Brock Beauchamp

Inversely, it's not great that Milwaukee and Tampa needs to run at 99% efficiency to compete, whereas the Phillies just throw money at the problem but aren't particularly smart about it. I actually don't want pure, NFL-style balance, but I do want a less stratified system.

Same. I fully expected the owners' first offer to include a floor of $80m or something equally laughable. I'm hopeful that their first offer is actually quite reasonable, and could lead to the sport being better when all is said and done.

Thanks for mentioning the benefits part. I knew benefits were included, but hadn't seen what the adjusted floor looks like. $150m is still a good starting point, IMO.

Yep, this is a problem we're working on right now.

You know I'm no fan of the owners, but offering a split in revenue, and a $171 million floor is beyond generous given their history. I feel like I'm missing something here because I fully expected the owners to start with something laughable like an $80 million floor.

What am I missing here? A $171 million floor makes this wayyyyyyyyy more appealing than I expected the owners' first offer to be.

Bah, that was my fault, I should have caught that 40-man reference. Yes, that's a $1.5 million major-league salary.

I'm good with this, sign me up! Mostly. I'm actually against 100% revenue sharing. I believe it's better for the sport for the Dodgers and Yankees and Cubs and Red Sox to be a little more prominent, and spend a bit more. But 80, 90% revenue sharing? Yeah, I'm all on board with that, and make a hard floor and cap linked to revenue.

The American League is in a sorry state.

I approved it just so you don't get stuck in a queue again. Yeah, this was one of the site instances failing, but I couldn't identify which one, had to wait for the developer to chime in on it.

Yeah, one of the instances on the servers is having issues, I am going to take a look later today.

Dude, seriously. You think teams will bunt? It's literally the first thing advanced metrics told us was a terrible idea. I just cannot fathom how anyone says modern athletes "aren't trying" in any capacity. For god's sake, professional sports are SO MUCH MORE COMPETITIVE than they were. Jacob Misiorowski just started a game where he threw about a dozen pitches over 102 mph. Guys are faster and stronger than they've ever been. They have access to film and training techniques impossible just 20 years ago. And if they put these things together, they might get a 500 MILLION DOLLAR PAYDAY out of it. And you think these guys just don't try to maximize every avenue of improvement? This take just absolutely floors me because it's so detached from reality. These guys start travel ball when they're like nine years old, but somehow they're not willing to maximize their ability in the name of a payday so large the average person can't even fathom it?

I think deferred contracts are out of control, and I don't like them much, but they also don't crack the top five of things I care about. The first four on that list are revenue sharing, revenue sharing, revenue sharing, and revenue sharing.

Most of those aren't the reasons baseball changed the rules. The game evolved, and MLB is encouraging things it wants to see. Stolen bases dropped because teams figured out they weren't valuable if you got caught. So MLB made it easier to steal, thereby encouraging teams to steal more. The three-hitter minimum was put in place to reduce game length, full stop. Pitchers never hit, can't forget something you never knew. So baseball mercifully put an end to that fiasco in the name of making the viewing experience better.