Apooogies if this has already been discussed as I usually don’t dip into MLB offseason threads

But one common theme I keep hearing from various baseball reporters I follow is this idea of collusion - the context in which they use that word meaning owners not willing to hand out enormous deals for veteran stars like before.

Am I missing something or is this just generally teams being smarter about how they allocate resources? My confusion stems from the same reporters who love Theo’s approach seem to be the same ones decrying the owners newfound stinginess.

This seems like an odd, yet widespread, complaint to a casual fan like myself. What’s the disconnect here that I am missing? I get revenues are increasing but that doesn’t make a Darvish or Pujols deal more palatable.

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Wiseman, please move to the politics section.

Each team deciding they don’t want to over spend on a player is not collusion.

If two teams, Yankees and Dodgers for example, discus only targeting a certain player to limit his choices, that would be collusion.

Im sure it does occur to some degree. It doesn’t require all 32 teams for it to be collusion. Collusion only needs two teams. But proving it is hard unless teams are stupid.

Nobody has to pay a player more than they think he's worth, but the owners can't collude to set the market, i.e. They all agree none of them will give out a contract any bigger or longer than X. They've gotten nailed for doing that once before.

I would think this time around they'd have a better defense as you can see that in the "post-steroid" era players aren't hitting their peak at age 35 anymore, and in fact it appears that when most guys hit 30 they are already moving past their prime which was the case throughout baseball history up until the late 1990s.

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When one guy does it Brad Pitt plays him in a movie. When 32 teams do the same it is collusion.

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There's certainly a trend that doesn't particularly work with the current service time before free agency rules. Dan Plesac discussed it on Mac and Parkey yesterday.

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This all just a simple culmination of the changing tide due to end of widespread performance enhancer abuse and the CBA. There is a good (for owners right now) the teams are planning around. The change (for whatever reason) in players career arcs is penalizing (in a sense) them for now. In the future they will negotiate again and things will evolve. I am sure in the next CBA one side will get the better of the other in some way that is unseen at signing.

No collusion will be proven imho.

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The next lockout is going to be a thing. The players brought this on themselves to a degree. They fucked over the young players by locking them in to slots for 6 or 7 years. The veterans never thought owners would realize its better to play a 23 year old nothing rather than pay a journeyman 15 million to be in the bench.

No such thing as collusion.

It's a made up thing.

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Conspiracy

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Players really goofed up their current deal.

- 6-7 years under essentially defined earnings schedules during prime years
- implementation of a luxury-tax.
- no implementation of salary floors for franchises or rules about pocketing revenue sharing.

The dickbag owners are killing it.

Also, the elite players, or near elite players are still getting paid massive contracts: Harper and Machado will each get in excess of 200mm, Patrick Corbin got 140mm (not even sure how elite he actually is).

The difference now is the second a third tier players aren't getting the long term big money deals that teams used to hand out in the past. Often they still have nice annual value, but they are one or two year deals: Grandal and Josh Donaldson. Oftener times though, they aren't that great in terms of annual value, and they are still one or two year deals.

The other thing is that with anywhere between 10-15 teams actively trying to lose as many games as possible before pitchers and catchers even report, the market for those second and third tier guys - essentially nice players who would really help a contending team fill a void - is severely constricted and oversupplied.

Yeah, the proliferation of tanking is going to kill the sport if it's not changed in 2021. Theo's kind of a dick for that.

The NBA has a big tanking problem and there is currently four teams tanking, not half the league.

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I guess the other thing that props up tanking to some extent is media revenue. Don't get me wrong, ballpark revenues are important and not to be undersold, but with the increasing overweight of revenue to media deals, essentially fixed contracts that bring in X amount of revenue for a team (and leaguewide) regardless if a team wins 60 games or 160 games, makes the ballpark revenues less important.

I guess my point is, that if teams were more dependent on ballpark revenue to fund their operations + turn a profit, you'd see a lot fewer owners willing to stomach attendance figures in the mid teens.

It's kind of funny how MLB used to be the gold standard for players being able to use their union to get a better deal than the other leagues and all of a sudden a salary cap and floor looks like a great idea.

Maybe MLBPA should hire Gene Upshaw?

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Baseball players have guaranteed contracts and NFL players don't. Considering the nature of their respective sports, I'd say that alone gives the MLBPA a very significant boost over the NFLPA.

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Bad take by Rick

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I think the concept of fully guaranteed contracts is overrated. Khalil Mack just signed a contract with $90 million guaranteed over 6 years with the total value being $141 million. So, it's basically a fully guaranteed 4 year deal at $90 million. After that, he is basically on one year deals for $17 million, $23 million, and $23 million that the team can get out of.

Mack has already made $56 million in his career, so by the age of 31, he will have made $146 million in guaranteed money.

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This will definitely change with the next CBA and JORR is right about how steroids affected this. Interesting side effect of the PED Era many people don't think about.

It is when talking about the top 1% of players. Not so much for the 5th WR or CB.

You dont think guaranteed contracts are overrated. You're just defending your favorite tv show.

They are overrated. NFL players get a huge amount of guaranteed money. It's just a different structure. Mack has a 4 year guaranteed deal, and then 3 team options after that at a rate similar to the first 4 years.

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Literally no professional athlete in the country would agree with this. It's easy to cherry pick the best player in the league who just signed the richest contract on defense in history as a counter example but in the vast majority of cases the fully guaranteed contracts make a huge difference.

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They play in by far the most brutal pro sport and are the only ones without guaranteed contracts. Your argument makes no sense. $100,000 is a lot of money, you seem to want to make an argument that it's essentially the same as having $1,000,000.

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If every single player in the NFL has Mack's deal, then I agree.

Kyler Murray may agree.

I'm not cherry picking anything. Let's take a guy like Trey Burton. He signed a 4 year deal with $22 million guaranteed out of the $32 million total. If he gets cut after 2 years, he gets $22 million as he is owed $3.5 million extra if he is cut right then. After that, he basically has 2 team options paying him about $7 million per year.

So yeah, there is a chance that he gets cut in year 2 or 3 and loses out on that extra $10 million for two more years of playing, or $7 million for one more year of playing but we also have to assume that the contract would have been for the same value and also guaranteed which is unlikely. It is a league with a salary cap that determines the total amount of salary available to pay players. It's not like there is a huge amount of unspent money that would suddenly be unlocked. That is why they are structured as they are. You get your guaranteed money that can't be taken from you, and a set number of years on that. It's then basically you are on one year deals after that. If teams had to budget out with no flexibility like that they would have to adjust accordingly.

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In MLB he gets the whole 32 even if he never plays another game. That is why this is a ridiculous argument.

The total pool of money to pay to players is set. If you had guaranteed contracts, how would the average player make more money?

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The average MLB annual salary is more than 2x the average NFL salary.

The average NFL career earnings are about $6.7M, versus average MLB career earnings of $17.9M.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

He wouldn't. I wish someone would ask him if he prefers fully guaranteed contracts for NFL players though. It would clear this up.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul