Deadline Day for Baseball
OK! After a solid week of negotiations between baseball owners and players, we finally have a few basic agreements between the two sides. This is very exciting:
The best season of “Justified” was Season 2.
Pepperoni is the best pizza topping.
Steph Curry is not human. He is an alien sent to teach us all.
“Coda” is a delightful movie.
Baseball is a game played with a bat, a ball and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field with four white bases laid out in a diamond.*
*Thank you to Encyclopedia Britannica for helping the owners and players find this middle ground!
With this much settled, you have to feel very good about the owners and players coming to an agreement today to save Opening Day.
Of course, if we’re being completely honest about it, there is always the chance that because they seem to be very far apart on the luxury tax, revenue sharing, minimum salary, a pre-arbitration bonus pool, an expanded postseason and how many players should be eligible for arbitration after two years, they will not come to agreement today or, indeed, anytime in the foreseeable future.
But, even in that grim scenario, they can all watch “Coda” together.
Such a delightful movie.
Of course you are sick of all this already. Stories that should be about players in the best shape of their lives and teams believing they finally have the starting pitching to compete are instead about incremental, unconvincing changes in the competitive balance tax and how many teams should be in the amateur draft lottery. Who could blame anybody for checking out? Who could blame anybody for just cutting ties with baseball entirely?
I feel certain the owners have done the intense research to determine just how much damage a postponed Opening Day would do to baseball’s bottom line. They would be fools not to have done so. I imagine they know exactly how many games can be missed, how many fans will move on, how many fans will SAY they are moving on but will actually come back, how much ill-will they can manage before it starts to have a negative effect on the bottom line, etc.
And I feel certain, based on that information, that owners are sure they can outlast the union and baseball fans will return in full force. Every single thing they have done the last three months — from locking out the players, to then refusing to negotiate, to then threatening to cancel games, to then making a show of negotiating without meaningfully moving from their original positions — speaks to that confidence.
They are billionaires, and they get their way.
I suspect today could prove a turning point in these negotiations, one way or another. With an owner-set deadline of today as the last day to save Opening Day, there’s a chance, faint as it may seem, that they will get close enough to a breakthrough that the two sides will express some optimism and keep at it, and in such a scenario we could get a deal relatively soon.
There’s a larger chance that they will not have a breakthrough, but the two sides will keep on negotiating, even halfheartedly, because neither wants to take the larger share of the blame for a delayed season.
And there’s also a chance that the negotiations will end badly, each side questioning the other’s commitment to a deal, and the two sides will take a break from talking, at which point we will all need to settle in because this could take a long while.
All of it stinks. But as fans all we can do is complain, threaten and inevitably wait to see if there will be baseball for us to watch and enjoy this year. And watch “Coda.” It really is delightful.
A few things keep coming back to me no matter what other noise we hear:
1. I don't think the owners care AT ALL what the public thinks. Like, not one bit. To the extent they're thinking about what's best for "the game," and therefore for themselves, it's all completely short-term thinking. And they know that if and when the game comes back it's gonna put huge mountains of sheckels in their own pockets.
2. The owners know that the players have much more to lose than they do for every regular season game missed. Yeah, it'll take money out of their pockets in terms of concessions (no pun intended) and tickets and merch. But the players get clobbered once they start missing games.
3. The owners can leverage 1 & 2 as they hold firm thru April, May, June, even maybe into July. Again, they'll feel it . . . a little. But the players will be hurting.
4. And therefore, the owners can choose the right moment -- as they look at the players bent over a barrel -- to "salvage" what's left of the regular season and head towards the post-season.
5. And that post-season is where the owners can make serious bank.
So what I suspect is that the owners will continue to negotiate in bad faith, keeping the players weak and helpless, with an eye towards a 50, 60, 75, maybe 100 game season with a 16-team, bracketed tourney-type post-season. And in so doing they can get maximal concessions from the players as that reduced season/expanded post-season approaches.
I hope I'm wrong, and I reserve the right to be so (!), but I don't think I am. The owners have proven they care about nothing but their own finances. They certainly don't care about "baseball," and definitely not in the long term. I don't see them even considering anything but what I've suggested above.
And it sucks.
I am seeing evidence on social media that, despite the facts you’ve laid out here, there’s still a substantial percentage falling for the idea that “both sides are equally to blame,” “those greedy millionaire players,” etc. I don’t understand how anyone can look at this and say, sure, the owners are being perfectly reasonable. I would’ve hoped that 2016-2020 was enough to squash the notion that billionaires have the interests of the little guy at heart.