NYCTK

His bat is exactly what we thought it was going to be two seasons ago. The only surprise with Martin was that he was able to prove himself a competent outfielder, enough so that he can be counted on to cover CF for a few innings.

Don't forget they're also one of the worst base-running teams in the league!

Let's try to find these two rational explanations...was it these? I don't see why that would be required for teams to accept greater revenue sharing. This isn't a sound reason. If you're saying the Twins would balk at receiving another $200 million dollars because the Mets might spend an additional $100 million dollars, I call bullsh*t. It's not inherently necessary for good meaningful sharing of revenue, which you claim is your primary concern. Whereas, the floor obviously IS inherently necessary for the larger teams to share those resources. Why share, if they aren't going to spend it. We actually KNOW a hard cap isn't necessary for meaningful revenue sharing because it currently is sitting at near 50% revenue sharing, and no hard cap exists. Why does increasing that 50% to 90% (or whatever figure) suddenly necessitate a hard cap? As for your restaurant analogy, it doesn't really work for me. Revenue sharing concerns how money is distributed. A salary cap limits what teams may spend afterward. Whereas, the restaurant is all about expenditures. A floor is intuitive. A cap is not. And you just repeatedly insisting it is does not make it so. The guy calling me bad faith and unserious said simultaneously that the owner's proposal was "stupid and bad for the game" while also that they "are the ones closest to what is best for the game". Sure. Whatever you say.

Without citing the owner's insistence, describe the logical requirement for a cap in order to enact near universal revenue sharing. Maybe I missed it. But your constant reverting to ad hominem attack tells me it's not in evidence.

Gotcha. So what you ACTUALLY meant when you said it was "closest to what's best" is just that you specifically want a Salary Cap and will ignore all other details. It really hasn't though. A floor, yes. The theoretical requirement of a floor paired with massive increase to the revenue sharing has been explained and is logical and both sides of the negotiating table understand it. But there has been no actual reasoning behind why large scale franchise pooled revenue sharing necessitates a salary cap. It's been asserted, but not demonstrated. It's been said the Owners would require it for revenue sharing, but the exact opposite can be said, that the Players require it not be enacted to increase revenue sharing and their position makes a lot more sense to me. And even more so, why would the MLBPA negotiate away their biggest position of strength? Because the fans have been convinced it's necessary for their owner's investment asset to compete for a championship?

Disallowing 18 year old from going pro? Reducing amateur bonus pool? The reduction of player remuneration by hundreds of millions? Which aspect is the one that's closest to best for the game? Or do you mean the very narrow bullet point of a salary cap which you've been led to believe is necessary for an incompetent organization like the Twins to be competitive?

Why are we ignoring the owners here? You've been ignoring the culpability of the owners the entire conversation actually. Do the owners not hold responsiblity for the exploitation of their labor? You know, the thing that capital inevitably does. And why are we also ignoring it was the mlbpa that won massive raises for those players? It certainly wasn't the owners just gifting it. You want to disagree, fine. But I'm here in good faith. I am subject to hyperbole, sure, and tongue in cheek ideology, absolutely, but I hold all the beliefs that I have shared.

I'm sorry the mlbpa didn't prioritize people not in the mlbpa. But that's how unions work. And they did, under pressure, then secure improvements. Like I said, I think the anti union propaganda has worked remarkably well with you. Members of the MLBPA.

If I'm not mistaken the negotiations that installed revenue sharing, it was an owner proposal, again trying to tie it to a cap. But the players negotiated it away. But point being it was the owners that have to figure out their own house in terms of franshise revenue pooling. Not the players. They have a lot of owners to keep happy. I think we've basically lost the plot on this thread. To conclude, my entire point is the biggest structural issue with mlb is indeed the potential revenue disparities between teams, and it has been and would be the owners job to internally negotiate the best fix. And of course the players then have to agree to it, but the biggest hurdle is the owners. This is all unrelated to a salary cap outside of the fact that the owners demand (and will not receive) one in return. It is not dependent on it for any reason other than the owners want it. No. That would be upper-middle. Which is why I also said upper-middle. Your strong feelings don't negate facts. You can try to argue upper middle class isn't middle class, but that's just obviously wrong because of how words work. This is just anti mlbpa propaganda. Could they do better? Sure, but a lot of the player voted representatives of the union are exactly those players, or more so the intelligent veterans that have been around a minute. Further, looking at the mlbpa offer in this negotiation we're currently watching, we can see the benefits to those players, more directly addressed than the owners proposal.

LOL. You're a bad victim of anti union propaganda man.

I simply don't accept your faulty premise. Again, I'm not going to pretend the MLBPA is perfect in all of their negotiations that have ever taken place, but there's a reason everyone agrees the MLBPA is the strongest player union in the world.

Again, I think you just don't understand what I'm saying. I think you're confusing league wide revenue sharing, that between franchises which stands at 48% and needs to be further addressed, with a revenue share with players. At it's most basic, the owners agreed to share half of their revenue with the other teams, and the players put some level of rules on the spending after the most important negotiation was done, that between the owners. And that could be the case again, where the owners are the ones that actually have to figure out how much and the method with which they will increase revenue sharing for the "poor" teams, and the players only real concern is that they can tack on some further spending requirements onto it. Like the Competitive Integrity Tax they proposed. NONE of that requires a salary cap, and theoretically would increase "competitive balance". But, most importantly, my entire point, is that the hard negotiation is that between the owners themselves, not actually between the owners and the players. We will see that unfold when the players hold strong against the salary cap come late winter. Again, I think you missed my point. Matt Wallner is not wealthy. This is not two groups of wealthy people fighting it out. It is obscenely wealthy battling a group of mostly middle-middle to upper-middle class professionals. About half of the players represented by the MLBPA are Middle Class.

