The time horizons are just so different for the two sides here I’m not sure that matters.

Owners will always be able to take a short term hit. That same hit may span a player’s entire career, which is a lot to give up so that future players have a shorter arbitration window.

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All I know is this doesn't appear to have any resolution in sight. They got a pass during the COVID season....it's not going to happen again. They can't grow the fanbase and attract younger audiences as it is.

They're going to cause permanent damage to a game that's already on the decline.

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And cost the White Sox at least one World Series in the process. That’s why reinsdorf is such an asshole.

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Laurence is pumped because Halsey, Pete Wentz and some guy from Modern Family are black.

He also recommends that his listeners read the collected works of Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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Hub has several ‘live, laugh, love’ style signs in his house.

Looks like he lives in a Homegoods.

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That's it...Live, Laugh, Love is the thread we need!

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Caught part of that but not the why. He went into some odd one drop you’re black worm hole. He working out a new schtick with Herb going?

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Too bad his employers could find one spot on overnights for a minority.

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"I give you my word as a Biden"

I thought that was a curious segment as well. There is a battle of that war being fought in the theater of public opinion, but it's definitely not the main battle. The only way this gets settled is for one side to reach its breaking point and then cave.

The other point he mentioned that I questioned was this idea that if the owners want to start spring training, they can simply end the lockout. That of course is true, but wouldn't the players be in a position to strike at that point? They don't exactly love the current system either.

Agreed with one side reaching a breaking point....I think the owners have more to lose here and will hold on longer / tighter. I am with the players on this one, but struggle to believe they know exactly what they want. Somehow they always seem to get something of what they want at the cost of something more important. They know service time is an issue, but I don't believe for a second they give 2 shits about putting more of money towards rookie contracts and younger players.

If the owners ended the lockout, they would have no CBA to work off of. I think the players have enough public support to say the existing CBA is not good enough. Whether they truly care or not, the Service Time bullshit is a bad look. I know we are closer to the Kris Bryant example than other cities, but there has to be a few other examples.

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I’m not sure the owners will ever have more to lose than the players. Their time horizons are so drastically different and the players have to give up much, much more if they opt to dig in.

That may be fine for a guy like Scherzer but he’s representing hundreds of people who may only play a year or two and risk missing out on the best earning years of their lives to realize gains they won’t benefit from.

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Aside from the service time manipulating I am not even sure wtf the players want or need.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The only one I’m aware of that I think matters from a competitive standpoint is the players want to alter the luxury tax thresholds. To what I don’t know. But they view the current system as a de facto cap and want that changed in some way.

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https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2021/12/2/22814019/mlb-lockout-explained-in-5-minutes
What owners want
There was a push before the 2021 season to expand the playoffs. This would have primarily benefited teams, who get 100 percent of TV revenue in the postseason, while players only get a portion of the gate, which is considerably smaller than TV revenue.

In exchange for this the owners offered a reduction to a 154 game season, and implementation of a universal DH — two things players have asked for. However, the tradeoff was paltry in exchange for the massive additional revenue owners would make from a playoff expansion.

Outside of this, owners wanted to maintain the status quo. The 2017-21 CBA was wildly profitable and beneficial to owners, so they simply wanted to keep the process in place — while making even more money through expanded playoffs.

What players want
The concerns of players are far more ranging. First, there has been a shrinking percentage of revenue going to players, with MLB using creative accounting to show why players are keeping an even share.

Players want provisions in place to protect prospects from being held back in the minors for the purpose of taking advantage of their contract status to sign them to less money. This service time manipulation is common, and has resulted in players not making their major league debut, despite being ready, because of their compensation.

In addition, players want free agency to be available to anyone who has reached 29.5 yards old if they’ve accrued five years of service time, or all players who have accrued six years of service time — whichever comes first. This is something the owners have said is a non-starter, as they want to keep the six years to free agency, and three years of arbitration process they’ve had in place.

While top-end marquee contracts have ballooned, the salaries for younger players have stagnated — and the union wants to ensure protections are in place to get standout young stars paid commensurate with their talent faster, rather than being forced to wait for their payday.

