S5Dewey

I think my position on WAR has been pretty well documented.

Kids are "a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling." -J. Buffett

Now, that's just stupid. :-( As someone said elsewhere, pick a number, any number, between the two positions. Publicly call it a compromise, shake on it and call it a day.

My son played soccer in HS. As part of their Phys Ed. program everyone in the school had to participate in a fitness evaluation. Every member of the soccer teams (both genders) beat every member of the football team in a timed 2-mile run.

Post of the day, right there!!

You're right. This is becoming a PR contest where both sides are trying to "demonize" the other to gain public favor. It's also worth mentioning that the owners have the upper hand in this discussion because we know how much money the players make but we have no idea how much the owners are making. Negotiations should never go public. Going public is an attempt to garner public support for one side of the negotiations while the public has no real significant financial stake in the outcome.

Gee, I wish I'd thought of THAT!

If Manfred's goal is to piss the players off in the middle of a negotiations this is the way to go about it. This is the kind of action that could very well bleed over into the next CBA. People don't forget being ignored.

I think this^^ is what's making me think the owners don't actually want to reach an agreement. When someone is bargaining in good faith they take what's already agreed on as a basic skeleton and then move on to flesh it out. Both sides make a few concessions along the way until both sides (individually) decide they want to come to an agreement. To oversimplify it, it then becomes, "OK, I can do this if you can do that", and "I can give you this but I need that in return" and after a few back-and-forths agreement is reached. I say it's an oversimplification because negotiations isn't simply exchanging offers, it's listening to what the other party wants and respecting that. The players have said very loudly what they want - an abbreviated schedule with prorated pay - and the owners aren't listening. Instead the owners are still in the 'throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks" portion of negotiations. The're stalling. At this point I have to think that the holdup is more over principle than money. IMO there is some other issue in there that we don't know about that is holding things up. As someone once said, "Disputes over money have a way of getting settled but disputes over principle can go on for a long time."

But is the offer of a 114 game season ending October 31 unreasonable? That's 114 games/dates in 123 days. If you figure in two DH's/month for each team you're down to 106 games/dates in 123 days. Do away with a schedule that requires teams to cross the Mississippi (figuratively speaking), do away with the AS game, agree to have the WS in warmer climates, and it's very do-able. The thing we don't know is what the owner's sticking points are. Does it have to do with salaries? Does it have to do with the proposed player's right to opt-out? Sometimes the devil really IS in the details. We don't know and the owners (rightfully) aren't telling. Is it something else? Is this the owners feeling out the union's position on the next CBA? There's often a lot more that goes into negotiations than what's on the table. That's why things get done in the last four hours of negotiations. When an agreement gets close and they're down to the sticking points neither side wants to give up what they've already gotten so those sticking points become more negotiable. IMO the owners aren't as ready to end it and get on to baseball as the players are. If the owners wanted to end it they'd be working within the parameters of what the Union has offered rather than throwing out completely new proposals every time they meet. Those just muddy the waters.

This is what owners DO in the name of saving money. It's my understanding that when they start negotiating salaries with individual players they have a binder full of stats telling the player how terrible he is. I've been known to complete negotiations thinking, "If the membership knew the s*** we have to go through to get a decent contract they'd strike, just on general principles". Your post here that I replied to is exactly why neither side should be leaking the goings-on. The negotiators know that it's all a part of 'the game' but those outside the negotiations don't realize that.

I've done some of that contract negotiating thing as a part of my labor union and one of the 'ground rules' of our negotiations was that there would be no leaks to anyone about the ongoing discussions. Unfortunately in this case both sides are acting like sieves leaking everything that is said. That's not productive because it gets the public involved and the public has no real stake in the negotiations. What needs to happen is for both parties to get locked into a room and agree to not leave until something gets hammered out. Here's what i've learned. 1) Nothing gets done until both sides decide they want to get it done. That's when #2 kicks in: 2) More gets done in the last four hours of negotiations than has gotten done in the past four weeks. I can't have an opinion as to whether it's the owners or the players who are holding things up because I don't have access to the owner's balance sheets. However, it does appear that the players are making some pretty realistic moves in an attempt to get back to baseball.

I agree that it's not an easy life for the players but being paid millions of dollars to do it takes a lot of the sting out of it. However, I have to agree with Kimmie. If, say, Michael Chavis had said what Pillar said I'd have to agree with him. When Kevin Pillar who has made $11MM over nine years says it it doesn't ring quite as true. A legitimate question is why the ones who are expressing their frustration are the 35% of the players who make over $1MM while the other 65% are remaining relatively quiet? Could it be as Jerry Maguire said, "Follow the money"?

