Jopal78

McCutchen is exactly the type of player the Brewers will likely looking to add between now and opening day. Proven MLB player, still productive yet can be had on a short term/bargain contract. Obviously at 35 he's far removed from his salad days with the Pirates but still has a .790 OPS in nearly 1500 ABs since leaving the Pirates and still averaging 26 homeruns and 94 walks per 162 games. Too bad is more of a LFer at this point, But certainly near the top of the barrel in terms of veteran outfield depth

From a fan perspective it was cool. From a business perspective the rent must’ve been pretty bad, because at least three different companies leased that space and were content to walk away.

In that scenario the Brewers most likely are just the landlord. They lease space to the X Golf Company who builds and then operates the range.

By International Draft I assume they mean the Caribbean islands, and not the entire world. It’s hard to picture any MLB club having a complex scouting system in Japan, and directly competing with the Japanese League for players. I assume so. It's an amateur draft and the Japanese guys are professionals. Not sure how it would work for other parts of the world. What I meant with Japanese players is: not even Ohtani came out of the womb as a fully formed middle of the order hitter. At some point he was an amateur player in Japan. I understand why a lot of owners would like an International Draft, equal access to the players there without the need for a huge scouting/baseball academy. However, an International Draft seems so fraught with obvious loopholes that it wouldn't really achieve anything. In America, if a high school player is drafted by a club that doesn't have a good reputation for developing amateur talent, or the slot money isn't enticing, the player can simply go to College, but once their College eligibility is exhausted if they want to play baseball for a living the player is stuck with whomever drafts them. It seems an International Draft, if a player wasn't enamored with the organization or the slot money, they could simply play professionally in Japan or Korea, then come to America as a free agent.

By International Draft I assume they mean the Caribbean islands, and not the entire world. It’s hard to picture any MLB club having a complex scouting system in Japan, and directly competing with the Japanese League for players.

Just for the sake of argument, there couldn't be a competing league even even if MLB owners decided to move forward permanently with replacement players. 1. Any player who is under team control or has a multi-year contract, cannot simply go out on strike, "quit" MLB and go play in a different league. The Uniform Player Contract doesn't allow them to play for anyone else except off-season leagues in accordance with MLB's rules. Any player under contract with an MLB club plays for MLB or not at all. 2. Infrastructure: a new league would have no "major league" caliber stadiums to play in. Many of the MLB teams own their stadiums or have long term leases. To play in other available stadiums would mean playing in multi-purpose stadiums (think Oakland) not designed for baseball, and/or the amenities at those facilities (training facilities, club house, media/broadcast areas) would all be substandard compared to MLB. 3. Capital: Starting a new league to directly compete with MLB would require hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in start up money. There are a lot of fans who follow specific players, but the majority of baseball fans follow teams, and it's weird loyalty. Most people start following a team at a younger age and that is their team as players come and go as the team's fortunes rise and fall. If MLB went with replacement players, sure there would be an uproar at first but in 5 years nobody would know the difference between the replacement home run king and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

If they actually came to an agreement and reporting day was Friday there are still a ton of players unsigned who would be left behind as they wait for the best deal.

Highly doubt a bigger base will shorten the distance, as the home plate-facing edges at 1st and 3rd can still be positioned exactly 90' from the plate. My geometry is out of practice - but I think the difficulty in maintaining exactly 90' between the bags gets iffy at 2B - is the rule change to change the bag size at all 3 bases or just 1st? If it's all 3 bases, there might be a slightly shorter distance to and from 2B if they want to keep the bags perfectly aligned - that could be resolved by slightly shifting 2nd back and over a couple inches to preserve 90' from the inside corner of that bag to both 1st and 3rd base, the rest of the base would just appear to be a little off center. Going from 15 inches to 18 inches in diameter will shorten the distance about half a foot in the aggregate. Not only will it help fielders turn more double plays, it will likely result in more stolen bases and infield hits.

