adambr2

Isn't pay part of the equation of whether you want to work or not? Many companies gave essential workers bonuses for working during a pandemic. So part of the equation of do I want to work during this time is pay. It would seem that if a player normally gets paid $7M a year they might not be willing to go back to work and risk exposure for himself and his family for $2M. I guess the point is despite things opening back up, this pandemic hasn't gone away. And many companies are treating it like that still working from home. If the owners want the players to take on this added risk they will need to pay them to do so. If you look at what Snell said it was about the risk and the reduced pay. They go hand in hand. I haven't seen a player say they won't play only for reduced pay, because they already agreed to play for reduced pay in March. All I'm really getting at is that there has to be solidarity in a union like the MLBPA among members in all important decisions. If everyone just does their own thing and makes their own decision, the MLBPA doesn't really serve any purpose. Obviously, these are very unique circumstances with a little more wiggle room for individuality in the name of safety. But I would expect that if there is an agreeement between MLB and the MLBPA, the vast, vast majority of players will report. I would go as far as to bet that Blake Snell will be reporting for whatever he makes under the agreement, regardless of what he said. Time will tell. Or maybe it won't since I think there's a good chance they can't come to an agreement in which case it's all a moot point anyway.

That's just not how a union works and it would defeat the purpose of having one. Either they're all in it together or they are not. If the MLBPA passes an agreement, no individual player is sitting out the season because of the money. It would be a horrible look, there has to be solidarity in their decision. Now yes, they cannot physically force them to play and there may be players here and there who choose not to. But those players will certainly cite health concerns and not money, and may still be in violation of their contract to refuse to play if MLB and the MLBPA both agree that the approach is safe. It's already not a great look for the higher paid players in MLB if they simply don't want to play because they don't want to play for partial money while their union counterparts making the league minimum and maybe trying to get their career started are quietly pleading to get the season going but fear speaking out against the stars. It reminds me of the recent CBA passed by the NFL where stars were generally against the agreement but the little guys at the bottom who benefitted more outnumbered the stars and so the CBA passed. https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2020/05/mlbs-rob-manfred-responds-to-concerned-players-we-would-never-force-players-or-try-to-force-them-to-come-back-to-work.html I don't think it is a horrible look. 95% of my company is working from home right now and we aren't going back to the office anytime soon. So it is not unreasonable for any player not to play this season for any reason. It's not unreasonable for a player to not play for health related concerns, based on the information you provided on what Manfred said. It would be unreasonable for a player to simply refuse to play because they didn't like the 2020 salary structure that was agreed upon by the MLBPA. Respectfully, I'm not sure what the percentage of your company working from home has to do with it -- working from home is obviously not an option for MLB. I work for a company of about 275 that also cannot perform our job from home and not one individual has refused to continue working for health related concerns. Some fields have this flexibility to a great degree, some do not have it at all. I acknowledge that there will likely be at least some players who refuse to play on health concerns, but in no way should it be influenced by a player's means but rather by his honest concerns that the given plan is not safe. Which honestly, I'm guessing it will be just as safe if not safer than simply not working, but I suppose there will still be some that refuse. But if MLB and MLBPA reach an agreement and as part of the agreeement, at Bryce Harper's salary level he receives 9 million for this season and Bryce Harper says, "forget it, I feel it's safe but I'm not playing for 9M, I don't care that the agreement was passed", then yes, that's a very bad look for him.

That's just not how a union works and it would defeat the purpose of having one. Either they're all in it together or they are not. If the MLBPA passes an agreement, no individual player is sitting out the season because of the money. It would be a horrible look, there has to be solidarity in their decision. Now yes, they cannot physically force them to play and there may be players here and there who choose not to. But those players will certainly cite health concerns and not money, and may still be in violation of their contract to refuse to play if MLB and the MLBPA both agree that the approach is safe. It's already not a great look for the higher paid players in MLB if they simply don't want to play because they don't want to play for partial money while their union counterparts making the league minimum and maybe trying to get their career started are quietly pleading to get the season going but fear speaking out against the stars. It reminds me of the recent CBA passed by the NFL where stars were generally against the agreement but the little guys at the bottom who benefitted more outnumbered the stars and so the CBA passed.

