Balta1701

While I would like to see this happen, there is no reason to think a salary floor will be showing up any time soon.

Small market teams aren’t in any threat of hitting the luxury tax if they hold onto a player long-term. An exemption from the tax only matters for teams that are close to it. Would matter a ton for the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets. This is the first year since the luxury tax existed that it would matter for a the White Sox - A mid-market team.

I seriously doubt the players would take a hard cap unless the revenue split was pretty dramatically in their favor. That was literally the genesis of 1994 - JR will break the union and get his spending hard cap.

If that is the case then I think this proposal by the union is a mistake. This is the first point where I have to say “the union is being intransigent.” They have plenty of room to negotiate downwards on core matters and used none of it. Give the owners a couple million on the tax line from their last proposal, cut the arb pool from $100 million to $95 million along with the moves they made on Super-2 today, change their proposed number for revenue sharing by a million dollars, and see if the owners make any moves in reply. If the owners aren’t actually interested in negotiating, they wont move at all in reply. If the players inch down and the owners inch up, then eventually they will find a deal. Frankly I’m not sure what today accomplished unless the players just needed to have a tantrum day. It made no real progress and gave the owners no reason to reply. This moves things closer to a long stalemate and closer to external mediation and stuff like that, and I’m not sure who that benefits.

The discouraging part is that both sides have made offers that are incremental at best, with almost no progress on the gap between them. At this rate, they might find a median sometime in 2024.

This is baseball. A 100 win team probably has a better chance of losing to the Diamondbacks in a 5 game series than a bottom team in the NBA does of winning against a 1 seed (or a 16-1 upset in the NCAA tourney).

Depending on what was said here, I think mediation time is actually now.

If this were in place for 2021, the Mariners and Blue Jays make the playoffs in the AL and the Reds and Phillies do in the NL. The Phillies won 82 games.

If the Giants kicked in a couple million in 2023 (La Stella has a balloon contract in the last year), a Kimbrel for La Stella swap probably works and clears a lot of the White Sox's tax issues this season. They would probably have to consider whether Kimbrel can survive as a setup man?

And when Konerko was 36, they signed him to a 3 year extension. Look, there’s lots of things the white Sox could do. They could just pay the tax for two years. They could let Abreu finish his career elsewhere and start a rookie somewhere. They could trade away a pitcher to clear payroll. They could attach a prospect with Moustakas and move him. I can guess which of those I think the White Sox will do, and I bet they are getting “big board” consideration when any deal where they take on a lot of salary is discussed.

But he also extended Paul Konerko into 2014 for a retirement party even when it was clear that his body was giving out in 2013.

No. Conforto and Abreu plus taking on those deals would probably put the White Sox’s 2023 tax number close to $250 million. Obviously some things could change to tweak benefits or how contracts are calculated for this, but that’s so far into tax territory that it would be all but guaranteed they’d be over the line.

To play my usual role…for 2023 on paper, assuming obvious things like Anderson’s option is picked up, this would put the White Sox’s payroll at about $195 million and their luxury tax number close to $210 million….without Jose Abreu. Good chance you can keep Abreu while staying below the tax line, but any other sizeable deals will put the White Sox well over even the Players’ union requested tax line.

Time between: Lockout and first owners proposal: 43 days First owners proposal and Union response: 11 days Union response and second owners proposal: 19 days Owners second proposal and Union response: 5 days

Soto has 3 arb years remaining. Let’s go $18 million, $22 million, $26 million as nonterrible guesses. That’s $66 million. The Nats will almost certainly offer him 3 arb years if he’s able to walk, so effectively he practically has banked that money. On top of that, this would be a 10/$284 extension. Less than Machado got, Harper, Giancarlo, etc. Theres probably a number that works for him right now, but this doesn’t pay him enough to buy out his career. So the question is - are the Nats serious and going to come back with a legit number, or are they leaking this to say “we tried” so that they could even consider trading him in the next couple years?

Soto's already in his arbitration years? Yeah, that actually seems light. Something weird here and I can't figure it out - B-R lists 2022 as his arb-1 season, but he was paid $8.5 million last year, and they're projecting $16 million this year. Do they count super-2 guys as "Arb-0" or something like that?

We already know that MLB's draft is often a crapshoot, and guys with legit talent slip many rounds sometimes. Investors aren't going to give everyone in the draft money. Give these guys decent nutrition and coaching and see if any surprises happen by the time they're 25. One obvious example - here's a scrawny kid from Michigan who was drafted after some 200 people that year. Who would invest in this guy's future earnings?

Want an example of a guy who had a bad offseason conditioning program and then his career completely changed when he improved that? Carlos Rodon. Obviously he also worked with a different pitching coach, but last year was the first offseason where he really was in proper shape by the end. Suddenly a cy young caliber pitcher, after badly struggling with injuries. Imagine that you draft and sign these guys and drop them into a culture where 95% of their teammates are working with trainers and coaches responsibly in the offseason. They’re all what, 18-23 years old? Do any of them pick up better habits? Make some changes in their body type as a consequence? Some scrawny kid starts putting on muscle late and suddenly they’re a 2.5 win RF and the roster saves $80 million? Those organizations that turn out positive minor leaguers regularly, could they have that type of culture? This seems like such a no brainer to me that I can’t figure out why it isn’t at the very top of an organizational priority list without insulting people, because it seems really stupid.

What drives me batty is that it should pay for itself. One player coming up and being a utility guy for one year, making it so you don’t have to sign a Leury, is worth $5 million right now. One back of the bullpen reliever is worth a couple million in savings. For the White Sox, they’ve signed guys like Bonifacio and Beckham and spent millions on them. One guy who comes up and has a solid season could be worth way more than that. But they put guys at a disadvantage for such a small comparative cost savings? This doesn’t speak to these owners being very good businessmen, let alone anything about baseball.