monty57

It's hard watching all these free agents sign elsewhere, but I think the Brewers are very hesitant to add any guaranteed money to next year's payroll. They'll have Hader (arby 4), Woodruff (A3), Renfroe (A4), Burnes (A2), Adames (A2), Lauer (A2), Suter (A4), Houser (A2), Tellez (A2), Severino (A3), Gustave (A2), and Urias, Milner, Williams, Brosseau, and Hiura entering their first year of arbitration. Things are going to get really expensive just trying to keep the team together, so they probably can't afford to add any more 2023 salary. I think that our best hope for additional offense is either a trade of Houser, Lauer or Hader, or the market falling for someone like Conforto or Castellanos to the point that they're willing to sign a one-year deal.

Rowdy has a career 98 wRC+ vs LHP and 101 wRC+ vs RHP. He still has limited career PAs, but he really doesn't have splits that show the need for a platoon partner. Of course he'll need some days off, and I figure one of the utility IF (Peterson, Brousseau) will play 1B on those days. I'd guess we'll roll with Rowdy as the everyday 1B to start the season. If he's not cutting it, Stearns will make a mid-season trade to bring someone in. I highly doubt it's an option, but for sake of discussion, if they were to play an OF at 1B, I wouldn't take one of our better defenders (Taylor), I'd look at McCutchen, Yelich, or even Renfroe. If you're going to have an inexperienced glove at 1B, at least improve your OF defense by putting Taylor out there instead of one of the lesser defensive OFs.

It will be interesting to see how they use McCutchen. If they primarily use him as an OF/DH vs LHP and a late-inning pinch hitter vs LHP, then I could easily see his OPS being mid-.800s. If he sees significant time against RHP, then we're probably looking at a mid-to-high-.700s OPS guy. He and Taylor both hit lefties significantly better than righties, while Cain (at least last year) hit righties better than lefties. I could see a regular "vs LHP" lineup with Taylor the starting CF and Cutch at DH or spelling Yelich in LF. Yelich is still going to be an everyday guy, but when he sits it should be against lefties (67 wRC+ in 2021 vs LHP). The big question is whether they just signed a former MVP to an $8.5M contract to play 20-25% of the games. I think he'll see quite a few PAs against RHP, so his rate stats like OPS will be lower.

Owners are expected to ratify this at 5:00 pm, and transactions are unfrozen immediately following that ratification.

For there to be a business, there has to be owners. So, who would own the teams in this league? The union? The players? If it's the players, is it only the current players? When a player retires, would they cede ownership to the player taking his place, or would we just end up with a couple hundred former players sharing ownership down the road? Who would make all of the management decisions? For instance, who would tell the player/owner who isn't that good that he was getting cut so that a better player (who is not yet an owner) could take his place, and probably take over his share of the ownership? Are the units of ownership transferrable? If so, could owners sell their share? If that happens, it wouldn't be long before some of those evil billionaires buy out majority ownership in all the franchises. If the union takes ownership, then they cease to represent the players, and are now just replacing the current owners. Then there are contracts. I would guess that the current players' contracts disallow them from playing baseball for anyone other than the team with whom they signed the contract. So, the only players who could leave would be current free agents and others who don't have any sort of contracts. Of course there would be plenty of players who would just stick with the league that has proven to have the ability to pay multi-million dollar salaries rather than taking the risk of joining a start-up league. Plus, there would be a definite conflict of interest if the union had any ownership in the new league that was directly competing with the MLB, so they probably wouldn't be able to represent the MLB players any longer. With the MLBPA out of the way, teams would be able to negotiate directly with players and their agents, and I would guess that the top free agent players would be getting huge offers to stay in the MLB rather than testing the markets in the new league. If a new league were to start, it wouldn't be started by the players or the union. One of those groups is good at playing baseball, and one is good at labor law. Neither would have a clue as to what it would take to run a billion dollar business. The league would be started by some other business people, just like the current owners. This dream of the players starting their own league really isn't based in reality, and even if it somehow came into being and succeeded, it wouldn't take long before the same old owner/labor battles were brewing. That's some things I came up with in a few minutes. I'm sure the high-priced attorneys would find a lot more problems with some players deciding to form their own league. It may be fun to pontificate, but it's not going to happen.