The NFL and NBA have revenue sharing which theoretically puts each team on level footing. In baseball there is some revenue sharing, but not enough to put all the teams on level footing financially. Thus, the MLBPA will not stand for a salary cap because half the teams are not going to be bidding on superstar free agents to begin with, and a cap will only further chill money the rich clubs can spend. I'm sure if the owners would agree to a floor forcing rebuilding clubs to spend over 100 million dollars a year, the salary cap and luxury tax wouldn't be a big deal. However, the Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs, Houston, Red Sox, etc. don't want to share all revenue across the game, because their local media money is what allows them to be competitive nearly every year. Meanwhile, the Brewers, Pirates, Royals, Guardians, Athletics, Reds, etc. do not want to be compelled to spend money on the major league payroll in years when they don't have the horses to compete.

"federal law does not permit independent contractors to unionize,” said a statement from the Fisher Phillips law firm. There are two types of employees in America. At will employees (either side can terminate the employment relationship at any time) and contracted for employees. Obviously baseball players are contracted for employees. By their nature, contracted for employees agree to specific work conditions and expectations which takes them outside of the Federal workplace rules you mentioned. So it's may be more nuanced than calling them independent contractors but the point remains the same, the workplace rules like "breaks,""overtime," "leave" etc. have been abrogated by contract.

Baseball players are independent contractors. They typical work place rules for "breaks" as well as "overtime" don't apply to independent contractors. The rest here is conjecture because unlike the NFL, MLB players are not required to talk to the media, bellies full or not. $102 dollars per person, times 26 players on roster, times 81 games on the road (although I'm sure travel days, and off-days on road trips count as well)= $215,000. I wouldn't take a player rep's leak to the media as gospel, because it's beyond petty, its illogical, given what they've offered the players as a minimum salary to dig in over 215K. Even $300,000 isn't likely going to make a bit of difference to any team. But it's really not. It's a labor dispute like any other in America where each side makes the same tried and true plays in the media "The laborers want the moon from ownership/management" and "Owners/management are making a financial killing and we only want our fair share". The only difference is instead of nameless faceless workers making up the Union, it's highly recognizable sports stars.

At least from the Angels and D'Backs perspective it is probably has to do more with the Astros and Dodgers teams in their respective divisions who already have a significant advantage over their rival in terms of talent, and being able to spend even more money would even further that advantage.

Bingo. Further whether owners make profit or not is irrelevant. Principal owners owe a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, if the teams weren’t profitable there would be infighting with nearly every club. Also don’t forget the teams do frequently reinvest that money into the franchise in other ways, like revamping the spring training facility, the pitching lab, purchasing the A-ball affiliate in Carolina. It’s always been the players asking for more and their union is a PR juggernaut and has multitudes of friendly media barkers to influence the narrative, to suggest the owners don’t need or deserve the money they’ve made off the game. We fans as bystanders have a binary choice if the blame for the work stoppage primarily lays with the unconscionably rich owners or the extremely wealthy players.

