Count me in for not giving a **** if Harper and Machado get $250m or $350m. The minor leaguers and young guys are the ones that are completely screwed. Aren't some minor league teams still like busing everywhere and staying in **** hotels and living like college fraternity brothers?

But for everyone wanting players to basically be free agents after the first good year they have, are you also ok with teams ripping up contracts when players grossly underperform/pack it in? Should the Mariners be able to get out from all the money they gave Robinson Cano because he got busted for roids? Can the Yankees get some Ellsbury money back?

The big deal in this area now is deGrom basically saying he's gonna pack it in when he just got a massive raise and will make $17m. He wants the Mets to give him a huge monster contract now? Now the Mets are a joke of an organization, but remember when everyone killed them for not doing the same for the Harvey? How would that have worked out.

I get owners are rich *******s, but they're always going to look out for their best interests. Teams are always going to have a budget. I, for one, am glad they've wised up to giving 10 year deals to Albert Pujols and Giancarlo Stanton and are setting a new standard. Like I said above though, the thing that really does need to change is the way minor leaguers and young players are compensated.


Ticket prices/concessions are obv never going down (ATL model tho!) when owners stop giving out insta-dumb contracts but they will certainly go up if contracts keep going up.

Because 1) getting out of bad contracts isn't as essential in MLB as it is in the NBA and doesn't hamstring a franchise as bad. John Wall contract for example has literally just single handedly destroyed the Wizards for the next decade. 2) Prospects after the top 5-10 are way more valuable, useful in MLB than they are in the NBA

I mean we are literally talking about the young players who are getting screwed by the current system so ok?

The biggest issue with the current CBA is teams manipulating service time. Worst case I can recall is the Ray's not bringing up Longoria until he signed a 7 year deal or whatever it was.

Bryant, Soto, Acuna, Eloy, VGJ off the top of my head also got/ are getting screwed the way the rules are written. 2 team controlled years and 2 arbitration years I think is fairish. If owners aren't (rightfully so) paying players for their declining years then something has to be done to get the players paid in their young prime years.

Labor negotiations are going to get nasty, and I fully expect a strike in 2 years when the current cba is up. Owners just fought for the right to pay minor league players less than minimum wage for ****s sake.

https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/mlb...192803977.html

don't think I saw Desmond Jennings or Anthony Alford listed. Alford is less of a case, I guess.

I cant think of a way to stop teams from manipulating service clocks or than making free agency age related instead of service time related. Up to 3 rookie contracts, the rest arb, FA after your age 27 season.

I understand the point, but the Yankees have a dog**** farm system right now. I don't think Fangraphs, Baseball america or Keith Law had any yankees in their top 100. And of course the owners are pocketing all their money.

The Thread: Hey guys, in the next CBA I think the priority needs to be stopping teams from ****ing over call ups by getting a 1/2-2/3 years worth of productivity without starting their service time clock, shaving one year off of arbitration, increase the league minimum salary, and increase roster size by one to give an extra 30 jobs.

Eddy/LFC: TICKET PRICES WOULD SOAR AND IF YOU WANT PLAYERS TO GET THEIR TRUE VALUE EARLIER THEN OWNERS SHOULD GET TO RIP UP CONTRACTS IF THEY UNDER PERFORM AND WHO CARES IF MACHADO OR HARPER GET 250M OR 350M CAUSE MINOR LEAGUE TEAMS USE THE BUS STILL!!!!

The Thread:

Increasing roster size is the dumbest thing ever. So now we have one more move per game to sit through. If anything they should decrease it, or add 2 expansion teams.

It would be pretty easy - just drastically increase the player pool for the Rule 5 draft, so that teams either have to call up prospects or risk losing them much sooner. Right now, teams can stash players on the 40 man roster but keep them in the minors for 3 years and don't have to put them on the 40 man roster till 4 or 5 years of service time (depends on how old they were when signed). So basically, if a team wants, it can keep a player in the minors for 7 or 8 years, without any risk of losing them.

If you reduced that to say 3 to 4 years (maybe even 2 for players drafted out of college), once a prospect is MLB ready, teams would have to call them up or lose them to a team that is willing to call them up.

and just count any season in which you played as a season instead of basing it on some percentile of days. maybe not include september expanded rosters

acuna being forced to stay a full extra year because the braves held him down for a month is so stupid

The easy fix to service time manipulation without drastically overhauling the whole system is to just start their service clock the day they're drafted or enter the organization. Teams get ~7 years of control regardless of call ups, so time spent in the minors would be strictly based on whether the player really needs it. There would actually be incentive to call guys up as soon as they're ready because their clock is already ticking.

This would be so much better for the game too and we'd get to see more young studs instead of $300m old cripples

an improvement for sure but makes it much worse to draft players out of high school. youd put all the development in while the big market team gets the major league production

Yeah, you could refine it. Make it age-based so everyone becomes a free agent for the first time at age 27-28 so you get more time with a younger draft pick, or do some combination of age and service time. The main thing is, set their free agent date on day one so it can't be manipulated in any way by the team and there's no incentive to artificially hold anyone back.

Force the small market teams to spend their revenue sharing money rather than pocketing it. The ****ing Padres and White Sox are in on Machado and Bro. Other "small market" teams can do the same. Increase the revenue sharing if they can't.

This doesn't really change things for guys like Acuna and Vlad Jr. Theyd just be raking in the big leagues for more years for free

It would obv help someone like deGrom but if he was an FA at 27 what kind of contract was he looking at?

Salaries for young players is a whole different and more complicated question. I'm just talking about the issue where the best players are being held back from even playing in the majors, cutting months or even years off their careers and denying fans the best on-field product.

I still think the cleanest solution is to keep the rules as they are except also say that if a player is on an MLB roster prior to roster expansion, their clock begins. If a team wants to hold out an entire year that they could be competitive for an extra year of time then that's on them, but this whole "wait 6 weeks and then get the rest of the season for free" **** they do needs to go away.

I dont disagree with that, but I hate the bolded even being an option because you know teams will exploit it and deny some players a whole year now instead of just a few weeks. As a fan of the game, anything like that to me is a bigger issue than whether a player who will make tens/hundreds of millions in his career is technically underpaid in his first few years. If a player is good enough to be playing in MLB, he should be playing in MLB, period. Especially with how important career stats are to players' legacies in this sport, it's a travesty to cut short careers just because of some technicality in the CBA.

Strike is coming.

I had made this point last night -- set number of years of rookie level contract and then the rest arbitration cleans that up nicely. If Vlad showed up last year mid way through, he'd be rookie level for ages 19, 20 and 21 (maybe 22 depending on rules, I guess), then arbitration for 22/23-27. If, say, Nick Senzel were to come up this year, he'd have 23 24 and 25 as rookie level, 26 and 27 arb, then free agency.

The majority of players won't hit the bigs at 19-21 though. I'd guess that to find an agreement, teams would want control through 28 or even 29.

Teams can have control as long as reasonable. They just have to pay the players a lot more.imo.

why, because he was bad and it proves your point over the 10 people named who don't?

i'll add one: rickey ****ing henderson chose baseball over any other sport

No, because when Henson was making his decision people were wondering why he wasn’t choosing football, and I remember it being somewhat of a shock.

Also, Ricky Henderson is arguably a top 10 player of all time.

Nah, not even close. Show your work