MLB on Strike

The players are locked out, not on strike.

Other than that your points are valid and should be concerning.

Clueless fucking greedy fucks

@Pikes Peak posted:

The players are locked out, not on strike.

Other than that your points are valid and should be concerning.

I understand it's a lock out by definition, but fans of baseball won't really give a shit what you title it.

They largely consider this a "millionaires vs billionaires" feud that should have absolutely been avoided. And yes, I get that many players in MLB, especially when you consider the minor leagues are not millionaires.

But again, in the eyes of fans, the majority won't see it that way.

They will look at it as Mike Trouts vs Steinbrenners. And it won't end well.

The guys really getting it in the ass on this are minor leaguers...25 year old guy at AA Shreveport with a wife and two little ones. No season, no pay.

I always preferred watching the owners play anyway

Taking a family to a MLB game far too expensive

@Chongo posted:

The guys really getting it in the ass on this are minor leaguers...25 year old guy at AA Shreveport with a wife and two little ones. No season, no pay.

This.

That mlb payroll rosters range from nearly 200 mil from the Dodgers to an absolutely pathetic 23 mil from Cleveland in 2021 with no minimum "floor" that states teams must spend at least X amount to field a competitive team is fucking embarrassing as well.

And then they wonder why fans are leaving in droves.

Until recently, MLB has had the strongest players Union of any professional sport.  That was necessary because (in general) MLB owners were ruthless fucks.   There’s a reason players went on strike several times between the 70s and 90s.  The owners were being too unreasonable.  

Now, the owners jumped the gun by locking out the players.  They did so in an attempt to “jumpstart” negotiations despite waiting close to 2 months to deliver the Union an actual proposal.

Fuck MLB

There needs to be about half the teams in the league if the bottom teams have no interest in spending money.   Of course there’s tanking and service time manipulation.   It’s encouraged!  The Cubs and Astros won a WS by doing it.

Which is why Jeter pulled out of Miami….he wanted to win….the owners wanted to make money

Was fun watching the Brewers put up a fight the last few years.  I still have hatred for big city teams with unlimited cash.  I sense we will be returning to more of that to appease players and keep owners richer.  oh well there's always war to watch....

i couldn’t care less.  boring sport with too many games and too little competitive balance. good bye

Let’s get real

Cleveland, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Miami, AZ, and probably Colorado, Chicago (Cubs), Washington, and KC have very little interest in winning.  

The Rays have fine tuned the loading up on cheap talent and draft picks approach for years.  Same deal with Seattle and Oakland and to some extent Milwaukee.  

The template is out there.  Houston, Cubs, Washington, Marlins (twice), and Rays.  Tear it down and win and tear it down again.

The part that absolutely sucks is Milwaukee has the best overall pitching in MLB.  If they get even mediocre hitting they are a contender.  Yet they are running out of time with cheap talent.

@GBFanForLife posted:

Taking a family to a MLB game far too expensive

Take them to a minor league game. Kids don't care about the quality of baseball. Buy them a hot dog, some ice cream and let them run around. Probably won't even cost you $100 for 2 adults and 2 kids.

I shall be 25 minutes from the Durham Bulls. Looking forward to it.

Kiel, you’re just hoping for Susan Sarandon. Admit it.

Manfred is a giant douchebag POS. This couldn’t have been handled worse by the owners. Flaunting power and wealth is all they’re interested in at this point.

@Maynard posted:

Kiel, you’re just hoping for Susan Sarandon. Admit it.

1993 Susan Sarandon. Not 2022 Susan Sarandon.

Picky, picky, picky...

@Blair Kiel posted:

1993 Susan Sarandon. Not 2022 Susan Sarandon.

I’m sure she would prefer the “93 Kiel model too.

@Blair Kiel posted:

I shall be 25 minutes from the Durham Bulls. Looking forward to it.

Ooh, can I come?

It has been handled worse

Bud Selig and his stupid shit and the 1994 strike.  How quickly we forget.

Oh you mean he was a cheapskate greedy owner as well?

