Roids anyone?
AP joins the host of people carrying water for the owners
Is there any institutional media that isn’t part of that group?
The owners buy more ads than the players.
They also issue more press credentials.
Lately the players have been doing a better job articulating their goals: 1) better pay for pre-arb players, 2) curtailing tanking, and 3) curtailing service time manipulation. Meanwhile I can’t identify what the owners, who are voluntarily and unilaterally imposing the work stoppage, want to change from the status quo.
Curtailing the use of cheap players.
If they tanked with a roster full of over the hill $30M players that would be ok.
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This is a tragic civil war: billionaires v. multi-millionaires. Oh, the horror of it all.
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Right. This is the crux of the matter. By framing it as “tanking” they set up an argument that says, “Anytime you play a rookie instead of an over-the-hill veteran, it means you are tanking.” This is clearly BS. Sometimes the rookie does not work out, but it still makes sense to play someone with the potential to improve over the course of a season (or two) rather than to hang on in an attempt to win 70 games instead of 65 with aging vets who have lost it. The owners may be being unreasonable on some things, but the players are the ones being unreasonable on this one.
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So, what are the owners unreasonable about?
Then you haven’t been paying attention. The owners want some sort of salary cap. They have wanted this for a long time, and have not been secretive about it. And the biggest things the players want is 1) a larger slice of the revenue, and 2) to eliminate the compettive balance tax, which has acted as a sort of de facto salary cap. The other things you mention are just the side show. The players simply want more guaranteed money from the revenue stream. So what it ends up being is the owners wanting to keep things they way they are because the players will never agree to any sort of hard cap. In short, both sides simply want to collect as much money as possible. Period. That’s their only real goal.
As for the lockout…that’s the only leverage the owners have at this point. At some point, they’ll force the players to strike. Up until now, no one has lost any money. That’s going to change soon.
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Exactly. The players want one thing out of this: money. They don’t care about the competition aspect of it, they simply don’t want teams using cheaper players. They don’t want a bunch of rookies making the league minimum, they want high-priced veterans. The owners have realized that paying for past performance is a bad strategy. The owners have gotten smarter, and it’s pissing the players off.
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Exactly. And they are both willing to “kill the goose”.
There’s too much money at stake for either side to kill the golden goose. But they don’t mind giving it a swift kick.
The economic incentives should align with the competitive incentives. How you get there is, of course, a lot more complicated than that.
Meanwhile, MLB makes a reprehensible argument in court than minor leaguers should not be paid for spring training because they “gain valuable life skills”
I would respect them more if they just said “we don’t want to give them any money.”
Of course they’re already working with a respect deficit so it’s moot.
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Paying them would end their amateur status.
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Bastards…
The recent takeover of minor league baseball by MLB already resulted in the loss of affiliation for numerous teams (although many survived at least temporarily by joining collegiate summer leagues or draft leagues). It also resulted in the reduction of levels in the minors from eight down to six (AAA, AA, hi-A, lo-A, Florida/Arizona complex leagues, DSL).
If the owners get what they want, roughly every reduction of 30 roster spots (say from 180 down to 150) means the reduction of another level of minor league baseball. So in that example six levels of minor league baseball would now become just five and 30 more teams would lose their affiliation.
Way to grow the game MLB!!!