The Futility Infielder

Two Week Notice

By now you know that the Major League Baseball Players Association finally set a strike date on Friday, giving themselves and the owners two weeks to work out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. After a rare glimpse of optimism earlier in the week, both sides now sound increasingly pessimistic about bridging their gap, particularly on the revenue sharing and luxury tax issues.

If you've been reading this site with any regularity, you know that I am generally pro-player in this battle, and have been for some time. I remember the 1981 strike, back when I was 11 years old. I'd already read Jim Bouton's Ball Four a couple of times, and the name Marvin Miller was certainly familiar to me when the players struck. I was disappointed at the timing of the strike, with my beloved Dodgers in first place and Fernandomania sweeping the nation. But I held no blame towards the players. Ball Four had exposed, to me at least, the routine buggery owners and general managers had used to bully players prior to free agency. Conditions have obviously changed since Bouton's book, but as he noted more recently, "For a hundred years the owners screwed the players; for twenty-five years the players have screwed the owners - they've got seventy-five years to go."

I don't honestly think today's players look at the situation with that kind of acrimony. But I do share their sense of skepticism with regards to the owners' intentions and to their claims that baseball is hemmorhaging money. I'm not a financial genius, but the work of people such as Doug Pappas has given me a reasonable understanding of the shenanigans that owners can use to conceal profits in their balance sheets.

So I bear the players no ill will for working to protect the gains they've made over the past quarter-century. I certainly have more respect for their union than the inept NBA players' one which failed so miserably at the bargaining table and in the court of public opinion during the 1998-99 lockout. Yes, I'd be heartbroken if the World Series were cancelled again, but this game is too strong, too rich in history to be destroyed by morons like Bud Selig and Jeffrey Loria. Owners, especially stupid ones, are an eminently replaceable commodity, just like slick-fielding shortstops who can't hit their weight. If this labor war shakes some of the dumber ones out of the game, good effin' riddance. The players are the irreplaceable product, and the minute owners forget that, the absurdity of their position is revealed. Nobody will go to Miller Park to watch the replacement Milwaukee Brewers or PNC Park to watch the replacement Pittsburgh Pirates--the real thing is nightmarish enough.

My observation of the contrasting ways in which teams like the Yankees and the Brewers have run their organizations over the past few years has shaped my views greatly. I grew up hating Steinbrenner for the way he bullied his players (and managers), but since his post-suspension re-emergence, he's managed to curb that tendency. He understands that within the game, nothing makes money like a winning ballclub. So George seeks out new revenue streams, then takes the money and pours it back into the team via player contracts and a strong international scouting presence. My take is that he wishes every other team would do the same. Yes, he'd like taxpayers to build him a better Yankee Stadium, but he knows the team's Bronx address is part of its hallowed heritage, and that his team can compete just fine without more luxury boxes.

But all markets are not created equally. The Oakland A's and the Brewers, to choose two examples, come from much smaller markets, but they've shown that intelligent management (or lack of same) is every bit as important as money in creating a competitive ballclub. It isn't about a shiny new ballpark built at taxpayer expense. It's about creative baseball minds that are open to new ideas on the field and in the front office.

Unlike most baseball writers, I don't claim to have any coherent plan that would solve the ills of the major league game. While I think some improved form of revenue-sharing has to be put into effect, that money MUST be put back into the teams instead of into the owners' pockets. Any revenue-sharing system which penalizes a successful mid-market franchise like the Cleveland Indians in order to prop up the inept large-market Philadelphia Phillies is wrong. Any system that rewards decisions to sign the likes of Neifi Perez to a long term contract at the expense of jettisoning home-grown talent like Jermaine Dye or Johnny Damon is wrong. Any system which makes the Brewers the most profitable team in baseball while fielding such a shoddy ballclub is wrong. And I'm sorry to my fans in Milwaukee to keep harping on their team, but we all know that these aren't Harvey's Wallbangers we're talking about. I want them, as well as fans of every team in in every city, to have pride in their ballclubs.

Enough soapboxing. There are much better writers than myself who are covering this much more eloquently. Bootleg Sports' Dayn Perry has a great starting point, covering the 5 best and 5 worst articles on major league baseball's economics. Among the best: the aforementioned Pappas (even if you never come back to this site, please read his work), Forbes' Magazine's analysis of MLB's claimed $500 million in losses, and Bryan Burwell's comparison of Bud Selig to the inept scam artist from the movie Fargo. Perry's article on the worst writing about baseball economics is also worth reading. The execrable, arrogant Mike Lupica, the toadying Phil Rogers, and the Wall Street Journal make the dishonor roll, and with good cause.

Pappas' most recent piece at Baseball Prospectus is also required reading. It addresses the big stumbling block in the current negotiations, the double-whammy of revenue sharing and the luxury tax. As Pappas notes, the owners' current proposal will not improve competitive balance; it's fundamentally flawed:

"That flaw is requiring all teams to share 50% of all their local revenue, from Dollar One. By creating a 50% marginal tax rate that applies equally to the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals, the owners' revenue sharing plan discourages both clubs from spending money to improve their teams. Discouraging the Yankees is part of the plan, of course, but anything that deters the Royals from reinvesting their revenue-sharing proceeds in better players will only worsen "competitive balance."

Pappas instead suggests a formula for graduated revenue sharing, in which the more money a franchise earns beyond certain thresholds, the more heavily it's taxed. Pappas claims such a system would also correct the problem generated by the split-pool system the players favor: curbing the subsidizing of teams which aren't trying to improve. One can only hope Donald Fehr, Gene Orza, Bud Selig, Robert Dupuy, and the player representatives read this. You definitely should.

I'm going to remain optimistic that the two sides can work this out, but I know that even if the players strike, what comes out of it will ultimately benefit the game. Sooner or later, both sides will blink. Especially the owners, who make up a far more contentious contingency than the players do. From A-Rod to 13-year minor league veteran Alan Zinter, the players have more in common than do George Steinbrenner and Carl Pohlad, and a solid track record of defending their turf. My money is on them.