Cap'n Piranha

You're continuing to miss my point. I don't have a problem with the players attempting to get their pro-rated contracts, I'm saying it's a bad long-term move for the players to push the owners into a corner on pay right now. It's potentially also a bad short-term move; if the owners don't concede, it's possible there's no season, and then the players get nothing above the $170M they already received. It's also just silly to say no players=no game as concerns the current MLBPA; the majority of professional baseball players are not part of the MLBPA. The owners would have no problem finding new players, while the players would have an enormously difficult time finding new owners. Let's say the owners decide to start play in 2022 with only MiLB players and line-crossing MLBPA players. The owners could set a salary cap of $40M/team ($1.2B total), and incrementally move that up until it hits say 35% of total revenue over the next 8 years. The Twins would save something like $80M to $100M in payroll in that first year, all of which is 100% profit. They could use that money to slash the cost of attending a game by 50 to 70% to start, all of which would make continuing to attend games very popular.

The real minimum wage is $0. In a free society, no one is obligated to pay anyone anything, and that includes the owners vis-a-vis the players. While US labor laws do require employers to provide a certain minimum standard (and I believe that is a good thing), that doesn't mean employees deserve that. The only things we deserve are inalienable rights, and a nice working environment is not a right. It is something the US government has decreed to be mandatory for anyone wishing to employ humans. With that said, if a company was able to use robots to fulfill all work-related tasks, the obligation for that company to provide a nice working environment for humans no longer exists, which is why it is not a right.

It's in no way a profit-sharing approach, it's the reality for anyone who trades their labor for monetary compensation. As little to no investment relatively speaking (other than time) is generally required to perform most jobs, they are always profitable, unless the employee is spending beyond their means. For example, if a brand new rookie ballplayer buys a $2M house on Lake Minnetonka, he might struggle to be profitable, but that is hardly the fault of MLB for not paying him more, anymore than an average worker not being profitable because he bought a Porsche while making $50k a year is the fault of his employer. You know what would be a profit-sharing plan? A salary cap where the the upper limit is pegged to a certain percentage of total MLB revenue, yet the players adamantly oppose that.

Until a player reaches free agency, at which point everything about his wage is free market. The fact that player wages prior to free agency are not free market has more to do with the fact that it is not economically feasible for there to be a second independent baseball league in North America, at least not one with anywhere near the ability to generate resources as MLB. As such, the players lose free market access when they agree to abandon the free market. If that is not acceptable to them, they are free to avail themselves of the vast free market of employment that is not professional baseball.

Actually, the owners are worth billions, they don't make billions (unless you're defining the owners as a collective group, in which case the players should also be defined as a collective group; they then also make billions). Furthermore, even if the owners were taken as a collective group, they don't make billions, they earn billions, which is a totally different thing. For example, I am far better off spending $100k to make $200k, than spending $1M to make $900k. I earned $700k more, but I actually made $200k less. The owners have a far lower profit rate than the players--take a player making the minimum salary of $563k. Let's say that player plays in California, and so loses about 50% of their revenue to taxes. They can spend about 20% of their remaining pay (about $112k), and still have a "profit" margin of 30%. To realize the same level of profitability, each MLB team would need to make $100M a year AFTER taxes--there's no way that's happening.

Humans don't deserve anything from employment--it is an agreement entered into by two consenting parties for which one side surrenders labor in return for the other side surrendering some other material benefit (almost universally monetary, but that doesn't need to be the case). As such, if a prospective employee feels what is being offered is not commensurate with what is being asked, they are free to reject the offer, and attempt to secure a better deal elsewhere. It is in the business' best interest to provide competitive compensation (which generally includes, safe working conditions, reasonable hours, and acceptable pay), else they will find themselves without employees.

