Collusion

[MAGA]

Well said Momo

[misterManager]

Momo, fair enough. I see your side and can appreciate that. I think you may underestimate the coming strife, is all I'd say. I went on a tangent on Ken Rosenthal's Twitter timeline when he said he didn't expect Lynn to make 100M in free agency. I got plenty of sympathizers who thought he was crazy to peg Lynn well below 100M. And now we're looking at even Rosenthal overshooting the mark.

The players who control the union are used to using certain measuring sticks, and when only a handful of them are getting the money that used to be tossed around to the guys of the last decade like CJ Wilson or Jordan Zimmerman or whomever else, I really just don't see a lot of room for reasonable talk from the two sides.

I don't know why I keep bringing up Lance Lynn either, besides the fact that he seems to be a horse that any team would have been overjoyed to have for a handful of reasonably priced seasons, historically. It just seems a bit surreal to me on some level, but then again it's probably Cardinal/player fandom or something clouding my vision there....

[Momo]

Well said Momo

Appreciate it.

Momo, fair enough. I see your side and can appreciate that. I think you may underestimate the coming strife, is all I'd say. I went on a tangent on Ken Rosenthal's Twitter timeline when he said he didn't expect Lynn to make 100M in free agency. I got plenty of sympathizers who thought he was crazy to peg Lynn well below 100M. And now we're looking at even Rosenthal overshooting the mark.

The players who control the union are used to using certain measuring sticks, and when only a handful of them are getting the money that used to be tossed around to the guys of the last decade like CJ Wilson or Jordan Zimmerman or whomever else, I really just don't see a lot of room for reasonable talk from the two sides.

I don't know why I keep bringing up Lance Lynn either, besides the fact that he seems to be a horse that any team would have been overjoyed to have for a handful of reasonably priced seasons, historically. It just seems a bit surreal to me on some level, but then again it's probably Cardinal/player fandom or something clouding my vision there....

Man, I get it, strife probably is coming. Maybe clubs will go a little money crazy next year when/after the Machado/Kershaw/Harper chips fall. But obviously, there's a good chance that the next CBA discussion could even lead to a lockout. That sucks, and clearly no one wants that to happen.

My point in all of this has simply been that while the owners are largely to blame in this (or pretty much any) salary issue, it has been at the very least exacerbated by the players' union not fighting for anything of value. Honestly, they haven't gotten much of value for probably decades now.

Look, the reality is that in terms of value, the system needs to be changed somehow so that Lynn would have been getting paid even earlier in his career. From 2011 to 2014, he put up WAR totals of 0.5, 2.8, 3.7 and 3.4. That's a guy who was pitching as an All-Star stud by his second year in the League (and who was even a World Series winner!). And how much did he make during those four early years? $414,000, $482,000, $513,000 and $535,000. Before you even begin to talk about cutting the length of service time to get guys into arbitration and free agency earlier (all of which are hugely important!), that is a ridiculous minimum salary.

As a brief aside, just to make a point about the MLBPA again, here are the minimum salaries they negotiated in the last 2016 CBA.

• 2017: $535,000
• 2018: $545,000
• 2019: $555,000
• 2020 and 2021: Cost of living increases only

Are you kidding me? They fought for mere $10,000 increases per year, and then agreed to some lame cost of living increase for 2020 and 2021? This is why they are a joke, and why I honestly have a lot of disdain for the union. They should have shot for over $1.5 million, and possibly settled around $1 million.

But back to Lynn. Baseball is a young man's game. Always has been, except for that steroid era we went through. But now Lance Lynn is a 30 year old, theoretically on the downswing of the aging curve, and is a post-TJ player to boot (who also notably looked pretty rough in the post-TJ year). It just doesn't make sense. Teams pay you the minimum for three years, arbitrate for three or four, all while you're producing your peak value, and then players are supposed to get paid more in free agency for their decline years? Is it really any wonder that teams are more interested in trying out some 25 year old fireballer from their own system that they can pay $500k instead of paying Lynn something like over $10,000,000 a year? Is it any wonder that teams are more interested in trying an underpriced international star they just signed from Latin America at a cutthroat rate because the MLBPA has negotiated a soft cap with very harsh penalties on international spending?

Nah, it's not.

Because the system simply doesn't add up. It's broken, and it needs to be fixed.

[Jocephus]

remove your appreciation

[pioneer98]

MLB teams should be owned by municipalities if not nationalized. We can still pay the players millions and make them rich (although maybe a bit less rich than they are now, since they'd technically be public employees). All the profits become a public good and we can do whatever we want with them. No more owners threatening to relocate a team unless X millions of tax dollars are extracted. Is this far fetched? The highest paid public employee in all but a couple states is already a football coach or a basketball coach.

[Swirls]

MLB teams should be owned by municipalities if not nationalized. We can still pay the players millions and make them rich (although maybe a bit less rich than they are now, since they'd technically be public employees). All the profits become a public good and we can do whatever we want with them. No more owners threatening to relocate a team unless X millions of tax dollars are extracted. Is this far fetched? The highest paid public employee in all but a couple states is already a football coach or a basketball coach.

So make MLB teams owned by the city? Like the Green Bay Packers?

[Jocephus]

interesting idea. maybe create more civic pride and/or maybe keep local talent on local teams. fun to think about but obviously would never happen.

[MrCrowesGarden]

MLB teams should be owned by municipalities if not nationalized. We can still pay the players millions and make them rich (although maybe a bit less rich than they are now, since they'd technically be public employees). All the profits become a public good and we can do whatever we want with them. No more owners threatening to relocate a team unless X millions of tax dollars are extracted. Is this far fetched? The highest paid public employee in all but a couple states is already a football coach or a basketball coach.

http://www.double-birds.com/2017/01/12/ ... cardinals/