I don't disagree with you. I just think that making this public knowledge is a PR spin to get people on "their side" mad. Both sides do this, so I'm not pointing fingers. I don't really care one way or the other, so I don't understand getting upset over these things. If a Brewer player makes an error that costs them the playoffs, get upset. If management decides to trade away your favorite player to save some money, get upset over it. If the cost of a player's beef burrito is put into a different column in the team's Quickbooks ledger, who cares?

The bolded part tells you all you need to know about the owners attitude to the players - you're just employees and you should be happy with what we give you and if we decide to give you something we can take it away or charge you for it (directly or indirectly) if we want. What's next? Pay toilets in the clubhouse? A fee for having indoor toilets instead of port-o-potties at the back end of the parking lot? Oxygen usage surtax? Uniform fees? We've been sold the con that baseball costs are escalating because it's not a sport, it's an entertainment business. I wonder how the Rolling Stones would feel if they were told there's vending machines down the hall if you feel hungry or thirsty. Where have you gone Hank Steinbrenner, A nation turns its lonely eyes to you... I think that's the way it goes... I get what you're saying, but it seems to me that you feel the owners are bad for noting that they have an expense in providing free food, but the players aren't bad for accepting that free food willingly? I think people are grasping at straws as to why they should be mad at one side or the other. Or, the PR machines of the owners and the union are doing there job at getting people fired up over something that really doesn't effect them. If Yelich will play better because he gets an extra cherry on top of his free sundae, then give him the cherry. I'll still hope that Yelich plays better regardless of how the team CPA accounts for meal money.

If this is true, and if xis' # of $130MM from the extra playoff games is true, then it sounds like there would be around $130M of new revenue stemming from the new deal, and $100M of that would be going to the players. The union seems to realize that they screwed up so badly in the past few negotiations that they feel that they need to make up for past mistakes this time around. Selig may not have been able to "keep up with the Joneses" as an owner, but he sure kicked the snot out of the union in labor negotiations. The arbitration/pre-arby system is horrible for the players, but rather than being mad at the owners for taking advantage of that system, the current players should be furious at the MLBPA for ever agreeing to it in the first place. If that 130 million was the extent of the increased revenues, you could have a point. But it's not the extent of it. Please expand on that. What else is there? They'll get something for ads on uniforms, but just pertaining to the CBA, what other revenues are the owners getting that makes up for what the union is asking for? I'm admittedly uninformed on this stuff, but to my knowledge the owners asked for more playoff games (xis' $130M number) and ads on uniforms. Were they getting anything other than that from the the recently nixed CBA? Meanwhile, the players were asking for what seems to be far more than a 50/50 split of the new revenue streams. That's why I think the union is trying to make up for past failures. They're trying to get far more out of this CBA than the owners would receive, so they're not just trying to win this negotiation, they are trying for such a landslide victory that they will make up for decades of losses.

Funny thing about that is, the Angels, Diamondbacks and Tigers are all bigger markets. You'd think teams like the Royals, Rays, A's and Brewers would be the ones who opposed it. Looks like the guys who don't want to see extra spending are teams that are poorly managed.

If this is true, and if xis' # of $130MM from the extra playoff games is true, then it sounds like there would be around $130M of new revenue stemming from the new deal, and $100M of that would be going to the players. The union seems to realize that they screwed up so badly in the past few negotiations that they feel that they need to make up for past mistakes this time around. Selig may not have been able to "keep up with the Joneses" as an owner, but he sure kicked the snot out of the union in labor negotiations. The arbitration/pre-arby system is horrible for the players, but rather than being mad at the owners for taking advantage of that system, the current players should be furious at the MLBPA for ever agreeing to it in the first place.

