Baseball Chat

[BullNBear52]

The players are starting to figure it out which might mean we're heading for a lockout. Teams keep them down on the farm longer and longer now and they only get one bite of the apple at the end of their career.

Crying poverty won't work this time around for MLB.


https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-cba-negotiations-seven-important-questions-as-baseball-work-stoppage-appears-likely-this-winter/

Priority No. 1 will be increasing the players' share of the money the league takes in, but that will not be easily accomplished. Teams' increasing reliance on young, cost- and team-controlled talent has cascaded through other markets for talent and depressed all but the top-most wages. Given recent circumstances, the best way to lift all boats is probably to press to make younger players more fairly compensated. That means significantly raising the minimum salary (over and above the usual minimum salary increases that accompany a new CBA) and perhaps lowering the service-time threshold for arbitration and free agency. None of that happens without significant give-backs or a strike. The union, frankly, is running out of paths to give away the rights of draftees and minor leaguers, so perhaps their play -- cynical though it may be -- is to dangle approval of an international draft. If that's not enough to lead a package of exchange concessions, then a strike is the likely way forward.