad they're doing that. It isn't, however, their primary argument. It's the "no tax on tips" analog. You fall for that stuff in real life too? The NBA's cap is a mess. Their "soft" cap has been a huge issue for that sport. They pay the mid tier really, really well thanks in part to the cap/floor, but the "soft" rules that invited aprons and all that other nonsense are why I prefer MLB has nothing to do with that. The NHL did it right. The NHL version of Skenes (Cellibrini) is going to get absolutely PAID by the time he is 20. Somehow, the cap is no obstacle to that. Funny, I'm told by you and Bryce Harper it is? Which is why MLB should do the same. Stop sacrificing several dozen Paul Skenes so that Bryce Harper can live like a king. Stop carrying Harper's water at the expense of the ACTUAL proletariat.

I'm in, like, 99% agreement with you but I did find it odd the types of players they targeted from a positional standpoint in that sell-off. We did have a lot of left-handed corner types. Which, as you point out, isn't necessarily bad because you always need depth....but then why roadblock those guys with scrubs like Bell and Caritini? I struggle sometimes to see the long-term vision.

We can have a separate debate about the owners asking for taxpayer money and the other socialized costs we absorb for their profits. I am 100% for tearing them out of those nests. You're letting your feelings about billionaires blind you to the CBA issues. Unless I missed something, the CBA isn't going to touch any of that. So long as it isn't, every time you include t in your argument it is fallacious and pointless. Read that again if it helps you focus. The player side of the CBA is a microcosm of a problem we have in our politics where regular people regularly vote against their own self interests. The Bryce Harpers of the world are your JD Vances of the CBA. They got elevated and now they use that elevated status to pull others in their direction knowing full well that a cap does nothing for everyday folks. Harper, like Vance, isn't in the billionaire club, he's just a useful tool. He profits greatly being the pied piper to convince regular people to vote against their self interests. He knows full well most guys aren't getting paid. It won't "trickle down" to the guy with a .700 OPS and good defense. It does nothing for minor leaguers. It actively harms dudes like Paul Skenes. In the NHL, a guy like Paul Skenes is about to look at a MASSIVE payday on a short 4-5 year deal with the potential for another payout when it expires. MLB? If he makes it through year 6 unscathed, he'll get one pay-day. It might be huge. For most it won't be. Read this part carefully so maybe, just maybe, you'll stop spamming the board with the same tired takes: "The cap is what makes us special in MLB, it allows players to claim their part in the game if they succeed. Anyone can hit that big contract!" is the same goddamn argument as "America being free market is why anyone can become a billionaire - even you! - that's why we're fighting for a free market against socialism!" It's the same f-ing thing. No, Bryce Harper, that kid coming through AAA is probably not going to get that Shohei deal. What he will get is 6 years of indentured servitude that he'll be lucky to survive and get a pay day. Just like America isn't made to make billionaires, it's a slog that you hope you come out of and make a decent life. It's a con. It's always been a con. The owners have their own versions of cons but those old, evil Bond villains actually put a floor on the table. A fairly high one! The players should be offering a cap. Then negotiate a high version of both with a contract structure for young players like the NHL does. Instead? Gotta protect Bryce Harper. Anyone could be Bryce Harper! Anyone! Gotta have that cap just in case! It's a toxic mentality against the middle and lower tier of baseball players. Just like billionaires in real life. And, just like in real life, even though the Bryce Harpers constitute a tiny part of the voting bloc, they convince the majority to vote against their best interests. And, just like in real life, somehow it works even though it shouldn't. Just because Bryce Harper's argument is a 10x scale lower doesn't make it any less ********. You should stop falling for his elitist argument just like you rightly reject the billionaire one.

https://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub/finance-investing-accounting/salary-cap The MLBPA is trying to be portrayed as the good guys is just silliness to me. The owners are billionaires and they suck terribly...they will get no defense from me. CBA negotiations are are not heroes vs. villains, it's villains vs. villains. The owner's proposal should be a reasonable starting point, so much so I had to read it a couple times just to make sure it was legit. The MLBPA as a white-cloak hero we all need? Consider: Your boss comes to you with two proposals at your work where 25 people make on average 70k a year. Proposal one calls for 2k raises and the possibility that 1 person in your office building could get to 1 million and possibly more since there won't be a cap. It'll only be one of you and the rest get small raises, but the one person who gets 1 million might be you! Proposal two says that the new floor for all salaries will be 120k, guaranteeing raises for basically everyone but they're going to cap salaries at 200k to help make that happen. They also guarantee that these wages can increase because they will now be tied to profits. It's obvious to me which one of those is the "right" call. The loudmouth 1 million dollar folks (played in real life by Bryce "I can't brush my teeth right" Harper) are leading the charge to reject proposal two and sucker their coworkers into agreeing. It's ALSO wrong. Just as the billionaires have a dumptruck full of wrongs. The MLBPA loves to argue that somehow having no cap on the possible salaries lifts all boats, but it really doesn't. It lifts the boat of the elites, but not of your fairly solid, 30 something player. It offers no change to the 6 years of indentured servitude that exists as a trade off for no cap. If you don't believe me, by all means go through this list and find out how many guys actually "cashed in". Now look at the recent NFL and NHL free agencies. Plenty of mid tier dudes getting absolutely paid. As the article above says: No cap means that many teams simply don't try because they can't offer Shohei that contract. Meanwhile, bidding wars happen in the NFL, NHL, and NBA because everyone from Tampa to New York are playing on an equal playing field. The cap, combined with revenue sharing, a floor, and a necessary 50/50 split with players, will raise the pay of many major leaguers. Even in a cap world there will be players who get huge raises (see: Kaprizov, Myles Garrett, Jaylen Brown, etc) but the mid and lower tier players will reap the rewards. I'm here for those guys.

