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....

The 1972 Strike - The First of Many Baseball Stikes (and first sports strike)....

Background:
Six years after taking over as head of the MLBPA, Marvin Miller lead the players in an effort to increase pension pay. Outside of a couple of consistent key issues (see below), there isn't a helluva lot of information out there about the 1972 strike except that it existed and it ended.

One interesting note, the Red Sox ended the season 1/2 game behind the Tigers in the AL East standings and played one less game. This being the same Red Sox organization that in 1972 had not won a World Series in 54 years (see, Bambino, Curse of the). Honestly, there is no way something like this could happen today. It's entirely unbelievable that a team failed to make the playoffs in a strike season because it played one less game than another team. I would lose my mind if that happened to my team.

Another interesting note, Ted Simmons of the St. Louis Cardinals refused to sign a contract with the team. Instead, relying upon the 1970 CBA, Simmons threatened to play the season without a contract and then have a neutral arbitrator decide his salary after the season ended. Uneasy with this proposition, St. Louis signed Simmons to a two-year deal in August of 1972 at a hefty raise. This strategy by Simmons laid the foundation for salary arbitration and later free agency.

Also, 1972 is the first, but not the last sports strike where a sitting President got involved or expressed an opinion. In between Vietnam and Watergate invasion strategies, President Nixon ordered federal mediators to settle the short-lived strike. However, the players and owners agreed to settle the issue before the mediators could end it.

How Long It Lasted:

• April 1-12, 86 games lost due to stoppage.
  

The Issues:

1. Player pensions. Initially, the players were hesitant to strike solely based on a perceived lack of pension funding. However, after Augustus Busch, owner of the St. Louis Cardinals and procurer of tasty adult beverages declared "We're not going to give them another goddamn cent. If they want to strike--let 'em," the pension issue became more about principal rather than substance, inspiring the players to unanimously strike, despite suggestions by Marvin Miller and others not to.
2. Binding salary arbitration. More to follow on this issue.

The Results:

1. Owners agree to add $500K to the pension fund. Literally a drop in the bucket compared with the revenues the clubs were bringing in.
   
2. Under the terms of the 1970 CBA, a player was allowed binding arbitration for his salary if he didn't sign the offered contract by the team. Until Ted Simmons challenges this rationale (see above), this strategy had gone untested and unused by the players.

509 days until the CBA expires....


Sources:
Treder, Steve. 1972: the year that changed everything. Nine
Copyright 2005 University of Nebraska Press. March 22, 2005. Volume 13; Issue 2

Image of Ted Simmons from: http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/simbacard.jpg

A good analysis requires a solid foundation of history

Over the course of the next several weeks and months, I hope to provide a comprehensive history of the baseball work stoppages, the issues causing those stoppages, and the eventual outcomes of the negotiations. After sifting through the history of the many baseball strikes and lockouts, I will begin an analysis of the issues facing the upcoming CBA negotiations and probability of avoiding yet another work stoppage.

First Post....

This blog seeks to compile, reconcile, and analyze breaking news and reports regarding the restructuring of the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement. As the MLBPA and Owners try to avoid a labor stoppage for the 2012 season, this blog will seek to analyze both the economic and practical effects of the various positions taken by each side. Having recently survived two of the game's darkest moments in history (the cancellation of the '94 World Series and the steroid era/downfall), it is absolutely critical the players and owners avoid a work stoppage in 2012. Here's hoping a new deal is in place before the 2012 season begins and no baseball is lost.

510 days until the CBA expires....