Question: how close to Spring Training do we need to get before FAs begin to crack and take high AAV, short-term deals, waiting for the next CBA in 2021?
Seriously, though: With the penalties of the luxury cap, these mega-Stanton/Zito deals are sucking the life out of teams. Eventually, teams are going to stop paying such long contracts to players. It appears that it is already happening. If the market for mega-deals is losing it's intrigue, more high AAV, short-term deals are going to happen. Fully-guaranteed contracts have far too many flaws.
Very simple. Yankees and Dodgers have embraced moneyball. While teams like A's use it to try to win more, Yankees and Dodgers use it to win like normal and spend less.
MLB and the PA need to fix a few things on the financial side, no doubt. If they are total idiots and want to kill the game, they'll have a work stoppage (again).
I agree on that. I hate for that to happen right in the middle of our title runs. It's a real momentum killer.
MLB attendance was down 4% last year. MLB blames it on the weather, but you have a team like Tampa closing their upper deck sections and will only have a capacity of 26,000. I think a work stoppage would be a huge mistake. The Astros are still recovering from the Comcast network debacle. Lots of fans forgot about them when they weren't on TV for a couple years. It's crazy they didn't crack 3 million fans after winning the World Series the year before.
Ticket prices cost too much these days, especially when you have 162 games per year, AND the quality/availability of games via the internet/tv is way up. MLB is still making a ton of revenue. Something needs to give.
We've been over this, the players literally have no leverage aside from a work stoppage. Teams have finally figured out long term deals far past 34 are terrible investments. The players are all to blame for this, and it's not even a discussion. They have stood beside this "whatever the market bears" mentality..yet have given away the rights of non MLB players without any assurances of more money being spent on current MLB players. They haven't gotten jack s**t of actual value yet... -They allowed a luxury tax to be put in place (effective salary cap). -Allowed MLB to institute slot values to take away earning potential of draftees -Allowed MLB to put limit on international signing bonuses -Never broached the prospect of livable wages for minor leaguers. -Never got team control reduced -Never got a floor penalty to go with the luxury tax. What do the players actually have to negotiate with? Draftees are conveniently slotted, and players are basically owned by the team for 8-10 seasons, most of their productive years. If MLB teams want to tank and spend no money, they can do that also. All the players can do is complain about how unfair it is, but this is what the market is bearing. My only hope is that the owners realize how dangerous a work stoppage is, and take away a year of MLB team control just to keep the product on the field, and the players will realize it's the best they can hope for right now and not press the issue. I have no faith in that happening though.
Its well known that the union sold out the prospects in order to keep what they had. As I mentioned in the Boras thread, it would be in both sides interest to allow a system where the club controlling team has to offer a multi-year extension to players who have met certain benchmarks (i.e. - the stars), or risk losing them to "early" free agency. Young players get big money earlier, and teams still get to keep/control their own homegrown players.
Young players getting big money earlier will almost certainly lead to older players getting less. While I think this should happen and is fair considering guys in their prime are worth more than when the same player ages, there will be push back. It would probably will need to be implemented in stages, otherwise, teams with older guys signed to long deals would be at a clear disadvantage and teams with lots of young talent could suddenly have to come up with big money to retain them.
Older players are already getting less. Why? Because teams would rather pay nothing for pre-arb or trade for arb-eligible players, vs. paying big free agent deals for 30+ year olds past their prime. Also, the type of extensions that the younger players are eligible for would be in the variety of deals that take them through their prime years, and in some cases past their prime. I expect plenty of opt-out clauses as well, giving them a chance to re-negotiate should market factor dictate higher average salaries within the life-span of their current deals. The only current players who get to test free agency in their true prime years are players who were promoted aggressively/earlier (Harpers, Correas). Guys like Springer have to consider extensions now or risk getting low-balled once they finally hit free agency.
While analytics certainly helps many players gain contracts, it also identifies elements of regression. Teams are more leery of giving out max contract to players potentially past their prime. This is one reason I think pitchers like Keuchel are having a tough time finding a home at a max deal. While baseball players are capable of playing for a much longer period of time then other sports like football and basketball, there definitely seems to be a trend toward the youth movement. A lot of this certainly has to do with the inexpensive price tag of the arbitration process.
read what longoria and all the other mlb players agree. judge/stanton/mcculers/baez and they know where this is headed. if you dont think there will be a work stoppage in the short future youre crazy. Owners need to WAKE THE FK UP.
owners are ranking in more money now then they ever have before while curtailing players salaries lol. The next work stoppage will be nasty
Revenue sharing, based on luxury tax violations, helped foster this mindset. Teams don't need to sell out stadiums to make money anymore. Media deals for MLB may be overvalued, but with every market having a "local sports only" channel, they'll always need live content to air in the dead summer months. Players don't have any leverage whatsoever right now. They're not going to get "more" money for older players. What they should bargain for is set max contracts that have to be offered earlier as extensions, or risk losing that player right then/there to free agency. Players also played a part in this as well. Advice from agents was always not to take the earlier extension that buys out some free agency years... and to wait. Keuchel was offered an extension after 2015 that he turned down. Altuve accepted his, in part because he had already accepted a below market deal that he actually would have gotten more money via arbitration. Players should take into account their age/prime years when making these decisions just as teams have already done so.