You really think the rich owners want to hand over large sums of money to their peers without any sort of requirements with it? The pressure to spend that near $200 Million check is as much from the other owners as it is the the players. I feel like fans vastly overestimate the financial security of the median MLB player. He's seen maybe $2 million his bank account over the course of 6 years so thusfarm, and his career might be soon done. He's obviously living comfortably, but he in no way has generational wealth. He doesn't even have a lifetime wealth. And who knows what his second life career is. So, yeah, he is actually pretty close to the average American (at the end of their career). OK. Billionaires are evil though. "While MLB claims to be acting in the interest of fans..." - response to owner pretending their proposal is in the best interest of the fans And the 3rd PR statement doesn't mention anything to do with the best interest of the fans. And that being the initial statement proves my point. The MLBPA invoking of fan interest is only in response to the owners pretending they care about fans. I repeat, the players don't give a **** because the fans aren't at the negotiating table. I think you believe our opinion is way more important than it is. Fans want a salary cap? Too bad, it's not happening. Will the MLBPA snipe back? Yes, and that's what they've done. But a couple comments in press releases are a far cry from the propaganda machine we're going to see from the League. Hell, he just saw that they tweeted from the OFFICIAL MLB account about the importance of a salary cap. Correct.

No. We see no evidence they care about competitive balance as it relates to a salary cap (which is already fine), and all evidence points to them wanting a salary cap because it would be lucrative for them. And one thing we know about the obscenely wealthy is that they only care about money. Correct. A lot of players ARE like regular people. Do you think Matt Wallner, pretty close to a median MLB career, is more like you and me, or is he more like Tom Pohlad? I don't automatically think a union is right in their actions (tenure over merit is often an issue) but I know the union is looking out for approximately 1,200 different players with varying career arcs while the ownership group is looking out for approximately 30 individuals. So, no, I don't see the MLBPA at all as only caring about money. One of these groups are the workers and the product, and one of these groups are exclusively leeches. So I'm very comfortable in that position. Again, I think you misunderstand my point. I'm being hyperbolic but what I'm saying is the fixes that will come about are conflicts between owners and will NOT be a salary cap. The MLBPA will obviously have to vote to accept it, but the actual battle is between owners. They aren't on a revenue share right now, so I don't know what mechanism you believe they would use to accomplish that.

Of course they do, but nothing commensurate with folding on their generations long-held red line. I guess you misunderstood what I meant, or I stated it poorly. Yes, obviously they want to be involved in the CBA discussion, but this competitive balance issue is not really their concern at all. They truly don't care, nor should they. So they're under no pressure to accept a salary cap to fix something they don't see any need in fixing. The owners are the only ones that see it as an issue, and the solution is ALSO entirely an ownership issue, in sharing their revenue amongst themselves. Only the owners are doing that. The MLBPA isn't bothering, because they know it doesn't matter. Yes, the Owners (who are evil) are going to try to leverage low information fans to put pressure on the players, but it's not going to actually do anything. If I'm not mistaken, the only comments the MLBPA has made regarding fans has been to call out the BS coming from the owners. I don't see how that follows. The most important thing to remember these next 9 months is that the owners don't care about a salary cap because of competitive balance. They care about a salary cap in order to better predict expenses and therefore increase the value of their asset.

I don't quite follow why this is a perceived requirement for inter-owner revenue sharing. And more importantly, I have not heard a single good argument for why the MLBPA should agree to any sort of restriction when it seems to be entirely an ownership issue. Completely irrelevant. Fans have exactly zero say over how this turns out actually.

I'm sorry, but if you're going to require a specific experience, bordering on premium, then you can't also complain about the cost. The beauty of baseball is you can go for so cheap if you choose to. You chose not to, which is fine, but then means the $115 per person package cost isn't all that excessive.

Well, the bigger issue is half (more like a third) of this country is in an echo chamber that doesn't allow facts, and there is no incentive for those lying to change. When one of the major parties holds a moment of silence for a convicted murderer in order to maintain a political narrative, I don't know what normal people are supposed to do about that.

MLBPA is largely unconcerned with fan sentiment. But still all the more reason to loudly support the players.

Meanwhile the league just proposed banning players from going pro out of high school... MLB owners are doing their best to kill the sport completely.

This would be a disastrous base building. Those families are going to 1-4 games a season, on the weekends. You want to make sure they're welcome but you need to build your attendance with more local regulars. People that work or live in Minneapolis, that are going to go 6-12 games a season with 1-3 friends.

I misunderstood your comment then. Others have stated that the Twin Cities just won't support a baseball team in general and I thought you were echoing that sentiment. The Mets are now going through the same cycle. For two short years being a Mets fan was cool, people WANTED to go to Citi Field. The front office had built a buzzy product. But the GM absolutely screwed the pooch, flipped the identity of the team and now convincing friends to head out to Queens is a struggle. It's tied to winning but it's not dependent on it. What the Padres and Rockies have successfully done by making their games THE event in the city, win or loss, is quite remarkable.

You can't make that conclusion. The Pohlads have owned the franchise for over 40 years and been terrible stewards for most of those years. Don't blame the customer for not consuming a terrible product. I haven't spent a dime on this organization after the 2024 trade deadline and I probably won't until the Pohlads are gone.

And it's not common sense to propose something the other side has said is a hard no for decades. Just because other leagues have something doesn't make it common sense. It's up to the league and owners to show it's in everyone's best interest. Not to mention the owners initial cap offer was effectively deception, specifically to get support from fans, thinking it looked reasonable at first glance.

Not a fan of the expanded format. But we're finally starting to get some drama. Tonight, I'm pulling for Iran to defeat Egypt by a greater margin than Belgium in their match against New Zealand to give us a potential USA-Iran matchup.