This is particularly tone deaf given what's happening in Ukraine and the issues we're dealing with domestically with inflation, soaring energy costs and the two-year covid curse. People could not care less about the squabbles between ridiculously overpaid. 250 hitters and greedy owners.

Could this replace MLB? pic.twitter.com/teu0FvPUDB

— Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) March 1, 2022

@Chongo posted:

Take them to a minor league game. Kids don't care about the quality of baseball. Buy them a hot dog, some ice cream and let them run around. Probably won't even cost you $100 for 2 adults and 2 kids.

That is what we do at our local single A team in town.  With a $100 I bet I could take my family to 3 games. 

IMHO both sides are greedy phucks and I blame both of them. If I was made king of baseball teams would have a salary floor they have to spend at and put a cap in place.  I know that players would never go for that but what they are missing is that if you have more teams competitive (NFL) they healthier your sport is. And that benefits who? to us the fans. You know the ones that pay for salaries, TV revenue, and for your $25 parking, $12 dollar beers, and nose bleed seats for $30 a piece. 

Oh and I would let 1993 Sarandon experience the best 8 seconds of her life.

@Pikes Peak posted:

I’m sure she would prefer the “93 Kiel model too.

The problem in negotiations like these is there are essentially three parties you are trying to keep happy (and in the NBA and MLB, 4 pieces to deal with).

1. The owners who usually became billionaires by crushing all the competition in their real business area. They got where they are today (or their parents earned the family money) by never losing a game of chicken at the negotiating table.

2. The superstar players who want to make 40-50 million a year and become worldwide name brands to try to become billionaires themselves (Aaron Rodgers, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Tom Brady, etc.).

3. The rank and file major leaguers who probably average 5-6 year careers and whose talent falls off before they can hit free agency. They make what's good money to us, but they end up taking home 3-4 million gross income after a few years of making the minimum or early arbitration salaries. If they start playing as 18 year olds and then are done by their mid- to late-20s, that money doesn't last that long if they are working some blue-collar job after that for 50K a year.

4. For MLB you have the minor leaguers who are treated like shit. The guys drafted after the first couple of rounds make less than poverty wages and live in crappy apartments or in someone's basement during the year. 95% of them have no realistic future and are just cannon fodder to develop the guys who eventually make the majors.

The owners and superstar players can afford to sit out parts of a season without affecting their lifestyle or grandchildren's lifestyle in any significant way. The owners net worth drops from 3 billion to 2.9 billion and the superstars drop from 200 million to 180 million. It's one less yacht.

They guys that have 3-4 years to make decent (but not huge) amounts of money can't afford to lose 10 or 20% of their overall earnings in a work stoppage because they'll never get that back. Losing 500K for sitting out half a year is a huge deal for them.

The rank and file guys usually cave because they have to. They have mortgages and car payments and don't have hundreds of thousands in cash to live off of when they aren't getting paid. About 250 guys make their big league debuts each season. Players are on minimum salaries until their 3rd or 4th year in the league. That means that even if only a third of the guys that make their debut each year stick around, there are somewhere between 250 and 300 guys playing every year that have never made more than the minimum. That's 8 or 10 guys per team.

The rank and filers have to cave and then there is nobody looking out for the minor leaguers making shit wages. Most minor leaguers make between 8,000 and 14,000 per year. NBA G league guys make about 40K a year. Not great, but at least it allows them to live with some dignity.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story...mental-health-crisis

In reality having essentially a free player development pipeline puts even more money in the owners pockets. In baseball, paying your bottom 8 or 10 guys 500K a year also saves a lot of money.

I guess I look at baseball like I do many other things; with a great deal of nostalgia. I believe that the greatest eras were in the 1950's and 60's, so many great players (way too many to list and we all had our favorites), and teams that built dynasties.
Nowadays, .... meh. I just don't care anymore. Cocaine in the 80's, steroids in the 90's and beyond, strikes and stoppages sprinkled in have made me lose complete interest.

