owbc

Have people forgotten what happened in March already? When this was really taking off the government was preparing for a massive increase in cases, football stadiums used as hospitals, etc. It almost happened. It was a real public health victory that people social distanced fast enough for that to happen. The mask shortage was real--my cousin was briefly forced to reuse her disposable masks at the hospital. And it is a victory in and of itself that so many individuals/companies are making PPE now and that handmade masks are everywhere. The events in Oklahoma from the weekend make it clear what we've known for a while--the vast majority of people are continuing to take this seriously. The fact that cases are again rising even with so many people taking precautions shows you how serious this is. As I said many pages back, my family has a variety of political views but everybody knows that to keep my 94-year-old Grandma alive (who is on oxygen) that we can't let her get COVID. And anyone who has talked to people who had the symptomatic version know this is not something to mess around with. My cousin just reported that his business partner in Florida has COVID and is very sick. Not hospitalized but dealing with the "worst illness of his life". He's 33 years old.

I don't think any fall sports are going to happen. Pretty amazing to see the contrast in states with COVID going away vs. exponentially increasing right now. I think you guys are still viewing this from a March perspective when we thought there was a possible 3-4% mortality rate associated with COVID. I'm pretty confident that the fact that there is very strong evidence that this is a lot less lethal than we had originally feared is definitely taken into consideration and is absolutely part of the reason we haven't really seen resumed lockdowns despite rising cases. Has nothing to do with mortality--the recent exponential growth in cases in many places is the problem which increases the odds of positive tests in locker rooms/clubhouses, thus throwing a huge wrench into sports. What if a college football team has positive tests a few days before the game? Do they forfeit? Or are they incentivized to hide the positives? Or do they just let every athlete/support staff contact COVID and if a couple of them experience complications or die (or their relatives die) then oh well, we'll pay off the lawsuits and move on.

The mask use seems to be a city vs. rural thing. In my experience it's about 80-90% compliance in the city and 10-20% compliance in the two small towns I stopped at. Probably the worst one was a butcher shop that had 5 employees working in close quarters to fill orders, none wearing a mask. I get that we've decided that we're going the herd immunity route but the lack of precautions is going to cause exponential growth again and result in a ton of unnecessary deaths because hospital resources are overburdened as well as a massive economic loss because of delays in reopening.

I don't think any fall sports are going to happen. Pretty amazing to see the contrast in states with COVID going away vs. exponentially increasing right now.

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/phillies/phillies-coronavirus-outbreak-clearwater-players-staff 8 positive tests in the Phillies camp...not good.

Looks like its working. Whoever leaks first gets to control the storyline with the writers rushing to be the first to tweet about it. Manfred got to control the narrative about the latest round and put the players on the defensive. That said...just get a freaking deal done already.

I don't think they would necessarily lose games with a modified season (maybe 10 or 20 at most), it would just give more meaning to each "series" in the second half of the season since they would count toward the round-robin. BTW I consume baseball the same way. The only Brewers game I watched on TV for more than an inning or two last year was the wild card game. But I'm a religious radio listener.

Maybe this will lead us toward scratching the 162-game season altogether, which would be a plus in my opinion. There are all sorts of creative ideas out there--they could play a fully-balanced 80 or 90 game schedule that ends at the all-star break. Then the teams get split into two groups, playing two separate round-robin tournaments consisting of best-of-5 series (stats count for regular season). The top tier is for postseason seeding and the lower for international pool money and draft rankings. Then a traditional postseason based on the results of the top-tier round robin tournament. Make it extra fun by allowing one or two of the lower-tier teams into the postseason and eliminating some of the top-tier teams after the round robin.

It sounds like the total money sent to the players is exactly the same as the previous MLB proposal. So one interpretation is that they have once again repackaged the same garbage. But just getting the two sides talking brings hope, and there is a path to a compromise if the sides are willing to move.

It seems like the compromise of full prorated salaries with more games in exchange for a grievance waiver should be enough to get a deal done. Although you never know with this group.

