bmags

I'd say no. Honestly getting an NBA championship was impressive. At the very least its gratifying that their trash front office was in fact trash and just was extraordinarily lucky. But absolutely hilarious how Westbrook went from untradeable to traded to the wizards in a bad contract for bad contract to then traded for by the lakers for actual good talent and they thought that would take them to the championship lol. It will never not be funny.

I don't think it will enable more steals and I think the less rules in games the better. What are going to have challenges on players too many inches past their allotted position? It won't make the game better to watch. Making pitchers throw less hard will make the game better to watch.

I really can’t get over how stupid all of the league rule changes both sides are arguing about are (with the exception of pitch clocks).

I don’t think it’s just star mega deals. It will help all players in free agency if the high spending teams have more room before being tapped out (look at the Sox). Especially - as I keep alluding to - with so many teams moving to their competitive window.

https://wtf1.com/post/my-honest-opinion-of-f1s-drive-to-survive-season-4/ sad

This doesn't make any sense as a response. Yes, labor has tools at their disposal to create leverage and urgency and aren't always on defense, but my point is not every CBA ends up in a strike or a lockout. As evidenced by the last 25 years. Manfred was the one that decided he could create enough leverage through the lockout. He was wrong. Blaming the players because they could do the same thing and therefore Manfred isn't at fault is silly. He's paid a lot to make decisions, he failed in 2020. He failed now. He is surrounded by leagues shoveling revenues into his mouth while he is watching his cash cow of RSNs fail and he ... fails in a labor agreement. He fails and he fails and he fails. He fails at building baseballs. He fails at telling the truth about building baseballs. He fails at fixing baseballs. He fails at telling the truth about fixing baseballs. He's bad at everything except keeping his job. It's okay to acknowledge it.

Well, we know that isn't the only playbook because we just had 25 years where there was no gap in the CBA. There are plenty of collective bargaining agreements that don't end in strikes.

Maybe, but a big reason why this turned into games lost is because perceived lack of respect. You don't lean into that by doing what manfred did. He's truly, truly a moron. Instead he should have tried to give so little in continuous negotiations the players walked away so he could say "See! The players walked away!"

I'm not gonna lie I feel like since 2018 I've not seen a single thing he has done so it's hard to be excited about him.

I'll stand up for the players here. The league should have realized in 2020's season restart negotiations, where they tried to hold off on negotiating until last minute and it failed disastrously that players were united this time. Manfred just went to the same playbook. Wait until there is a feasible deadline, push at last minute with bare minimum. It didn't work. This is absolutely rob manfreds doing, this isn't like boras players are striking and refusing to negotiate.

One thing I wish the players did was remove the "player benefits and other comp" or whateer from the the Luxury Tax calculation merely to make it easier on all of us.

On twitter I saw a writer post how after the first half of the free agency before the freeze, it was hard to see this as a league not working. And I'd just restate my opinion that much of this animosity is for the 2017-2019 period of an unusually large number of teams being uncompetitive. That this was the result of a new competitive advantage in front offices around player development staffing and technology and analytics, and years of results for franchises like the white sox, reds that the old way of doing things wasn't going to work. Now virtually every franchises save the Rockies has modernized and retooled, and we just finished a year of very good competition and it only getting better. The players could do nothing to tip the balance against tanking and see greatly reduced tanking! But the number of early retirements and poor FA spending laid the groundwork to fight the last battle. And the commissioner is an absolute ahole who wants to fight battles. If the players had prioritized just getting rid of draft pick compensation, and raising limits, they'd likely be pretty pleased with their takeaways the next 5 years. But they are trying to recoup losses and win, and the owners are trying to always prove they are victims. It sucks. Baseball is a good sport, it shouldn't be this hard.

Right, I guess that’s my overall point. I think players think “anti-tanking” wins the public over, but reality is they want Oakland, Pitt, Balt to spend more. I think those teams that have been competitive despite low payrolls should get windfalls. Competitive balance team tha makes playoffs? You get an additional $10 mill toward player salaries. Can only be used on payroll though. Non competitive balance team in bottom 10 of payrolls? You lose 2nd round pick. Do I think that would get sign off? Maybe not, but it’s more worth fighting for than a damn lottery, my god.

Who are the perpetually tanking teams though?

Exactly! I think experiencing the 2009-2016 white sox was good his very experiment. And it kinda sucked! I’m pro tanking, even 2018 was better than 2015.

The union wants Bobby Witt Jr to get out of his first contract earlier to sign with the Yankees. It wants the royals to sign second contract guys instead of them being forced to retire. The CBT should go up. But it’s hard to see either side actually improving the game based on these negotiations.

So while I am now firmly on the players side, it is only on the divvying up of this CBT to an acceptable level and the min salary. In Passans article, taking seriously the players goals of reducing tanking and increasing competitiveness, I find the players solutions lacking. Lottery (does nada), more handouts to small market teams (this reduces tanking? What?). Just a bunch of garbage. And the idea that more playoff teams disincentivizes teams to spend seems like something one person said once and everyone decided to parrot. It doesn’t seem to pass an inch of scrutiny. Honestly 7 playoff teams makes more sense to me to disincentivize tanking than a lottery. Tanking was needed because you needed an overwhelming talent and depth advantage to be win divisions. If you can get into playoffs as a less balanced team you may go after one last piece to get you to 82-86 wins. id bet getting front offices in to create these incentives would lead to more interesting solutions than this garbage from owners/players. (and obviously the players don’t want 7 playoff teams because it merely grants additional revenue to owners and should come with appropriate concessions to labor. Not because it disincentivizes signing players, GMAFB)

when you know what words mean.

Walmart employs 1.6 million associates in the US. The $12/hr they moved up to in 2021 is like 24k/year. If you paid 1.6 million people 26k more per year that is $41.6 billion. Their net profit was $14billion globally last year.

Eh. From the most profitable companies? I'd say this may be one of the few times that isn't true.

Do you think this isn't happening right now?

I think it would have been probably better for the minor leaguer if branch rickey's system didn't take off. Maybe college baseball was even more prominent as a feeder and high school less. OR you end up with a system more like soccer, Formula 1, etc, where you still draft guys and have their rights, and these differnet leagues (Premier Baseball League, National Baseball League), purchase loan contracts on these players. The expectation is the clubs will purchase them back. But for those teams, they will have payroll themselves and need to pay player salary. The best next league would likely be in places like Louisville, Charlotte, Nashville, etc. Because these teams are putting together the best talent they can and trying to win, interest is decent. They can afford a salary of a late career player. The level of baseball is pretty strong. They get some decent TV money and followings. They need to recruit the talent and teams to give them players there. Players build a decent following and carry it into the MLB. Pay if you get on these teams, and facilities, are probably much improved. OTOH, there is likely less of them. Players who don't get picked up by this are in the team complexes playing backyard games. Alternate universe.

thoroughly enjoying the elder ring "tough death" clips on tiktok/twitter.

Damn this should be illegal I thought this was a real link

If anyone has some of the top cattle advanced milk production stat sites for me to get into during the lockout please share it to me. Just getting into cattle stats