LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[Longgone]

19 minutes ago, chasfh said:

And once they spend for those guys, that creates the baseline for eh other free agents in the market and, just as importantly, the arb-eligible players, whom all 30 teams eventually have to pay. That’s what teams want to avoid: having to pay for those boats lifted by the rising tide.

Yes, and this is what the owners logically want to avoid; the market being set by those few clubs with grossly disparate resources. No one in their right mind would want that to happen, and it would be bad for the league.

[chasfh]

41 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

absolutely, But to analyze conventional wisdom, look for available data. Compare football or basketball to baseball. In those sports, almost all teams have payrolls at or within striking distance of their caps, but not in baseball. Doesn't that argue that there must be some other situation that constrains many baseball teams other than the existence of the cap (de facto or otherwise) that is not constraining basketball and football teams --  like that the revenue situation is so different in baseball than in other sports? Are we to believe that baseball owners are some different kind of breed than other sports owners? Why would they be? I don't see how you fix the overall revenue split to the players without working toward a more equitable revenue split. All the cap increase does is allow a few teams to pay more, while leaving competition even more screwed. That's good for a few players, I don't see how it's good for players as whole. 

I think the fair counter question is why doesn't the union see this if it's so obvious, and personally I think it's because the union is well captured by the richest players who do benefit - as a sub group - from a higher cap.

You also have the 'aspirational fallacy' at work. In the same way many lower economic group people defend the rights of the rich in politics because they think they might be rich some day, many more players than ever will probably beleive they will be stars.

I'm not an expert at football or basketball, but as far as baseball owners are concerned they, as with business owners, are responding to the incentives being offered. The revenue streams in baseball are so varied and lucrative that a team can choose to spend very little on talent, essentially choosing to punt on competing, and still make healthy profits and, as importantly, substantial capital appreciation. That's the thing that's constraining spending among so many teams: they don't have to spend or compete to make money. Is that unique to baseball versus football or basketball? Not sure.

Not all 30 teams respond to those incentives in exactly the same way to not spend, since they're not automatons. The Yankees must spend because spending/competing/winning is their historical brand. Dodgers are motivated to spend because they want to dominate this era of the sport in a unique way. Mets want to spend because of their superfan owner. Those guys will spend around the cap, whether it's 210 or 260. But limited-window teams have to choose whether to compete by spending to get talent to keep up with the leaders in their division. They absolutely would like to compete, but they don't want to spend too much money to do so. That's why they want the smaller cap. That way, they can save money on competing, which suppresses free agent comp potential. And suppressing FA comp keeps the market lower for arb-eligible players as well, since high salaries set the overall market, and all that helps keep spending down even for the Pirates and Orioles when it's time for them to pony up for their arb-eligibles.

[Longgone]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

I'm not an expert at football or basketball, but as far as baseball owners are concerned they, as with business owners, are responding to the incentives being offered. The revenue streams in baseball are so varied and lucrative that a team can choose to spend very little on talent, essentially choosing to punt on competing, and still make healthy profits and, as importantly, substantial capital appreciation. That's the thing that's constraining spending among so many teams: they don't have to spend or compete to make money. Is that unique to baseball versus football or basketball? Not sure.

Not all 30 teams respond to those incentives in exactly the same way to not spend, since they're not automatons. The Yankees must spend because spending/competing/winning is their historical brand. Dodgers are motivated to spend because they want to dominate this era of the sport in a unique way. Mets want to spend because of their superfan owner. Those guys will spend around the cap, whether it's 210 or 260. But limited-window teams have to choose whether to compete by spending to get talent to keep up with the leaders in their division. They absolutely would like to compete, but they don't want to spend too much money to do so. That's why they want the smaller cap. That way, they can save money on competing, which suppresses free agent comp potential. And suppressing FA comp keeps the market lower for arb-eligible players as well, since high salaries set the overall market, and all that helps keep spending down even for the Pirates and Orioles when it's time for them to pony up for their arb-eligibles.