I care. Injuries are always a risk regardless of circumstances. The Bucks already won an asterisk-less title in 1971. Is there an asterisk next to the 1981 World Series winner or the 1999 NBA Champions? No fans, no home court, just some random fan-less arena at Disney world. I know some disagree vehemently but I’ve been alive 32 years, almost all of which the Bucks have never even sniffed a deep playoff run, and it would be a very meh feeling to me to not see it happen in our own state, much less our fans not experience it. The nostalgia won’t be there for the second title (if we ever had a chance) like it would be for the first. This is nothing like 1999. It’s not even 2020 MLB which hasn’t begun, this is a cut off in the middle season that they’re desperate to finish. For me, I really don't care if they're playing on a specialy constructed basketball court in Greenland. Why would the Bucks of all teams get an asterisk next to their championship if we won it? We were already in line to get homecourt advantage throughout the NBA playoffs. We're going in at a disadvantage relative to where we were in early March, not an advantage. Do you consider next season to be asterisked too if it doesn't start until Christmas? You are certainly entitled to feel however you want to feel about it, just understand that for many it will still feel euphoric and earned. And for those that it doesn't, nothing says we can't go back next year and win it all in front of a packed Fiserv Forum.

There's no asterisk in front of the 2019-20 NBA champions whoever it may be. If we win it, we will certainly have legitimately earned it just the same as any other champion. It sucks that the circumstances have changed, but that's the reality.

June 1st is probably not a hard deadline anyway. But I am probably more talking out of annoyance and frustration than anything.

Just go ahead and cancel the season at this point, I'm about done anyway. No other professional sports league is having such a struggle getting going again for economic reasons, they're having trouble getting going again for the right reasons. It's an embarrassment for a sport which is already a dying breed among youth, and labor strife again in a year or two is almost inevitable. Baseball may be playing empty stadium games for a significant amount of time for reasons other than a virus.

Can you please share the source that says pregnant women and newborns are at high risk for developing serious illness? It's not on the CDC's list: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/index.html One side note, I thought the players were being way more fair than they needed to be when they agreed to a prorated salary based on games played. These are guaranteed contracts. Once it's safe to play, the players should get their full salary to play whatever season there is to play. For owners to on top of that, ask them to take a greater paycut is just so ridiculous and greedy. I don't think it's this simple, MLB with fans and without fans is apples and oranges, revenue-wise. A fanless revenue model for baseball would never be enough to pay for the current salaries. Sure, TV contracts do help some but a team like the Brewers would still stand to lose substantial amounts of money with prorated salaries. I don't really expect owners to operate at a loss. However, if this is something they did indeed agree to back in March, they should honor that agreement. It's inexplicable to me that fanless baseball wasn't apparently something anticipated in the agreement both sides signed in late March and that there wouldn't be something in there that specifically addresses that possibility.

It's an interesting question but any data you find will be piecemeal or anecdotal at this point. It's gonna take a while for that to be reported as some places just don't do it on a monthly basis. (by way of example, Michigan just released its traffic fatality report for 2019 two days ago, and CDC is only through Q3 of 2019 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm). You can look around and find some data but unless you get the whole picture it's not that meaningful - WI had 146 traffic fatalities through May 17 this year. Last year it was 166, year before was 177....that's been trending down for a while so not sure if it is due to quarantine. I guess you'd have to see what the rate in decline was for the last 10 - 20 years to see if that's a really big drop or not. In Arizona, they have a ton of "other" deaths relative to years past. Specifically those are deaths classified as "Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified.” So far, through May 3, there’s been 1,141 deaths classified in the category. The previous average for an entire year: 1,307. The guess is that most of those are Covid but obviously not 100%. https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/data-expert-says-arizonas-death-rate-from-covid-19-may-be-much-higher-than-reported Sorry, this might be better suited for the off topic thread. Yeah that's my bad. For some reason I thought I did post the inquiry there and went back and realized I put it in the MLB thread. Thanks for the info.

One thing I'm curious to know is what the overall 2020 deaths are relative to expected overall deaths (compared to 2018, 19, etc). Does anyone have the statistics on these? I think this can help put things in perspective of how much if at all that the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to deaths in society. We know many people died with COVID-19, but how many died with it and how many died BECAUSE of it, if that makes sense.

