2021 Collective Bargaining Negotiations

[bkox]

MLB Players Association makes second economics proposal to MLB, likely leaving...

[andyb]

Boras pushing the theory that the change to a capped draft pool is a huge reason behind all the tanking that is going on. I am not sure I agree there. The draft picks are perhaps the least important incentive to tank. The prospects acquired in tanking trades are more important. Now I agree that capped draft pools do make draft picks more valuable, though my solution there would be to increase the bonus pools and allow trading of picks. If those picks are so valuable, let a bad team trade them for something else.

Team salary floors and more money to younger players are other needed tweaks, but I really hate the focus on tanking for draft picks. The Harper and Strasburg type sure things just do not come around every year and there is often not too much difference between the 1st and the 5th pick.

While MLB and union bargain, Scott Boras criticizes tanking and general managers...

[bkox]

I think the whole worst record gets the #1 pick is stupid. Why are we rewarding losing?

Wanna stop tanking? Make it that every non playoff team has an equal shot at the #1. Complete random lottery. for picks 1-20 (or how ever many non-playoff teams there are if they expand the playoffs)

[VoteForKalas]

Agreed, that is how the NHL has done the draft order for non-playoff teams recently. Plus the lottery is another hockey event that can be promoted by the league.

Agree with andyb as well on draft picks being tradeable assets and teams tanking for a high draft pick does not make as much sense in MLB as in other leagues due to the time frame even a #1 pick takes to get to the ML level.

The timing of this labor strife is so unfortunate. Baseball keeps stabbing itself in its own eye with many forks: they handled the pandemic poorly, all the silly "speed up the game" rules are ridiculous, they're about to implement the league wide DH which I detest, having playoff games late at night on multiple cable channels is stupid and engagement with new, young fans is nowhere. Now they are are going to proceed with another labor dispute to argue about money between millionaires and billionaires.

If I was not a diehard Phillies fans, I would have stopped watching MLB games completely years ago. I have the same approach with the NFL and NBA. Only the NHL has maintained some level of consistency, rationality and awareness of the fans, but I also love hockey as a sport more than football or basketball. Baseball is still my favorite even though they continue to make it very hard to stick with it.

[andyb]

My point was that the draft pick is not the most important part of tanking. The most important part is trading veterans for prospects. The Nats got a dozen prospects when they tanked this year and several would have been high first round picks. That is just a far more important addition to their roster than whether they draft 5th or 8th.

[allentown]

Neither has really proven to be of much value to the Phillies. The tanking for draft picks makes sense only in the years with one or several 'sure thing' prospects. The trading of a vet for young talent only works if you have baseball people who can identify young talent with a chance to become an impact player and other baseball people who can properly develop that talent. We even traded Lee in his prime and got zero help back in return. That is indicative of the poor quality of the non-player guys on the baseball side. That's why I'm happy when the Phillies sign primo, not superannuated FA. The world knows they're great. You don't need to develop them. You don't need to be able to spot the quality FA on our own. Since we haven't shown the ability to do either, since about 2008, it makes sense to sign as many superstar, baseball middle-aged, FA as the budget will bear. We've shown little ability to do much else well.

[zambonir]

Well Boras certainly didn't leave that out of his rant. He basically said the Braves only won the World Series because they were able to raid the tanking teams.

[andyb]

Well Boras certainly didn't leave that out of his rant. He basically said the Braves only won the World Series because they were able to raid the tanking teams.

I guess he is saying the tanking teams were not getting good prospects then. There is something to that. It still ignores the main point is that the only way to get better in baseball in the long run is to trade for multiple young players and hope a few of them work out.

Boras is kind of saying that the path to winning that Tampa and Oakland use should be eliminated. This happens to some degree in all sports though. When paired with appropriate revenue sharing and salary floors it does not have to be that bad though. It is actually much worse in the NBA when getting one or two stars in the draft that can make a 10-year difference in your team is a very real thing. In baseball the rate of success of top picks is smaller, so the tanking problem is not as bad.

Boras is a smart guy. He probably knows more revenue sharing is the right way to go. He just needs to make sure the top of the market still sets prices (i.e. the Yankees and the Dodgers). His solution might make it worth if the rich clubs still spend but there is less reward for tanking. Then we'll see more mediocre Tampa teams and continue to have the Dodgers dominate.

[BostonRoss]

Boras is concerned only with his clients (and therefore Boras himself) making the most money they can. He doesn't care about the sport. He'd be fine if only a handful of rich teams, presumably stocked with his clients, won every year.

[BostonRoss]

I agree with the first overall pick being relatively unimportant. I think that Carlos Correa was the first #1 overall pick to win two championships with the team that drafted him. I think Pat Burrell, who won a second ring as a role player with the Giants, is the only other #1 overall with two rings. So having that pick has seldom produced anything like a dynasty.