I never said it's the players' fault, but you're fooling yourself if you think, right now, it's not the players' problem. The players need to see the whole board--the owners have already lost billions in revenue; with no fans at games, they stand to lose billions more. These are people who also have seen their other assets, in all likelihood, plunge in value/cash flow. Asking them to just accept a loss in most cases probably means liquidating assets, or enacting cuts at other businesses in order to secure the liquidity necessary to continue payments. It's also just silly to say the players don't get more when a team's revenue increases--the Twins are a prime example. In 2009, the Twins payroll was $65M (according to Cot's). in 2010 it jumped to $97M, and the next year, it was $113M. In 1990, the minimum salary was $100k, and the average salary was $578K (according to baseball reference). In 2018, that had increased to $545k and just under $4.1M; that's a 450% increase on minimum pay and a 600% increase on average salary, while the average American has seen only a 150% increase since 1990. The minimum MLB salary is enough to put a player earning it easily in the top 5% of all earners, and probably closer to the 1% threshold than the 5% threshold. The average MLB salary puts a player earning that comfortably in the top 0.1% of all earners. Blake Snell, for example, even if he "only" received a third of his $7M salary would still be right around the top 0.1% of earners. To answer your closing question, the players should consider "suffering" the momentary downturn because of the very real possibility I outlined that choosing not to cooperate with the owners could transform their momentary downturn into an extended, or even permanent, downturn. The easiest way for any entity to increase profitability is to reduce expense, as every dollar saved is a dollar of profit, whereas every dollar created is only cents in profit. The easiest way for the owners to reduce expense is to reduce player pay; therefore, the less painful, comparatively speaking, it becomes to not pay the current members of the MLBPA, the more attractive dissolving that relationship becomes. The owners are under no obligation to the players to continue to pay them after 2021--the players ignoring that fact because they want to make more money this year is akin to taking your credit card company up on an offer of delaying payments; the bill will come due, and you'll lose more than you gained.

That has something to do with the Marlins being run both cheaply AND inefficiently as well. And as rare as generational players are, there are always more of them. I guarantee there is at least 1 player currently in the minor leagues who will make the hall of fame, and there are more in high school and college too. The first year with none of the current major leaguers would be jarring, to be sure. Every subsequent year will be less so, until eventually, all the difference is gone.

So long as the players are being paid, they always have a net profit, as there are no costs associated with being a player (unless you count lost opportunity cost, but I think it would be hard to argue MLB players have more lucrative jobs elsewhere they are forgoing in order to play in the bigs). In that sense, the owners are actually asking the players to reduce their profits for one year in order to offset the losses the owners would have to take in order for the players to have said profit.

But you're missing the point--the product is only inferior for 2-5 years, unless you're assuming that all the top prospects, college players, and HS players refuse to play for the owners in some kind of solidarity play with a union that doesn't represent them OR their interests. Individual teams also aren't guaranteed to perform worse--it's not like the Twins have to scrap all their current MLB players, but no other team does. True, implementation of a permanent lockout of current players will result in a greatly reduced bar for overall quality compared to current, but everyone is operating with that new lower bar, so the comparative quality across the league won't shift all that much. And, as I've discussed before, that bar will rise every year, as the new players get better. Essentially, the owners would simply be frontloading 6-10 years of roster churn into one year. Finally, while Mike Trout is an asset, he quite possibly could be an underwater one--Albert Pujols certainly is. That is the crux of what I'm saying here--if the owners can't make money this year, or perhaps next due to current situation, and if there's going to be a work stoppage in 2022 anyways, why not get out from under your underwater assets (the players as a whole), and reset the economics in your favor now? If the owners decide to do that, there's not a whole lot the players can do, other than figure out a way to start their own league, and that's a much tougher proposition than the owners simply accelerating future roster churn. It would also require the players to in all likelihood make salary concessions at least on par with, if not greater than, they would be doing with the owners now and their proposed 50/50 revenue split. Essentially, the players would be taking an enormous risk for no reward, if not a negative reward.

I disagree that specific players are the lifeblood of attendance--I'm sure they are for some people, and probably factor in for most, but I'm guessing the majority of people care more for the name on the front of the jersey than the back (except, possibly, when buying jerseys). I believe this because I didn't stop following the Twins when injuries ended Kirby's career, I didn't pack away my homer hankies when Joe retired, and I didn't transform into a Mets fan when Johan was traded. If you want more proof, look at the name of this site--TWINS Daily, not Cruz, or Sano, or Buxton, or Berrios Daily. This site existed before any of those players had ever donned a Twins uniform, and it will exist after they're gone. If the Angels traded Mike Trout, they would undoubtedly see a dip in attendance and merch sales. But if they proceeded to start winning 97 games a year, and making World Series, they'd get it all back and more. That's what players are fighting against--their eminent replaceability. And the only weapon they have is the owner's unwillingness to incur losses and devaluation of their franchises. If that's going to happen no matter what, the players would be unwise to push the owners further into the corner--they might not like what the owners do to get out of it.