Is there a point in all this? Until there is greater competitive parity, there is going to be a great disparity in payrolls, and thus teams that struggle to compete and continue to rebuild, which you erroneously call "tanking". This is not good for the overall health of the league.

[chasfh]

14 minutes ago, Longgone said:

No matter how many times you repeat this, it simply isn't true. The disparity is simple math, and the restrained spending is only on the richest clubs, and checks them from dominating the free agent market, but still allows them to easily outspend everyone else.

And no matter how many times you repeat that it isn't true, that isn't true.

While the CBT number appears to serve as a restraint on the highest-spending teams in the technical, it helps keep the market lower because it defines the limit for how much a top-of-the-market team will pay for talent. It helps every other team by setting the market for them.

Even the least-spending teams benefit from this. They want to keep the CBT low not because they're afraid it's going to make them lose—they're already comfortable with the losing. It's spending more for the losing that they're trying to avoid.

[chasfh]

14 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Yes, and this is what the owners logically want to avoid; the market being set by those few clubs with grossly disparate resources. No one in their right mind would want that to happen, and it would be bad for the league.

I agree with everything in bold here.

[Tiger337]

10 hours ago, KL2 said:

The problem, for the 100th time, is this thinking is that a) it ain't that easy. B) it's not conducive to winning.

It's not easy, but there  have always been players who could do it. 

It's not conducive to winning because the whole game is designed for home runs now.  They could deaden the ball, but they don't want to.  Removing the shift is not going to change that.  Players will keep swinging for the fences.  

[chasfh]

3 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Is there a point in all this? Until there is greater competitive parity, there is going to be a great disparity in payrolls, and thus teams that struggle to compete and continue to rebuild, which you erroneously call "tanking". This is not good for the overall health of the league.

Yes, the point is having an interesting discussion on a sports forum board.

There will always be disparity in payrolls; that's never going away, whether the CBT is at 180, 210, or 260. What Players are looking for is for greater comp across the board. That's why they want higher CBTs. Baseball wants to spend as little for players as they possibly can. That's why they want lower CBTs. Simple as it gets.

[Longgone]

2 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Yes, the point is having an interesting discussion on a sports forum board.

There will always be disparity in payrolls; that's never going away, whether the CBT is at 180, 210, or 260. What Players are looking for is for greater comp across the board. That's why they want higher CBTs. Baseball wants to spend as little for players as they possibly can. That's why they want lower CBTs. Simple as it gets

Yes, and there is no way spiraling salaries set by the richest clubs is good for the league, and the competitive health of the league trumps maximizing player salaries every time. And yes, as currently constructed, there will always be a resource disparity, but it would be malfeasance not to narrow the gap as much as possible.

[Longgone]

18 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I agree with everything in bold here.

I'd like you to try to explain how that would be good for the league.

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Yes, and there is no way spiraling salaries set by the richest clubs is good for the league, and the competitive health of the league trumps maximizing player salaries every time. And yes, as currently constructed, there will always be a resource disparity, but it would be malfeasance not to narrow the gap as much as possible.

With $10+ billion coming in to baseball owners annually through multiple sources attended to baseball, I don't see how a prediction of salary spiraling will be bad for the league. Maybe it shave a few bucks off a organization's topline. If so, then boo-hoo.

If there's malfeasance, I would place it on the organizational level, because every team has the resources right now to spend more and be competitive.

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, Longgone said:

I'd like you to try to explain how that would be good for the league.

I didn't say it would be good for the league. However, since you're the one who made the explicit point that it would be either "not good" or "bad' for the league—three times by my count, just today—perhaps you can explain exactly how.

[Longgone]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

With $10+ billion coming in to baseball owners annually through multiple sources attended to baseball, I don't see how a prediction of salary spiraling will be bad for the league. Maybe it shave a few bucks off a organization's topline. If so, then boo-hoo.