[zambonir]

I wouldn't say that. Yeah, it's self-interested, but rising tide lifts all boats. Plus, players who aren't his clients may someday be his clients (be they current pros or the not-yet drafted). I don't think he would want it to be only rich teams either - he wants salary floors that would increase spending not by the Tampas and Oaklands, as well as fewer restrictions on spending at the top.

[BostonRoss]

I dunno, it seems more likely that Boras doesn’t like the draft pool cap because it costs him money.

[bkox]

this offer would tie pre-free agency pay directly to a player’s Wins Above Replacement tally. Under this structure, a player’s service time and career WAR marks (weighted to emphasize the most recent seasons more heavily) would set the player’s salary. While multiple websites calculate WAR totals in different ways, MLB’s proposal would base salaries on FanGraphs’ WAR tabulations.

MLB Proposes Replacing Arbitration With Salaries Based Off Player WAR Totals
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/11/mlb-proposes-replacing-arbitration-with-salaries-based-off-player-war-totals.html

My thoughts... They need to fix Defensive WAR before considering WAR. Especially in this day and age when a lot of players play all over the field and often have their dWAR suffer because of it.

I like WAR... but it still has issues. A player like Pat Burrell, IMO, was much more valuable than the 19 career WAR he put up. And that number is drgged down by the fact he never had a positive dWAR

[zambonir]

Seems like some obvious flaws there, particularly on the defensive side, where quantification (and context) remains harder to to execute. Positional changes would become more fraught as well.

[julio]

Add to that, WAR is a function of playing time - it's not a rate, or productivity measure. In practice, this means that a marginal player who happens to be a manager's favorite (can you say Ronald Torreyes) gets more playing time than his productivity warrants, and then gets a bigger salary the following year.

In general, surrendering player salaries to a formula - an algorithm, based on a black box "everything" statistic that has a plethora of internal issues - is a really offensive idea. Substitute the computer, and whatever machinations go on at Fangraphs, for any judgment in the front office.

[zambonir]

I thought Fangraphs WAR was not as reliant on playing time. But hey, even if it was, Michael Maton had pretty much same WAR as Torreyes with 1/3 the playing time (0.5 to 0.6) so Torreyes would still not be getting rewarded for just standing on the field.

[BostonRoss]

Oh, man, this is an awful proposal. There's a lot that a player can do to help his team win that wouldn't optimize his WAR. A player might not want to sacrifice or hit behind the runner if going for a bigger hit would result in better WAR. Maybe a player wouldn't want to risk stealing a base if getting caught might hurt his WAR more than succeeding would help. Maybe a pitcher wouldn't challenge a hitter with a multi-run lead if giving up a home run would hurt his WAR. I'm all for paying for value, but when players are aware of how specific actions affect their salaries, they can't help but be affected.

[zambonir]

I'm not sure it would actually be that dramatically different than it is now, when players can still chase stats for their next contract without it being as formally stratified. And arbitration arguments/hearings still turn on all this same stuff.

Luckily, most players don't have a clue what would or wouldn't raise their WAR! But I would agree it shouldn't be WAR and nothing else. Something more like the NBA, where if you make an all-NBA team you become eligible for more $, could be put in place, where if you're Top 5 or Top 10 in x number of categories you automatically reach a certain salary level for your service time.

Both sides are just flailing around really, because neither side can really get what it wants (the owners a salary cap, the players true revenue-sharing and big changes to the service time tiers).

[andyb]

I get your point and generally agree that WAR is too flawed to formally use it exclusively. But it is not as if the current hodgepodge of numbers used also don't provide the same incentives or disincentives for the player. A team might note a player's stolen base percentage in their case. Or on base percentage (lowered by sacrifice flys).

All numbers need to be considered in context. WAR is a counting stat so is based on playing time to some degree. It has defensive components that are not perfect (but are generally more good than bad).

I think the solution is just to say that WAR can be considered along with a host of other data in these hearings. Arbitration rewards that considered WAR along with experience in the amount might be more fair than what we currently use. Home run hitters at 1B generally get higher rewards per WAR compared to defensive oriented players at other positions and that is not fair. The players should consider some form of using WAR here.

[BostonRoss]

I would agree that stats are used informally already, probably including WAR. Whatever stats are brought up probably are used by whichever side it provides an advantage to. (Players may not know what affects their WAR now, but under such a system they would learn fast, and their agents would learn faster.

I think there are already contracts that include incentives for winning awards or making All-Star teams. At least those things are decided by an third party and they are determined independently of any salary negotiations.