pittmike wrote:
This Ends in Antioch wrote:
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.
Aside from the service time manipulating I am not even sure wtf the players want or need.
https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2021/12/2/22814019/mlb-lockout-explained-in-5-minutesWhat owners wantThere 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 wantThe 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.