Look at Ray Ray Run

The risk with wet balls is to the batter, not the pitchers. Even with a new ball every pitch the glove is wet, your hands get wet, and the ball slips. With guys throwing 100 MPH way more often no one wants to assume that risk.

Not sure how this is good news. This is also terrible negotiating by the players. If you expand playoffs to 14 teams in hopes of upping the CBT, there's really no need for owners to even push the limits of the tax because the playoffs become that much more of a crap shoot and your regular season eliteness means very little so there's not much reason to spend huge dollars to get bounced by an 83 win team in a short playoff series. This would be a horrendous miscalculation by the players union and would honestly harm the integrity of the regular season and the sport imo. I, speaking for me personally, would likely watch fewer regular season games with the expansion going that far.

The players have stated they have attempted to negotiate and meet since the lockout started but the owners have not wanted to. Hard to blame the players in that situation; takes two to meet.

I agree with this 100%. This is a good point.

Personally prefer fewer teams being allowed in given how long the regular season is, but 6 teams isn't a deal breaker for me. My concern is that 6 is "just the start" for owners as they will push for more teams each CBA.

The retention of profits are not one of the primary drivers in the increase of franchise valuations. This has moved away from being an industry of which the profits are reinvested. I don't pretend to know what the distributions are like, or what that process entails, but I am confident in saying those profits aren't reinvested in the organization in the way you are implying.

I don't base my actions in life on the choices others make. I'm sure, just as exists in any workforce on the planet, there are people who wouldn't and people who would. In large groupings of people you will find diverse opinions.

This is the way it once was, but absolutely is not the way it is today. The Braves, who are really the only books we can look at, are going to walk away with over 100 million in profits in 2021. If you want to use 2019 when they didn't win a World Series they walked away with 54 million.

But this completely ignores the actual profits they have also generated on the ball club in that time. This is just raw investment to invest worth ignoring $$ and profits generated over that same 41 year window.

I don't cross picket lines in any scenario, so yes that's correct. This is like arguing if I'd stop supporting the trucking union when places start to run out of food due to their strikes. It's not the truckers fault, it's the fault of those who refuse to pair a fair wage. It's not the players fault that people aren't supporting vendors because players went on strike, it's ownerships fault (this case it's a lockout so even more on the owners). This is something people seem to have a difficult time understanding. Just because you're not starving or living paycheck to paycheck doesn't mean you no longer deserve a fair share of the pot that is built on the back of your work. Fair compensation and workers rights degrade over time; they are chipped away CBA after CBA. The reason we're sooo far from the 40's-60's in regards to profit distribution to workers is because they have been chipped away one CBA, one union breakup, one lobbiest proposal at a time.

Oh wow, thank you so much for telling us all what the real narrative is. I root for labor in negotiations. It's not a difficult concept to understand. I root for Kellog workers, truckers, starbucks, amazon and baseball players all the same. Every fight won by labor is a fight won by the guys who deserve a larger piece of the pie IMO. It's really as simple as that. I care about teachers unions, nurses unions, warehouse unions, trucking unions. I don't stop caring about the fight for greater workers rights, protections, and earnings because the earnings are more than I make. You're either pro-union or you're not. It's really that simple. There's actually nothing more absurd than telling someone else what they should and shouldn't care about under the guise that they're "too stupid" to understand what is "actually" happening.

The players are asking for a split of revenues more in line with other major sports. People who say that better wages mean higher costs for everyone are merely parroting talking points of large corporations and the billionaire owners. It's embarrassing, honestly. Feel sorry for? I feel sorry for you stanning for a bunch of people who provide you with absolutely nothing at a baseball game. Even worse for you for arguing against more fair revenue distributions to labor by using some absurd "players wouldn't be better in some other line of work" line which is embarrassing, even for you.

So you think a team would try to miss the playoffs to get a better draft pick? What player on the planet gives a shit about a draft pick that won't even be in the big leagues during their time with the team, and what manager would risk a chance at a World Series for players who won't be on the team when he's there? Players and coaches would never ever tank away a playoff chance down the stretch for a better pick. If you had organizations releasing good players and etc to force a missed playoff chance fans would revolt. There are some issues with the idea like your Arizona example, but my goodness would it be a breath of fresh year to stop incentivizing this non-trying method of sports ownership. If you spend more and invest in an 78-80 win team you might be rewarded for at least attempting to put a decent product on the field.

