The league has plenty of sources of revenue it doesn’t give players a share of. But it wants players to share in their losses.
[Just after midnight Eastern time Friday morning, the Prospectus staff starts discussing the coming agreement]
Derek Zumsteg: It appears that if the owners gave in right now, just said “sure, we’ll take your last offer”, they’d have won more in this negotiation than in any previous one since free agency. Why did the players move so far? Are they that afraid of the NLRB and implementation? Do they believe that if they give in this time, they’ll be able to win it back in four years when it’s apparent none of this did any good for competitive balance?
I’m baffled.
I’m the new owner of the Angels.
Disney kept the team from leaving Anaheim, but their tax break was mostly expended, and running the team took energy the company wanted to spend persecuting peer-to-peer file sharing. The franchise didn’t come cheap, mind you, but I think it will be worth the money. Now, I’m Bud Selig’s worst nightmare, because I’m going to derive millions of dollars through his proposed revenue-sharing plan and field a team that’s going to thrash his precious Brewers for the foreseeable future.
Selig insisted that liabilities under the 60/40 rule have always included the value of salaries for future years, and any suggestion to the contrary was “just bullshit.”
One of the most complex and bedeviling problems in baseball today is understanding to what extent large-market teams have an competitive advantage over small-market teams.