BREAKING: Rob Manfred tells ESPN he is less confident there will be a 2020 season; MLB says unless MLBPA waives any legal claims against the league, there will be no 2020 season

[Pancake Bear]

Just now, Don said:

The players and owners had an agreement in March. The billionaires are not willing to honor that agreement because they don't want to lose money. The greed rests with the owners and not the players. The players simply want the agreement from March to be honored.

Well, I mean, both sides are greedy. But one side has a mutual decided on agreement on their side, while the other side just has a bad case of the gimmies.

[Inside Pitch]

1 minute ago, Don said:

The players and owners had an agreement in March. The billionaires are not willing to honor that agreement because they don't want to lose money. The greed rests with the owners and not the players. The players simply want the agreement from March to be honored.

Its not even that they don't want to lose money -- they don't want to not make the same profit that have in previous years....   Meanwhile the players have already agreed they wouldn't be paid for games they didn't play.   

[Pancake Bear]

1 minute ago, Inside Pitch said:

This is exactly where I am -- have always been fully in support of the owners, I was too young to have an opinion for the early stoppages and by the time collusion had come and gone the owners had seemingly learned their lessons and were playing it straight.   Not this batch, they have done a 180 and turned ugly.

I don't know that past stoppages have been this black and white obvious. Based on the CBA, the owners - unlike other leagues - take on the risk and receive the benefits. To date, that has worked out exceedingly well for them. Now that it isn't, they want to not only take what the players gave up (pay for all games not played), they want more (a significant reduction of pay for games played). And now that they realize they're going to lose a grievance for negotiating in bad faith so they hold the season hostage to try to strong arm the players into playing ball.

It isn't entirely certain whether the owners would lose money with full pro rated salaries at, say, 82 games, because they won't reveal their financials. But honestly, that isn't the players' problem because the owners agreed to the effing CBA that says they bear the burden of both gains and losses! The players haven't been seeing the gains because the owners haven't been raising salaries at the level that the owners have been realizing gains.

It's a total joke, and too many fans are laughing when they should be holding the league responsible for screwing the fans over. The players shouldn't give in because, even if there is no baseball in 2020, once they do, not only will they be letting the owners get away with breaching the CBA, but they'll also be setting a bad precedent for negotiations of the next CBA (post-2021). They shouldn't do that.

[Lhalo]

26 minutes ago, ScottT said:

I'm not.

F them all.

[beatlesrule]

16 minutes ago, Don said:

The players and owners had an agreement in March. The billionaires are not willing to honor that agreement because they don't want to lose money. The greed rests with the owners and not the players. The players simply want the agreement from March to be honored.

You just missed my edited post. I stated that they need to go to court tomorrow and get that settled and whichever side is right automatically concedes and the season can start.

[Don]

3 minutes ago, Pancake Bear said:

I don't know that past stoppages have been this black and white obvious. Based on the CBA, the owners - unlike other leagues - take on the risk and receive the benefits. To date, that has worked out exceedingly well for them. Now that it isn't, they want to not only take what the players gave up (pay for all games not played), they want more (a significant reduction of pay for games played). And now that they realize they're going to lose a grievance for negotiating in bad faith so they hold the season hostage to try to strong arm the players into playing ball.

It isn't entirely certain whether the owners would lose money with full pro rated salaries at, say, 82 games, because they won't reveal their financials. But honestly, that isn't the players' problem because the owners agreed to the effing CBA that says they bear the burden of both gains and losses! The players haven't been seeing the gains because the owners haven't been raising salaries at the level that the owners have been realizing gains.

It's a total joke, and too many fans are laughing when they should be holding the league responsible for screwing the fans over. The players shouldn't give in because, even if there is no baseball in 2020, once they do, not only will they be letting the owners get away with breaching the CBA, but they'll also be setting a bad precedent for negotiations of the next CBA (post-2021). They shouldn't do that.

There's another point to this that Dallas Braden made the other day... There's a huge opportunity cost that the players take on when it comes to risking the loss of a season, and that's simply because of physiology. Every player would be losing a year in their life that their body is in playing shape and capable of generating the kind of revenue that a professional athlete can. A guy that was 30 this April will not be 30 next April. The owners don't really have that timeline imposed on them by anything other than, well, death.