if owning a team was not profitable the owners would open their books and show all the world what a money pit it actually is. The fact that they dont tells me that the information would NOT benefit their cause if made public. I don't think that true. They're not legally obligated to announce their financial records, so they aren't going to do so no matter what those records say. That said, teams (like any business) should make money. If they don't, they shouldn't exist. What I don't understand is the concept that because a business (or the owner of a business) makes money they are necessarily not paying the employees enough. The main job of any business is to make money above and beyond expenses (aka turn a profit), or at least reinvest the profits into the business so that it will help in the future. For example, renovating the Arizona complex should help improve future teams, while paying a veteran $7-8M instead of paying a rookie league minimum may help today but it probably hurts the future, as they will have less money and the rookie won't get a chance to prove himself. This is true in all industries. Jeff Bezos grew Amazon by constantly reinvesting proceeds while not showing any profits. Shareholders and stock analysts gave him a hard time for not making a profit, but it seems to have worked out okay for them. It made a lot of sense when the Brewers were pretty certain that they weren't going to win that they put money into projects focused on the future rather than signing some journeymen FAs to increase payroll. Now that they're vying for the playoffs, it makes sense to spend as much as they can on adding current talent, and not spending as much on projects for the future. But that doesn't mean they should stop spending on other things. Costs put into things like international training facilities and things like the "pitching lab" are very important. They are basically the R&D budget for MLB teams. Wendy Selig Prieb was horrible at running the team, and the Brewers failed to field a .500 team for 25 years. I am very glad that Attanasio knows how to successfully run the team. If he makes some money from that, more power to him. By doing so, he is also able to pay his players more than the Seligs did. Well-run businesses can pay good employees. Poorly run businesses cannot. The union makes a cut of every player's salary, therefore they are very focused on making sure as much money as possible goes into player salaries. I get that. They are doing their job by focusing all the attention on that one facet. It's important, and the players should be paid well. But the team also has to make sure it stays financially sound, or they will cease to exist as a team, so the management has a tough job, and they also deserve to be paid for it. As I said in a previous post, getting upset over who may be getting the biggest slice when all of the slices are big is probably not worth the energy or anxiety. It takes a lot of smart people to run a multi-billion dollar industry, and all of them deserve to be paid for what they do. At the end of the day, I'm not going to be any better or worse off if some extra money goes to one side or the other, so I'm just hoping for a resolution that doesn't make it tougher for the Brewers and other small-market teams to compete.

A + B does not necessarily equal C. With the foresight that there wouldn't be any new trucks being made due to the chip shortage, I bought a new truck last summer. Right now, I could sell it back to the dealership for more than I paid for it, but even though I would have more money than I paid, I won't sell because then I wouldn't have a truck to drive. As others have said, professional sports teams are status symbols for the rich. I'd go even further to say they are lifelong dreams that few can ever attain. Selling it, even if it brings a significant gain, means that you are no longer an owner and will probably never get the opportunity to own a team ever again. Plus, in an era of zero interest rates there aren't a lot of alternatives to grow wealth, so why not hold on to the appreciating asset? It seems to me to be a safer long-term bet than throwing the gains into Bitcoin. I'd guess that owning a team is a pretty big write-off for people who otherwise have a lot of taxable income. With a baseball team, there is usually a way to put income back into the team so that you don't show a profit. When the Brewers' payroll was down they bought the A ball team and did a bunch of upgrades on the Arizona facility and on Miller Park. These upgrades help out for the future without adding taxable income in the present. A lot of business owners do this, so that while they are paying taxes on their income, they are able to improve their asset (the business) without paying extra taxes.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/ross-stripling-mlb-mlbpa-negotiations.html Stripling is saying the owners tried to sneak things past them in the early morning hours as they were seemingly getting closer to a deal. Doesn't seem to me like we're going to get a deal done any time soon. If it weren't for my kids' obsession with sports right now, I'd probably already have moved away from baseball until things get straightened out, but my 16 year old gives me minute-by-minute updates of what's going on so it's hard for me to step away. I've never said that I'm going to stop buying a certain brand of car because of a lockout or strike, and I'm not going to stop watching baseball after these negotiations are over, but arguing about who's more at fault is probably a fool's errand. It's a labor negotiation. Both sides signed the last deal, so if one side feels they were screwed by it, it's at least partially their own fault, and the fact that we're missing baseball this year is partly the fault of both the owners and the players. Once baseball is being played, I will still be glad that it's Attanasio in the owner's box and not Wendy Selig-Prieb, because who owns a baseball team does matter. I will also be glad that guys like Burnes and Woodruff will be pitching for us because who is playing for the team does matter. Until then, I don't see the point in arguing over "who's the bad guy?" when it's two sides trying to split up an enormous pile of money. Both sides are doing far better than 99.5% of the people on this planet so the only reason anyone is getting mad at one side or the other is because both sides spend a lot of money on PR to make sure that fans get mad at the other guy.

