A’s price hike reminder tickets aren’t related to payroll

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

During the lockout, if you looked in the Twitter mentions of any major MLB reporter pushing out updates on the negotiations between the league and the union, you would find fans complaining about how the players were greedy and it was going to cost families more to go to a baseball game because of them. This is simply not true: ticket prices and player salaries aren’t connected, even if they have both grown next to each other for some time now. And our most recent reminder of this fact is the way the Oakland A’s are currently operating: by selling off much of what isn’t nailed down to other teams, and then raising ticket prices for the 2022 season, anyway.

SF Gate’s Alex Espinoza wrote a story on this earlier in the week:

Continue reading “A’s price hike reminder tickets aren’t related to payroll”

Bernie Sanders threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption, and an old task force better support that

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

A little over one year ago, I wrote about how it’s too late for the United States Congress to save Minor League Baseball like some of its members had hoped to prior to MLB’s disaffiliation of dozens of teams, but that there was still time to punish the league for their monopolistic actions. The punishment that would work best was and is the removal of MLB’s antitrust exemption, the existence of which allowed them to get away with shrinking the minors without anything stopping them from doing so in the first place.

While there was basically silence on the issue coming from Congress from the time I wrote that last February until now… well, now is a little different, because Senator Bernie Sanders is making the removal of MLB’s antitrust exemption a priority. Legislation has been introduced, and as Sanders explained on HBO’s Real Sports, it’s not just because of MLB’s removal of 40 minor-league clubs, but also the owner-imposed lockout that was clearly designed to just break the union and gain further control and power over the players.

Continue reading “Bernie Sanders threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption, and an old task force better support that”

MLB would definitely shrink the minors again

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

In reaction to the news that Major League Baseball has already been found to owe damages to minor-league players thanks to the class action Senne v. MLB suit, Maury Brown reported that we could see more MiLB clubs “dissolve” as a result of these increased costs:

In total, the increased cost with the minor leagues has raised concerns – both within MLB, and with some minor league owners – that additional contraction of minor league teams might take place when the current agreement between MLB and MiLB expires.

In speaking to several minor league owners, and sources within Major League Baseball, the idea that the number of affiliated teams could drop further is not being denied. When pressed in a meeting between minor league owners and MLB as to whether the number of teams could drop when the current agreement expires in 2030, Major League Baseball would not commit to it.

Continue reading “MLB would definitely shrink the minors again”

Minor leaguers secure another win in Senne v. MLB

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

The class action lawsuit, Senne v. MLB, has yet to actually go to trial — that won’t happen until June 1 — but the Senne side representing minor-league players and fighting for back pay has already racked up a few wins against the league. They won class action status in the first place in August of 2019, and had it upheld on appeal, too, in both the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court. The latest W comes by way of a federal judge who declared that minor-league players are year-round employees, and are owed damages for not being classified that way in the past.

The Athletic’s Evan Drellich reported the news on Tuesday night, and included info on Judge Joseph Spero’s decision:

Continue reading “Minor leaguers secure another win in Senne v. MLB”

MLB’s labor dispute is over. MLB’s labor dispute will never end.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but labor peace is a lie. A new collective bargaining agreement shouldn’t be considered the dawn of an era of peace, but more like a temporary ceasefire, until the next escalation brings the two sides to full-blown conflict once more. That’s not the kind of verbiage you’ll hear from either side — MLB because, like any monopolistic power, likes to pretend they aren’t the aggressors, and the Players Association because they have to live side-by-side with those aggressors until the next time. If you never take a step back, and are always publicly fighting, you’ll simply fatigue fans and the media who stir them up. Given that Thursday’s new CBA marks the end of a dispute that began essentially the moment MLB started jumping through the loopholes of the previous agreement, well… it’s time to quietly plan for 2027, and save the loud parts for later.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Players Association won a stunning victory with the new agreement, but considering they were fighting from underneath the entire time — the damage from the 2011 and 2016 CBAs, especially, had them coming into this bout far from at their best — reaching a time-limit draw with the league is still somewhat remarkable. What matters now — or, later, really — is what happens in 2027.

Continue reading “MLB’s labor dispute is over. MLB’s labor dispute will never end.”

Bargaining is ongoing, but a 14-team postseason might be dead

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

There is little point in discussing the reports on the collective bargaining tax threshold at this particular moment, as this is being written during an overnight pause in negotiations between MLB and the MLBPA — the PA is speaking to its board in the morning before submitting a counter to MLB’s late-night offer. What did pop out that seems like it could stick, though, is that the league seems to have finally given up on an expanded postseason model that includes 14 teams.