[Don]

1 minute ago, beatlesrule said:

You just missed my edited post. I stated that they need to go to court tomorrow and get that settled and whichever side is right automatically concedes and the season can start.

That would be awesome. It just seems that legal stuff like that usually doesn't move that quickly. Which means it'll probably have to be settled sometime later. And the owners now are basically asking the players to give up their right to do that too.

[aznhockeyguy]

3 minutes ago, beatlesrule said:

You just missed my edited post. I stated that they need to go to court tomorrow and get that settled and whichever side is right automatically concedes and the season can start.

Do you know how courts work?  You just can't walk in and get a judge to see your case the next day.   It'll take months if you're lucky.  MLB and the MLBPA don't have that kind of time for the 2020 season. 

[Stradling]

Hey, I ask this question not to absolve Manfred of blame but just as a thought.  Do you think Manfred is sick of the position ownership has put him in?  He obviously works for the owners, but at the same time he took a job with I’m sure the right intentions.  Now because of this ownership directive, it puts him in a lousy position.  Once again, it is his responsibility to get the owners to see the big picture, but he has nothing to gain from this current situation at all.  I’ve seen tweets today talking about how this is his comfort zone, battling it out to win.  I have also heard Ryan Spillborg talk about how amazing it was to see him work and how he could juggle so many things at one time.  Just curious if any of you have considered he isn’t much more than the fall guy.  

[Inside Pitch]

1 minute ago, Stradling said:

Hey, I ask this question not to absolve Manfred of blame but just as a thought.  Do you think Manfred is sick of the position ownership has put him in?  He obviously works for the owners, but at the same time he took a job with I’m sure the right intentions.  Now because of this ownership directive, it puts him in a lousy position.  Once again, it is his responsibility to get the owners to see the big picture, but he has nothing to gain from this current situation at all.  I’ve seen tweets today talking about how this is his comfort zone, battling it out to win.  I have also heard Ryan Spillborg talk about how amazing it was to see him work and how he could juggle so many things at one time.  Just curious if any of you have considered he isn’t much more than the fall guy.  

Dude makes 11 mil a year as the commish -- I don't think he's ready to walk away from that yet.

Everyone knows he's the owner's mouthpiece so really... until this, all he had to do was smile and repeat whatever the owners told him to say.   The only real flak he got was from the players union and again, everyone understood he was the owner's boy.  Things seem to have done a hard 180 the last couple of days since the details of the March 26th agreement got out and the players stop fighting.... pretty much every beat writer I've seen has outed the owners as being 100% responsible for this, well everyone except Heyman.

Never seen the media be so universally in the player's camp.

[AngelsLakersFan]

40 minutes ago, Pancake Bear said:

Bless your heart.

Some people also have presuppositions they can't get past. Facts and data are meaningless. Personally, I've never been reflexively pro-players. I tend to lean pro-owner, but this whole debacle has been a gigantic mess - and it's been mostly from the owners side. For once, I have few complaints about the players side. Except Tony Clark. F that guy.

I'm generally pretty pro player. Most of that has come from recent issues in which I haven't felt like the players' representation has done enough for non-star members. At the same time owners have stood by and allowed the state of the game to start to rot all in the name of additional short term profits. I think there is room for the players to compromise but they have lost at every step of the way over the last several years. Ownership has gotten used to getting their way and this is the result.

[AngelsLakersFan]

46 minutes ago, Don said:

The players and owners had an agreement in March. The billionaires are not willing to honor that agreement because they don't want to lose money. The greed rests with the owners and not the players. The players simply want the agreement from March to be honored.

I think it's a little more complex than that, and I think it's important to once again reiterate that the owners are not losing money. SOME owners may be losing money if the season eclipses 50 games with no fans in attendance.

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

I hope you guys are excited to watch Manfred tonight on ESPN's "Getting Back To Playing Sports" special with league commissioners! 

No joke... I wonder if he bails.

The country gets to see why his true gloss is ManlessFred.

[Don]

7 minutes ago, Stradling said:

Hey, I ask this question not to absolve Manfred of blame but just as a thought.  Do you think Manfred is sick of the position ownership has put him in?  He obviously works for the owners, but at the same time he took a job with I’m sure the right intentions.  Now because of this ownership directive, it puts him in a lousy position.  Once again, it is his responsibility to get the owners to see the big picture, but he has nothing to gain from this current situation at all.  I’ve seen tweets today talking about how this is his comfort zone, battling it out to win.  I have also heard Ryan Spillborg talk about how amazing it was to see him work and how he could juggle so many things at one time.  Just curious if any of you have considered he isn’t much more than the fall guy.  

