Ceetar

Sad day.

I mean, I could see baseball wanting to make an example of him. I could see the Players Union not particularly caring. I could see how they both feel seeming harsh on drugs. What's the term for exposing a small bit of crime so the biggest deeds go unnoticed? Catch a few sloppy drug cheats and you don't have to get super worried about all the drugs you don't forbid or the guys that are using real masking agents or nothing such things. Kind of like how going above and beyond to hunt down one of the best ever and suspend him for a year makes you look tough? Having someone actually banned from the game seemingly reinforces their threats to keep the game clean. Is it completely absurd that Mejia's blood still could test positive from the first time? I don't particularly think Mejia's got much of a case, but it absolutely wouldn't surprise me that someone within MLB threatened him either.

Frayed Knot wrote: Really all that happened all them years ago was that they got rid of the concept of the perpetual reserve-clause state that existed in the pre-Marvin Miller era and hit upon the kind of 'tiered' [pre-arb / arb / FA] system that still rules today (with some minor tweaks along the way). One would think that clubs wold rather have the good publicity rather than the half-million or so bucks they save by telling powerless players that 'you'll take this and you'll like it'. But I suppose that they'd still run up against the idea that whatever they wound up offering the player would still fall far short of market value so may not end player bitching anyway, and that there's been no evidence that there's any long-term harm in doing what they're doing. Also any bone they toss now comes up in arbitration which is a modification of last year's salary. So unless it's the 100k or so they gave their guys this year, whatever you give you're giving 3-4 times over.

It's almost like players are realizing being under team control and making near the minimum for so long is not quite inline with the actual value they provide. Especially for pitchers and late-starters like deGrom.

result inconclusive "No dopey shootout" - Howie Rose

quite a hand for Yoenis Cespedes.

nice hustle double for Lagares leading off.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Ceetar wrote: RELEASE MONTERO I can't get my audio to work. bummed, pissed. annoyed. Was having a similar problem; MLB At Bat is saying I need to renew my subscription, but Google Play-- which apparently marks subscriptions by calendar year-- tells me I can't do that, since, having signed up last April, I'm still subscribed. I contacted Customer Service via two channels, and twelve hours late, I have yet to receive even an auto-response. Mine worked on Wednesday when I bought it, but here's the kicker, I bought it the same day last year. So what has to have happened (Hey, I'm a programmer, I can remotely debug this process without real info, it's fine) is that my purchase worked fine, I listened to some of the Tigers on Wednesday, and then my auto-renewal from last year kicked in afterwards and in some way that double-attempt at connecting to the MLB.COM account borked it all. I actually talked it through on TWitter with @MLBFanSupport and they ended up telling me "talk to Google" so helpful. the reviews of the app speak to a similar problem. Here's what I did. I canceled my auto-renewal subscription. I then clicked 'report a problem' on my Google Play order history for the app, claiming it was defective. in the text I said "seems to have gotten mixed up with my auto-renewal from last year, isn't activating in the app." or something like that. They refunded me in like 20 minutes. I then repurchased the subscription, via the app itself by clicking on the audio tag, clicking 'season subscription' putting in my Google password and what not. now it works.

foul ball into the radio booth, live on the air!

RELEASE MONTERO I can't get my audio to work. bummed, pissed. annoyed.

Vic Sage wrote: who is Krauss? this guy i guess http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/krausma01.shtml

we have lineup De Aza DH Lagares CF Conforto LF Flores 3B Plawecki C Krauss 1B Campbell RF Tejada SS Herrera 2B Montero P

omg it's an in game thread. 1:05 ET at Space Coast Stadium featuring Rafael Montero starting against Max Scherzer. game will be on the radio at 710 WOR or your At-Bat app. You'll see a regular parade of players you've barely heard of, as most of the regulars probably won't make the trip from Port St. Lucie for the typical 3 inning stint you see early in Spring. You'll hear (presumably) Josh Lewin and Howie Rose. (The Islanders are in Winnipeg and Howie usually doesn't go there)

[video:w6j4bqqe]https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CcjPW5FWoAEvSG4.mp4[/video:w6j4bqqe]

Baseball Prospectus getting a Mets local version.