Now, nothing is definite at this stage: the league could request to go back to 14 teams in their proposals, just like the PA did when they re-raised the pre-arbitration bonus pool amount to $115 million after making changes elsewhere. But the fact that MLB was willing to even entertain the idea of sticking with just 12 teams is a bit of positive news, for those who felt further expansion — unwelcome expansion — was an inevitability.

Continue reading “Bargaining is ongoing, but a 14-team postseason might be dead”

If MLB’s owners wanted a deal, they have a funny way of showing it

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

It should have been obvious that Major League Baseball and the Players Association were not close to a deal on Monday night. Still, though, fans can hardly be blamed for letting their optimism be abused by league sources and overly credulous media members; after all, they just wanted to watch some baseball when they expected to be able to watch some baseball, and belief that a deal was imminent helped to keep that particular dream alive.

The league leaned on their favorite reliable mouthpieces and also the likes of Bob Nightengale, who has, let’s say, something of a reputation for hurrying information out on Twitter without vetting it as much as it should be, in a way that isn’t necessarily reflected in his longer form published work, in order to inflate this sense that a deal was imminent — the idea, as was more plainly revealed the next afternoon, was that the league wanted to be able to act as if a deal was close until the players decided to instead face God and walk backwards into hell.

Continue reading “If MLB’s owners wanted a deal, they have a funny way of showing it”

Understanding 1994, the owners’ leverage, and a shift in media tone

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

The benefit of assuming that there would be no deal by the time MLB’s self-imposed bargaining deadline passed is that, now that there is officially no deal and the first two series of the 2022 season have been canceled, there is less catching up to do around these parts than elsewhere. The downside to that level of preparedness is that “where to begin?” in a post-cancelation world is a much more open question: we’ve got much to think about.

Let’s start simple: by recapping a bit. On Monday, Baseball Prospectus ran a feature of mine titled “1994 Explains What ‘Labor Peace’ Never Could,” with the idea behind it being that the owners’ goals in 1994, and how those goals ended up playing out, are far more instructive to us in the present than the decades of “labor peace” are. You can’t think about what’s happening now in terms of how CBAs were negotiated in 2016, or 2011, or even in the aughts. The owners have a goal here, and it’s to crush the union. That, to them, is the goal. It’s the only “fair” outcome in their minds, and anything less is worth sacrificing season to avoid.

Continue reading “Understanding 1994, the owners’ leverage, and a shift in media tone”

It seems unlikely the 2022 MLB season will be 162 games long

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Let’s rewind for a second, to one week ago. Last Friday, I wrote about how the Players Association had issued an ultimatum to MLB, saying there would be no expanded postseason in 2022 without a full 162-game schedule and full payment for those games. The conclusion:

The union is saying, loud and clear, that they want to play 162 games. Whether they want to play them because they want their full salaries isn’t quite immaterial, but it’s not the most significant point to draw from the declaration. The union is separating itself even further from the idea that it has anything to do with the threat that the season will not start on time. We’ll see if it’s all as convincing and/or panic-inducing to the league as the “when and where” strategy of 2020 was, but for now, we do know that there are plans to potentially meet for bargaining every day next week in order to sort things out before MLB’s imposed “the season won’t start on time if we come to an agreement after this” date of February 28.

Continue reading “It seems unlikely the 2022 MLB season will be 162 games long”

Bargaining isn’t always about midpoints

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

​I understand the impulse to think that collective bargaining is always a series of back-and-forth movements from your position, until you end up in a midpoint that neither side is satisfied with. “That’s how you know it’s a good deal,” people will say. That can be true, sure, but it is not a hard-and-fast rule. Sometimes two sides are asking for two very different things, and simply cutting the baby in half isn’t a solution.

Take the pre-arbitration bonus pool proposals between MLB and the Players Association, for instance. MLB is not opposed to the existence of a pre-arb pool, but they are completely against the specific instance of it that the union is pushing for. The owners want a small central fund that all 30 teams would plop what does not amount to much more than a league-minimum salary into, and then those funds would be dispersed 30 ways among the top pre-arb players. The owners don’t want to give the players anything, not really, but if it costs all of $20 million in 2022 to keep anyone from being able to say the owners haven’t moved on anything, well, that’s $20 million well spent, since it could save them far more than $20 million elsewhere if public pressure turns on the players.

Continue reading “Bargaining isn’t always about midpoints”