If the MLBPA loses it's power because the owners impose new conditions the MLBPA doesn't agree to, and therefore brings in replacement players, that won't matter. There will be a brand new MLBPA made up of players who agreed to anything the owners wanted, because that was the price of their inclusion on a big league roster. Put in real terms--do you think Royce Lewis is going to turn down an opportunity to be in the bigs now, all in support of an organization he's not a part of? Especially if the Twins tell him if he agrees to play, they'l give him a 6 year, $30M contract right now?

I think the players miss this aspect of it--owners are under no obligation to continue to hand out free agent deals at the level they did this past offseason. Owners can also simply refuse to meet the players' demands after the current CBA expires, and move forward with minor leaguers and line-crossers whi agree to a salary cap. I imagine that 5 years from now, something like 60% of the current membership of the MLBPA would be out of baseball anyways, and 10 years from now that's probably more like 90%, so while it will impact the game for a bit, there is a hard expiration date to that. Much of the bad will could also be mitigated by the owners if they slashed prices and concessions, something which they could certainly do if they realized hundreds of millions in labor costs.

I'm intrigued by this idea, but I would tweak a couple of things; I wouldn't put Berrios and Hill back-to-back during the regular season. A piggyback game should yield 7-8 innings from your "starters"; allowing each "starter" to face 18 batters means they could give up a WHIP of 1.5 and still cover 8 innings. Therefore, the bullpen should be needed less on days with piggybacks, so why not space out the rest for the pen? It's also possible the Twins could go to a six-man rotation, and still have two piggybacks, or alternatively, use Dobnak/Thorpe/Smeltzer to be "finishers". I would define that as letting them pitch 2-3 innings to finish out a game the Twins are winning comfortably. Finally, the Twins could also give each pitcher an "IL stint" at various points in the season, where they let them skip a start in order to stay super fresh. The upshot is that the Twins will have myriad options to manage the health and productivity of their pitching, which is something I'm not sure any other team can realistically say at this point.

If this is true, and average ticket cost is not weighted based on purchases, but rather availability, and we assume that better seats are purchased at a higher level, that simply adds to what I'm saying; it would mean revenue from tickets is actually higher than the $2.2ish billion I was quoting, and it's therefore even more disadvantageous for owners to put on games for which they cannot accrue fan revenue. I also was very clear to say revenue, not profit; that being said, you can't have profit without revenue, and the owners are looking at a 50% decline, at least, in revenue.

It's certainly possible, but would absolutely require substantial pay cuts from the players to work. Fan revenue will be way down for a long time--no MLB team is going to allow a new league comprised of their former players to use their stadiums. There will be massive up-front costs in establishing all the necessary infrastructure to run a modern professional sports league. Either the players will need to both not pay themselves AND invest heavily from their career earnings/take out huge loans against future speculative revenue, or more likely, find 20-30 entities (individuals or corporations) willing to post 8-9 figure losses for multiple years. No one would be willing to pay all the start up costs necessary, with no guarantee of revenue, and an inflexible commitment of $100M or more a year in player salary.

Player salaries will always grow slower than revenue, because player salary is only one piece of the revenue pie; first off, taxes need to be paid. Then there's raises for other aspects of the organization (on-field staff, front office, operations folks, etc). Upgrades to physical assets such as stadiums, training facilities. I'm sure there's myriad other places a multi-million dollar entity needs to address with money, to blindly state that players should always see an increase commensurate with the overall increase is myopic, and a strategy no successful business would endorse. It's also worth noting, this is not a bad year. This is a cataclysmic year. Statista estimates MLB brought in $9.9B in revenue in 2018--let's say they hit $10B in 2019. With no fans at games, MLB is looking at about a 30% decline in revenue at minimum, and that's assuming they still get the full amount from all TV/radio deals. If they only get half for an 80 game season, that's another $2-3 billion out the door. Now owners are looking at a scenario where they are down 50 to 60 percent in revenue, but their largest single cost, which accounts for 40ish percent of total revenue, is not being attenuated. In reality, a 50/50 revenue split is quite generous of the owners--since MLB salaries were somewhere between 40 and 42% of revenue in 2019.

