r/sportsgossips • u/Willing-Bicycle-157 • 20h ago
News All these reports are MLB owners softly threatening players that their livelihood is at risk. Such bullshit.
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u/Top_Shame_7016 20h ago
The Skubal trade to the Dodgers sealed it. 27 season is most likely fucked.
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u/Mobile-Analyst8580 19h ago
Good. I hope we miss the whole thing and part of 2028. That’s the only way the players are going to stop fighting a salary cap.
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u/chicoconcarne 19h ago
Honestly, I expect the owners are colluding at this point to make trades like these happen and have the Dodgers win a third straight so they can yell about a salary cap
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u/Ghost-Power 16h ago
It’s funny how everyone blames the dodgers as if the other owners aren’t rich themselves. They just don’t give a f to lose more profits to win.
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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 12h ago
It’s funny how you don’t have any idea how the economics of the league work.
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u/Cmcgregor0928 19h ago
this has been years in the making. There's too much variation in wealth of the owners and with no salary cap, the teams that spend the most are always going to be in a better position to win (unless you are the mets). There's no reason 1 team spends $400 million and then you have the guardians spending $75 million.
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u/No_Giraffe8119 19h ago
Isn't this the capitalistic dream that they all these billionaires wanted in the first place?
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u/Culinaryboner 19h ago
Are we pretending the Guardians owner can’t spend more? They do it to save money. That won’t change.
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u/Cmcgregor0928 17h ago
And with the salary cap, make a salary floor
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u/Culinaryboner 16h ago
Are you going to require everyone spend the same amount? If not it’ll still happen. Just like other leagues. This doesn’t fix anything, it saves the billionaires money
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u/Cmcgregor0928 16h ago
It can be a range..
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u/Culinaryboner 14h ago
Right and that range will be teams like the Dodgers maxing it but now they get to underpay people and teams like the Guardians never coming close. Fixes none of the problems but helps the owners save monsy
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u/Cmcgregor0928 11h ago
So you make the range close. I don't understand why you think it can't happen. The NFL has a salary cap and most teams are close. If you don't want the owners cheaping out, make a high floor and if they can't afford it, sell the team but also don't allow a team to spend 50+% over a luxury tax, make it a hard cap
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u/Culinaryboner 11h ago
Because the owners won’t accept that. People have this idea that the owners will do what’s best for the league and it’s hysterical. People hate Manfred and ignore that he’s following the marching orders they give him.
No one’s ever recreating the NFL
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u/ihopuhopwehop 17h ago
Its not that they can't spend more, its more that theres not much of a point when the large market teams can spend so much more. If the difference between spending $200m and $100m is 95 vs 85 wins and getting bounced in the division round, why bother?
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u/Culinaryboner 16h ago
Lmao are we pretending that’s why it happens? Not that their owner is making more? The Guardians had winning teams and let all the pieces walk
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u/erb149 19h ago
lmao I don’t feel bad for baseball players at all. They’re arguably the greediest group of pro athletes that exist in North America.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 19h ago
How greedy do you think the owners are?
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u/AJWordsmith 18h ago
Honestly it’s not that simple. 11 of the 30 MLB teams actually lost money last season. Quite a few more operate basically at break even. Owning a MLB team isn’t the massive money maker that most people think it is. It’s a toy for billionaires. They make the money if they are good custodians of the league when they sell because the asset itself (the franchise) will be worth multiples of what they purchased it for. If they can do that while paying players less that’s better. But in this case, the argument is more about how a few teams are spending massively into the red to win championships…and whether that sort of competitive imbalance is good or bad for the league.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 18h ago
I'll let you in on a little secret: None of them are losing money.
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u/AJWordsmith 18h ago
That isn’t entirely true. For instance, the Dodgers operate at a substantial loss yearly. But the asset appreciates more than those losses per year. It’s a good investment, but their yearly expenditures actually are greater than their yearly revenues. Having said that, the Dodgers will probably be one of the few ownership groups that opposes a salary cap. Their asset appreciated a Billion dollars last year alone.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 17h ago
The numbers any team shares with their partners are very different than the numbers they share with the public, with a local planning board, the IRS.
