Home Commentary And Analysis CBA Madness, Phase VII (A Piece of the Action)

CBA Madness, Phase VII (A Piece of the Action)

By
Rice Cube
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93

This isn’t necessarily new since the last time we saw anything substantial on the CBA front, but we pretty much know how capitalism works at this point, where the people up top want to maximize profits by reducing costs (i.e., pay people less, and pay fewer people) while the workers scratch and claw for whatever they can keep. It is, however, a long-awaited breakdown by Evan Drellich (and other Athletic friends, gift article, yay) on the owner proposal from May, wherein we all facepalmed and wondered how they think they can get away with it. But alas, billionaires often get away with a lot, because money, right?

The big point in the latest from Drellich is that MLB proposed an even 50-50 revenue split between the owners and players, but that doesn’t work for two main reasons:

  1. Players currently receive greater than 50% of the revenue so this is a step backwards;
  2. What is “baseball revenue” anyway?

It is generally true, based on what we know of the other leagues with a cap/floor structure, that the revenues being used in the calculation need to be clearly defined. I believe in the current CBA (that I plowed through once before my eyes glazed over) they have a section on how revenue sharing is set up and I want to say there is some kind of balance sheet each club has to submit to the union each season, but given how often clubs hide revenues and use lawyerese to restrict access to certain streams, who knows how accurate those are. In this proposal from May, the owners are more bold-faced about codifying how they intend to deduct specific revenues from the “baseball revenue” number:

MLB could take up to 17 percent of local revenues off the top annually as expenses, plus up to 22 percent of national revenues. Plus, some areas would have no expense cap, such as construction and renovation costs for ballparks, including spring-training facilities.

The league-run TV station MLB Network would have no deduction limit, and for 2027 and 2028, neither would costs from any team’s local broadcasts.

The league also wants unlimited deductions for what it broadly termed “new ventures.”

It is nice in theory to share the pie, but not if the big brother already took two-thirds of it for himself before saying “hey let’s split the rest.” There’s a blurb in there suggesting that any money spent on player salaries and benefits would count against the players’ share, which seems very self-serving for the owners pre-defining the pie to be cut up. I do recall a bit during either an in-game interview or a pre-game sports show where Crane Kenney said that all the revenue generated from Wrigley concerts and shows and other events set up by the Cubs would go back into baseball operations, but a) I don’t remember when that happened, I wanna say around the All-Star Game; b) I don’t know how truthful he is about this; and c) based on the Drellich article, teams with “ballpark districts” like the built-up areas in Wrigleyville surrounding the stadium would share some of the revenue from these developments, but not much.

There’s this part of the reporting that makes me wonder if it actually hurts the players’ side:

“As usual, the league’s calculation is misleading,” Meyer said. “It stretches back to 2003 for a reason, because an examination of more recent trends in revenue and overall player compensation would show the two have closely tracked one another. In fact, since 2022, growth in overall player compensation has exceeded revenue growth.”

In that sense, it suggests MLB is just trying to claw back some of its profits and it may not work for public opinion to know that salaries have outpaced the actual revenue growth, but that’s just my first impression.

It is still a preliminary proposal, aside from the supplementary proposals MLB has thrown out to further piss players off, and while I am admittedly biased in favor of the labor force, it is clear that any cap system, should the union capitulate, will depend on how the revenue number is calculated. Unfortunately, if MLB has their way, there are going to be many slices not even available to the players, and that doesn’t seem quite fair, even if the players themselves are only directly responsible for what happens on the field on game days.

93 COMMENTS

  1. Being the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, which I hope the new Paramount leadership doesn’t ruin, the title is of course the title of an infamous episode where Kirk and Spock find a world has been polluted by gangster culture, see?

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  26. The Cubs challenged that call on PCA at first, and the MLB replay center declared it too close to call in under a minute. WTF?

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  45. Do the Cubs even have the players to acquire Skubal? I haven’t paid much attention to the system, but Matt fucking Shaw is about it from what I can tell.

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  51. Economy must be bad
    Bert usually has a wish or two fully funded by now but he might actually be able to sleep early because he’s still apparently short of even one full wish

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  57. Why do I keep hearing about where Tarik Skubal wants to go? That is not a realistic factor. He doesn’t have a no-trade clause and anyone saying the Tigers care about what he wants is fucking delusional.

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  91. Hmm
    Milwaukee didn’t want to beat this?

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