Would I pay the same amount? No. But I would pay to watch the team below; C: Jeffers 1B: Rooker 2B: Arraez if they can get him to cross ( I would think a 3 year, $15M contract would do it, since he's made only about $500k as a big leaguer) SS: Lewis 3B: Maggi LF: Larnach CF: Wade (same as Arraez--offer him 3 and 9, and he probably crosses) RF Kiriloff Pitchers: Sands, Ober, Balazovic, Duran, Alcala, Jax, etc (Dobnak, Smeltzer and Thorpe could probably all be induced to cross too) The Twins could put together a pretty decent roster for about $40M, and that's if they give those minor league guys $1M each, which means they could cover all salary costs with just the money from FSN. If we're assuming fans are back involved, the Twins could cut prices by 50 to 60%, and slowly raise those over the next few years as their player costs go back up.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29167541/mlb-owners-give-opening-presentation-restarting-season-players Did you miss the part in the third to last paragraph where is states "The sides also agreed in March to discuss the economics of a season played without fans in the stands"? Seems like it was acknowledged that further discussion might be needed, and now one side doesn't want to hold up that end of the bargain. The players have every right, of course, to make it about money; my point is that complaining about "only" being paid $2M to $3M to play in maybe 17 games (which is what pitchers, like Snell, would do in an 81 game season) is spectacularly bad optics at any time, and especially so right now. I have no problem with players being paid what they're being paid--if the market is willing to bear the cost, then full speed ahead. I'm saying this battle is largely one of public perception, and the very first move the player's side made was to make it seem like they are laughably out of touch with reality. Furthermore, the owners can always choose to simply weather the next few years without today's players, and rely on a combination of minor leaguers, out of work veterans, and young players with only a year or two of service time who will break from the union. 10 years from now, most of today's big names will be gone (for example, of the 30 hitters with the highest WAR from the 2010 season, Brett Gardner is probably the most relevant today--would anyone bemoan a reality where Brett Gardner no longer plays baseball). On the other hand, the players would need to find multiple entities willing to assume hundreds of millions in start-up costs, with no guarantee of sufficient revenue at any point in the future--seems much more difficult to me.

You could state it that way, yes--the owners save more by not paying player salaries, than they would earn by having games under normal conditions. The point I was trying to make is that player salaries are an immense cost, and while fan attendance doesn't completely cover it, it does cover a substantial amount. Therefore, the players insisting on full per-game pay even if games are played without fans is probably as much a non-starter for owners as if the owners insisted on a partial per-game pay with regular fan presence.

Because they foolishly didn't have their own proposal out first, and therefore are stuck trying to explain why an even split of money (which works out to billions of dollars for playing a game) is unfair. They further have to explain that to a country with 36M unemployed people who would need their entire lifetime to equal the earnings of the average MLB player.

Trov is right--Blake Snell's comments published on ESPN this morning, wherein he says making multiple millions of dollars to "risk his life", are not going to play well with the grocery store clerk working far harder, for more hours, with much higher risk, all for $10 an hour. Things like this are part of why the owners generally beat the players in negotiations; the owners understand (or at least employ people who do) optics.

And of course player salaries have remained the same over the last few decades? If owners are asking players to subsidize their losses (by asking players to accrue less revenue), then by the same logic, players are also asking owners to subsidize their losses (by asking owners to accrue less revenue). Two quick googles show 68.5M fans in 2019, at an average ticket cost of $32.99. That's $2.17 BILLION dollars of revenue on tickets alone. It's completely reasonable to believe that concessions, merch, parking, and in-game sponsorships account for another billion, which means in an 81 game season played without fans, the owners are forgoing around $1.6B in revenue. Meanwhile, player salaries were $4.16 Billion last year ($138.6M average payroll x 30 teams, according to Spottrac). So players are asking for owners to still shell out over $2B dollars, while forgoing $1.5B in revenue.

Are the players going to give back salary when revenue goes down? Of course not. Contracts were signed, and they should be honored, except for in those circumstances, like this one, where extraordinary circumstances make normal operations impossible. If games are played without fans, but the players are unwilling to make salary concessions, they are asking the owners to forgo tens of millions in revenue--of course the owners are going to balk at that. What other business would keep it's highest cost active while giving up it's 2nd largest revenue stream?

Let's say a team draws 20,000 fans a game (25 teams were above that threshold last year). Let's say the average ticket price is $20 (probably low), and each fan spends $10 on concessions. That's 48.6M in revenue, and as previously stated, that number is in all probability tens of millions low for most teams. TV definitely makes up the lion's share of team revenue, but in-stadium revenue is far from small. The cable companies also have no reason to renegotiate right now--the team can threaten to move to a different channel, or start it's own broadcast company if they don't, but so long as there is a contract, the team isn't going anywhere. Most teams would also struggle to find a viable second channel in their home market, and the start-up costs for a new broadcast channel I'm sure are quite high. Add to that the reality that the cable providers are under no obligation to add a new channel to their platform (which is where the majority of cable channels' revenue comes from), and walking away from tens of millions a year is a risky proposition.