Well maybe they should put the money into the bank/investments instead of stuffing their pants! I did a quick check of 4 other teams. I used 2021 stats with hitters more than 70 PA (where pitchers start to sneak in) and 30 IP. Counted the players in the top 45 for their draft year (so some competitive and first round + that likely had more bonus than a 1 year minimum wage). Here are the results: Cardinals = 5 Astros = 8 Giants = 5 Rays = 4 That's 22 across 4 good/v good teams not named the Dodgers or Brewers. So on average 5.5 per team. I don't recall the exact number of players I checked. but it was the low to mid 20's for each team. Not only is that not a majority. It's closer to 25% of a 26 man roster. So that's a rough estimate of the players that come into the majors with a wad of cash (some pretty small and some pretty big (top 15ish each draft). Now looking at it another way I checked the top 50 players from the 2007 draft. Of those 50, 22 made a million or more in salary on top of their signing bonus with 16 more than league minimum *3 years and 6 around $1M-$1.2M. What was shocking was the number of players who spent 6-10 years in the minors and never had single game in the majors (about 10). That's a long time working at minor league conditions. Personally I think the draft is such a crap shoot it's better to reign the bonus pools back in, get real money into the minors and increase the first years salary or at least make a real bonus pool for pre-arby players. $25M is less than $1M per team. That's just chump change. I am with MLBPA that it needs to be closer to $100M or $3M per team and it could easily be done with a cut to the bonus draft bonus pool. MLBPA would likely not even blink if the owners suggested that. Edit: The Top50 players in 2007 had a combined signing bonus amount of $78.25M. The players that never made it to the majors or played so little they made less than $1M accounts for 41.4% of that bonus amount. That's a lot of money payed to players who couldn't make any impact at the ML level. I don’t know why you would choose 2007, when MLB went to slotted draft picks in 2012 and bonuses skyrocketed. There wasn’t a player in the Top 43 picks in 2012 who didn’t sign for at least a million and only one player in the first 60 picks signed for less than 700,000. In ‘12 the first 7 picks signed for a approximately 28.8 million dollars. In ‘13 the top 7 picks signed for a combined 32+ million dollars, and none of the 39 first round selections that year signed for less than 1.4 million dollars The Brewers have spent over 32 million dollars on just first round bonuses since 2012, and with two exceptions have paid out million dollar bonuses to all of their second round picks the last 11 years. Further the trend in Milwaukee for the last half decade has their 3rd round picks all got bonuses of $550,000 or more. In fact you have to go down to about the 7th round before the bonuses are regularly less than $250,000. It’s a distortion there are scores of minor league players chasing a dream without a penny to their name. A lump sum payment of even a quarter million dollars would be a life changing amount for most people. More importantly, context of the labor agreement, it’s only players on the 40 man roster who are in the Union; and neither the owners or players are proposing to do anything significant for those organizational soldiers who dedicate their youth to the game and never make it.

I was very careful in stating there were 12 first round picks who saw time with the Brewers in 2021 and it's true: Hiura, Ray, Yelich, Lauer, Derek Fischer, Billy McKinney, Brad Boxberger, Wong, Bradley Jr., Jace Peterson, and Phil Bickford. That's over a quarter of the 40 man roster. I didn't say they all originated with Milwaukee. If you want to move it out to 1st and 2nd round picks (who also get handsome bonuses in today's game)add: Devin Williams, Houser, Tellez, Tyrone Taylor, Mario Feliciano, Jordan Zimmerman, Josh Lindblom. The Dodgers had former first rounders: Beuhler, Kershaw, Bauer, Scherzer, Will Smith, Trea Turner, Corey Seager, AJ Pollock, Gavin Lux, David Price, Corey Knebel plus the aforementioned Phil Bickford and Billy McKinney. The point is, the players who got little to no bonus and toiled away for years making it to the major leagues aren't the majority here. Its players who are starting from go, with their pockets stuffed with dollars.

I haven't done the research but I'd be willing to bet close to half the players are on 40 man rosters (who are the members of the MLBPA) are former first round picks (the Brewers had 11 first round picks play for them at one point last year). With slot value for the 30th pick in the First Round being worth 2.3 million dollars, I'm not so sure how many toiled in the minors for peanuts. Corey Ray and Keston Hiura are going to be rich men (4+ million dollar draft bonuses) whether their MLB careers pan out or not. Even 2nd round picks are now starting to get multi-million dollar bonuses. So yes, there are 20th round picks that received no bonus and fought their way to the majors, and foreign born players who signed for peanuts, but they are the exception not the rule.

The fact that you can quote exact player salaries and hold that against the players while not being able to say one truthful word about how much the owners make is by design. If the owners wanted to end this, they'd open their books and show the players how big a share of revenue they are already getting and leave it at that. They won't however, because - I wonder why someone wouldn't be transparent in a negotiation? Any ideas? I'm not holding it against the players, the first line I wrote above indicated it's a choice between the super rich and the ungodly rich. The fact of the matter is Dan Vogelbach, the textbook definition of journeyman player, after playing 337 MLB games is most likely going financially be fine for the rest of his life, and given the laws in the United States regarding the transfer of wealth, his unborn kids will likely have a financial leg up too. Indeed, from a PR standpoint it's a bad time to be a billionaire in America, and for sure the MLB owners don't help themselves (or even really try) in that department. That being said; baseball teams are "for profit" corporations and with few exceptions are not publicly traded. Any sort of argument they are deceiving the players because they won't open their books is just MLBPA propaganda. Closely held corporations in America (State Farm, Deloitte, Mars, Enterprise, Subway to name a few others) aren't obligated to make their finances public, baseball teams aren't doing anything other similar multi-billion dollar companies aren't doing. Moreover, if a team failed to turn a profit there would be repercussions no different than if Subway failed to turn a profit so I've never really understood why it's "bad" that the teams are profitable. I'm sure Giannis didn't pump millions of dollars into the Brewers expecting them to lose stacks of dollars and have to pump in even more cash to keep it afloat. But as I've said before, being a fan of the Brewers I'm for whatever keeps that team most competitive in the coming years and it isn't what they players are selling for sure.