Edgy MD wrote: Edgy MD wrote: yea, too much. banishing a team for having a bad season is fairly harsh If you disagree, that's fine. But pretending you haven't read what I typed is what's maddening. no, I didn't pretend I didn't read it, i dismissed it and stated my opinion that I don't see any benefit to it, and then when pressed I explained why I don't think what you said is a benefit. I don't think we don't use language the same way. I've suspected as much for years. Frayed Knot wrote: they're not being denied an open market, they're being denied fair market worth. A free and open market is what determines fair worth. Arbitrary numbers that lay down specific caps & floors, or schemes that fix payrolls to a certain percentage of revenues, are what skew it. so does revenue sharing, luxury taxes, and a portion of revenue coming from TV contracts. I think salary ranges would, at least for the foreseeable future, result in the players as a whole making more money. But there are clearly other options. Like maybe putting minor leaguers in the union and actually paying them.

Edgy MD wrote: Ceetar wrote: yea, too much. banishing a team for having a bad season is fairly harsh If you disagree, that's fine. But pretending you haven't read what I typed is what's maddening. no, I didn't pretend I didn't read it, i dismissed it and stated my opinion that I don't see any benefit to it, and then when pressed I explained why I don't think what you said is a benefit.

yea, too much. banishing a team for having a bad season is fairly harsh, and it also pushes a "just don't be _that_ bad" mentality. And it's still going to relegate teams that aren't tanking, that just happen to be the worst. Sorry Reds, Votto and Frasier got hurt in June and now you don't have a major league team next year. Frayed Knot wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I'll likely live to regret asking this, but how are FA-eligible players being denied market rates for their services, and who is colluding and how? I've said it a bunch of times, the owners are getting richer and richer and players salaries are not keeping pace. Collectively they make the teams much more money than they cost, hence they're undervalued. That answers neither question that I asked. How are FA players being denied an open market? Who is colluding and how? they're not being denied an open market, they're being denied fair market worth. There seems to be an unwritten cap on both annual value and even length that isn't growing at the same rate as revenue is. I'm not saying it's active collusion, but there's a little bit of 'breaking the seal' to it that everyone's afraid to be the first team to pay someone $45 million because then suddenly it'd become the norm. This might very well come to a head with Bryce Harper.

Frayed Knot wrote: I'll likely live to regret asking this, but how are FA-eligible players being denied market rates for their services, and who is colluding and how? I've said it a bunch of times, the owners are getting richer and richer and players salaries are not keeping pace. Collectively they make the teams much more money than they cost, hence they're undervalued. Edgy MD wrote: I certainly don't argue for revenue sharing. At least, I don't argue for luxury taxes. I'm good with the opposing team a cut of the broadcast revenues for a particular game (rather than any pooling) just like they'd traditionally gotten a cut of the gate. And I equally don't stand for incentivizing tanking. All I said is that salary caps are awful. If you don't like tanking, join me in rooting for a regulation/promotion system. I'm not saying you do. Removing the revenue sharing and the luxury taxes might be better than a salary cap. I'm not necessarily pro-salary cap, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if it went that way. I just think it could be better. I'm very anti-relegation/promotion. Even if we could do the crazy amount of overhauling to implement it, I don't think it'd have any chance of catching on and I can't think of anything it really adds

Edgy MD wrote: The NFL has a puppet union. Salary caps are awful. Salary rules are less awful than teams routinely cheating the league, and therefore the players, out of money. Miami runs dangerously close to taking in more in revenue sharing than they spend on players. You could argue that it's in the best interest of the fans to not have teams that categorically are not trying to compete. There are going to be a lot of awful Braves-Phillies games this year for example. And there would be teams up against the cap that would be willing to move dead weight that tanking teams would be willing to deal with, in exchange for say a pick or a prospect. If the Yankees were up against a cap they'd seemingly be willing to pay to let CC or Texiera play badly for the Braves Of course, you'd run into similar issues about the teams not having the motivation to truly spend because the cost-value ratio wouldn't be great pushing towards the top of a cap. Of course, that's true now anyway and isn't going away. Frayed Knot wrote: Yeah, I didn't phrase myself correctly in that previous answer. The NFL doesn't need a system with a cap & floor but it's one the players feel they need to agree to because they don't have truly open FA-gency that will allow salaries to seek their market level. Because MLB does have one that allows most players to reach a point to sell themselves on the open market before becoming old and gray then they have no incentive to agree to a cap and the owners aren't going to want any part of a floor. My point is that the players are NOT reaching market level contracts. What's happening is just shy of collusion. I'm merely suggesting it might be in the best interest of the MLBPA to give up the allusion that they WILL in fact start getting bigger contracts and look for a way to force the issue. Salary caps may be extreme, but I just threw it out there because it's a common thing. There are various other ways they could achieve this, and again my main point is that this IS an issue that's going to be raised.

