2021 MLB Season / 21-22 Offseason Thread

[The Buscher]

Diehards care about the specifics of these deals and find them interesting.  I'm certainly in favor of the players trying to get everything they can.  But the cold reality baseball faces is that average fan does not give a flying fuck about what is a "fair" offer or not, especially at the levels being discussed, they just want to see baseball.

It doesn't even matter who is to blame at this point, the sport as a whole is going to take a fucking beating it will take a very long time to recover from if/when games are lost.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Are there even "average" baseball fans anymore?

[gunnar hendershow]

I mean this is 2 times in 3 years. They absolutely could've gotten 110 games or do out of the Covid season but everyone just dragged their feet to the finish line. Baseball had the chance to be the only thing keeping people sane for months and instead they waited until everything else started to ramp back up. They just don't really care and every year that goes by is another that people can get their sports fix elsewhere.

[The Buscher]

4 minutes ago, Cornelius Weinerbottom said:

Are there even "average" baseball fans anymore?

They do.  They aren't people going onto social media or following every minute detail of the sport.  Plenty of people tuning in to most/all the games but don't care about anything that happens off the field.

A massive fail for baseball today, if games do get cancelled.  Even if the season starts on time, they've made themselves look foolish.

[Lowerdeck]

1 hour ago, damhausen said:

I mean this is 2 times in 3 years. They absolutely could've gotten 110 games or do out of the Covid season but everyone just dragged their feet to the finish line. Baseball had the chance to be the only thing keeping people sane for months and instead they waited until everything else started to ramp back up. They just don't really care and every year that goes by is another that people can get their sports fix elsewhere.

 

I watched more Korean baseball in 2020 than American.  It also didn't help that Boston was trash that year.

 

Speaking of the Sox, so far they're losing a homestand against the Rays and Orioles.  No huge loss there.  Weather will probably suck anyway.

 

IMO, the baseball season should get cut down to about 130 games.  Opening Day on May 1st, start the expanded playoffs in the last week of September.   There's too many meaningless games throughout the year.

[The Buscher]

Since it hasn't been posted yet...the first week of the season was indeed cancelled and, presumably, the league will keep cancelling every week that no deal is reached.  Meanwhile the players will undoubtedly demand to be paid for all 162, which the league won't do, and this will go on for a while until somebody caves.

Players supposedly have a warchest to pay guys during a stoppage, but it's tough to imagine that lasting more than a couple of months.  The billionaires meanwhile have piles of cash to sleep on even if not a single game is played.

Like, I don't blame the players for not wanting to tie themselves to another lousy 5-year CBA.  But I don't see an offer from the owners being markedly better in a month, two months, three months etc.  Players are likely just costing themselves their paychecks ahead of inevitably getting screwed anyway.  The economics of this sport are messed up beyond measure.  Morbidly I almost hope the season is fully cancelled because this league deserves it.

[Krabby]

50 minutes ago, CM Busch said:

Since it hasn't been posted yet...the first week of the season was indeed cancelled and, presumably, the league will keep cancelling every week that no deal is reached.  Meanwhile the players will undoubtedly demand to be paid for all 162, which the league won't do, and this will go on for a while until somebody caves.

Players supposedly have a warchest to pay guys during a stoppage, but it's tough to imagine that lasting more than a couple of months.  The billionaires meanwhile have piles of cash to sleep on even if not a single game is played.

Like, I don't blame the players for not wanting to tie themselves to another lousy 5-year CBA.  But I don't see an offer from the owners being markedly better in a month, two months, three months etc.  Players are likely just costing themselves their paychecks ahead of inevitably getting screwed anyway.  The economics of this sport are messed up beyond measure.  Morbidly I almost hope the season is fully cancelled because this league deserves it.

Bring back the scabs!

[gunnar hendershow]

Max Scherzer is a good one

 

[The Buscher]

He definitely is.