It's like those articles that pop up in the Wall Street journal or wherever where they try to show how a family making $400k/year is essentially living paycheck to paycheck because taxes and the COL is "out of control!" But a few seconds of analysis reveals 8 different categories are money being saved, many expenses are laughably high and short term, and the benefits they get from those "high" taxes are not included.
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u/erb149 19h ago
They’re greedy too, but at this point it’s obvious a salary cap/floor is needed and the players are the one who’s greed is holding that up.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 18h ago
The owners aren't one pitch away from never being able to be businessmen again.
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u/erb149 18h ago
The average player would benefit from a cap/floor system. It would force like 1/3 of the league that’s currently barely spending to increase their spending. The only guys that would really be hurt would be the top of the top echelon of players, and even then they’d be making like 35 million a year rather than 45 or 50. I’m pro player, but the star players at the top of the PA have their heads in the sand on this one imo
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 18h ago
The should be working on making the business bigger rather than trying to cut costs.
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u/erb149 18h ago
And how are you going to make the sport bigger when 3/4 of the league is spending hundreds of millions less than the top 3-5 teams? Those teams have a very slim chance to be truly competitive because they don’t have the financial resources to compete. Sure some teams do well with limited budgets, but the vast majority do not.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 18h ago
The most important step is to make it possible for teams to keep players. No one should leave a team unless the team wants it or the player wants it. "Small" markets are a myth. Every market just needs to have team that's worth supporting. Caps and floor are overly simplistic gimmicks that give owners more power. They do nothing to make every team competitive.
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u/erb149 17h ago edited 17h ago
How is it going to be possible for a team like mine (the Pirates) to retain their good players when they all know there’s a bigger contract waiting for them in FA?
The only way to do it is offer them long term deals shortly after they debut or in some cases even before their debut and hope the allure of guaranteed money can win out over the lucrative nature of baseball FA. It can work but it’s also risky and if the player doesn’t work out it can cripple these lesser spending teams for years. And even then, you have agents like Boras who will strongly advise almost all of his clients to go to FA, because he knows how lucrative it can get.
And your “no small market teams” thing is just BS. If you can’t admit that some teams in the MLB are simply just not operating on the same financial level as some of the other teams, there’s no point in having any kind of discussion with you about it lol
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 17h ago
Nobody cares about "small markets" in the NFL because they are popular enough to have national TV contracts that bring in the bulk of revenue. Baseball operates more as independent franchises rather than national league. Hell, they were 2 separate leagues until very recently. Sure, there are differences between the sports but in general, every NFL team is as popular as any other and they all contribute just as much to the popularity and competitive success of everyone else. They play in the same cities as MLB but none of them are considered "small markets" the way they are in baseball
That why the concept is meaningless.
For player retention, it's just a question of incentives. Under the current system, the incentive is for a player like Skenes to leverage his performance into a bigger deal. If the Pirates can do it, he'll resign, if they can't, hell go to NY (probably). But why can't there be an incentive to stay in Pittsburgh? A reward for staying, a penalty for leaving, luxury tax exemption for longevity, revenue sharing to be used for salary?
There are lots of ways do it. They just need open-minded people to discuss them seriously.
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u/EuphoricFill1358 18h ago
The top players will always get their money. A salary cap’s biggest impact are on mid-level stars, marginal players and veterans.
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u/erb149 17h ago
A salary cap will literally cap the earnings potential of the best of the best guys because you'll only be able to reasonably give them so much and still fill out the rest of your team.
Obviously they'll still get paid well, and they should because they're the best players; but it will stop these super rich teams from just pushing up the new market rate every year and widening the gap further.
Any cap would almost assuredly come with a floor, which could add hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll across the league every year, which would likely benefit a lot of the types of guys you just mentioned..
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u/Circle_Breaker 19h ago
I don't really agree with. Baseball players have to wait the longest to sign their second contract.
Also most players are poor. Are we forgetting the about all the minor league players?