Leverage for 2021 or not there is no appealing to public opinion on this one. The general public will be fairly disgusted with both sides if they can't figure this out. Baseball really can't afford another 1994 fallout. They are struggling to appeal to younger generations already as it is.

I am fairly certain Rodgers will end his career in San Francisco the team he actually wanted to be drafted by and play for. I could definitely see this happening. However the 49ers are a pretty well-run organization and I'm not sure how big of a premium they would pay to get Rodgers. Nor will they likely be picking in the early part of any round anytime soon.

POJs still have to be maintained, too. Isn't it easier and more sanitary to maintain a public restroom than a POJ? I can't think of any advantage of a POJ over a public restroom besides being portable and cheaper. They certainly aren't more sanitary. Also given that millions are being paid to stay home, you'd think there would be a little extra money in the budget for local governments to provide maintenance and security for a few public parks.

Nobody's talking about the humanity of it or any such nonsense. We're talking about what the ACTUAL impact on the salary cap could be moving forward. A factual discussion of what COULD happen and how that COULD impact the NFL in the future. Nobody ever presented it as a "oh, the poor NFL." I.. .never said that they were. I am not sure why you went here as I wasn't addressing it at anyone. I was just taking a little tongue-in-cheek jab at the NFL and the concept of then having to operate under a significantly smaller revenue model, nothing more.

There's definitely a danger of that anytime you are incentivizing people to stay home. Unfortunately, I am not sure what the right solution is. Not helping out the millions of unemployed beyond the meager base unemployment wages obviously isn't a great alternative either.

Yes. When my wife asks me if I think her friend is pretty, I shrug and say "She's okay." I don't go on for 2 minutes about what a great body she has.

Even if the NFL had to permanently conduct operations with no fans in the stadiums, it would still be a highly profitable organization from TV contracts alone. Players would just have to get used to $15-$20M annual top contracts in place of the current $30-$35M ones *gasp* and the league would have to become accustomed to several hundred million in annual profits rather than billions *oh the humanity.* Of course rather than accept that new reality they would probably be focused on how to operate as a PPV type business going forward.

I think you could make a legitimate argument that winning it all would make him more likely to leave. (Not that I wouldn't still take a championship!) No unfinished business, nothing left to prove in Milwaukee, etc.

I don't think social distancing between athletes is really the biggest issue for sports being able to take off. UFC and WWE have been operating almost this entire time and they have more direct contact between athletes than anyone. I see social distancing as more of a short-term large scale societal strategy to help prevent overrunning of medical facilities rather than something that is necessary on a small scope of a football field as a necessity to resume league operations. I think wide scale league access to testing and potential treatments are much more important to seeing football again than social distancing on a football field, and they've had the luxury of numerous months to prepare that other leagues just haven't had. I don't think the NFL season is in any grave danger of being lost.

