Reserve System/ Player Salaries (non-Phillies discussion)

[Austinfan]

I think the real problem will be the superagents who want big money for free agents rather than more money for minor leaguers, benefits or young players - because they get most of their income from their cut of big salaries (and aren't needed to negotiate a league minimum deal). Those agents have had undue influence in the past, but I could give a fig if Arrieta thinks he should have been paid a more obscene amount.

It shouldn't be that hard to negotiate a deal that slightly increases the player share by improving compensation for 90% of ML players (and minor leaguers) but it will require the owners to understand that they both need to compromise and sell the deal to the rank and file over the objections of the stars and their agents. And such a deal wouldn't require drastic changes, but it would shift money from the top free agents to the guy fighting to stay in the majors who really needs the health insurance, etc., as well as a salary boost. And while it should be popular, look for the superagents to employ propaganda to fight such a shift.

[andyb]

When you complain about the agents, all you are doing is taking the owners side. The agents work for the players. If the players are getting less revenue (which may only be true in the last 2 years) then there is a problem. Agents get a set percentage, so they really don't care whether it goes to the stars or the everyday players. You seem to create this fantasy about agents only caring about the stars just to take management's side. That is an owner PR tactic, not a serious argument about share of revenues (where agents would always want a greater share for the players).

It just seems objectionable to you for a player to get big money where it does not seem objectionable for owners to make even bigger money.

[julio]

It just seems objectionable... for a player to get big money where it does not seem objectionable for owners to make even bigger money.

It comes down to basic ideology, I think. Who should reap the financial benefits - the talent, or the capitalists who employ the talent?

This isn't different from arguments that occurred in Hollywood before the old "studio" system was broken. It's the same argument that exists between musicians and music publishers ("record companies," to the extent that isn't a complete misnomer these days). Or between authors and publishing houses.

It's baked into our very language. The capitalist "gives a job" to the individual who actually produces the product or service - as if the capitalist is somehow doing the employee a favor, by letting the employee produce, and only keeping a (large) percentage of the employee's value-added for himself.

[zambonir]

Those agents have had undue influence in the past, but I could give a fig if Arrieta thinks he should have been paid a more obscene amount.

What makes his salary "obscene" to you? Compared to say, a CEO or a movie star or a newscaster or even athletes in other sports?

And he doesn't even want "obscene." He just has been part of a monopolistic, if collectively bargained system in which the truly obscene salaries he made for the first five years of his career (obscenely low, that is) were supposed to be balanced out by a big free agency payday, even one where he ultimately got paid while hurt or underperforming. I'm glad Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee got paid under those circumstances, even if it would have been better if the Phillies hadn't been the team to do it (or had been able to better manage the overall payroll as they did). When you average out Arrieta's earnings for his entire career he has not been lavishly compensated. And neither the team that invested in his development nor the team that is paying him the best got his best years.

[Florida_Sunshine]

He will have made $62M by age 34. I think he has been paid well.

Can make another $45M for present performance at ages 35 & 36.

Owners should make more, they have the capital investment and accompanying risk, and the expenses.

[julio]

What makes his salary "obscene" to you? Compared to say, a CEO or a movie star or a newscaster or even athletes in other sports?

Yeah. Megyn Kelly left NBC - essentially fired - and got to keep all of her $69 million salary.

This for a pretty face whose job, in any culture except the USA, would be titled, "news reader" - which describes the actual job.

Now maybe a pretty face on a woman who makes smarmy comments about our political leaders is "entertainment" to lots of Americans, who don't begrudge her that salary... or have any problem with a movie star being paid $20 million for work on one film. Ballplayers are no different.

At another level, ALL these levels of compensation are ridiculous - but most Americans (including most here, but not me) are willing to send Verizon or Comcast an excessive payment every month, for the "privilege" of receiving pablum on their TV sets, or to fork over excessive amounts for tickets to events (sporting events, movies, etc.). That money has to go somewhere. Since we don't have the sense to impose high marginal tax rates on those who bring in these excessive "earnings," it's going to pile up - either in the bank accounts of the capitalists, or in the bank accounts of the talent.

It's pretty stupid to characterize one of those two choices as "obscene," and be silent about the other.

[Austinfan]

The top agents don't work for the "players," they work for a small subgroup of players who garner a lion's share of salary.
The majority of ML players will never reach free agency, or if they do, are looking at one 2-3 year deal at the end of their career.

[Austinfan]

I hate the term "capitalist," Marxist rhetoric has pervaded the academy, much of it used by people who have never read Marx (I had to read all three volumes of Das Kapital in graduate school), have no acquaintance with the history of economic thought, and don't realize that Marx is outdated as Freud, important in the history of thought, but basically irrelevant in today's world (Marx never read or ignored Marshall, he was basically a sociologist, not an economist).