I still like and watch the playoffs and will watch an inning on the tube here and there.  

When the Brewers are competetive, baseball is fun.  When they aren’t, I pretty much lose interest the moment NFL training camps open.

Man it would be nice if baseball catered to their fans even a little bit.  Rob Manfred is just a pathetic joke as a commissioner.  We all like to pick on Roger Goodell as he certainly has made his share of mistakes as NFL commissioner.  That said, he’s 1000 times better than Manfred.  Manfred’s PR skills are non-existent, sometimes it almost feels like he hates baseball and wants it to fail, he’s that inept.

@fightphoe93 posted:

When the Brewers are competetive, baseball is fun.  When they aren’t, I pretty much lose interest the moment NFL training camps open.

Man it would be nice if baseball catered to their fans even a little bit.  Rob Manfred is just a pathetic joke as a commissioner.  We all like to pick on Roger Goodell as he certainly has made his share of mistakes as NFL commissioner.  That said, he’s 1000 times better than Manfred.  Manfred’s PR skills are non-existent, sometimes it almost feels like he hates baseball and wants it to fail, he’s that inept.

As much as Selig got roasted for some of his decisions as the commissioner, it was always clear that he was a guy that truly loved the sport. Not so much with Manfred.

But Manfred plays the same role as Goodell. He gets paid a lot of money to be the guy the fans can direct all their bitterness at so the billionaire owners don't take as much of a PR hit. They are paid well to be the bad guys.

Baseball would be more interesting if they wore helmets and tackled the person with the ball.

or

Yeah, that'll work.

Selig was a fraud.  He loved to romanticize about baseball but he was a complete cheap ass bastard as an owner.  He employed lackey front office idiots or family members that were totally incompetent.  He let Paul Molitor walk for a million dollars.  

Then he moves into the commish job and gets paid but turned his back to the steroid issue and fucked up numerous other things on his watch.  

Manfred is just an incompetent stooge.  He may have the worst interpersonal and communication skills of any pro sports dude in the last 50 years.

@Pikes Peak posted:

I still like and watch the playoffs and will watch an inning on the tube here and there.  

The problem is that the game has evolved to be a mind-numbingly boring  game of 25-30 strikeouts between each team intermixed with 2-3 home runs. There is no action on the base paths at all. It's a very stagnant game.

The problem is if they change the rules to outlaw the shifts and continue to eliminate the pitching changes it favors the big market teams. The very things that make it boring make it more competitive for small market teams.

What's funny about this strike/lockout is that no one actually cares.  If the NFL went on strike or lockout, it'd be front page news every day until it was resolved.  Even the NBA would dominate the headlines. This strike may go on all season because neither side will be feeling any pressure from the public to cave because we just don't care.

@Dr._Bob posted:

Yeah, that'll work.

To much clothing but I would be ok with that.

@MichiganPacker posted:

The problem is that the game has evolved to be a mind-numbingly boring  game of 25-30 strikeouts between each team intermixed with 2-3 home runs. There is no action on the base paths at all. It's a very stagnant game.

The problem is if they change the rules to outlaw the shifts and continue to eliminate the pitching changes it favors the big market teams. The very things that make it boring make it more competitive for small market teams.

That is what get's me is that they just don't get it that fans want more truly competitive teams and that makes for a healthier sport.  More fans are interested, more fans go to games, and more money for everyone. 

I am very much in favor of some of the rule changes such as limiting the amount of pitching changes, pitch clocks, etc.  Shoot I can watch the first inning of a baseball game go mow my lawn and watch a movie and still make it in time to watch the 8th inning.

Another dumb thing they do is start playoff and world series games so late.  If they start a playoff game on EST it might not be over until after midnight.

I love baseball, but the emphasis on the home run swing and teams unwillingness to adjust hitting away from shifts  has really dampened my interest. The national league DH will make it even worse for me.

It took me 5 years to come back from the 1994 stoppage. I'm sure that i'll come back from this one, if I live long enough, but I imagine it will be another 5 years.