If there's malfeasance, I would place it on the organizational level, because every team has the resources right now to spend more and be competitive.

This doesn't address any of the issues. The players need to be fairly compensated, at around 50% of revenues. But, competitive parity is a huge issue for the league, and the CBT is effective at correcting some of the disparity. There are many ways to ensure players get fairly compensated, and parity issues are also addressed. Encouraging greater disparity is counterproductive.

[Longgone]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I didn't say it would be good for the league. However, since you're the one who made the explicit point that it would be either "not good" or "bad' for the league—three times by my count, just today—perhaps you can explain exactly how.

If you were starting a league today, would you design it so that some of your franchisees had 20 times the competitive resources as others? That would be unfair and absurd. The health of any league implies each team will have relatively equal opportunities to compete. The situation with MLB is historic, and the CBT deals with it in an oblique manner, but simply put the lower the ceiling/higher the penalties the greater the parity, and yes, parity is good.

Also, if you were starting a league, you would probably have a hard cap, which constrains salaries, so I'm not sure why you find a soft cap in MLB so offensive.

[chasfh]

6 minutes ago, Longgone said:

This doesn't address any of the issues. The players need to be fairly compensated, at around 50% of revenues. But, competitive parity is a huge issue for the league, and the CBT is effective at correcting some of the disparity. There are many ways to ensure players get fairly compensated, and parity issues are also addressed. Encouraging greater disparity is counterproductive.

I don't see how competitive parity can be a huge issue for a league in which 24 of its 30 teams have made the playoffs since 2016.

Raising the CBT won't materially affect the disparity. The disparity will be the same because teams will respond to the range the CBT creates. I simply reject any notion that suggests that raising the CBT will only cause three teams to spend right up to it, while the other 27 teams cry in the beer because they can't keep up. I believe they'll keep up at least enough to maintain the current level of payroll level deviation

[Longgone]

6 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Raising the CBT won't materially affect the disparity. The disparity will be the same because teams will respond to the range the CBT creates. I simply reject any notion that suggests that raising the CBT will only cause three teams to spend right up to it, while the other 27 teams cry in the beer because they can't keep up. I believe they'll keep up at least enough to maintain the current level of payroll level deviation

This is an assumption based on an erroneous perception, as I said, it's simple math. 

[chasfh]

30 minutes ago, Longgone said:

If you were starting a league today, would you design it so that some of your franchisees had 20 times the competitive resources as others? That would be unfair and absurd. The health of any league implies each team will have relatively equal opportunities to compete. The situation with MLB is historic, and the CBT deals with it in an oblique manner, but simply put the lower the ceiling/higher the penalties the greater the parity, and yes, parity is good.

Also, if you were starting a league, you would probably have a hard cap, which constrains salaries, so I'm not sure why you find a soft cap in MLB so offensive.

Well, if anyone were starting a league today, it would be the USFL, where the league owns all the teams outright, have all the teams play in a single stadium despite the fiction of regional or city representation, and would compete for a second tier of players who would otherwise not have any opportunity to play professional football at all, and who would gladly do so for barely a living wage (average: $45,000/year) strictly for the chance to be noticed by the first-tier league so they can finally get good and paid.

Otherwise, equality of resources to every team in order to compete neither can nor should be guaranteed. This isn't communism. But major league owners are not made up of consortia of guys who are like you or me. Even the "poorest" MLB owner has $400 million in personal net worth which, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean that is the sum of all resources he can control on behalf of the team. But even if that were the sum total of resources available to him, I don't think the game should unilaterally create an artificial obligation to hold itself back just so the few owners who have only two commas in their net worth can comfortably compete—most of whom aren't, anyway. If those owners can't keep up, they are certainly free to sell their stake in their MLB team to any one of the numerous concerns already lined up for the chance to get on that MLB gravy train themselves. Under-resourced businessmen getting run out of their business because they either can't or refuse to keep up? That's pure capitalism, baby.

