Quote:
Originally Posted by Chiefspants
Is Scott Boras the de facto head of the Players Union? Service time is a legit gripe, and many of the players have voiced their (very justified) anger with the league switching out baseballs on them. However, the latter point is just... absent from the players demands? Instead the focus is on tanking -- which Scott Boras has been against for years now. Lovely.
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Boras has done as well as anyone financially even through these cold free agent markets of recent years. The high-end players, that Boras represents, aren't really the issue in this labor dispute. They're doing just fine.
Service time is a legit gripe but I feel like it's going to get manipulated no matter what changes they make. If a half year as a rookie counts as a full year of service time, I see a high-performing Triple-A prospect being held down in July until next spring training. Plus, legislating a franchise's ability to determine when a prospect is ready or not is virtually impossible.
I don't see the owners going for the age 29 or five years of service time free agency. I think that is an automatic no for them. The question is whether new MLBPA negotiator Bruce Meyer (apparently he's a hard liner) is willing to go through an ugly labor war on those service time proposals or can the owners offer earlier arbitration and higher minimum salaries to compromise off them. The small market teams have a strong voice too, they're not going to give up higher minimum salaries or earlier arbitration easy.
The draft lottery has been proposed to discourage the tanking. I hate the concept of a draft lottery. The MLBPA won't agree to the salary floor because it feels the cheap teams will get right over the threshold and stop spending. It would almost validate their lack of spending. "Hey, we're over the cash floor. Go **** yourself."
This is my personal opinion, but I think a lot of issues can be resolved by just letting the Dodgers spend as much as they want so more players get their market value and not attach as many penalties to high spending teams. But it will never happen because Manfred and almost every owner is against it. They're afraid it will lead to the escalation of player salaries.
This is easily the most complicated CBA since 1994 and I could see it getting ugly. Some optimistic people think it can be easily resolved but call me a skeptic.