Potential baseball strike

Cafe Society
1

Is there really as big a danger of a work stoppage/strike as they’ve been talking about on ESPN lately? I haven’t heard all that much about it in the papers or magazines (SI, ESPN etc), but then again I feel pretty ambivilent about the whole thing. On the one hand I think Donald Fehr is a dick nostril and the players are idiots who can’t seem to understand that the average salary is $2.5 MILLION.

Anyway, I’m not gonna turn this into a rant yet, just curious as to other Dopers feelings about this.

2

Good. The sooner they bury the sport the better.

3

Don’t hold back, tell us what you really think.

Seriously.

4

Frequently Asked Questions About the Baseball Labor Negotiations

5

Baseball needs to disappear. I know there are still alot of people who are into it, but whoever thinks that baseball is still a “national pastime” needs to wake up and smell the football.

Too many games.
Too slow.
Too many games.
Too much bitching.
Too many games.
No cheerleaders.

6

I am a fan of the game. I enjoy listening to games on the radio. Baseball is special.

The players OTOH are a bit spoiled IMO. The players union, wow! It is soooooo powerful. Maybe we should send it to tackle the terrorist issues. My take is that players needed to get better money and benefits years ago. I think the owners were taking advantage. Now, the players and owners deserve a kick in the rear.
If they strike at this particular time…I will be pissed.

7

Ignoring the anti-baseball posters, I think there is a real danger of another strike/lockout/work stoppage (WS) because there is no real economic restraint on either side. The players are already all rich and the owners are already all richer, so what do they personally have to lose from ? If there is a WS the owners will in fact save on their only big expense, player salaries. The owners make their money in other areas, not baseball, and due to sweetheart deals don’t have more than nominal rent for the ballparks, so they’ve “got their nut covered.”

I usually support the players, because I like to watch players play rather than watch owners own, but I am very tired of the fallacious argument that “nobody accepts a limit on their salaries.” In fact, everybody who agrees to work for someone else accepts a limit on their salaries. Even the great Donald Fehr has his salary limited by his employer. If the union can cap Fehr’s salary, then management through collective bargaining ought to be able to limit the employee-players’ salaries.

8

There’s an excellent chance of a strike in early August. There’s almost no chance of it lasting as long as the last one, since apparently many of the owners have loans outstanding that contain provisions making them callable immediately in the event of a strike or work stoppage – roughly the equivalent of losing your job and having your bank demand immediate payment in full of your mortgage in the same week.

I’m very ambivalent about it all. I love baseball, but I’d just as soon go to a minor league game as a major league one – it just happens that I live in a major league city (Atlanta). It’s hard for me to find much to criticize in the players’ positions or their behavior – the players aren’t asking for anything new, and they’re not striking for more money; they basically don’t want to give up features of the current structure that their predecessors had to fight long and hard for. And don’t forget that the amount of money an individual player makes, over and above the stipulated minimum, is negotiated between the club and the player or his agent – the CBA is mainly about work rules and the parameters within which the owners have to operate. If the owners want a salary cap, all they have to do is reach in their back pockets and put one on – to say, “we can spend this much and no more”. For some owners, that figure will be higher than for others – 'twas ever thus; ask anyone who’s studied the history of the St. Louis Browns, Philadelphia A’s, or Kansas City A’s.

The owners have their heads up the south end of their collective GI tract, and their hands in everyone else’s pockets. There’s no evidence that any significant number of clubs are actually in trouble, unless you accept the ludicrous numbers Selig tried to foist off on Congress – the ones that claimed that only nine MLB teams were in the black last year, and that two of those cleared less than $1M. Those numbers, the threat of contraction, and all the other posturing the owners have done have had one purpose: to get other people to help the owners make even more money than they’re doing now: to get the players to agree to concessions that would save the owners payroll dollars, and to get local governments to pony up for sweetheart deals on new facilities to help the owners realize substantially higher revenues.

Doug Pappas has an excellent site on the business of baseball, including a page devoted to current labor/contraction issues. He compares the numbers claimed by MLB with independent estimates of the profit/loss and value of each franchise done for Forbes magazine. According to Forbes, twenty of the thirty franchises made money last year – over twice as many as claimed by MLB (keep in mind that these are not estimates from the players, or any other party with an ax to grind – they’re from a disinterested third party). Much of the “losses” claimed by MLB clubs are paper-only losses – the standard accounting practices are used to turn a real profit into a paper loss to avoid taxes. In other cases, the value of related-party transactions (such as the Braves’ – owned by AOL Time Warner – sale of broadcast rights to – AOL Time Warner) is dramatically diminished in MLB’s numbers.