Edited March 8, 2022 by chasfh

[chasfh]

6 minutes ago, Longgone said:

This is an assumption based on an erroneous perception, as I said, it's simple math. 

Where is this simple math? I don't recall having seen it?

[KL2]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

It's not easy, but there  have always been players who could do it. 

It's not conducive to winning because the whole game is designed for home runs now.  They could deaden the ball, but they don't want to.  Removing the shift is not going to change that.  Players will keep swinging for the fences.  

Not everybody is tony gywnn. And he's a hall of famer. Of course there are guys that can do it but even at the major league level there's only a few and they are the guyss always at the all star game. To argue or say well just learn to do it, it's not that easy. 

It's not conducive to winning no matter the era. Deaden the ball and its still not conducive. Why because as we said doing it once it damn hard. Now imagine doing it three times (single, single single) to get one run before getting 3 outs. Crazy hard. And how is deading the ball not changing the game the same way as mandated the shortstop stand to teh right of 2nd base before the pitch?

The whole ban the ban on shifts argument is stupid on several levels. It fails at a practical ability and what humans can do. it fails at a winning level. it fails at a changing the game level. 

[Tiger337]

8 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Not everybody is tony gywnn. And he's a hall of famer. Of course there are guys that can do it but even at the major league level there's only a few and they are the guyss always at the all star game. To argue or say well just learn to do it, it's not that easy. 

It's not conducive to winning no matter the era. Deaden the ball and its still not conducive. Why because as we said doing it once it damn hard. Now imagine doing it three times (single, single single) to get one run before getting 3 outs. Crazy hard. And how is deading the ball not changing the game the same way as mandated the shortstop stand to teh right of 2nd base before the pitch?

The whole ban the ban on shifts argument is stupid on several levels. It fails at a practical ability and what humans can do. it fails at a winning level. it fails at a changing the game level. 

Not everyone can do it easily, but there have definitely been eras when more than a few hitters could use the field better and eras where it would be conducive to winning.  I think deadening the ball would change things a lot, but it's not going to happen.  

Edited March 8, 2022 by Tiger337

[Longgone]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Otherwise, equality of resources to every team in order to compete neither can nor should be guaranteed. This isn't communism... That's pure capitalism, baby.

Communism! These are franchises of a single entity. 

I can't let you continue to abuse terms. Capitalism and Socialism are two distinct economic systems.

Are taxes socialistic? No. Regulations? No. Social welfare programs? Absolutely not. Government funded Infrastructure programs? No. Price protection and subsidies? No.

All of these are almost universal features within capitalist systems throughout history. 

Making something more equitable is not Socialism. Government funding is not, in itself, Socialism.

 

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, Longgone said:

Communism! These are franchises of a single entity. 

I can't let you continue to abuse terms. Capitalism and Socialism are two distinct economic systems.

Are taxes socialistic? No. Regulations? No. Social welfare programs? Absolutely not. Government funded Infrastructure programs? No. Price protection and subsidies? No.

All of these are almost universal features within capitalist systems throughout history. 

Making something more equitable is not Socialism. Government funding is not, in itself, Socialism.

 

There we go! Got you onto something else you'd rather talk about! 🤣

Anyhow, I said it's not communism, so, we both agree on that. 😁

[CMRivdogs]

Now spread some of that $$ around...

 

[chasfh]

7 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Communism! These are franchises of a single entity.

Also, to clarify, Major League Baseball is a cartel.

[Longgone]

7 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Also, to clarify, Major League Baseball is a cartel.

They are a single entity, competing in a capitalist system for our entertainment dollar, and trying very hard to screw it up.

[chasfh]

Just now, Longgone said:

They are a single entity, competing in a capitalist system for our entertainment dollar, and trying very hard to screw it up.

It's true that Baseball is competing in a capitalist system for a limited entertainment dollar, and screwing it up badly.