notin

Is this suddenly news?

No Angry Grandpa Rambling, please…

Exactly. Now think of all of those taxes those poor owners have to cheat their way out of paying!?! Do you know how tough on them that is?

I think you have left out that complaining one is underpaid (for any job) is an American tradition that rivals hot dogs and apple pie. The Founding Fathers would have given us that as an inalienable right, but they knew it was impossible to take away. It’s the American Way to stand with the underpaid! Come join us and be a Patriot…

Maybe he just doesn’t know how to read calendar. We know he doesn’t know how to run a baseball league or negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. I doubt the list of things he doesn’t know how to do stops there…

I remember an interview with Rob Manfred back when the Guardians (now Guardians) had to play some snowed out make up games in a neutral site. The question was asked “why not just start the season in the warmer cities?” And Manfred responded that April was the best month and no team wanted to give up April home games…

Actually April is typically MLBs best month, since no one is eliminated yet. It’s why we still have the occasional snowed out game. Teams in colder climates don’t want to give up the April gates…

And they’ve done it without stoppages since. I’m rapidly becoming seriously anti-owner. And now Cubs’ owner Tom Ricketts is looking to purchase an English football (re: soccer) team currently owned by a Russian oligarch. Apparently Ricketts is dissatisfied by the prospect of having only one team he doesn’t want to pay for…

A new wrinkle requires a new strategy. The league shouldn’t maintain rules to accommodate a couple teams

I guess their $8bill revenue fooled me…

No. It’s the one several of them try repeatedly with the same deadend results year after year…

One thing the NBA does that maybe MLB needs to consider is equalizing the money in trades. It makes Deadline Firesales (aka “we’re rebuilding!”) more difficult since you have to take money back anyway, so teams wouldn’t just dump players for no reason but to save cash, and it increases the value of expiring contracts..

But as I pointed out, the competition is hardly balanced in the NBA. The Lakers have had multiple great runs in the past 40 years, while the Sacramento Kings haven’t had any. And the NBA does hane minor leagues - actually often called developmental leagues, but I’m not really sure how this factors into competitive balance. In fact, the NBA championship winner almost always comes from a very short list of teams, and the number of teams with no rings in the past 50 years is far greater on the NBA. Not to mention their contracts are insane compared to MLB, with several players making in excess of $40mill annually. Yet their small market teams still survive and fare better than those in MLB…

In fact, one could (and should) argue competitive balance is far worse in the NBA, considering that from 1984 through 2018, only 9 different teams won a title. In that same stretch, 20 different teams won a World Series…

The NFL has the advantage of a very short season, allowing them to hype every single game and monopolize Sunday afternoons. Really that’s maybe it. But what advantage does the NBA, which has a lengthy schedule involving multiple games a week and has numerous teams in “small market” cities like Portland and Charlotte that just don’t have the same competitive issues as MLB? I don’t get your reasons here…

They are a crapshoot when you get in. But when you own the Pirates and have a payroll of non-competitive players whose aggregate payroll is less than your share of competitive balance revenue, you'r e just intentionally producing a flop and cashing in on it. These small market owners have been all but proudly announcing this all through the negotiations. "Don't raise the tax limits and cut into the revenue I get without having to do anything!!"

And promote who? You need a team to replace them in MLB. It works in English soccer leagues because they have multiple professional leagues not affiliated with each other in any respect. It might work in Japan, where struggling NPB teams get sent to the lesser PCL (do they do thuis already? I don't know.) But MLB is not set up for this with another competitive league. Sending the Pirates to the PCL (their team plays in the Inetnatonal League I believe) is really just sending them to thier room without any dinner for a season. And then what do you do when they dominate the PCL, which they will? Send them back to MLB and punish someone else?

THe problem with trying to add relegation into MLB is that there is no "lower league" to bring teams up from. The minor leagues are all affiliated with the MLB teams they would be replacing. If the Pirates and Tigers were to be relagated, where do they go? CAn't send them to AAA. The Pirates already frequently bring up their AAA team to play in MLB as it is. So where? The Atlantic League? The Nothern League? And MLB sees the debuts of the Kentucky Wild Health Genomes and the Lake County Corndogs? (Yes, mvp78, I did use this as an opportunity to mention the Wild Health Genomes again.)

The Competitive Balance Tax has been an abject failure in its goal to produce more balance on the playing field. It's turned numerous owners into Max Bialystock, realizing they can make more money by producing a flop than producing a hit...

Why can't you compare MLB to the NBA or the NFL? The Walmart/KMart analogy falls short on me. Those are rival businesses competing for your retail dollar. If KMart disappears (which they did), Walmart can still continue (which they are doing). If Amazon wipes out Walmart and every other retailer (which they are trying to do), Amazon won't disappear in the aftermath. But MLB needs multiple teams to produce a product. If 29 MLB teams collapse, and only, say, the Baltimore Orioles survive as the last remaining MLB team, they won't enjoy the same monopoly Amazon is striving for. Who are they going to play? Who outside of Baltimore will care? MLB is one business competing for your entertainment dollar. It's a singular corporation, not 30 little corporations. And there are multiple corporations that have a heavily profitable division or divisions carrying several lesser profitable ones. The competition for the Red Sox isn't the Yankees. It's Netflix. It's HBO. It's MGM. It's the NBA. It's the NFL for part of the year. Heck, it's Jelle's Marble Runs if that spins your wheels. It's not other baseball teams; it's any other source that can divert your attention and ultimately your money elsewhere where you might find entertainment and satisfaction...

The really weird part is how many people think the players are on strike and therefore being greedy. It’s kind of amazing how it drifts that way…

Of course they’re not a big issue. The only teams they affect are the ones that don’t care about them…

Or that

I think it is moving that way somewhat, and such owner-centric comments are somewhat relevant, maybe tangentially. But I think maintaining the baseball theme has to be somewhat essential around here, and therefore at a minimum they would benefit from some context…

The CBA really needs a clause that if your payroll is below your allocation from revenue sharing for X consecutive seasons, you should not be eligible to receive revenue sharing.