Back on topic please, and we have this very good news to discuss: Ken Rosenthal @Ken_Rosenthal · 1m Source: MLB proposal includes: •60 games in 70 days •Season starting July 19th/20th •Full Prorated Salary •Expanded Playoffs in 2020 and 2021 •Waiving of any potential grievance

Please be true, please be true

And as a side effect they have created unprecedented unity in the players' union and have turned the vast majority of MLB fans against them. I really doubt that. There are more players that are fringe roster guys who I'm sure would rather be playing and receiving something more than the couple hundred bucks a week they're getting now than there are guys at the top who are set financially whether there is a season or not. As for the fans, I'm sure whatever "side" everyone was on before all this hasn't really changed. More so probably, fans are blaming both sides for idiots. The top social media post is as follows: That's the message that the majority of baseball fans are seeing and believing. Yes, there's plenty of nuance to it, but I think BF.net tends to be more on the owners' side than the average baseball fan because the Brewers are punished by the current financial inequity in the sport and would benefit from some of the owners' proposals.

Weed ranges from an "essential service" in some states to completely illegal in others. It's crazy. All you need to know about testing is that they never test at while collar jobs. If you create unreasonable barriers to entry then you can't complain when you can't find qualified candidates. If insurance requires it then complain to the insurance company.

And as a side effect they have created unprecedented unity in the players' union and have turned the vast majority of MLB fans against them.

Are the owners playing some sort of perverted long game where they throw baseball in the trash for a year in order to extract concessions from the players in the 2021 CBA when the players are desperate for a paycheck?

I’m done thinking about the financials, I already paid for my MLB at-bat subscription and I want some baseball to listen to in the evenings. 2020 will be fun and I will follow, but yes, it shouldn’t be compared with previous years. At least one bottom-10 team is likely to make the playoffs. If someone hits .400 it isn’t going to count. But if the rules are set and everyone agrees to them, then it is technically legitimate. And compared with other sports that abandoned most radical changes, this will be a really radical MLB season. Playoffs from day 1 essentially. From a management perspective the challenges are intriguing. All about going with the hot hand and riding streaks. History doesn’t matter. If guy #45 on the roster is getting it done, he’s staying in the lineup. Everyone besides Yelich faces the risk of being benched for a hotter hand. Hader can pitch a TON since he’s not being saved for anything. The biggest bummer would be if a number of top players choose to sit the season out. I wouldn’t care that much if that was the case.

My issue is that a significant portion of that equity is a result of publicly-funded infrastructure to support the sports team. Mark Attanasio doesn't own Miller Park, but it's not like it has much value if there isn't a baseball team in Milwaukee. It would be better for everyone if he did own Miller Park and assumed the risk associated with owning the facility. As Boras noted, a big reason owners do not want to pay more in salary dollars is because they are getting crushed by debt obligations associated with stadium-related projects. The Brewers are surely in that situation with whatever they owe for Maryvale. The situation would be even worse if the MLB owned the stadiums, but instead the local governments are stuck with that problem. In Seattle, T-Mobile Park gets $4.5 million/year in maintenance money from hotel taxes. There isn't any hotel tax revenue this year. Where is that money going to come from?

I would be surprised - my guess is that most people in the league want the summer off, be it to spend more time with their kids who are off from school during the summer or to just enjoy the summer weather and not have to work. All things being equal, if I had to work 9-10 months of the year I'd prefer it be September through May-June. The players might think that but the owners have other ideas. Several are now on record expressing openness to a permanent calendar adjustment. If MLB has a work stoppage they can drop right in. Football can never be a summer sport but it should be no problem for the NBA.

