One-game Wildcard Playoff?

"Rumblings from the labor front suggest there's a clear split between the two sides on expanding the playoffs, with owners pushing hard for a one-game sudden-death playoff between the two wild-card teams and players holding out for a best-of-three. The more we've thought about it, the more we've concluded that anything but a one-game, winner-goes-on-loser-goes-home format would be a huge mistake." -- Jayson Stark (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings110412)

The intensity of a matchup like this would be huge. In baseball, anybody can beat anybody on a given day, so this would truly be a "wildcard" game if there ever was one. Plus, if neither of these teams was good enough to win their division, we shouldn't have a problem with one of them going home after one game, right? Yeah, I think that's right. While it permits the unfortunate situation where a 2nd place, 95-win wildcard team from a division might go home after one game, in favor of a 90-win wildcard team that otherwise wouldn't have made the playoffs, it rewards division winners even more. As someone who watched the Braves only win one championship despite 14 division titles and also watched the Marlins win two wildcards and two World Series, I can't fault the logic of making wildcard teams earn it in a one-game playoff.

As far as adding a playoff team, I think it's great. With a season as long as baseball's, it benefits the game as a whole to keep as many teams in the fracas as possible. I think I'm looking forward to this new format.

New 7-day DL

Love the new 7-day DL for concussions. I'd like to see MLB make moves like this on the fly the same way the NFL does. I realize it effectively "punishes" those teams with issues prior to a rule change. However, for something like concussions, it makes sense to help everyone going forward. Great stuff!

More Good News

Regular sessions between the players and owners to begin once the season starts. This is great news. Maybe the '94 strike really got to me, but this almost feels too easy....

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110313&content_id=16938262&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

This is great to see...

MLBPA Union Leader, Michael Weiner: "We had a good dialogue with the owner's representatives and good contributions from the players themselves." (Source: ESPN.com).

This is great to see. There is just simply too much at stake to risk a labor stoppage.

For the full article, click here: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6177833

Curt Flood and the HOF

Curt Flood should be in the Hall of Fame. Period. Seeing as though the Lockout of 1976 is strongly correlated with the advent of free agency thanks to Curt Flood, I believe it's only fair to advocate for his inclusion in the HOF prior to continuing with the historical analysis of the labor stoppages.

A quick google search for "worst player in the baseball hall of fame" returns a few possible candidates. Curt Flood's impact on the game is vastly more important than many of these players and certainly no less important. So if we are not going to let Curt Flood into the Hall, here are some people we should probably kick out.

Tommy McCarthy
With apologies to the McCarthy family and McCarthyism enthusiasts of all shapes and sizes, it's hard to argue with Bill James' assessment that Tommy McCarthy's inclusion into the 1946 HOF class makes him the worst player in Cooperstown. Apparently America's obsession with McCarthyism predates Senator Joe's black list of suspected Commies unleashed in 1950. According to baseball reference, McCarthy (the baseball player, not the Red Scare fueling Senator) had a lifetime .292 average with 468 steals over a thirteen year career. His peak season of 1890 included a solid .350BA and 83 steals, carving a niche out as a precursor to a poor man's Vince Coleman. Seeing as though Vince Coleman isn't in the HOF, a player with lessor accomplishments shouldn't either. On pure stats, McCarthy shouldn't be in.

Bill James' cites McCarthy's addition of the hit-n-run and batter to base runner as to why he was held in such high esteem. That's fine. I have no problem rewarding those who come up with new ideas and challenge the conventional thinking. However, if you are going to consider factors outside of statistics, Curt Flood's absence in the HOF is comical. His courage to challenge the owners, risking his name and marketability, singlehandedly created free agency, changed the game forever. For that simple reason, he should be in the Hall.

Final interesting note: Flood's career BA is .293, .001 better than McCarthy's.

The Lockout of 1973

Background:
Following the strike of 1972 in which actual baseball games were lost on account of a labor stoppage for the first time in modern baseball history, the players and owners were at it again. Only this time, no games are lost. (As an aside, apart from the players and owners (and baseball dorks like myself), does anyone really care about a sports labor dispute if no games are lost? Doubtful.) The uncertainty created by Ted Simmons when he refused to sign a contract and threatened to take his salary to an arbitrator after the season for an ex post valuation of his worth surely led to some uneasy owners, who likely decided they wanted to set out some ground rules regarding salary arbitration. As an owner, it would be a scary proposition for a player to have a breakout season and then have an arbitrator decide what the player was worth after the season. This outcome would lead a club to have potentially mass amounts of payroll uncertainty if a player(s) salary was not decided until after the season. While it might seem like a good way to incentivize the player, a club needs to have a ballpark of its payroll in order to decide how much revenue it needs to bring in to cover player expenses.