I think this is an important point. Many years ago, the players decided to unionize, and since then there has had to be a CBA in order for baseball to be played. Both sides have had to sign every CBA that has existed, so neither side can be blamed for holding the other side up to the current agreement. It appears to me that the union realized over the past few seasons that the last few CBAs have favored the owners, so they are trying to make that up in the current CBA. The owners asked for some extra playoff games and ads on uniforms, and the union asked for massive changes. If you're looking for "fair," then you probably think the owners are screwing everyone because they seem to be getting more of the growth in revenue than the players. If you are looking at the previous CBA as the baseline and are looking at give-and-take from the previous CBA, the union is asking for far more "take" and less "give" than the owners, so in that regard they are the ones screwing things up. I get why the union wants to make massive changes to the way things have been run, because the pre-arbitration / arbitration system does hurt players. But they are the ones who signed off on that in previous CBAs, so I can understand why owners don't want to just bend over and give in to the union demands because it may be "more fair." I personally think the union did tremendous disservice to the players over the past few decades, and that has led them to this point. They feel they need to ask for the moon in order to make up for past mistakes. Even with their "concessions" it would still leave the players in much better shape than they were with the previous CBA, while the owners would really get very little in return, so if they don't concede a heck of a lot more, we will probably not see baseball any time soon. That doesn't leave the owners blameless. They could say "we took the union lawyers to the woodshed in previous CBAs, so let's cut them some slack" and we'd have an agreement, but I don't think that's how negotiations are normally done. They'll look at the last contract as a baseline, and as I said previously, if you look at it that way the union is asking for way too much. That is why the owners wanted to use a mediator, and why the union knows that a mediator would side with the owners.

Barney Stinson wrote a whole "Bro Code," and Robin and Lily were two of his best Bros. (How many here will get this reference?)

I don't hate either side. I cheer for the Brewers, so I hope their players do well and I want the owners and management to make good decisions to keep the franchise "sustainably competitive." There is a lot of money involved, and I understand that both sides want to keep a good share of that money for themselves. At the end of the day, most of this doesn't affect me much, so I just hope that they are able to sign a deal, and that deal won't make the uphill climb that small market teams already have even steeper. Brewer management has done a good job of putting together a team of players who have a legitimate shot of winning it all. Let's get the CBA done and start playing baseball!!

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 don't get what you're saying. Of course profits and expenses are different, as profits are figured after expenses are taken out of revenue. The GM's salary is an expense just like the players' salaries. The GM isn't an owner, so how does he/she figure into your argument? If JosephC is correct that the average team profit is around $40,000,000, and the average opening day payroll in 2021 was $119,710,221, I think it's relevant to note that on average the owners bring home around 1/3 of what the players bring home. Are you arguing that the owners should not be able to make a profit, and that they should only be allowed to participate in the gains when they sell the team? I'd have to believe that since Attanasio is one part of a membership group which owns a smaller revenue team, that Attanasio will get less income from the Brewers over the next few seasons than Yelich. All I said was that the players seem to be doing pretty well, and you took offense to that. So, what is your argument?

The NFL shares TV revenue. If MLB shared TV revenue, most of the big market/small market talks would be over. The Brewers draw a lot of fans and have a lot of parking revenue... their TV deal vs a large market's TV deal is the reason they can't "spend with the big boys." As to "free market," MLB is the "company" and the competition is every other form of entertainment on which consumers can spend their money. The people in charge seem to think it's a good idea to give the advantage to big cities, as there are more fans to spend money when their team is good. It sucks as a fan of a small market team, but MLB doesn't seem to think it's a big deal, or it would've been fixed a long time ago. The way it's set up is completely against any rules of sportsmanship we'd teach kids. It's akin to the Olympics saying that since countries like U.S. and China have a larger audience they get to run 75 meters while the smaller countries have to run 100 meters. Just because Usain Bolt may still win doesn't make it unfair. But, it's all about the money. The union obviously doesn't care, as they're trying to get rid of the "competitive balance" programs that are in place, and the owners could have fixed the problem decades ago by signing one TV deal for the league rather than having each team sign their own deal, but the big market owners would never go along with that.

