Commissioner Rob #FireManfred has "removed from the [2022] schedule" an additional week of games.
Because of the logistical realities of the calendar, another two series are being removed from the schedule, meaning that Opening Day is postponed until April 14th.
On March 1, #FireManfred said the first week of games had been cancelled. But it appeared that as of March 7, MLB was still planning on a 162-game schedule, leading one to assume #FireManfred's laff-riot cancellation was not really a cancellation. But now it looks like #FireManfred has flip-flopped on his flip-flop.
Dan Szymborski muses: "My guess is that MLB's abrupt cancellation instead of another counterproposal suggests that Manfred no longer had 23 owners for another step further."
I hear the Players Association is also working on an album:
"Manfred's Farm"
"I Don't Believe You (MLB Acts Like They Never Have Colluded)"
"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Tanking)"
"Stuck Inside of Bargaining with the Manfred Blues Again"
"Idiot Wind"
Manfred wouldn’t hold another press conference to announce the cancellation of more games cuz he knows he’d get too excited up there
— Gabe (@PlayoffTanaka_) March 9, 2022
5 comments:
The players are like spoiled babies. Time to understand you can't just get more and more and more forever. Come back to the real world with the rest of us. Take a look at the economy of the last 3 years. Take a look at where it is going this year. You play a kid's game. Most of you make $millions (major leaguers). Many of you make 10s of millions. Some of you make over $20m per year and a growing few are making over $30m per year. You are in the upper echelon of the 1%. Many of you make more than Fortune 500 CEOs, heart surgeons and specialty physicians, the best lawyers and legal minds, top actors and actresses, etc. And you play a kids game. In the scheme of things don't you think you are more than a little full of yourselves? You've won the lottery of life- but it just isn't good enough. Get real. You $20+m ballplayers are part of the distribution of wealth problem in this country. A union of millionaires and multi-millionaires. Seems like the concept of a union applies more to common workers who are unfairly treated than to mega rich millionaires with endless greed. Take a good deal that also distributes some of that elite wealth more fairly to other baseball players in your union.
You play a kid's game.
Man, I fucking hate it when people say this stupid, illogical nonsense. I don't know any kids who can crank a 100 mph fastball or throw a devastating breaking pitch with near-pinpoint accuracy. But I also don't get out as much as I used to, so who knows . . .
Saying "it's a kid's game" is like saying *everyone* can write a story (whether you're 7 or 20 or 55), so why should the world's most talented writers make a majority of the money their books generate for publishers? And why pay the best actors a solid percentage of the hundreds of millions their movies make for the studios, because *everyone* can pretend to be someone else and say words. Right?
Posnanski, today:
"We here at JoeBlogs have been adamant — as most analysts have been adamant — that this inane and maddening lockout is happening almost exclusively because of the owners.
That opinion remains unchanged. The owners locked out the players back in December, you might remember, so they could "jumpstart negotiations." And then they waited almost two months before even making an offer or meeting with the players. They tried to double-down on the luxury tax/salary cap that they got out of the players in 2016. They refused to make any serious offers to resolve problems they openly admit are bad for the game, such as service-time manipulation and drastically underpaying young players. They tried to bully the players into making a bad deal by inventing counterfeit deadlines, and then they just began canceling games, trying all along to say to the players, like movie bad guys, "You did this to yourselves!"
It has been a master class in bad-faith negotiating."
Pos writes today about the sticking point of the international draft (about which I admittedly am completely ignorant) and the Union's questionable actions.
The Union is not blameless, of course (its refusal to make life better for minor leaguers is especially galling to me), but if I was helping to make *tens of billions* of dollars for a small group of people -- indeed, if I was one of a select group of people who were in demand as the primary reason *any* of that money even existed -- and I was being compensated at a few million a year, I'd be *extremely* pissed and feel taken advantage of, even if I was considered wealthy by most standards.
Add in the fact that all of the owners are dishonest liars (a bald fact that has been proven over and over and over and over and over, for decades) and I'd also feel like never conceding *anything* to those assholes and would enjoy making them suffer more than a little bit.
According to one commenter at Joe Blogs:
"*Why aren’t the players fighting AT ALL for minor leaguers?"
Legally, they can't. Minor leaguers aren't part of the defined class of "Major League Baseball Players," which is the only group of people for whom the Union is legally allowed to negotiate. Negotiating on behalf of minor leaguers would land the players' attorneys in some pretty hot water, and would potentially invalidate the CBA itself (certainly with regard to any aspects concerning the minor leaguers).
***
Which I guess means the team owners are fully responsible how minor leaguers are treating and paid like shit. Just *another* feather in their cap . . .
Calcaterra:
By yesterday afternoon the owners and players were reportedly super close to agreement on the core economic issues everyone has said was the key to a new CBA getting done. Specifically:
* The players moved to $65 million on the pre-arbitration bonus pool. The owners had last been at $40 million;
* The players offered Competitive Balance Tax thresholds of $232 million to $250 million over the five years of the deal. That’s only $2 million off on the first year and $8 million on the fifth year;
* The players moved to minimum salaries from $710,000 and moving up to $780,000. MLB is at $700,000 to start and finishing at $770,000.
These are not big gaps. This is “let’s get some coffee, come back in an hour, and finish this up” territory. And then Major League Baseball and the owners decided to fuck things up. . . .
If the players did not accept one of [three] option[s proposed by MLB], Rob Manfred and his boys said, they’d cancel another two series worth of games.
These are, to say the least horseshit options and that ultimatum is the utmost in bad faith. This is MLB driving the car into the ditch over an issue it has half-assedly thrown out there a bunch of times over the years, which has never been well-received by the players, and which the league never considered a priority, let alone a deal-breaker. It’s the elevation of a side issue into to a key term at the last minute, with all kinds of stupid strings attached and poison pills embedded within. The whole approach, which MLB did not deploy until the sides were close on the core issues, can only be calculated to sow divisions and scuttle any deal.
The players, nonetheless, responded to it with a counter . . . The owners declined to respond to this counter. And then they canceled games through April 14."
* * *
The players compromise on three issues and the owners, rather than negotiate to end their own lockout, offer garbage proposals and bullshit threats and say Fuck You.
Also, Calcaterra:
"Doing the math, that means that each team now gets $65 million+ a year from national TV deals alone. Just national deals, not local broadcast deals — which themselves average around $50 million a year — not ticket sales, not concession sales, not sponsorships, not mech sales, and not revenue sharing checks from other teams. Just the national TV deals.
In 2021, meanwhile, the Marlins had an end-of-year payroll of $60.8 million, the Orioles had a were at $59 million, the Guardians were at $53 million and the Pirates were at $50.3 million. Which means they covered player payroll — by far their largest expense — even before a single ticket, hat, or hot dog was sold. With all of the other revenue streams they were, quite obviously, MASSIVELY profitable. And the same goes for the teams with higher payrolls.
Worth remembering the next time some owner cries poor."
* * *
MLB's new "Friday Night Baseball" streaming deal with Apple will put more previously watchable games behind a paywall. FNB will be a weekly doubleheader available only on Apple TV+. MLB gets more $$$ in rights fees, Apple gets sports content, and fans get shit on. . . . But, sure, blame the players . . .
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