IMO the bigger issue is the message the players and owners are sending to the public and fans in particular. That message is, "We're a bunch of millionaires playing baseball and a bunch of multi-millionaires (or in some cases billionaires) who own the teams and we are so greedy that we're unwilling to come to a reasonable compromise so we can continue to provide entertainment to you folks who aren't nearly as well off as we are." Posters here don't represent the general public since we're rabid baseball fans, and we're sick of it. How well do you think this is playing with the casual fan? MLB should be very careful. They may very well be killing this goose that keeps laying golden eggs.

Promise?

Ya know what? I was away from this site for a while and now I know why. This is a fairly small sandbox and we've had a long standing policy of not entering into political discussions for the sake of avoiding ******** just like what's going on now. I appreciate and recognize your right to free speech. You have every legal right to climb up on your soapbox and spew whatever you want if you don't care about maintaining this forum as a place where people can go to get away from political...again.. ********. Frankly, your, "I have a legal right...." rings about as soundly to me as, "I have a legal right to not wear a face covering". Ya, you do, as long as you don't mind being a first-class...... ah.. whatever.

So.. are you trying to say that these Sabermetrics make baseball "about as much fun as doing your taxes" for you?

No great change there! Most of his posts got either an asterisk or an eye-roll from me for years.

I happened to be there for that. It was Patriot's day and I was sitting in the grandstand looking straight down the 3rd baseline. When the whole pizza thing happened not many people in the stands (me included) knew what had happened, only that there was some kind of a skirmish near the jut-out down the 3B line. It was only after we got back to the hotel and turned on the TV that I was able to see what happened. That's one disadvantage to being at a game - when something unusual happens you often times don't know about it until later.

Only to remind people how fruitless this discussion is. My best guess is that everyone is so firmly entrenched in their belief on this topic that no amount of evidence would make them even consider that they are (gasp!) wrong about clutch. Again Copied and pasted from a previous post: ...do you have any idea how far away "never" is? Because that's how long it will be before you get the stat geeks here to agree with us. It's a battle you cannot win here although most people* who have played the game and been in pressure situations will agree that "clutch" exists. So, good luck with this topic. I gave up on it a long time ago recognizing that people will believe whatever their biases lead them to believe. :D

Copied and pasted from a previous post: ...do you have any idea how far away "never" is? Because that's how long it will be before you get the stat geeks here to agree with us. It's a battle you cannot win here although most people* who have played the game and been in pressure situations will agree that "clutch" exists. *most people being virtually everyone whom I've ever played competitive sports with. When I tell them that I'm in an ongoing debate over whether clutch exists they just roll their eyes and say, "Of course it exists". So, good luck with this topic. I gave up on it a long time ago recognizing that people will believe whatever their biases lead them to believe.

We can't define it because "clutch" is in the mind of the player. It's stepping up to the plate and knowing (more than usual) that it's important that you get a hit in this situation. It's the ability and mindset to throw a strike to home plate from 375' when a runner is breaking for home. In basketball it's the ability to drain that 22'-er as the gun is going off. It's the ability to 'turn it up' when you think you have to. The situations can be entirely different. It's easy to say that when you're at bat and your team is down by a run late in the game that it's a clutch situation. However, one can also want to 'turn it up' when the pitcher threw one high and tight in the most recent AB and the hitter wants to show the pitcher up a bit. Or when the hitter in front of you gets walked to get to YOU. Or when you just bet someone in the dugout $100 that you can get a hit off this guy. We can't define clutch because clutch is in the mind of the player.

Yep. But do you have any idea how far away "never" is? Because that's how long it will be before you get the stat geeks here to agree with us. It's a battle you cannot win here although most people* who have played the game and been in pressure situations will agree that "clutch" exists. *most people being virtually everyone whom I've ever played competitive sports with. When I tell them that I'm in an ongoing debate over whether clutch exists they just roll their eyes and say, "Of course it exists". So, good luck with this topic. I gave up on it a long time ago recognizing that people will believe whatever their biases lead them to believe.

???

I agree. As a matter of comparison, a couple of years ago a ST game was rained out and the ticket money for that game was immediately returned to my credit card. I can say this for sure... If they decide to hold more ST games and then try to make the March tickets valid for the later games with no refunds available I'm going to be a very unhappy camper!