I certainly think it's possible that he knows and hates the position he's in, but that he's doing it anyway because he thinks that's his job. That said, I don't actually think carrying the owners' water is his job. Sometimes it's a part of his job maybe, but I think the actual scope of his position is quite a bit bigger than that. One, he needs to be more proactive in dictating to the owners what is good for them, and not the other way around. They elect a commissioner to be a leader, not an errand boy (or at least that's the way it should be). That means he has to actually lead sometimes, and this isn't leadership that we're seeing now. He should be hammering the owners with the damage this ongoing dispute is doing to their overall brand. Two, he is the commissioner of baseball, not of the MLB owners' group. He has to do what is best for the sport, which includes the owners, but also includes fans, players, and other employees. Keeping the whole game and everyone involved with it in a good place translates to long-term solid profits in the end.

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, Don said:

I mean he'll just get on there and trash the MLBPA and their leadership, right? Seems like a pretty easy playbook. I don't agree with it at all of course, but just keep repeating "We've made reasonable proposals that the union refuses to accept or negotiate from due to misguided leadership." Just hammer it. Answer every question just like that.

Especially since none of the owners proposals are truly any different from one another, % wise

[DMVol]

Circular firing squad for sure....going to take some work to put Humpty Dumpty back together....

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, Inside Pitch said:

Clark and Manfed....  in real time...

ManlessFred with his tongue stuck to something?    That's worthy of Emmy award consideration. 

[Angel Oracle]

5 minutes ago, Don said:

I certainly think it's possible that he knows and hates the position he's in, but that he's doing it anyway because he thinks that's his job. That said, I don't actually think carrying the owners' water is his job. Sometimes it's a part of his job maybe, but I think the actual scope of his position is quite a bit bigger than that. One, he needs to be more proactive in dictating to the owners what is good for them, and not the other way around. They elect a commissioner to be a leader, not an errand boy (or at least that's the way it should be). That means he has to actually lead sometimes, and this isn't leadership that we're seeing now. He should be hammering the owners with the damage this ongoing dispute is doing to their overall brand. Two, he is the commissioner of baseball, not of the MLB owners' group. He has to do what is best for the sport, which includes the owners, but also includes fans, players, and other employees. Keeping the whole game and everyone involved with it in a good place translates to long-term solid profits in the end.

There are several owners who have absolutely no freaking excuse to be owning a MLB  team.

TB, Miami, A'ths, Baltimore, Mess, etc. 

[Lou]

58 minutes ago, Don said:

The players and owners had an agreement in March

In that agreement, didn't the players agree to make economic concessions if games were played with no fans in attendance?

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, Lou said:

Cricket returns in 3 weeks.

Matches length of time makes baseball look like a 3 inning game. 

[beatlesrule]

I posted this is another thread already and it is relevant in this one too; the owners have all the power here. To many of them, this is their plaything. They don't eat sleep and die baseball like many of us. This is not their main source of income. I'd bet many of them aren't even baseball or sports fans. It's obvious that they don't really care if baseball comes back this year or not. They are so stinking rich that they will just turn to their next money making thing or hobby or just gas up their yacht and go on vacation.

[Don]

3 minutes ago, Lou said:

In that agreement, didn't the players agree to make economic concessions if games were played with no fans in attendance?

It's a bit of a he said/she said. MLB leaked an internal email suggesting that language was going to be put in the March agreement. The MLBPA reps claim they agreed to a pro-rated salary with no regard to whether or not fans are in attendance.

[Inside Pitch]

1 minute ago, Lou said:

In that agreement, didn't the players agree to make economic concessions if games were played with no fans in attendance?

No -- thats exactly what came out recently.   

There was no such language written into the agreement..  which is why the grievance would go in favor of the players, also why they want them to agree to not file..

It's a joke.

[Angel Oracle]

Can't wait to see the WNBA commish go Ralphie on ManlessFred's Scut Farkus.

Edited June 15, 2020 by Angel Oracle

[Lou]

3 minutes ago, Angel Oracle said:

Matches length of time makes baseball look like a 3 inning game. 

Depends on the type of match.