That's the rub, right? It's picking sides between the extremely rich and the godawful rich. Let's be honest though, the vast majority of members of the MLBPA aren't players who "just" made $600,000 per year and had a short career. But take a guy like Dan Vogelbach: 337 big league games under his belt and looking for his 5th professional organization. Yet he has already pocketed 1.6 million dollars as a signing bonus when drafted in the 2nd round. As an arbitration eligible player it means he has at least three years of service time so he's likely made at least another 1.5 million dollars in MLB pay. Plus whatever smaller, but no doubt significant, amounts from MLBPA licensing fees, sponsorships, playoff pay, etc. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule (the 30th round draft pick who makes it, or the 17 year old from the DR who signed for $20,000 and became an everyday player) and maybe those are the folks they should try to help more. But even the non-descript players like Dan Vogelbach are multi-millionaires despite a short career floating around from organization to organization. As a Brewers fan, I know they're in arguably the worst market and won't ever have the resources of New York and Los Angeles. Therefore, I guess I'm on the owner's side in this one, because its better for the team I follow. If I was a Dodgers fan I'd probably feel differently.

You're partially correct, in hindsight they could have done something during that six weeks if for no other reason than to control the narrative. However, it wasn't until this last week when it was crunch time that the both sides moved off from their initial positions. It's just like settlement negotiations for a lawsuit, it is the the prospect of otherwise going to trial that motivates a resolution. In this instance the Owners wanted to wait until there was some urgency in order to get down to brass tacks (and we saw in the last week both sides dropped their most over the top demands with little fanfare). Without a doubt, the attorneys for the MLBPA knew this was the situation all along, but the MLBPA is far better at the media game than the owners, and were able to use that inactivity as a PR cudgel against the owners.

Did the players go on strike? This is all about the owners forcing the players to fix the mistakes the owners keep making. No labor union in America is going to show up to work without a collective bargaining agreement with the employer. There was going to be a work stoppage in MLB once the CBA expired no matter what. Does it really matter if you call it a lock out or a strike? I think what also gets lost here, nobody is asking the MLBPA to maintain the status quo established under the last CBA. It is indisputable if the players accepted whatever MLB's last offer was they'd be doing better than they were under the last agreement. So really, this labor fight is about--how much better the players are going to do compared to the last CBA. Seemingly, the narrative has developed that solely because the teams are profitable and despite already paying fantastic wages, in the spirit of fairness they somehow should take less profits and pay out even more in salary, a concept which is not supported by law or custom in America. I suppose in part the writers fear losing access to Max Scherzer or other star player members of the MLBPA, while nobody would really care if Attanasio, or Larry Dolan refused to speak to the press when this eventually concludes, and therefore the articles put out are heavily critical of the owners. Certainly they are not blameless, then again if they give up the farm now, what is going to be the ask from the MLBPA in 2027 or 2028 because it won't be maintaining the status quo. If you like the Brewers as opposed to following certain players, its bad for your fandom. They're never going to have a NY/LA type of payroll, they'll have to stretch their dollars even further, and the success cycle will be even smaller, and even more challenging to successfully rebuild.

I'm not sure that nobody would watch. But for the fans who only care about specific players, yes they would probably be done with MLB, but as it stands now most fans root for a specific team. If all players on all teams were replaced, to the naked eye in the stands or on TV there would be no difference in the game. It's only stat cast or the radar gun that would tell fans if a replacement pitcher is topping out at 91-92 instead of 98-99, or the spins on a curveball or the exit velocity was 86mph. If you go see the Milkmen play they still have breaking balls, homers, relay throws nailing the runner at the plate, outs made from deep in the hole on the infield, etc.

