Jon Becker

Lesson learned for the future: when Richard Staff tells you to do something, do it

Can’t watch the ASG because my WiFi is absolutely cooked (not sure how long this post will even take to send) after multiple people encouraged me to go to Philadelphia last minute and I said nah, this is like Stage IV FOMO

My takeaway from the All-Star red carpet photos I’m seeing: way too many guys wearing black in that heat

wow this sorta blew up you should subscribe to FanGraphs plus.fangraphs.com/product/fangra…

James Wood, FanGraphs user

@castrovince For sure, same here. Ultimately it’s early and I’m in “I need more details” mode with so much of this. Appreciate the discussion!

@jonbecker_ And that’s fair too. The public negotiations benefit no one, especially at this early stage. I am an advocate for small market fans and would love to see changes that benefit them no matter which side they come from.

I work for MLB obviously. But I can understand, in theory, why a cap/floor is a + for fans and, by extension, revenue growth. I don’t understand how MLBPA proposals (so far at least) are a + for fans and growth, though I welcome explanations.

@castrovince As for the fan point, I agree that they’re important because they drive revenue. But from either side’s perspective: the fans aren’t a party to negotiations here. IMO they’re only invoked as a PR play right now and shouldn’t really be used as a measuring stick for proposals

@castrovince That’s totally fair. I’d say that I *personally* am not in favor of curbing spending in any fashion and am automatically going to be skeptical of any claim that the league is trying to get *more* money to players, especially at this juncture. (1/2).

@castrovince We haven’t seen a hard definition of how the 50/50 split would come to be. Is it just MLB player salaries? Is amateur spending included? Player per diems? There are a lot of levers here that don’t necessarily ensure it’s comparable to current estimates of share of revenue

@castrovince I think the ensured min. revenue part of the PA’s proposal helps to ensure that teams can afford a baseline level of spending, tho, and as for your second point… I keep seeing that said but I’ve never seen hard numbers. How is revenue defined? How is player compensation defined?

@castrovince I would also add that there is still significant yearly revenue growth under the current economic system sans cap/floor, so unless you think the PA’s proposal would actively hurt revenues they don’t need to prove it to the extent that MLB does when suggesting an overhaul

@castrovince YMMV as to whether or not you believe this does enough but disincentivizing teams from spending too little coupled with a complete overhaul of the revenue sharing structure is presumably in the PA’s plan for a lot of the same reasons as a cap/floor, just without limiting spending

I'm not even against spending limits for amateurs, whether it's the draft or IFA (this is probably my most owner-friendly take), but it's disingenuous to say "well we're just responding to how teams have acted" when you're effectively limiting how many preps they can take

It's not like senior signs from college never amount to anything but teams largely only draft them as a cudgel to go overslot on the prep guys they *really* want

Manfred is correct that a large majority of draftees come from college, but a lot of that 70-75% is underslot lower-ceiling guys so teams can attempt to sign as many high school guys as possible without going over spending limits. Teams would probably love to sign more preps!

passan is a moron

That was absolutely incredible, I’ve never seen an athlete so calm and locked in

Gotta get rid of the magenta ball next year, sorry T-Mobile

I don’t care about his top hand I want to see ball go far!

just turned on the HRD pregame show to see it's just shooting the shit with local celebrities on outdoor couches and my mind immediately went here