Balta1701

Germany (population 83 million) had roughly as many cases per day as the Houston Metro area (population 4.6 million) for the last 2 weeks of May. For the last week, because Houston is increasing and Germany is decreasing, the Houston area has had >2x the number of cases per day as Germany. And that's early in the surge in cases that is growing for the "early open" states.

Around the world is different from here. Japan and South Korea combined have about as many daily cases as my county right now, and that's 1 suburban university county. Low incidence and lots of testing in those areas means you catch it early most of the time. Far higher incidence here means people are going to be exposed all the time, and then you just need for a person to be at the right stage of transmission for it to spread it to a large group.

Watching as college athletes return to campus and infect their teammates despite supposed safety measures being taken...the only way sports play this fall is if teams just decide they're ok with everyone getting sick. The NBA has an out - they can do a bubble for their playoffs because they already ran most of their season. NFL, MLB, College football - trying to travel, allowing people to interact with families, other outside businesses, with the spikes we're seeing in the irresponsible states?

Don't just say K-12, include universities, they're going to be a mess too. Anyway, here's what a country that isn't just going to let it burn through everywhere looks like (Good read overall for contrast to the US) https://www.ft.com/content/d68d6292-0486-4bfc-bf5c-54ce850a3f7a

So the owners proposed it at the time, the players said no, it did not make the agreement text, but you keep acting as though it was agreed to?

NBA still has an actual shot with the bubble. It's a legitimate plan and could actually work.

"I looked in and saw the grocery store was on fire. Before going in, I therefore lit 3 other fires, just to make sure."

Then the owners have to take that risk.

1If ownership doesn't believe they can safely pull off a 3 month season starting in August then they should say so and we wouldn't be having this conversation. They're probably not wrong.

You and the owners are insisting they should.

Well it's already underway right now in any part of the country that has largely "re-opened". I can't see how Arizona and Florida and a few other spots aren't in full crisis mode by early July, and Texas a few weeks later as their hospitals overflow. But that illustrates another problem... The players are the ones who are putting themselves most at risk by having to travel and be out of any quarantine during this. So, they're not only having to take a paycut on their normal rate, they're also being asked to take a paycut under hazardous conditions.

This could happen right now with no new agreement.

You really think that a 20% pay cut would bring things into balance if there were no playoffs?

If people are still interested in how this spreads, here's a paper looking at clusters in Japan. Take home messages: -Hospitals, bars, restaurants, concerts, gyms, choir/singing practice/church, transportation (planes), and "Ceremonial functions" are the places where large clusters occurred. -1/2 of the clusters started because of someone aged 20-39, with the greatest likelihood of starting a cluster being someone 20-29. -Only 40% of the people who started large clusters showed symptoms at the time they started a cluster -Only 1 of 22 clusters started with someone who already had a cough, the clusters started before coughs developed. -Typical time from cluster starting to onset of symptoms was 1-3 days. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/9/20-2272_article The recipe for how to beat this thing is right there, if we could get people to actually care.

Nonsense. The players do not get paid for the playoff games. If there were 0 games in the regular season, and only playoff games played (imaginary scenario), the owners would still clear a billion dollars or more. There does not need to be any paycut whatsoever to make that happen, and the players already signed onto the original agreement. The players are offering a fair deal - increasing the playoff revenue for increasing games, which follows the language of the original agreement. The owners will not accept any version of that, so now the players are saying they'll just abide by what they already signed. The players already agreed to that!

No, they want the principle that the players will have their salaries limited/slashed based on revenue to be established. The players already agreed to fewer regular season games and MLB could set the number of games right now. The players already agreed to fewer regular season games and a lower share of their full salaries accordingly.

Then they could launch right now, planning an early playoffs and a 50 game schedule.

This is why it isn't good faith. The Owners have an agreement in hand saying the players will play for their full salaries pro-rated to the number of games in the regular season. The agreement says the 2 sides will bargain in good faith if the economics don't work. The players say "We will allow you extra playoff revenue in exchange for extra games at the agreed rate". The owners say "No. You must accept pay cuts under any circumstances we will offer". So the players are willing to give the owners extra revenue to help their economics, but the owners are not willing to give the players extra games in exchange for the extra revenue. If the owners can break even at 50 games and a full playoffs, where is the offer of 65 games, expanded playoffs, and full pro-rated salaries? Why haven't they made that offer?

It does not say the bolded. The specific language is that they will "Discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games at neutral sites or without fans". It does not say that they will discuss reducing salaries, that is your/the owners interpretation, not included in the original agreement. https://apnews.com/dd87bcc774d608e53624594fe56fab0c The players are, in good faith, trying to offer the owners a schedule of games that will work and additional playoff rounds for additional revenue. The owners insist that pay cuts must happen regardless of any revenue increases.

But the players were willing to give the owners expanded playoffs to increase the revenue for ownership. That just wasn't good enough for ownership.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29302203/how-astros-luhnow-mindset-ruining-mlb

Assuming Giolito remains an all star caliber pitcher for the next 4 years, neither of these guys are likely to pitch alongside him for very long as an ace. If Giolito is this good for 4 more years, he's going to wind up in Los Angeles or Boston or NY with a $250-$300 million deal after 2023. With as screwed up as this year is it's hard to pencil in everything, but Kelly is only 18, if he spent the next 2 years in the minors, he'd make his big league debut at age 21 and pitch with Gio for 1 year or less. Crochet might move faster and could pitch with him for a year or more if he developed faster, but he's also still somewhat raw and yeah, this year is still a mess so who knows? If you want your second ace while Giolito is still in this organization, it's Kopech, Cease, or someone else who is already here breaking out (Stiever, Dunning, Lopez?). This round of draft picks slots in to replace guys like Gioilito and Keuchel when they leave in a couple years.

If you're talking about the difference in expenses between 50 and 80 games and declaring that 80 games just isn't feasible, in the ballpark isn't precise enough, you can't give me numbers that could be off by 10%. You got to 1/3 of a season, 54 games, because you were arguing that it was precisely 33%. If it's actually 45%, then the right number of games would be 73. This is again a great case for opening up the books a little bit more.

1. Given that a substantial fraction of the revenue comes from the playoffs, and the playoffs would still happen and could even be expanded, I think the first bolded item is wrong. It's probably wrong based on the Forbes numbers. But of course, more open books could prove you right, and that would make the players much more willing to make a deal. 2. The second bolded item is missing one hugely important factor; all the other things that go into running a game don't need to happen. You're not paying extra cops to handle traffic. You're not paying security. You're not paying to clean up the ballpark every day. You don't have to bring in a huge amount of food every day. Yes that costs revenue, but the non-player expenses are dramatically lower.