Agreement on 2020 salaries/service time/contracts

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Viewing 25 posts - 126 through 150 (of 499 total)
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  • #129350
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    #129353
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    #129354
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    There is long thread with a labor lawyer explaining why the players do not have to negotiate. I am not showing it all here.

    #129370
    Minuteman3
    Participant

    Free

    This whole thing is getting to be a shining example of why I like NASCAR so much.

    They depend on TV time to pay for the first bunch of races with no fans. Driver contracts handled between the driver and the owner – NO UNION. The last time they tried a union (with Richard Petty leading the charge) Big Bill France ran them out and brought in wannabes.

    Now for baseball with their players union and the prospect of a shortened or non-season staring them in the face. I tend to agree more with the owners (some like to call them billionaires but the players are millionaires) on the issue of pay but the whole deal seems to be getting more complicated every day and pay is not the only issue it seems. If it is possible that some players will not participate then so be it. That will give room for others to step in. I personally would not pay any extra dime to see Mike Trout over say somebody like Dylan Carlson. This thing is getting too complicated for me and it is tending to make fans choose sides which I don’t want to do. Bad enough that it’s an election year in which we have to choose sides and a COVID19 year in which we have to make choices too.

    As I constantly say, the only shout I want to hear is…………….PLAY BALL.

    #129372
    mudville
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    I agree with you, MM3. The only thing I would add is that there is entirely too much money being thrown around in baseball, and most other sports for that matter. Let the billionaires get a reasonable return on their investment, and let the players get a the type of salary and benefits that fans can relate to.

    #129388
    1982 willie
    Participant

    No the players shouldn’t go for this garbage. This is just a strategy by the owners to break the union by trying to appeal to the lower paid players. It happens in business/union negotiations all the time. Im not saying the higher paid players shouldn’t be willing to take less but it should be more in line with how many games are being played. Going by what the graph of the players salaries above shows and how much they are loosing, then they should only be playing a 25 to 30 game season. There is no reason they shouldn’t have fans at the stadiums at this point. Obviously there may have to be capacity limits but heck in some places they still probably wouldnt get that many people to come so in the end it wouldnt be that much different. These owners are ridiculous. Pile up the money and try to use the pandemic to hold onto even more. If you aren’t going to try to be fair, just don’t play a season at all.

    #129420
    BlackHillsCard
    Participant

    Free

    I saw this coming a mile away. Everyone should have, really.

    #129421
    Euro Dandy
    Participant

    Free

    #129422
    Minuteman3
    Participant

    Free

    See ya next season but I still won’t watch NBA or NFL. Well maybe the Super Bowl. If there is no season this year because of money it will put a hurt on the game with fans. Too many people are hurting bad now to have much sympathy for either side.

    #129423
    Onyxgem
    Participant

    Free

    Got to love Greedy people, if they do not play this year it will be worse than a strike and they are going to lose a lot of fans.

    #129424
    Minuteman3
    Participant

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    Trevor Bauer smacks Boras.

    https://tinyurl.com/ybqb5fuu

    #129428
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    The Union’s strategy makes sense. It goes back to the March agreement. The owners want to reopen the salary decision. Now, the players want to reopen the length of the season, which they had ceded to Manfred.

    The counter proposal will not fly with owners because they feel they are losing money with every regular season game and the more games they play, the more they lose. They want to get to the playoffs, where they can make more. A longer regular season delays the playoffs and increases the risk a virus outbreak could shut it all down. The players may try to address that by suggesting an even more compressed schedule, because of course, the more games that are played, the more prorated salary the players would make.

    The obvious compromise is to revert to the March agreement. Whether that happens, I don’t know.

    #129429
    CardsFanInChiTown
    Participant

    Free

    I’m rarely on the owners side, but in this case I 100% am. I’m confused and maybe have missed something, but how do they expect full prorated salaries with zero fan revenue?

    When someone is complaining about making $6M to play a game when the rest of the country is struggling and suffering, I can’t support that. Yes, the owners paying that are billionaires, but when they will bring in $0 from fan revenue which is the main generator, the players need to make concessions.

    If it’s going to cost the owners a lot more to have a season than to just say “well, I guess we will just start back up in 2021 then”. Even with the plans I’ve seen, I can’t see the TV revenue covering what they have proposed on top of all of the other expenses such as admin, money paid to workers already, the draft, minor leagues, upkeep to stadiums and the list goes on and on.

    Millions of American’s have made extreme financial sacrifices and a majority of small business are all but doomed due to this thing. Especially those of us in Illinois, Crook County, Chicago where the governor, through his companies profiting in an extreme way and promoting his “agenda” by locking us down are all in bad shape.

    I don’t feel bad for the MLB players even a little, the minor leaguers is an entirely different story.

    #129430
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    CFICT, so little is known about MLB teams’ true finances that many do not trust their claims. If they want further employee concessions, shouldn’t they open up their books for the Union to assess? Most believe that will not happen.

    The sides do have a March agreement. The disagreement since is at least partly rooted in the matter of if/when fans can return. MLB seems to be assuming that will not happen, but there is reasonable reason to think some fans could be allowed back in in some parks by fall.

    I am keeping my mind open on both sides because we have limited specifics.

    P.S. I am also sensitive to the many hardships Americans are facing. What I do not understand, however, is how Yadier Molina giving Bill DeWitt another $5 million of his salary back this season (on top of the earlier $10 MM cut) would help anyone other than Bill DeWitt (for example).

    #129437
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    Jayson Stark tweeted concern that June 1 is already so close. I replied with an assessment that unless the players give in, the owners’ motivation may be to delay the regular season as long as possible.