The most Mets thing ever would be for the season to be cancelled and a 38-year old Scherzer decides to simply retire without ever throwing a pitch for his new team.

[The Buscher]

 

[The Buscher]

MLBPA made their latest offer today and MLB already put out a statement stating that they felt the offer went "backwards" from where they were last week. The league plans to respond but "this offer makes it difficult".

AKA, time to sit on it for a while and cancel more games.

On top of this, MLBPA is sending out signals that their warchest built up from licensing deals in the last 5 years is far deeper than MLB realizes. So they don't intend on substantially decreasing their offer anytime soon.

[The Buscher]

MLB/MLBPA had a 17 hour negotiating session. The Athletic reported the owners had finally made some big concessions on core economic issues regarding the CBT and pre-arbitration pool. And last night hope among baseball Twitter was building yet again that a deal was close. I refused to get my hopes up though.

Woke up this morning to find talks broke for the night at like 3:30 AM. And of course the first tweet I see is from SNY reporter Andy Martino that “significant gaps remain”

Lmfao. This is gonna be like last Monday/Tuesday all over again with the sides pointing fingers and Manfred gleefully cancelling another week of games.

[The Buscher]

And so here's today's rundown:

• MLB offered a 162 game season after previously saying cancelled games would not be made up.
• Of the 2 series that were already cancelled, 1 would be made up at the end of the year and the other would be in-season double headers since everyone was playing a division rival at some point.
• The league made by far its biggest jump yet in its CBT and pre-arbitration pool offers, the CBT numbers in particular being very close to what the union wanted in their last counter.
• Even the clearest pro-union reporters (Passan, Rosenthal, Drellich) acknowledged that the league offered up more money in those two areas than anybody expected them to during this process.
• MLB wanted to implement an international draft (effectively a Latin American draft, since the Asian leagues are still covered by the posting process) instead of the free for all free agency system they have now.
• Union was against the draft, with several prominent Latin American players speaking out about how Puerto Rico's baseball scene has worsened since their players became subject to the MLB Draft.
• The ask for an international draft was tied to the union's request to stop docking a draft pick from teams who sign a guy with a qualifying offer.

MLB ended up presenting the players with three proposals:

• Agree to the international draft, the qualifying offer draft penalty goes away
• Decline the international draft, qualifying offer rules remain as is
• Qualifying offer draft penalty goes away, players have until November 15 to further consider an international draft and, if they don't agree by them, the CBA will re-open after the 2024 season

The union rejected all three offers, and MLB then promptly cancelled two more series.

Opening Day is now April 14th at the earliest but getting 162 now is logistically impossible.  And with that, the union and league will now have even more issues to argue about (backpay, service time, etc.) meaning it's going to take that much longer to even get a deal.

At this point, it's tough to say anything but fuck everyone involved in this process.  Pour one out for the neighborhoods and business districts that exist entirely on baseball and taxpayer-funded ballpark traffic.

[gunnar hendershow]

This was an absolute set-up and the players from Tony Clark on down walked into it like they're the Democrats.

[gunnar hendershow]

Ok it might be happening.

[The Buscher]

Scherzer and Lindor are on the executive committee with Nimmo and Alonso also both being active in union business.  That said, Cohen himself was reportedly on board with a 4th tax level.  It's not like the money matters to him.

What an LOLMETS moment to possibly block a deal....

[The Buscher]

IT'S OVER!!!!!  BASEBALL IS BACK!

[ThrillhouseMAX]

 

 

Yeahhhh

 

[The Buscher]

The final tally of the votes was 26-12 in favor of accepting the deal.  Only 4 of the 30 team union reps voted no, and all 8 members of the MLBPA subcommittee voted no.

It's exceptionally rare for union leadership to even put something to a vote in that situation, which makes me think they knew they had the votes to pass it and them all voting no was somewhat performative as if to tell the league "we did you a solid".

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, ThrillhouseMAX said:

 

 

Yeahhhh

 

His replies to that after getting hacked today were gold.