How bogus is the owners’ position regarding contraction? Here’s the numbers for 2001 for two franchises (using MLB’s numbers, just for grins):



Franchise	Profit/Loss	Value		Est. Debt/Value ratio
Franchise 1	($36,584,000)   $243,832,000        93%
Franchise 2	    $536,000    $131,621,000        63%

Which club did MLB want to contract? Franchise 2 of course (the Twins). Franchise 1, obviously in much grimmer financial condition, is the world champion Arizona Diamondbacks. Forbes, BTW, estimated the Diamondbacks’ losses for 2001 at closer to $3 million, and the Twins’ profit at around $3.6 million. So why contract the Twins? Because Carl Pohlad obviously wearied of owning a baseball team years ago (remember the discussions about selling the club and moving it to Charlotte a few years ago?), but rather than take a chance on having to accept an offer whose value is currently being diminished by labor uncertainty, he volunteers to let MLB pay him off at a better price. Worst case, for Pohlad, is that the voters in Minnesota relent at the threat of losing their team and agree to pay for a new baseball-only facility with lots of luxury boxes, which will boost revenues for Mr. Pohlad or his heirs and assigns.

I stuck with the game through the last strike. I probably will again. But the owners are essential a cartel that is able to limit the supply of the product, and that treats its employees and customers with a shocking contempt and arrogance, and every time I buy a ticket to a game I’m aware that I’m putting more money in the pockets of those people. At some point, I may decide I don’t want to do that any more.

9

The thing that really bothers me about the player’s striking is that they choose to strike when they have a valid, and accepted, agreement in place. They knew the rules for the 2002 season and agreed to them years ago. Their plans to strike are based on the premise that the owners will change the rules for next year.

My personal opinion is that if you are operating under the agreed to terms you do not have any cause to strike. If the owners choose to change the work rules next year, unilaterally, then the players may very well have cause to strike, at that time.

10

If this is what you call a salary cap, then probably about 80% of MLB teams have a salary cap. And not just the small market teams, the Giants for one have structured their payroll since their move to PacBell to make a small profit each year. They do not attempt to match Jerry Colangelo’s Diamondbacks dollar for dollar.

As for an “informal” salary cap, about 15 years ago, the owner’s had a backroom handshake deal not to go above a certain level on free agent signings. The player’s union sued them for collusion and won.

My feeling is that there must be both a salary cap and a salary floor, along with redistribution of wealth from the rich teams to the not so rich teams. A cap to prevent the Steinbrenner’s of the world from overspending everyone else, and a floor to prevent a post 1997 Florida Marlins situation. Unfortunately there is absolutely no one in MLB right with any sort of vision for the future, so I see no hope for baseball to get itself out of the mire.

Here’s a little fantasy, GWB parlays his baseball past and his current extreme popularity to “suggest” a equitable solution to both sides. Too bad it won’t happen.

11

I’d agree with you if your premise were valid. It isn’t. The MLB CBA expired at the end of the 2001 season. Just as in 1994, the 2002 season opened without an agreement in place, so the terms of the existing agreement continue in force until a new agreement is reached, the owners lock out the players, or the players go on strike. The owners have the option to declare that talks are at an impasse and to unilaterally impose new work rules, at which point the only options the players have are to strike or accept the owners’ terms (which won’t happen). As Doug Pappas notes in the pages I linked to before, the owners have the advantage during the offseason, when they can declare an impasse and impose new terms or lock out the players at little or no cost to themselves. Once the season starts, the advantage changes to the players’ side, and grows every day as the season progresses – a strike at the end of the season that wipes out the postseason deprives the owners of their biggest revenue sources for the year.

12

I’m not talking about collusion – I’m talking about individual teams deciding what they’re going to spend on payroll and sticking to it. My point is just that no player making over the major league minimum salary got those additional bucks as a result of the terms of the CBA – it’s what his agent negotiated and the club agreed to pay. It’s worked so far for the Twins – Pohlad has pocketed most of the revenue sharing bucks the Twins receive under the current system (in 2000, the Twins payroll was less than the revenue sharing payments they received from MLB). Of course, that means that they can’t compete on the field, right? What? They led their division most of last year before fading at the end? They’re leading their division so far this year? Oh. Never mind.