So, the team made $193 million in profit in a four-year period in which they paid their players $474,521,814? Seems like the players did okay in that deal.

I don't believe the Brewers and A's matchup prospect wise. The Brewers just don't have what the A's would want in an Olson trade. The Yankees could easily top anything the Brewers throw out there with just one prospect. I just don't see a realistic scenario where the A's trade Olson to the Brewers. I've probably read similar comments before in this thread and I really just disagree. The Yankees have Volpe (60FV, Fangraphs #12). He would be the Brewers #1 prospect, yes. I don't know if he's more valuable than the Brewers top 2, or top 3, or top 4, but it's somewhere in that range. Further, I don't think the Yankees even would want to trade Volpe for Olson, since he may be more valuable and I think they want him in NY. I don't think the As would want a 1 for 1 trade either, since the low payroll teams usually want multiple guys back to fill multiple positions. The Brewers have 2 guys with FV50, the Yankees have 4. The Brewers have 2 guys with FV45+, the Yankees again have 4. So it's really just a question of whether the Brewers are willing to trade 2-3 guys from their top 4, or do the Yankees want it more and will top it with 2-3 guys from their top 9 and a little more. The Brewers could put something together, it would just take at least three of Ashby, Mitchell, Frelick, and Turang. That would leave the farm all but devoid of MLB talent, and they wouldn't be able to afford all of their arbitration raises probably as soon as next year, but certainly in two years. Therefore, they would be trading away all of their prospects for one year to go "all in," and then they would need to start selling off their expensive arby guys (Olson, Adames, Woodruff, Burnes, etc) after the "all in" year. There are teams that would do this, it just isn't what Attanasio and Stearns have been preaching since Stearns was hired.

There is no doubt that Olson would make the team better, but I don't think we can afford him. Unless we include Burnes or Woodruff in the deal, we probably don't have the prospects to make the deal happen, and even if we did, we couldn't afford the arby increases for all of our guys who are going to get raises over the next few years. If we were able to make a trade for Olson happen, it would necessitate trading some of our stars after this season is over. We may have to do that anyhow, but I don't see Stearns adding another expensive guy who's already in his arby years.

Good point. The "problem" for the Brewers is that they have decent players to cover most positions: (2021 OPS+) C: Narvaez, 99 OPS+ 1B: Tellez, 116 OPS+ 2B: Wong, 108 OPS+ SS: Adames, 135 OPS+ 3B: Urias, 111 OPS+ LF: Yelich, 99 OPS+ CF: Cain, 95 OPS+ RF: Renfroe, 112 OPS+ 4th OF: Taylor, 106 OPS+ Util: Peterson, 93 OPS+ That certainly doesn't tell the whole story, but the point is that it's not cheap or easy to find a big offensive upgrade. Without a lot of money to spend, the upgrade would probably have to come from trade and that probably means weakening the pitching staff to some degree. With this being the "buy low FA" thread, I think it's going to be hard to find a "buy low" position player that will be penciled in as a starter over the guys we already have. Maybe a RH 1B, but we're probably not going to replace any of our other starters with a bounce-back candidate. Any "buy low" guys will likely be in the bullpen or competing for a bench/role player spot.

Because he can still hit LHP. 2021 vs LHP (116 PA) .291/.319/.582/.901 133 wRC+ 2020 Did not play 2019 vs LHP (53 PA) .367/.415/.551/.966 151 wRC+ As noted, he is highly unlikely to sign anywhere, but his ability to hit LHP is why he could be appealing to platoon at 1B or DH.

You are almost certainly right, but if Stearns likes him it would be worth the call. Maybe he'd come back to play a limited role for a team that has a pretty good shot at making the playoffs. Then he can sign a one-day deal with the Nats next offseason to retire with them.

Agree. I thought Taylor earned a shot at a starting job, but it looks like he'll be the 4th OF this year. Due to injuries and the way the Brewers operate, I'm sure he'll get plenty of PAs throughout the season and I highly doubt that the Brewers will consider trading him. He's cheap and will play a significant role for the '22 Brewers.