The union also wants to see tanking addressed. The Orioles have been a prime example of tanking in recent years, befitting from landing top draft picks and benefiting from the league’s revenue sharing. All this while only playing their entire roster $42 million, $100M less than 14 teams in the league. Players want to see a way this process is stopped and teams are incentivized to win again by paying players a fair wage.

Finally, on the topic of potential playoff expansion, players are concerned that expanding the field will motivate teams to spend less on players knowing they could still slide into the postseason and benefit from the TV revenue from the playoffs.

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Thanks for the link, Zippy....that sums it up fairly well.

Tanking and Service time manipulation are definitely of interest to the players, but the bottom line is the players want a bigger piece of the increased revenue pie. That's the complicated one and I see them screwing it up.

The owners want status quo plus expanded playoffs which is bad for everyone. Fucking Assholes.

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The guys who are well and truly fucked are the ones who lost a minor league season in 2020 and then got stapled to the bottom of their team's 40 man right before the lockout so they couldn't get picked in the Rule V draft. So now they can't go to minor league camp or play in minor league games until the lockout is resolved.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

In real life those differences should not be insurmountable. Of course, this is not real. I feel the owners will always be on top as they are the owners and whatever you think they take the risk. Players should really stop acting like paupers also. Maybe the players should give some ground on contract guarantees of the really long huge ones the older guys get. Like NBA buyouts or something?

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Bernstein had a july-ian take on the Bauer case, which is to be expected. I haven’t followed that one very much but Danny kept saying things along the lines of ‘Bauer didn’t present evidence to prove he didn’t do ____’ which seems a bit backwards.

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Frank from oak park talking to hub is my version of hell.

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Serious Bernstein is almost unlistenable. I think I’m about a week into trying to listen to this station again. M&H are what they’ve always been. I like P&S slightly more, if only by virtue of disliking Spiegel less.

I’ve thought Bernstein has been tough to enjoy for several co-hosts now and he may be worse than I remember.

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not sure who is more insufferable - Serious Benstein or Serious LoHo

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

Bernstein appears to have entered a state of irreversible decline, but Bernstein and Rahimi is still better when Rahimi is absent.

I agree that Spiegel is less detestable than he used to be.

I'd like to cave Haugh's skull in with a ball-peen hammer.

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They’d both benefit greatly from better or different producer interaction. The jump in producer quality when P&S comes on is incredible. I’m not sure if I’d put that on the producers or the hosts, but the afternoon show is just so much more listenable and I put a lot of that on Tannehill and Riordan.

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I think Parkins and Speigel are definitely enhanced by Shane and Tanny's on-air contributions. Those guys crack me up, especially when they are busting the hosts' balls. Bernstein used to have similar with Abbattacola and Goff, and now he's unchallenged with no one keeping him in check.

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Agreed.

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So Bernsie was doing his 11 at 11 thing or whatever. A long dumb story about eating at hot dog joints but thing was about masks and if businesses should or could require them. He was strongly for an owner demanding people wear masks as long as it is clear like no shirt, no shoes, no service. Owners right.

Isn't that the same as the sign saying I am not making your gay wedding cake that he rails against?

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

In possibly the most ironic moment in Score history, Drinky is currently on the Spiegel and Parkins show discussing his personal mission to set a good example for his young sons.

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Why is it ironic? If he has set a new path then good for him.

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

What risk is associated with owning ~97% of North American professional sports franchises? The government subsidizes almost all of them and the valuations of teams only go up every year. Even some piece of junk like the Florida Panthers is a winning investment because the government pays you to have the master lease on a public arena with which to make money on concerts. Which baseball teams are in dire straits? Maybe the Rays? They're pocketing revenue sharing and coming out ahead. Bottom line, we're not talking about Greek restaurants here -- now more than ever after the coup against Donald Sterling, these are risk-free investments.

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Why is it ironic?

Because he has lived the life of a self-absorbed libertine.

The claims he made today of his moral awakening are hardly new. Perhaps your faith in drinky will prove to be justified. History, however, is definitively not on your side.

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