How long it lasted:
February 8-25. Zero games lost due to stoppage. However, the start of spring training is pushed back. On the bright side, the delay in spring training saves countless players lives due to less time encountering blue-hairs on the roadways in Florida.

The Issues:
1. Salary Arbitration: The owners and players needed to get on the same page regarding salary arbitration.

The Result:
1. Players and owners agree to binding salary arbitration as a part of a 3-year CBA to decide a player’s worth whereby a neutral arbitrator decides between the player’s offer and the team’s offer. Different from traditional arbitration where an arbitrator may reach any presumably equitable result, “baseball arbitration” only permits the arbitrator to pick a side. (Example – The Rays offer B.J. Upton $3MM and B.J. Upton’s agent proposes a salary of $3.3MM, the arbitrator may only pick one of the proposals and can not split the difference.) Allowing salary arbitration ultimately cost the owners because players will earn higher salaries in the years prior to free agency. However, players with production well over the arbitrated salary amount still make less than they would in free agency or in a freely negotiated contract. (See Howard, Ryan). A player’s requirements to reach arbitration (i.e. ‘Super Two’s and other matters) continues refinement to this day and will likely play a large role in the new CBA. More to come on this issue later.

493 days until the CBA expires….

Can you support the Baseball Union without being a "Union Guy"

Is the MLBPA different from a regular union? Yes, I think it is. (Entertaining side story, last weekend at a local watering hole, a friend of mine described three bartenders who had no desire to serve any of the patrons as looking like "a bunch of union workers on break.") The following are a few reasons I think the MLBPA is different than a regular union:

1. Career length. Baseball players have a limited career and thus have a much more limited window of opportunity for employment than a traditional union worker. For example, a middle reliever, with little to no transferable traditional employment skills on account of being drafted out of high school and not attending college, has a 10-15 year career window at best. This is way different than a line worker in a factory that can presumable work 40-50 years in his position.
2. Reevaluation. The market constantly reevaluates a baseball player's "worth". Unlike a regular union worker, a baseball player's pay is evaluated (whether positively or negatively) every time his contract expires. In contrast, many union contracts include collectively bargained pay increases. While bottom-line baseball minimum wages do increase similar to regular unions, a large portion of baseball contracts are freely negotiated between the player and the team (or arbitrated) and increases/decreases in pay are the product of free market contract. If a team doesn't want to pay Player 'X' $15M in year four of a contract, the team and player don't agree to a contract and the player is free to see if another team is willing to pay him that amount. (See Lowe, Derek). If a player in decline is not worth $15M a season, then the market can reflect a new value of the player's services. A regular union contract "protects" the union worker from a similar decline in pay on account of a market change. For example, in a declining economy, it is likely there are people who would do the same job in a factory for less than the current employee, but the union contract prevents the company from reevaluating the employee's "worth".
3. Birthdays? I found this amusing. According to http://www.iww.org/organize/laborlaw/contract1.shtml, a typical union contract involves getting your birthday off as a holiday. That is definitely different than baseball. While it is nice not to have to work on your birthday, the fact that a regular union is able to require the company to give the worker that day off is comical. I wonder what the collective cost of every employee getting his/her birthday off costs?
   
4. Transferability of employers. Once a player meets the collectively bargained requirements to reach free agency, there are a number of different options for the player to take his services. Contrast this with a regular union whereby an employee is always free to change employers, but likely doesn't. This is because the union worker doesn't possess a special set of skills necessarily irreplaceable in the market place, which leads me to my next point.
5. Higher skill set. Baseball players, especially the top tier, have a much higher replacement cost than any regular union employee. A typical union worker can be paid in excess of 150% of what the free market (in non-union states) pays for the same job. Every employee in a company is replaceable, while it can be argued that above average baseball players are not.
6. Power? Between a regular union and the MLBPA, who has more power? Tough call. The MLBPA generally gets what it wants. Nobody wants to see replacement players, the MLBPA knows this, the owners know this, and the fans drive this. Compare this with a regular union where the employees are much easier to replace (the only hitch being, you know, the threat of violence to picket-line crossing individuals by union leaders).
   

That's it for now. More to come. 501 days until the CBA expires....