A lot of people probably aren't going to like what I say here. That's okay, I respect that. If you don't, all I ask is that you read this in its entirety first. I would like to preface this by saying that I am NOT a "these spoiled brats get paid millions to play a game" person. I generally do side with players over owners on labor issues. I'm involved in a union myself and I respect it. So with that being said, I'm pretty disgusted with what I've seen and heard out of MLB players lately. I'll start with what I'm not disgusted with. Players like Clayton Kershaw and Nolen Arenado have basically come out and said, "We had an agreement, and both sides should honor it." I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance to have, and I am not letting owners off the hook. If they agreed to pay salaries at their full prorated rate, that's exactly what they should be doing. Now, I'll add what I'm disgusted with. I've yet to hear (and I could be totally wrong about this and might have just missed it) a single player come out and say something along the lines of "I'd like back out on the field for the people of this country." Not a single mention of trying to give back in the form of entertainment to the fans, who finance your entire livelihood. The country is in crisis. People want, need something to cheer for, need a sense of normalcy again. Citizens who haven't ever cared about the game of baseball would be willing to fall in love with it now. Baseball really has a chance to win over the hearts and minds of the people right now, who are desperate for a distraction. And instead, they are completely missing the boat and they don't even seem to realize it. Nor do they seem to care. It's all about "me, me, me. You want me to play? What's in it for me?" And to some degree, I understand it. I know these guys are looking out for themselves first, and no one should be expected to sacrifice their health for entertainment. But it would be nice if, in this day and age, with so many unemployed and struggling, if there was even a smidgen of a thought from a single player that "Hey, people are really suffering right now. What can we do to help?" Yes, I know the highest paid MLB stars are giving money to COVID-19 causes like every other rich athlete right now. And it's great that they're doing it, but there's something to be said for doing something collectively as a group for the morale of a nation. Blake Snell comes off to me as one of the tone-deaf, selfish players I've ever seen. And maybe he's not. I don't really know him. But his comments come off as such. "Bro, I'm risking my life." Bro, spare me. The diabetic cashier working the 7-11 where you just filled up your Escalade is risking his life. The middle aged nurse working 16 hour shifts in NYC is risking hers. Let's put aside for a minute the fact that as a 27 year old healthy world class athlete, your risk factor is incredibly low. The reality of your situation is that you won't be asked to do your job unless it is deemed remarkably safe, and if you have so much as a sniffle, you will have a test up your nose and access to any medical care you might possibly need before you even know what happened. That is your reality. You know what gets me? The guys who want to give their two cents on the pros and cons of having a 2020 MLB season are overwhelming players who would be just fine without one. The Bryce Harpers, the Clayton Kershaws, the Mike Trouts. The guys who could each walk away from baseball forever today and spend the rest of their lives living in affluence. What about the players who have made a few hundred thousand in their careers and have their entire futures and livelihoods at stake? What about Corbin Burnes, who needs desperately to get back at this? What if he loses another year after a lost year and never gets back? Do you think Corbin is okay with just poo-pooing the season away because Trout and Harper think they should What about someone like Tyrone Taylor trying to make it? What about some 32 year old journeyman minor leaguer who finally made the big leagues last year and may only have one last shot at making a career out of this? Does anyone care how these guys feel about it? Do you think they would be okay with a lost season? Has anyone asked? Would they even be willing to speak up out of fear of angering baseball's elite class? This is what I mean by selfish. Getting baseball going isn't just about you, Blake. It isn't just about you, Bryce. If you don't care about getting it going for the fans, at least care about getting it going for your union brothers. Anyway, I've ranted enough for now.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is stating for certain that Giannis wants to leave, I just don't think we have any idea of anything until the ink is dry. I'm long past ever taking professional athletes at their word no matter how sincere they seem. Being able to offer him the most money just isn't as important as we'd like it to be. He's Giannis. He can go to L.A, build his own brand and make a fortune just off endorsements in California if he really wants to.

I don't remember why, but my dad hated, absolutely hated Chuck Crim.

Well I agree with what you said before. Too bad so sad if they really didn't forsee that and still made the deal. That's a pretty bad faith negotiation if they don't intend to honor it now.

The agreement was made on or around March 26th. If the owners didn't know by that point that fanless baseball was a very strong possibility for 2020, they had an incredible lack of foresight. That's extremely revisionist. On March 17 I posted that I did not think we would have any baseball and pretty much nobody agreed with that. The consensus at that point was we were looking at starting a plain old season On June 1. The season continuing in July with no fans the entire way was perhaps a whisper, but I'm all but certain the owners did not anticipate that realistically when they agreed to that deal. So maybe they just do have an incredible lack of foresight being that they, you know, own the teams. But that is not what the pulse of the public was at that time. People were still hoping to resume a school year and all sorts of things that now look like fantasies. It really isn't. Go back to Pages 13 and 14 of this thread which is the timeframe of when the agreement was made. While there was still uncertainty, there was a strong feeling among many that if games were being played this year, it would be in front of empty or reduced crowd stadiums. It didn't take a revisionist, much less an MLB owner who should have had a pretty good understanding of the situation, to know in late March that playing in empty stadiums in 2020 was a very strong possibility.

The agreement was made on or around March 26th. If the owners didn't know by that point that fanless baseball was a very strong possibility for 2020, they had an incredible lack of foresight.