Yeah, no, Jeets.
https://twitter.com/Marlins/status/915205784287563776?s=20&t=BVwTU-M3pDtSnOT-e-6WvA
People don’t forget!
We might have baseball sooner than most people thought. Nightengale was breaking most of the news today but this seems to be the most up to date situation:
Wouldn’t hurt to cut 20-30 games off the schedule permanently.
The only way the owners go for that is if they expand the playoffs and make every series best of 7 so they can hope to make up the revenue from those games.
I won’t be surprised at all if there’s no season. The owners aren’t bargaining in good faith and are trying to break the union.
Can we get the sculpture back please?
https://twitter.com/crocodilethumbs/status/1498772704673030154
https://twitter.com/GrichukToKBO/status/1498769939016163333
https://twitter.com/Razzball/status/1498776120740564992
These replies are apparently part of some kind of organized troll campaign. They’re all identical.
https://twitter.com/highlghtheaven/status/1498789713934786561
No idea what’s going on here.
I reject this idea that if you’re not 100% on the players’ side on every issue, then you must be on the owners’ side - that 98% of national baseball pundits and writers (who care about access above all) keep trying to put forward.
The game fucking sucks. I don’t care whose fault it is. I will keep losing interest in baseball until it puts a better product on the field. I may be a dumb small-market casual fan who doesn’t understand statistics, but I can still easily see the Dodgers, Sox and Yankees are playing by different rules. They don’t lose their homegrown stars. They don’t tank. They make the playoffs every year.
The players seem to think the solution is shaming the greedy small market owners into spending more. And if that doesn’t work? Oh well, the status quo is fine with them. The only thing that will ever force owners to spend more is some kind of salary floor. This is so obvious that attempts to argue against it feel like gaslighting.
And I’m not the only one who feels this way. The fans already are staging a slow-motion boycott. Maybe someday the owners and players will figure out that without the fans, there won’t be any money left to fight over.
I would agree that these guys would be better off addressing problems like competitive balance and a whole host of on-field issues. The things they did to try to shorten games were laughable and they didn’t work. Manfred didn’t understand that a livelier baseball would lead to longer games with less action, not more. The product is pretty bad right now.
Yeah it’s a bad product in a lot of ways - slow pace, lack of balls in play. And of course I’m a crusty old man - but bullpen games and ridiculous shifts really don’t do it for me.
On money stuff I generally side with the players. But I think they’re being myopic about not calling for a salary floor and more revenue sharing, not less.
The players’ ideal world is pure free agency, no luxury tax, highest bidder wins. And sure, from their POV that’s the best for them. Until it’s not, because they kill the game.
It’s not a small market/large market issue at all. It’s teams of all stripes running things like a McKinsey outfit instead of remembering they’re in the entertainment business. At least half of the teams (probably closer to two-thirds) weren’t even trying to put a competitive product on the field last season, and were just giving players away at the deadline.
The big teams certainly aren’t immune — the Red Sox traded away an MVP in his prime two years ago, in part because John Henry didn’t want to pay the luxury tax, and ended up tanking the following season.
One of the dumbest controversies last season was Tony LaRussa getting mad at his player for hitting a homer on a 3-0 pitch against some position player scrub that came in during a blowout. As if watching a major league hitter tank against some lame pitcher is entertaining.
I’m writing a screenplay about a MLB labor dispute where the arbitrator orders the players and owners to switch roles for a season.
Rob Manfred on Tuesday announced he has canceled Opening Day and the first two series of the 2022 season
There we have it.
Note: Still none of this has to happen. The MLB owners could lift this lockout at any time, just like they imposed it. And it still doesn’t mean the season would need to be shortened… even if the season was delayed. Between pushing the World Series back, and doing (7-inning covid crap) doubleheaders, up to a three week delay in the start of the season is possible.
This is the owners doing their best C.Little, when his character said he’d “shoot that n-word-er dead” in Blazing Saddles.
We are not in the exact same dynamic as 2020, but there are some pretty important similarities. That year MLB owners wanted, and got, that farcical 60 game season.
Another 60 game season could easily be what we’re looking at this year too.