Yes, there is capital, there is labor, there is technology, there are power relations and market structure. There are markets, but "capitalist" implies a mode of analysis which is wrong headed and outdated. It depends on the labor theory of value, which simply is bad economics.

Players couldn't make a dime without stadiums, TV, etc. and the human capital developed by the minor league system.
So it's not like they've "earned" this money which is then expropriated by owners, it's an entertainment industry, in which all parties make an investment (financial, human capital) and earnings depend on both value created (i.e. entertainment value which is what produces revenue) and bargaining leverage. A team can be owned by a single rich man, or in the case of the Green Bay Packers, a collective. Players could own teams (and some are part of ownership groups), but there's a good reason most aren't interested, few have enough money for a majority interest, and a minority interest isn't the best investment in the world. And the transactions and opportunity costs (not to mention ego issues) of players banding together to buy out the owners precludes that happening in the real world.

[Florida_Sunshine]

Ever wonder how many MLB players leave the US to go play in Cuba versus the other way around?

[zambonir]

I am not saying he's poor. But he was not well-paid relative to the value he delivered on the field, or relative to baseball's overall rising revenue. We tend to still think $10 million is a lot of money because we remember what players made in the '80s, and the shock of the first free agency years. But it's just not, in context.

But the point is, someone made that money while Arrieta wasn't making it. Like Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay. That system needed to change then and it needs to change even more now.

Y'all are talking like baseball is a free market. Take away the reserve clause and the public funding of stadiums and the need the league has to prop up smaller markets and let the players sign with any team they want at any time. Then whatever they get paid will be what they deserve, sure.

[julio]

Yeah, OK, I over-simplified. Given the audience here, that didn't seem to me to be a poor choice (and still doesn't).

That said, your exposition seems kind of... beside the point? There are boatloads of money, generated by cable television rates and ticket prices, that accumulate to the industry. You cannot seriously argue that it's "obscene" for one subgroup of that industry to acquire that money, but OK for another subgroup to do so.

[Florida_Sunshine]

I am challenging your point that when you average out his earnings that he has NOT been lavishly compensated.

In my book, what is it? 5 Million per year since he would have graduated from college?

I understand his point, but the players and we do not make the rules. This has been collectively bargained for a very long time.

[julio]

Y'all are talking like baseball is a free market. Take away the reserve clause and the public funding of stadiums and the need the league has to prop up smaller markets and let the players sign with any team they want at any time. Then whatever they get paid will be what they deserve, sure.

Works for me.

[Florida_Sunshine]

It's really not that simple either. If we did as you suggested, all sports would consist of a couple of teams in each category. Just the super rich. The way sports is set up is to try to have competition between as large a number of teams as the sport can support.

[zambonir]

He is a wealthy person by any reasonable standard but that's not a lot of money for an elite baseball player.

But yes, it has been collectively bargained and it needs to change. "This is how it always was" applied to Curt Flood too.

[Florida_Sunshine]

His career is not over but you made me chuckle when you said that was not a lot of money for an elite baseball player. It is.

His production really has only been very good from 2014-2016.

[baseballoldie]

The issue is not whether players are paid well or not compared to the average salary of other industries - the minimum salary of $555k for 2019 is a great salary compared to the average salary of the American worker. But that doesn’t mean it is a fair salary for the baseball industry. The relationship between owners and players is a zero sum game with regard to the revenues - any reduction in player salaries goes to the owners. It certainly doesn’t go to the public in the form of lower ticket prices. And it’s not truly a zero sum game because only the owners benefit from the increases in franchise values, which is their return on investment for being an owner.

The owners and management are changing the game with regard to paying the players and that’s the issue. Analytics may support not paying older players but not paying younger players either because of minimum salaries and arbitration limits is resulting in a shift in balance to the owners favor. And while the top players definitely get paid via arbitration, it’s the veteran players that are in the middle and lower tiers that aren’t getting paid that is bringing down the overall share of money going to the players.

Three years until the next CBA and its going to get ugly if the ownership and management continue to follow the same approach they have been the last two years.

[Florida_Sunshine]

But for this to be true, wouldn't owner expenses need to be going down?

I am unsure if that is true. If it is, I have not seen that anywhere.

Can anyone help here?

[Florida_Sunshine]

The average MLB salary dropped in 2018 for only the fourth time in the last 50...

[baseballoldie]

The owners net is going up with higher revenues and lower share of shares paid to players.