I can go along with a required minimum payroll; indeed, that should be a provision of any new revenue sharing arrangement to prevent the Lorias and Pohlads of the world from pocketing the revenue sharing bucks and letting the team scramble as best it can on subsistence-level payrolls. As for a cap, I’d prefer to see an arrangement that Bill James has suggested: require that all local and superstation TV revenue be divided 50-50 between the home club and MLB, with the MLB portion being divided equally among all clubs (as long as they meet the minimum payroll requirement). As James says, this seems obvious once you consider it: the Yankees’ TV rights wouldn’t be worth much if there were no one for them to play. This would simultaneously limit the money currently available to the richest teams for payroll, and would make a substantial amount of additional revenue available to the teams without huge TV contracts. There’ll still be a disparity between the Yankees and Royals, but it won’t be as massive as it is now. And as the Twins and A’s have demonstrated in the last few years, teams without huge bankrolls can be successful on the field, they just have to be a lot smarter about how they draft, develop, and trade for players.

13

When a sport id thriving, salary caps are unnecessary. I hate them. If you must “level the playing field” use revenue sharing (but not the MLB version of revenue sharing).

14

Fair enough, I didn’t realize the CBA had already expired. My main issue is really that the terms under which they are currently working are acceptable. CBA or no CBA, the owners haven’t yet changed anything, AFAIK. This is not like some teachers or bus drivers striking because they have a lapsed agreement and haven’t had a raise in 2 years. The players like the terms they currently have.

As you said, they will strike before the WS only because it is a strategically advantageous time to strike, not because their working conditions are unacceptable. They (the players) have more than enough resources to weather a long strike. I don’t like the fact that fans have paid a lot of money from the start of the season with the expectation of a championship, to have it taken away for “strategic” reasons. The owners will at least have the decency to delay the start of the season rather than ruin a season already begun.

15

I like a salary cap. The NFL has one, and teams have a legit shot at winning. The Yankees would never be able to do what they do in the NFL. I think it’s great how the NFL can have true surprise winners like the Ravens or Patriots that win because they play over their heads, not because they bought all the best players.

16

Actually, I seem to have expressed myself badly. The players would be content to play out the season under the existing terms. The owners, however, have the ability to declare an impasse in negotiations and impose whatever terms they think fit. The players are then in the position of either accepting those terms, or striking. There are several points in the owners’ current position that are flatly unacceptable to the players, so their only viable option is to strike. If the players move to strike before the owners declare an impasse, it’ll more than likely be because they want to force the issue and get the dispute settled in time to preserve at least part of the season and the postseason. As I said before, the likelihood is that, in the event of a strike, the owners will cave in quickly this time, because of the demand payment provisions in many of their loan agreements that go into effect immediately if a work stoppage occurs. Given that, I’d say that the MLBPA is being somewhat restrained in not taking advantage of their dramatically greater leverage, giving the owners an opportunity to put some sort of sane, workable offer on the table. The owners won’t do it, of course, and will continue to blame the “greedy players” and foment popular outrage at the prospect of guys making $12 million a year going out on strike, which plays well in the media.

17

Philisophical question: If your team is contracted and the players go on strike does it make a sound?

18

Just like baseball.

19

The players’ position would be much strengthened, at least in my mind, if they had actual lousy rules to strike against. That way, they could at least say “See how much money the owners want to take from us!” Right now, as far as I’m concerned, they are still negotiating, and a strike would be a negotiation tactic. I do not like the idea of holding the postseason hostage in order to improve your negotiating position.

We lost the WS a few years back, and a lot of fans got screwed in the process. In particular the Expos fans really took it hard, they had a great team that year, and had a good chance to win it all.

20

Sure, it plays better in the media if you’re the wronged party – which is one reason the owners keep thinking they’re going to win one of these disputes: they’re able to spin the story so that it looks like the players are just being greedy and trying to get more money, when that’s never been the issue.

I don’t blame you for being upset at the prospect of another season being gutted by labor issues. I just think you’ve picked the wrong target. From what I can tell, the players don’t intend to strike until it’s obvious that the owners intend to declare an impasse and impose new terms unilaterally. You can bet that if that happens, it’ll be because the owners stage-managed that result: forcing the players to strike so that they’re the ones the public blames. I realize it’s hard to fathom, but once you study the history of baseball’s labor problems, you come to understand that for a lot of the owners, sticking it to those damned uppity players is almost more important than making money.