LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[chasfh]

 

[casimir]

18 minutes ago, chasfh said:

 

I wondered about this.  Typically that's what we do where I've worked.  Preliminary talks occur before the end of the current CBA.  The new CBA is usually not finalized, and the terms of the current/old are just extended.  Anything that changes from the current/old CBA to the new CBA (ex, wage increases) is handled retroactively.  I assume that's how most union shops work, but I don't know that for certain.

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, casimir said:

I wondered about this.  Typically that's what we do where I've worked.  Preliminary talks occur before the end of the current CBA.  The new CBA is usually not finalized, and the terms of the current/old are just extended.  Anything that changes from the current/old CBA to the new CBA (ex, wage increases) is handled retroactively.  I assume that's how most union shops work, but I don't know that for certain.

I’m guessing the owners initiated the lockout because they reason that if there is a work stoppage, the players will get the blame. That is working to some extent.

[gehringer_2]

35 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I’m guessing the owners initiated the lockout because they reason that if there is a work stoppage, the players will get the blame. That is working to some extent.

IDK. I thought the owners initiated the lockout to prevent the players from striking. I don't remember the nuances but supposedly there were some kind of advantages to the players to having officially gone on strike. Why they can't strike while they are locked out I couldn't tell you.....

Edited February 17, 2022 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

this is about labor negotiations, not public relations.

this lockout has really flustered some folks.  i swear joe sheehan is going to shoot himself.  

[casimir]

37 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I’m guessing the owners initiated the lockout because they reason that if there is a work stoppage, the players will get the blame. That is working to some extent.

 

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

IDK. I thought the owners initiated the lockout to prevent the players from striking. I don't remember the nuances but supposedly there were some kind of advantages to the players to having officially gone on strike. Why they can't strike while they are locked out I couldn't tell you.....

Wasn't it to speed the negotiating process up?

I heard an interview with Jeff Passan yesterday.  A couple of points he brought up that I found interesting:

• In prior CBA squabbles, the general public has been in favor of ownership 2 to 1.  That appears to be flipped this time around.
• Players appear to pretty galvanized in their stance, more so than before.
• The drop dead date before moving regular season games is February 28.

OK, so, I guess take it for what its worth, that's just one person's opinion.

[casimir]

23 hours ago, chasfh said:

My impression of promotion/relegation is that it works best in a table-type league, where all 20 or 22 or whatever teams all play each other twice. Maybe p/r could work a division-oriented league if you move teams among divisions as other teams come and go, but in a country as geographically vast as the United States, they might get a little hairy.

The English soccer pyramid goes something like 20 levels deep, and it’s technically possible for a team to rise all the way from the bottom of that pyramid to the top in any many years as it take to leapfrog levels. An American baseball equivalent might be some town team in Battle Creek eventually working its way up from many levels down to the major leagues in the space of a few decades. I believe that might be technically possible in England even today.

Anytime that I have seen it brought up for MLB, there is no framework attached to it to suggest how it could be implemented.  Its the cool thing because soccer does it, and maybe it works fine for soccer.  But how would it work for MLB?

Now that the last vestige of AL vs NL is being removed and all teams are playing by the same rules, I'm ready for a geographic realignment.  Or will they wait for teams 31 & 32 before they do that?

[oblong]

I can't imagine any owners would be in favor of doing a relegation system.   Remember... the owners are all business partners, not competitors. Why would they do anything to financially hurt one of their partners?  

I think expansion will come about once the deal is done and the owners use that to pay off the players a little bit.

 

[buddha]

there will never, ever be promotion/relegation in american sports.  its a different business model.

[chasfh]

22 minutes ago, casimir said:

 

Wasn't it to speed the negotiating process up?

I heard an interview with Jeff Passan yesterday.  A couple of points he brought up that I found interesting:

• In prior CBA squabbles, the general public has been in favor of ownership 2 to 1.  That appears to be flipped this time around.
• Players appear to pretty galvanized in their stance, more so than before.
• The drop dead date before moving regular season games is February 28.

OK, so, I guess take it for what its worth, that's just one person's opinion.

I remember they said that thing about speeding up negotiations, too, but since Baseball waited something like six weeks to provide its first proposal after implementing the lockout, I don't take that too seriously.

I actually haven't seen any polling about how the public regards who's at fault here, but I could see people siding with the players if they've been following closely how the process has been going.

 

[chasfh]

22 minutes ago, casimir said:

Anytime that I have seen it brought up for MLB, there is no framework attached to it to suggest how it could be implemented.  Its the cool thing because soccer does it, and maybe it works fine for soccer.  But how would it work for MLB?

Now that the last vestige of AL vs NL is being removed and all teams are playing by the same rules, I'm ready for a geographic realignment.  Or will they wait for teams 31 & 32 before they do that?

Since the geographic realignment of the leagues has become a non-zero possibility, I've been wondering they could do it in such a way as to be fair about it to as many teams as possible. If you wanted to even out the miles traveled as much as possible, I don't think they could simply create eight divisions of four teams all of which are the closest to one another, because that would give the best teams clustered around New York and Chicago a big advantage on travel, since they wouldn't have to travel nearly as much as teams in out west would have to. As it is, today, the Cubs and White Sox travel only half the miles the west coast teams do. I'd be interested in seeing how they can balance fairness in miles traveled with time zone management, or whether they'd be like, eff it, just cluster them and be done with it.

[oblong]

They will do what works best for TV ratings

[casimir]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Since the geographic realignment of the leagues has become a non-zero possibility,

Non-zero?  The NBA and NHL are aligned based primarily on geography.  The NFL could somewhat be considered in the same boat if you consider how the TV contracts are doled out for the 1pm and 4pm starts among CBS (AFC) and FOX (NFC).