AH, I must have missed that you guys were communicating via PM's and I somehow got access and that this conversation wasn't posted on a public message board. My bad. I'm glad to see you couldn't refute my points though.

They're not paying a net negative tax rate really, that may have been a slight exaggeration unless we're talking about people who started industries and businesses which were heavily subsidized by government dollars and then also had the government subsidize the sale of said product by covering a base of the cost with government dollars promoting sales and growth; this could be argued to be a negative tax rate because effectively they're receiving more in government subsidies in one way or another than they're giving back in tax dollars. I'm not going to pretend that I know the business backgrounds of every MLB owner or that they fit that bill but it is possible if you reach with the definition. That said, there have been plenty of studies done that show what you're saying is misrepresenting the reality of the situation. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/what-is-the-average-federal-individual-income-tax-rate-on-the-wealthiest-americans/ "New OMB-CEA Report: Billionaires Pay an Average Federal Individual Income Tax Rate of Just 8.2%" Now you can argue that those loopholes are available to everyone, but that would be an incorrect proclamation when you actually account for this thing called reality. Players can't skirt the idea that their earnings are revenue; for example, they can't be paid in stock holdings. Effective tax rates are really the conversation here, and frankly it's all that matters. The proclamation that they're merely following the tax code is incredibly misleading, as they're actually using their wealth to exploit the tax code to levels of which we've never experience. As an example, from the chart above, in the 40's and 50's, following the mass labor movements, effective tax rates for the elite in the country reached as high as 90%+ in the highest bracket. I'm not going to derail the conversation much further, and while SSH is exaggerating slightly your proclamation that the tax code is somehow based in fairness and equality available to all American's isn't actually true or honest in execution.

Politicians have more leverage over baseball than other sports because of the anti-trust exemption. A threat to remove that exemption could certainly expedite the process. Who knows if they would go that way.

How weird do you have to be to side with billionaires who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire over the players who are the entire reason you watch the game? Jerry Reinsdorf is undoubtedly leading the charge and trying to break the union, just like in 1994, during the middle of a White Sox contention window... despite having made billions of dollars as an owner in professional sports while the players are simply trying to play baseball and be compensated fairly in relation to the revenue they generate... There's no bias here. The game is not the game without the players. The entertainment does not exist. Even a 50/50 split has always felt absurd, given the importance of the actual product and the rarity of the assets, yet in baseball the split has moved closer to 44/56... People who side with big corporate employers over employees are just brainwashed sheep, frankly.

2011 lockout and I think big baby got fat and boris draw grew an additional human

Median and average salaries are up around 75% while revenue is up around 180% during that same window, what's happened is top end salaries have gone up a bit but most of salary escalation has been driven by minimum increases and top end talent. That said, it's also just been that owners have pocketed a higher share of revenues than they once did since there's no guaranteed split/revenue sharing like there is in basketball and football. This is why people talk collusion because in unison ownership stopped paying the middle class players, gave out big contracts to high end talent to say (see were giving out big money), and have decreased the share of revenue to players by possibly as much as 5-7%. This is why I've said baseball players would honestly be better off going to a cap because at least the cap forces owners to open their books and increases payrolls every year as revenue grows. As of now, a higher % of that revenue growth is just going into ownerships pockets. Used thos comparison the other day but if you scaled the sox 2008 payroll with revenue growth in the sport and nothing else, they'd be sitting at 215 million today.

How can something not be true when it hasn't happened? Who knew you'd start carrying water for white sox leadership this off season. Saying the sox will add shit players instead of high end free agent targets (that you said they were after) somehow isn't true yet they haven't added any of those targets. Amazing

weren't you telling us the Sox work within a very tight budget and fans should understand that when evaluating potential signings? If the Sox had 20-25 million to spend, they just spent 20-25% of it on a utility player.

You don't have to read my posts. Not sure if you knew that, but hope you understand now! I think I've said it about 96.8 million times so not quite as often as the Sox sign shitty players.

No one thinks the Sox will add no more players, jfc. The thought is they'll add shit players that they hope to strike gold with... you know, like they've done the past 97 million years.

For a while I was certain Maloney was him, but after your adamant dishonest defense of him the past few days it's 1000% gotta be you. At this point you have just made up countless scenarios where he was "first" on something that is 100000% false. Good to have you around, Steve! Pull up a chair and stay a while.

The Sox ranked 29th in baseball in payroll in 2018 at 72 million. 24th in 2017 26th in 2019 "Their payrolls were somewhat high."