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smittykins

By smittykins
in Sports

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catlover79
catlover79

A's fans were still able to make their fury at the Astros known when the teams played in Oakland last night. They may not be physically allowed in the stadium, so they did the next best thing:

xaxat
xaxat

I read that Houck said he was "bummed" that he would missing a start. Hmmm, if only there was something he could have done to make sure he could play in every park. 

xaxat
xaxat

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Lantern7

Lantern7

(edited)
24 minutes ago, Sew Sumi said:

The DBacks owner complained about playing in November. You already play in March at Wrigley! Stop that. 

Didn't Arizona win the World Series the first time the World Series broke into November?

Oh, and the '86 Mets are in the Dream Bracket final. Their opponents: the '01 Mariners.

Edited by Lantern7
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JTMacc99

JTMacc99

19 hours ago, Harry24 said:

I’d be interested to know what any of you more knowledgable fans think of this perspective.

That person is comparing apples and oranges. Using the value of the asset to argue that the owners should suck it up and operate at a loss for a year.

I look at it from both sides. From the players' side, there is a LONG history of not trusting ownership. 

From the owners' side, it's hard to argue that if they expect to play the game with no ticket sales, that they'll be short that $2-$3 billion of revenue this year. The players would like full pro-rated salaries, meaning that they want to be paid for 80 games. The owners want them to get something like 70% pay for those 80 games, which actually kind of works pretty closely for accounting for the missing ticket revenue.

But the players don't want to agree to that because they don't have any way of knowing if the owners are actually going to lose (or refund) the TV money for the lost 80 games. And in my opinion, that's totally fair. I seriously doubt baseball is going to refund the networks and the networks refund the cable companies who are going to refund us. 

So there you go. Because these side don't have an open books policy about revenue, there is no trust and probably no deal.

I also read today that there are MANY teams, teams that probably normally operate at break-even or at a loss, who are perfectly willing to shut it down and try again in 2021.

So to that point, the linked article about telling a rich guy he should operate his team at a $30-$50 million dollar loss this year "because he can afford it" is a stupid argument in my opinion. Rich guys didn't get rich by making decisions like that.

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cleo

cleo

(edited)

All I can say is the owner of the Blue Jays as an example is not poor and likely had increased profits due to the pandemic.

Also if they in fact did threaten to cancel the season unless the players waived their rights to grieve- it speaks volumes to me. They know they are in the wrong.

I have to go based on the actions of the parties since March and it seems clear to me based on the concessions in the March agreement and the actions of the two sides since that some owners at least don't care if the season is played and haven't really been bargaining in good faith.

I read that some owners are both surprised and angry that the players didn't cave.

ETA: bc more news! Summary: Yankees president says players have a right to full prorated salaries as per the March agreement and let's move onto the rest. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29319308/yankees-president-randy-levine-calls-mlb-talks-resume .... I figured they knew they did not have the legal footing if it went to arbitration.

Edited by cleo
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JTMacc99

JTMacc99

15 hours ago, cleo said:

I read that some owners are both surprised and angry that the players didn't cave.

This is an excellent example of how the owners create such a contentious situation with the players. They don't even agree with each other. Or even get along with each other. How can the players association trust what the owners are telling them when it's hard to believe that the owners themselves are being honest with each other about revenues?

As evidence: 

15 hours ago, cleo said:

ETA: bc more news! Summary: Yankees president says players have a right to full prorated salaries as per the March agreement and let's move onto the rest.

Of course the Yankees want to cut the crap and play. They're in the group of teams that will absolutely still operate in the black in 2020 even without the exorbitant amount of money they charge their fans to attend games. (Plus they think they have a chance to win a championship and would like to play.) They just bought back the YES Network, and would really like to get some games on the air.

To put in perspective why the Yankees issued a statement about "Let's just play and pay the players whatever they want", here's the last paragraph from that linked article:

Quote

Last season, the Yankees averaged 277,000 viewers per game on YES, by far the most in baseball. According to SNL Kagan, YES commands the highest monthly affiliate fee ($6.37) of any RSN, 53 cents more than number two Fox Sports Detroit. Analysts estimate YES will throw off about $400 million in cash flow (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) this year, hundreds of millions of more than any other RSN.

Many teams are approaching this negotiation with the thought of not wanting to generate tens of millions of dollars of negative cash flow, whereas the Yankees (and Dodgers and a few others) are just trying to not lose the tens of millions of dollars of positive cash flow they'll get regardless of the deal they cut with the players. 