[RedRamage]

On 2/14/2022 at 8:34 AM, 1776 said:

The rationale used to eliminate the pitcher as a hitter because of his skills is flawed. The system has diminished his skills over the time he has been playing baseball from high school to present. Two wrongs don’t make a right is how I perceive it. 

I've recently read a couple of books on "old timey" baseball and it's interesting to read about pitchers hitting.  I think it was Auker who argued that a DH was silly because once you start going down that road, where do you stop?  Obviously we haven't moved beyond pitchers yet and it seems like there's a reasonable argument that pitchers are a different animal.  Every play (when their team is on defense) starts with the pitcher.  They have a very specialized skill set they need to hone.  They cost a lot of money and a teams success hinges heavily on how well they play.

The argument would then be that because they have to spend so much time on pitching they don't have time to learn proper hitting. Because they are involved in every play, they have a bigger impact on the game than position players who also bat.  And because they cost so much money and are so important to the success of the team it's reasonable to not want to add extra risk by having them hit.

That seems like a pretty reasonable argument... but couldn't you pretty much say the same thing about Catchers?

[gehringer_2]

24 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

That seems like a pretty reasonable argument... but couldn't you pretty much say the same thing about Catchers?

or shortstops. If you want to push it out to the end point it's football: 18 players - 9 defenders, nine hitters, an 'O' team and 'D' team.

[1776]

To expect pitchers to bat for a decent average would be naive. It’s the strategic part of having to manage a pitcher through a game, including from the offensive perspective, that I enjoy. I would think organizations that put an elevated focus on the pitchers offense in spring training drills could see dividends during a long season. The pitcher comes to bat with the lowest of expectations of anyone in the lineup to begin with. If a pitcher could lay down a decent bunt or have a disciplined strike zone it would be an advantage over the majority of other pitchers in the league, a difference maker. MLB has created a liability over time, in their view, of having a pitcher hit. Didn’t Lolich homer in the ‘68 series? Bob Gibson homered in the 1967 series against Boston. Like every position, some guys are going to be more skilled in certain aspects.

You make a good point about the catchers. They’re the coach on the field and are preoccupied with every nuance of the game during play. For the majority of the history of the game the pitchers have had to bat. Removing this as a component that has to be managed will take something away from the game. Baseball has been referred to for years as, “the thinking man’s game.” In it’s current state and direction, I don’t see that as so much the case anymore. 

[oblong]

SS and C do not have to go through the specialized mechanics that a P does.  There's a clear line there.  I don't buy Auker's complaints and since we've not gone down that road since that proves it wasn't something to worry about.

Defensive positions are interchangeable.  It's not uncommon for a C to play 1B, a 2B and SS switch up, OF etc.  But we only see a regular guy pitch in silly circumstances.  

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, oblong said:

SS and C do not have to go through the specialized mechanics that a P does.  There's a clear line there.  I don't buy Auker's complaints and since we've not gone down that road since that proves it wasn't something to worry about.

Defensive positions are interchangeable.  It's not uncommon for a C to play 1B, a 2B and SS switch up, OF etc.  But we only see a regular guy pitch in silly circumstances.  

But is interchangeability the issue, or just more offense? If the ultimate quest is just more offense, then the principle says that any compromise in the selection of hitters is counterproductive, so don't make any of them field at all.  

[Tiger337]

6 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

But is interchangeability the issue, or just more offense? If the ultimate quest is just more offense, then the principle says that any compromise in the selection of hitters is counterproductive, so don't make any of them field at all.  

It was originally done because the AL wanted more hitting. I think injuries are a legitimate concern.  I don't think interchangeability of positions was ever a consideration other than to rationalize why they don't do it like football.  

[oblong]

My point on interchangeability is to distinguish between everyone else and the pitcher for the team on defense.  I see it as two groups. The P is one and every other position is the other.

Not having a DH degrades the quality of the product.  I don't care how they did it in 1939 or 1962.  That's not relevant anymore.

 

 

 

[casimir]

13 minutes ago, oblong said:

My point on interchangeability is to distinguish between everyone else and the pitcher for the team on defense.  I see it as two groups. The P is one and every other position is the other.

Not having a DH degrades the quality of the product.  I don't care how they did it in 1939 or 1962.  That's not relevant anymore.

 

 

 

I thought the interchangeability angle makes sense.

[oblong]

Today's session lasted 15 minutes

[gehringer_2]

30 minutes ago, oblong said:

Today's session lasted 15 minutes

was just in the car running last minute before the storm errands (and the ice balls have just started falling here....) and the guys on DFN were going ballistic over it.

[theroundsquare]

I do a fair amount of negotiating in my line of work, and we never accomplish anything with in-person sessions.  Too many personalities, egos, etcetera.  In my experience, the exchange of written proposals is where the real work is done.  It is possible that there may be progress on that front, notwithstanding the hardly-existent in-person sessions.  But it doesn't sound like it.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

SS and C do not have to go through the specialized mechanics that a P does.  There's a clear line there.  I don't buy Auker's complaints and since we've not gone down that road since that proves it wasn't something to worry about.

Defensive positions are interchangeable.  It's not uncommon for a C to play 1B, a 2B and SS switch up, OF etc.  But we only see a regular guy pitch in silly circumstances.  

Oh I know, I'm just pulling your chain, but the there is an underlying point that the people managing the game today really don't have any vision for the integrity of the game, they may propose a change that makes sense but it will be by random chance and they will propose as many others that will take the game backward. 

I mean, if I hear one more goofball proposal on pace of play before the game gets its head out of its arse and just tells hitters to get in the box and hit, I may give it up completely and start watching tournament basketweaving.