Except labor is an operating cost, not profit. Viewing the two as the same thing is wrong, as the players are literally the ones out there working to provide a product. Is the pay of the general manager profit, too? I wouldn't say the players are providing the product. It is the owners who provide the product (an MLB game) to the paying customer. The players are more like a factory worker who helps create a finished product for the owner to sell. To keep things in perspective, Disney had an operating income over 7 billion dollars in 2021. As someone else said earlier, baseball teams aren't the best investment in terms of generating profits, a billionaire would be better off buying Microsoft or Disney if annual profits is what they're after. With baseball teams, the real money making event occurs when the owner goes to sell the team (Attanasio bought the Brewers for 223 million in 2005, and even conservatively could sell it for more than one billion dollars, a nearly 500% return on his initial investment in less than 20 years).

I’d suggest reading up on the actual terms of the lease before calling something incorrect, because the Brewers actually can force them to spend money because of the state of the art clause. Again, ignorance is bliss I suppose. The State of Wisconsin passed a law that eliminated the 5 county sales tax. Since that time, the Stadium District has no way to generate revenue. If the Brewers are adamant they need certain improvements to the stadium that the district cannot afford, Attanasio will most likely take his team somewhere else when the lease expires in 2030. As to your comment about a “State of the Art” clause. That can literally mean anything or nothing depending on the metrics used to define it. I do know both sides would have a bevy of lawyers to fight over what it means. Even if it came to that the Brewers are most likely gone anyways because it necessarily would mean the Stadium District already told them to pound sand, and on top of that would still need a bill passed by the legislature and signed by the governor to generate any money besides what they have in their pocket now. They can ask the Stadium District for whatever they want, absent litigation they can’t compel the District to do anything, and if there’s litigation the team probably attempts to relocate anyways. It’s testing the waters to ask for more public financing, plain and simple.

Not sure why the need for the condescension. The whole purpose of the study is to determine if they actually have the funds to live up to their part of the agreement with the Brewers as it is currently funded. Not sure why you're choosing to interpret the wording of a correct statement that simply omitted the 'as currently funded' part to spin it something that wasn't said. And that's the issue that seems to be problematic with how this narrative is being spun, apparently by the JS and bloggers- the Brewers haven't and won't ask the taxpayers for anything. They will probably, however, ask the stadium district to meet the terms of their lease, as ANY tenet would of their landlord. Then the stadium district will have to obtain the funding if they're short, or they'll be non-compliant with the lease. But you’re still incorrect. I don’t think there has been any suggestion the Brewers can force the Stadium District to spend money they don’t have, and would not make sense anyways since the Stadium District can’t simply restart taxing the 5 counties because they want to. There is zero chance, none, the Stadium District breaches their lease with the Brewers; even if they don’t do anything but keep the stadium operational for major league games. Based on what has been reported since the tax ended, I’m not even sure to what extent the Stadium District is responsible for maintenance or improvements at American Family Field.

While that's technically true, its somewhat of a distortion. If the Brewers want modifications to the stadium that cost X, and the Stadium Tax District has less than X, the Brewers will most likely tell them to get the money from somewhere and pony it up for the modifications or they're going to consider leaving for greener pastures when their lease expires in 2030. From the JS articles I've read, I don't think the Stadium District has the authority to levy a new tax to collect money for stadium repairs so it would require legislation to do that. So in essence, yes, the Stadium District would push for new legislation, but only at the behest of their tenant Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, LLC. But there is part where you are incorrect however. The Stadium District is the landlord and the Brewers are the tenant. Because the stadium district is a quasi-government entity it most assuredly is impossible for them as the landlord to "fail to live up to their part of the contract they agreed to with the team". To suggest otherwise means the stadium district breached their lease agreement with the Brewers, which is nonsense. American Family Field is now 21 years old and the Brewers have 8 years left on their lease. The Ball Park at Arlington lasted 25 years before the Rangers left. Turner Field was 20 years before the Braves left. I guess we'll find out if this is much ado about nothing, or the first salvo in a push for another new stadium in Milwaukee.