 

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cleo

cleo

(edited)

So I'm being nitpicky but the Yankees didn't say pay the players whatever they want, the quote in the article says they are entitled to what was negotiated in March. But yes clearly the owners are divided. I guess the one thing I don't understand is why they agreed to the prorata scheme in March if they didn't really want to follow through. I mean March was not that long ago and the financial issues should have been clear at that stage. 

 

Edited by cleo
Harry24

Harry24

Whoa, you are right about Hicks.  Normally I’m not a beard gal, but it’s working like gangbusters for Hicks!  (OTOH, Giancarlo REALLY needs a haircut.  I wouldn’t have thought anything could make someone that handsome look less so, but apparently I was wrong!)

And I have to say I wondered if there anyone was surprised to see Judge in this video.  Which makes me wonder if Jeter would have participated in such a video when he was a player.

Finally, would any kind soul be able to id the players in order of appearance?  I recognize all the current and former Yankees, Adam Jones, Mookie, Price, Fielder and a few others, but I’m sorry to say there are a bunch I don’t.  TIA.

 

 

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Mittengirl

Mittengirl

So, the owners want to play a 60 game season and the players want to play 70.  If only there was a way to work out some kind of compromise.  Hmm, maybe choose a number of games somewhere between each side’s desires.  How in the world would we figure that out?  
 

Why do they want expanded playoffs and the DH in both leagues In both 2020 and 2021?  I suppose the expanded playoffs next year is to hopefully recoup some tv money, but why the DH?

 

OMG!  I just had a brilliant, IMO, idea!  65 games is exactly halfway between what the owners want and what the players want!  What if each side made a teeny, tiny compromise in order to move things along?  I wonder why they didn’t think of that?  Unless, of course, each side is more interested in “winning” than in getting things done.  I’m sure that isn’t the case, though.

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Mittengirl

Mittengirl

I really don’t think baseball is going to happen this year.  Whether or not it should is another matter.  Between the absolute inability to compromise on both sides and the shiftiness of the virus, I just don't see it happening.   And frankly, I really don’t care much if it does.  It seems like those who could make it happen care even less than I do.

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JTMacc99

JTMacc99

On 6/21/2020 at 1:49 PM, xaxat said:

I'm not an epidemiologist, but the covid numbers out of Florida sound really bad.

Yep. Pretty much all of the Sun Belt states from Florida to Texas to Arizona to California are spiking right now. It got so hot that everybody went back inside to nice air conditioned buildings, where the stupid virus spreads easily. 

It will also spread easily in locker rooms, trainer's rooms, gyms, and possibly dugouts (depending on the air flow and how close they sit to each other.) This stuff isn't going to go away any time soon. It seems unlikely that they'll be able to pull off any kind of a season if the expectation is to shut down operations every time a couple people test positive.

As for the owners 60 game schedule, all they did was take their proposal of 80 games at 75% pay and change it to 60 games at full pay.  80*75%=60. They simply agreed to pay the players their full pro-rated salaries (which they demanded) but still only committed to paying them the EXACT SAME amount of salary.

And that's exactly what I was trying to work out in my head previously when I talked about the owners trying to figure out how much TV money they're going to actually get this year (assuming that they're expecting to get $0 of the $2-$3 billion ticket/stadium revenue) and making it work with the salaries they have to pay out.  It's pretty clear that they've come to the number of 60/162 games worth of salary.

cleo

cleo

(edited)

I heard minor league stadiums are just not the same as major league stadiums. I don't know the truth of this but I don't see how this covid situation will result in an equal playing field for all teams (heh)- some teams at home, some teams not, some teams sharing, some in minor league stadiums.

Apparently it hasn't dawned on MLB Jays can't play in Florida or Toronto given no one at MLB has bothered to talk to our health officials. 

Edited by cleo
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Lantern7

Lantern7

(edited)
1 hour ago, cleo said:

I heard minor league stadiums are just not the same as major league stadiums. I don't know the truth of this but I don't see how this covid situation will result in an equal playing field for all teams (heh)- some teams at home, some teams not, some teams sharing, some in minor league stadiums.

I was thinking that with more stadiums, maybe there would be enough in “safe” places to host MLB games with no audiences. The minors are kaput this year no matter what. And yes, “safe” is not guaranteed anywhere, but at least there would be more options.

Edited by Lantern7
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Mittengirl

Mittengirl

I wonder what kind of “Opening Day” festivities there will be, if any.  Or will both teams just wander out on to the field and start playing.  
 

Call me skeptical, but I can’t see the players going all out this season.  I suspect we will see a lot of 80% effort.  Except maybe the guys who aren’t sure about their status in the league.

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