This is a good discussion and gets into some deeper details about what we imagine professional sports should be vs. what they actually are. The key thing to me is the use of public dollars for stadiums. If the billionaire owners want to run MLB as a business that's fine, but when they use taxpayer dollars then they are renting a public asset and there is an obligation to be more than just a business. We've started to see pushback around public funding of stadiums and with wealth increasingly concentrated at the top it is increasingly clear that the days of public financing for stadiums are coming to an end. In fact there are now instances (such in Seattle) of ownership groups being required to pay into the city's affordable housing fund in exchange for the privilege of operating a sports facility in the city. Obviously not every city has the leverage that Seattle does but with near-guaranteed profits from a sports team it seems like some money is finally flowing in the correct direction. Getting back to MLB, the big unanswered question is how far they can push this until there is a public revolt. It seems like 1994 has been mostly forgotten, or at least there is the belief that if another 1994 happens the fans will return fairly quickly. That seems like a very dangerous assumption in these days of unlimited entertainment options. And the NBA owners have already expressed an openness to permanently play in the summer, so MLB's monopoly on the summer sports calendar is going to continue to erode. I'm interested to see what happens if MLB tries to impose a 50-game schedule. I can't imagine that anyone will view that as a legitimate season, especially if some players sit out. There won't be much reason for fans to care with the NBA, NFL, and college football going on. Part of me hopes that happens, actually. If some serious pain is felt by both sides it will increase the likelihood of a faster CBA agreement which is better for the long-term health of the sport.

Wow, just wow. When the owners ganged up, threw out Fay Vincent for siding with the players and gave Selig the commissioner spot, that moment right there is the most defining moment of owners being only interested in profit and having no regard for the good of the game. You'll have to elaborate, I'm too young to remember that and I'm not familiar with the history.

They want baseball, but are only comfortable taking a loss up to a certain level. Obviously they got together and agreed as a whole that they can afford to take a XXX loss to put a product on the field this season, and have the numbers worked out for different scenarios with the number of games. These guys aren't idiots. They became billionaires by taking calculated risks that have, for the most part, paid off. Even though they all will be taking a big loss, to bring baseball back the financial risk still needs to be mitigated, or it isn't going to happen. I agree that it sucks, but that's the business side of things. That's reality. The owners aren't holding out on bringing baseball back because they don't want to. They are holding out because it doesn't make financial sense not to. This is exactly the problem with professional sports (as well as college sports). Run purely as a business to make as much money as possible. Every single decision made with the balance sheet in mind. We’ve known this all along but now the rot is out in the open and it is disgusting to see. Most (all?) billionaires are about as smart as the average senior executive, they just got lucky or started their lives on third base. I refuse to hold them on a pedestal. As a billionaire running a sports team I would argue that they have an obligation to bring baseball back and uphold the good of the game that they are entrusted with an ownership stake in. It’s a moral obligation. And a contractural one. They should have written the risk into the contracts if they didn’t want to pay them when a crisis happened. There are a thousand other things they could have bought and profited on instead of a sports team. The “run as a business” crap is reality but it doesn’t have to be reality. It didn’t used to be reality. When Selig was running baseball there was a balance between profits and the good of the game and it turned out that improving the game was good for business. Now the pendulum has swung so far towards profits that it may destroy MLB in the long run. Which might be a good thing.

At least in WA state if you made $50,000/year you are getting $500/week from the state plus $600/week from the fed government, or $57,000/year. This is the main issue. Everyone making less than ~$60,000/year is making more off unemployment than they would be working. Then when you add in schools being closed (don't have to pay for childcare if at home), it probably makes sense for most people making less than $70,000/year to not look for work if they are unemployed. If you're wondering why the economy is still humming along, that's the answer. I highly doubt those unemployment benefits are going away prior to the 2nd week in November...

No method is perfect, it's all about keeping the R-value low.

I wouldn't be surprised if they permanently push the season back so that the finals are in July or August. I doubt MLB would like it but having playoffs during MLB all-star week would be a winner. And it seems like MLB is headed to irrelevancy anyway so we're going to need something to fill the summer sports calendar. For 20-21 by Christmas for sure. Maybe they take a page from the baseball playbook and schedule 2-game series against the same opponent? Unfortunately many of the initial creative ideas seem to be going away as we get closer to reopening.