    #129438
    gscottar
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    A VEB writer leaves no doubt who he favors in this mess.

    https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2020/5/28/21272588/support-the-players-not-mlb-owners

    #129439
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    #129440
    bicyclemike
    Moderator

    Paid - Annual

    It surprises me that the team’s financials are not open to the player’s union. I would think the union would have had the right to see the books written into the agreement years ago.

    At any rate, there is likely no way to profit from a season at this point. The owner’s need to look at the value of their asset, and think about how it will look in the next 3-5 years if this season is not played. I would think it will take longer to recover the lost value with no season than with a partial season.

    Given that the industry will fall in value in 2020, then likely start to creep back up over the coming years assuming things are back to normal, then the answer to player salaries is deferred compensation – basically players will get paid for this season over the coming years as teams regain the value lost from this season.

    So maybe the clubs do the scaled salaries shown earlier, with a recovery of a percentage of the cuts each year over the next five.

    #129447
    CardsFanInChiTown
    Participant

    Free

    BW, those are very good counter points. I’m thinking along the lines of the owners and the mentality of “what’s in it for me”, if they are going to lose even more money where is there motivation? The loss of long term fans also needs to be factored in. On the flip side, will the die hard fans go to the park more after missing it for a year and a half?

    I would love for them to open up their books, but that’s not happening in my lifetime. As far as the fans, I’m under the impression that in Chicago it won’t happen until there is actually a vaccine. That’s according to the Chicago media, which as you could imagine is very one sided.

    Yadi is a great example for the side willing to hold out, the guys close to the end of their careers with power. Secondly, I would assume the “veterans” on the MLBPA side are taking the lead in the negotiating.

    From a ticket buyer point of view, I have Bears season tickets that I’m opting out of this year. I have no interest in going to more than a few games since I’m not a Bears fan and more importantly, the chances of the demand being high enough to not sell them at a loss is quite small.

    #129449
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    bikemike asked:

    I would think the union would have had the right to see the books written into the agreement years ago.

    Opening the books is not something the owners want. Further, players have not been participating in revenue sharing, so it was not an area they needed to dig into deeply. The only revenue sharing has been between the owners themselves. I do believe there are some basic audited statements the players had access to.

    #129450
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

    CFICT, you raise the real wild card. How will fans react? I don’t mean the angry words now. That is very predictable. I mean the REAL actions later. My guess is that the owners may feel the game is bulletproof. Until last season, MLB drew more than 70 million fans for 15 years in a row. They have been making record profits, less and less of which depends on rear ends in stadium seats.

    Danny Mac and I talked about this briefly on our last podcast. I think the game will bounce back whether they play or not because the situation across our entire country is so disjointed and disrupted this year. Dan is not as sure. I hope I am right and he is wrong, but it surely could go the other way.

    #129451
    Euro Dandy
    Participant

    Free

    The late March agreement for prorated pay had qualifiers on when the season would begin. As reported by Passan at that time, one of those conditions was there would not be bans on mass gatherings limiting fan attendance. That condition had a caveat which said if no fans are allowed, then the two sides would consider the feasibility of playing in empty stadiums to see if that approach works for both sides.

    So, for those like Eugene Freeman who are saying to not pay full prorated salaries is counter to the March agreement, the empty stadium scenario is precisely the situation in which the March agreement calls for a joint reconsideration.

    All the above assumes Passan was accurate in his reporting on the agreement. It was widely reported by various media outlets and he was often quoted by those outlets. I haven’t seen any specific report to invalidate that. Also, I have not been able to find the documented agreement itself.

    #129453
    1964cards
    Participant

    Paid - Annual

    Brian, I am very concerned with the ability of the game to bounce back if there is no baseball this summer. There are so many negatives In the baseball environment right now:

    Governmental responses to COVID have resulted in limited, to no, baseball at the amateur level in many areas. State and local budgets have been devastated and will most likely result in spending cuts. In turn, these cuts will result in select college programs being scaled back or eliminated. Additionally, the MLB plan to downsize MILB coupled with no MILB this season is another negative factor. In short, many parts of the country have seen limited to no baseball this season and face the prospect of losing local teams by next season. This could cause the public to turn to other sports for their entertainment spending.

    The labor battle being so public is another huge negative factor. Labor strife has always had a negative effect on the public opinion of the game – right or wrong. The worse the strife the harder it has been to bounce back in the past. This time it may be more difficult as the perception is that we have “millionaires fighting with billionaires” in a battle to determine who is the greediest. Again, the perception of this labor strife may turn portions of the public away from baseball to sports with less labor strife.

    I fear baseball may lose big time if a deal is not struck soon. I feel strongly that the two parties need to find a way to provide us with at least a half season of baseball.

    #129455
    bicyclemike
    Moderator

    Paid - Annual

    I agree ‘64, in that it is in everyone’s best interests to have some baseball this year. Both sides need to see the big picture in that regard.

    I do not know the details, but asking the players to take deep cuts, like receiving only 20% of their salary seems extreme, unless as I said before, there is a method in place where the the majority of the remaining 80% is deferred.

    Bottom line though, getting a deal in place and the games going again carries a lot of value. We cannot easily put a number on it, but it has to be considered. Not getting the season going due to a labor dispute would be a huge economic hit, maybe more than the loss of playing a partial season.

    Then again, maybe I am totally wrong on that and a season with no baseball would be mostly forgotten if 2021 is a return to business as usual.

    #129463
    Brian Walton
    Keymaster

    Paid - Annual

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