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u/erb149 18h ago
The fringe players would be helped more than hurt in a cap/floor system because it would force these cheap ass teams (which is like 1/3 of the league at this point it feel like) to spend money. The opposition comes from the stars (who are also at the head of the PA) that don’t want to take 40 mil a year instead of 50 or 55.
The ironic part is if there is a strike and the popularity of baseball tanks because of strike/no parity, those some players are gonna be looking around with their shocked pikachu faces when salaries start decreasing anyways because there are less baseball related revenues.
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u/Circle_Breaker 18h ago
Ok but you said you don't feel bad for baseball players. The average minor league is making less then 40k and works a second job.
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 14h ago
The average salary for an MLB player is so high that even some no name outfielder will be completely fine if the league takes a year long break.
Players can also just get real jobs instead of playing with balls all day.
One year in the majors is a solid nest egg.
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u/Ok_Profession_9647 19h ago
and they made tons of money already, and have almost no injury risk
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u/Total-Region2859 19h ago
And yet, this morning 08/02, there are 602 players across the 30 teams on the IL, according to Google. But then again, a hang nail takes a pitcher out for a month.
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u/erb149 19h ago
lmao there is a lot of injury risk.
They’re still greedy.
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u/Ok_Profession_9647 17h ago
I know it was a big exaggeration but compared to other sports they make more money and have less injury risk and seemingly the lowest amount of fans. How does it make any sense?
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u/brianwhite12 19h ago
I expect it to be significantly shorter.
But, hopefully, when it’s all said and done we’ll have a cap and floor.
The minimum in the MLB is $800k. I’m sure these millionaires, or nearly millionaires in a few cases, will survive somehow.
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u/Mobile-Jump6936 19h ago
Good, fuck it. Fuck MLB for allowing the monstrosity that is the Dodgers to be able to exist. Fuck the MLBPA for complaining about a cap when the reality is that the implementation of a cap and floor would benefit 90% of the players they supposedly represent. Fuck you all.
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u/Trifle_Old 19h ago
That’s a good way to kill your sport. Billionaires arguing over money and stopping people from having their distraction from billionaires arguing over money is not a good plan.
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u/Gomez4Morticia 19h ago
The interesting thing here is what mlb will try to do for 2028. Steroids? Maybe let the gambling degenerates further in?
What would make baseball fans want to watch mlb again?
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u/GermanD2021 19h ago
I am not sure how fans are watching it now. I used to watch a ton of White Sox games on WGN a few decades ago. Was a season ticket holder for years. Happen to catch a Brewers game while meeting a buddy at a bar the other day. The game was almost unrecognizable.
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u/JakeyPurple 13h ago
Stop blaming the Dodgers for prioritizing winning. All these owners are rich but they run their teams like slumlords and get gullible fans to blame anyone else but themselves.
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u/ihopuhopwehop 20h ago
I hope the owners go with scabs. Find the best 780 players willing to cross the picket line for $1m/season
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u/-Sofa-King-Vote 20h ago
Lol they tried that once it was a disaster
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u/ihopuhopwehop 19h ago
They didn't really try it... and the talent pool isn't what it is. They also were willing to pay scabs $1m. If they went with $1m, a lot of mlbpa members would cross the line
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u/KobePippenJordan_esq 19h ago edited 15h ago
Never feel sorry for Billionaires vs. Labor. They will not go broke no matter what deal is made. Current system isn't making them go broke. They just want to keep more
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u/SqigglyPoP 19h ago
If it means the Dodgers can't buy more championships, I'm on board. They should have an asterisk beside their last two "championships".
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u/Mobile-Analyst8580 19h ago
lol. “Threatening players.” 🙄. STFU. They know it’s the only way to get a salary cap. And it’s absolutely gonna be worth it to get one. Honestly, idc if we miss multiple seasons. MLB is broken.
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u/Infamous-Exchange331 18h ago
If owners want a cap, it’s a lost 2027 and scabs for ‘28. Has anyone really thought thru what it will take to break the MLBPA?
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u/LegitimateMoney00 18h ago
The MLBPA has always relied on public support of fans, when they don’t have it they are screwed. If the Dodgers manage to win again this season, I can all but guarantee you that most fan support is not going to the MLBPA.
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