Why would a contending team deal from their all important pitching depth because a 27 year old is a bit sad he lost his spot? I know it's the Pirates but there is absolutely zero reason for them to move this guy for anything but an overpay.

It's almost like a small sample size of one week is a bad one to use to judge a bad team as a contender. Jim Mora should've been used during that slate of ridiculous articles:

Right. Imagine you get tickets to a high school football game, you know nothing about the league at first so you ask someone to describe the nature of the two teams..... If the person you ask this question to responds with "Well one of them is from the richest suburb of the Cities, they have every advantage known to man, and a roster that's about 80 players deep with several future D1 players. Their opponent is a 14 man team who plays both sides of the ball, who just got out of the cornfields, and have zero chance of playing another snap in their life after high school" Your optimism for that game would plummet. You'd ask yourself how on earth that matchup was made given the completely different dynamics at play. You'd question the basic competitive nature of the game itself for even allowing that matchup to exist! The NFL, NBA, and NHL don't have that. When you sit down to consider those sports the winners and losers are decided by competency in management, coaching, player acquisition, etc. These are things completely independent of market size, TV deals, fanbase sentiments, etc. In other words - things your organization has control over versus those they don't. When a league sets up their competitive dynamic they shouldn't be purposely creating matchups like cornfields vs. the elites. (And they don't. Please see EVERY ammy/high school format known to man for teams) The CBAs that professionals play under are the framework for that dynamic. It should reflect a real competitive spirit instead of the one we know today. A couple week small sample in October shouldn't be confusing anyone about the flaws in the previously described matchup or the longterm impact it can have on fans to build a league around such lopsided competitions.

Also why "But we're a wildcard team today!" threads needed to chill out last week.

100% on board

I appreciate that, but then why not option someone who wouldn't be available today? Or someone with options?

I....what? There is no rational reason not just option someone instead of this?

This has already been proven fallacious. Repeating it doesn't change that.

It's possible the math is wrong, but that's part of the problem. The MLBPA, by many estimates, falls short of 50% in some years under the current CBA. (And exceeds it other years) Part of how that happens is that there is no transparency from owners because the MLBPA refuses to agree to anything that would require it. As a result, all of us are somewhat in the dark. Maybe the union isn't, but I've never seen them lay out the details for the math that favors them either. Occam's Razor would tell us why that is too. Call me crazy, but I think transparency is a good thing and we won't get that until the PA agrees to something that directly connects team spending to team revenue. This will cut down on exploitation, loopholes, and a lack of transparency. Every single person should want this - players and fans alike. It will not happen without a cap. And...we know this works because the other three major leagues already do this and none of the same question marks exist. So much of what the MLBPA seems to be arguing is not math but a Helms Deep/Last Stand/Nathan Hale type BS about the principle of a cap.

Agreed. Also, whatever money you think you may have to sign him for would then become an asset in space below the floor you could leverage to sign players or take on bad contracts for prospects. Love Joe, but moving him is the right move. Buck probably too, sad as it is to say.

Many things owners do are designed for this purpose. When they milk us for tax breaks, raise beer prices, gouge us on tickets, etc. But the notion the cap is designed for this is simply not true.....at least not necessarily. If that cap is not indexed to revenues...then absolutely it is a cash grab...but it's up to the union to make sure in negotiations that they tether the values of the cap and floor to league revenues. This article is one I think worth reading. I'd argue, by staunchly refusing a cap, the MLBPA has largely been doing a disservice to its own members because their percent of the take fluctuates without such an agreement. And, given your post I'm sure you'd agree with me, I'm sure the owners are leveraging that frequently to their advantage.

That's what should be happening, I agree. But so long as these are not "hard" then I'm not sure it matters much. Allowing a soft cap/floor only invites shenanigans no matter which end (cap or floor) they allow it. The revenue sharing is huge and people should remember that leagues are national. Hyper-localizing revenues is a detriment to the overall health of the league. From a player's perspective, they should want more pooled resources to have more access to those revenues. The more the revenues stay localized, the less likely it is to be shared. (With anyone - players, owners, or fans)

It at least appears to be on the table at this point. And their number, while low, wasn't preposterously low. To me, the first olive branch in this exchange happened on behalf of the billionaires. Good negotiations should be working around that reasonable parameter: they offered a floor for the first time ever, maybe the players agree to a cap after some hard negotiations that pulls both numbers up to a level that they find acceptable. If players stay firmly on "no cap ever" - I simply can't support their perspective.