So if they are making proportionally less the solution for them would be fewer rules not more. Salary caps, even if accompanied by floors, exist for the sole purpose of limiting salaries and guaranteeing owner profits (despite what the ESPN crowd will try and tell you about promoting 'parity') so the players certainly don't want to go that route. As for Fowler & Baltimore: I don't know what the hell happened there. He rejects $15.8/1-year to go for $33/3 and then rejects that for $8/1 all to wind up back where he started?!?!?? I wasn't talking QOs, more about Fowler and say Heyward. It seems weird to specifically have an opt-out only in the most competitive free agent class. It feels like something is up. The Salary cap/floor would have to be negotiated in a way to raise the numbers overall obviously. $3,762,899,113 was the overall 2015 payroll. That works out to 125,000,000 on average. If you set that as the floor, with increases tied to revenue or simply increases every year, you'd guarantee the players more money overall, barring 3-4 teams going Dodger crazy and jumping up to 300, which is an extreme case and unlikely. But you'd need a rolling increase anyway, and by increasing the floor say 20 million every year you'd force competition, you'd force teams to actually have to sign players (and you'd avoid constant embarrassment by the Marlins and others actively cheating the game out of money) You could set the cap ridiculously high, 200k, or even have it a soft cap and increase the revenue sharing numbers above it to help the smaller teams reach the floor. I dunno, I think it'd be interesting and wouldn't really harm the game or competitiveness in any way. I don't know if you could convince the cheaper teams to agree to it, but maybe the rolling increase helps that.

Frayed Knot wrote: Ceetar wrote: You don't think the players union is aware that league revenue is increasing at a greater rate than player salaries? That's gotta be up there near the top of their concern list. I have no idea if that's even accurate. But even if so, players' salaries are limited now only by their ability to negotiate, I have no idea why they'd also want to tie it to a percentage of something they can't control. I'm not suggesting they want to tie it to a percentage, merely that they want more. It's greater than one player's ability to negotiate. We're seeing record contracts, but just barely. A lot of this has to do with how more and more of the revenue is of the fixed, television contract, variety and less performance based, coupled with luxury taxes and revenue sharing makes going really crazy with salaries not really financially sound. But it's pretty clear that owners are pocketing more and more money and that the players aren't getting quite as big a proportion. I don't know what the obvious answer is, salary cap/floors? remove revenue sharing? cut a year off pre-FA service time? but I'd be shocked if it's not one of the points they plan to bring up next year.

Frayed Knot wrote: Ceetar wrote: there's no formula, but I'm sure the players are aware they're getting less and less of the pie. Really? Even if nothing actually happens, I suspect the issue will get raised meaning it might be in the owner's best interest if that number starts heading in the order direction for the NEXT negotiation. I think the LAST thing the players want is to introduce is the concept of a percentage of revenue as a basis for their pay. You don't think the players union is aware that league revenue is increasing at a greater rate than player salaries? That's gotta be up there near the top of their concern list.

Nymr83 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I think we may actually, somehow, have a home opener without a single guy getting audibly booed. Folks may be over Tejada, but giving his leg to the cause has got to have bought him some goodwill. The series goats are either gone (Murphy) or still glossy (Cespedes) or enjoying so deep an emotional commitment among the fans so as to blot out any alleged sins (Shmarvey, Familia). De Aza may get the closest thing to a boo bashing just for existing — for being an unpopular signing at a time when it was believed he was the booby prize for losing Cespedes. He isn't that at all, now, but there might be some habitual, residual angst there. The home opener is against the Phillies, the fans an find plenty to boo and happily not direct it at the Mets! The average Mets fan would have trouble naming two Phillies.