The Major League Baseball Players Association has now expanded its grievance proceeding against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic reports (subscription link). The union is in both cases challenging the team’s use of revenue-sharing funds.
As the MLBPA looks for ways to spur teams to spend, it has targeted the ever-stingy Bucs. An initial grievance proceeding included the Pittsburgh organization as well as the A’s, Rays, and Marlins.
It seems the initial action covered spending over the 2017-18 offseason, with the new one relating to the winter of 2018-19. Biertempfel spoke with union chief Tony Clark, who didn’t weigh in on this particular matter but did state that his organization remains concerned with “revenue-sharing recipients who remain in that perpetual rebuilding mode.”
The Pirates, of course, claim not to be rebuilding. Newly hired GM Ben Cherington has spoken instead of a “build.” Parsing the terminology won’t change the substance. After a winter in which the team traded Starling Marte and didn’t add back much salary, the Bucs are presently slated to open the season with approximately $57MM in player salaries on their books. That marks the club’s lowest Opening Day payroll since 2011 and fourth-straight year-over-year decline.
This grievance is obviously only one part of a broader union strategy to push back against some broader trends, but ir remains unclear precisely what remedy the MLBPA can hope to achieve through this mechanism. A team is required to spend revenue-sharing funds “in an effort to improve its performance on the field,” though the collective bargaining agreement contemplates quite a few things beyond MLB salaries as fitting that definition. At the time the first grievance was filed, then-Pirates president Frank Coonelly called it “patently baseless.”
As Biertempfel notes, there’s some interesting potential interaction here between this story and the recent reports of extension possibilities for the Pirates organization. Investing in existing players wouldn’t change the immediate mix of talent, so perhaps it wouldn’t speak directly to the union’s position. But it would go some way towards quelling the understandable angst emanating from the ranks of Pirates fans over the organization’s spending.
“But look at all the money we’re giving Chris Archer!”
-The Pirates, probably
MLB is a joke thanks to Manfred. He cares more about making a pitcher cough up 10 runs so he can a pitch a full inning then he cares about baseball. It’s shameful what teams like the Pirates are doing thanks to profit sharing. What would be healthiest for baseball is getting rid of a couple MLB teams all together. There are too many players playing right now that should be AAA players. Make the competition better.
Is Manfried the joke or MLB?
You know it’s 3 batters, not 3 outs, right?
I don’t think he knows much of anything
comes in with bases loaded, gives up grand slam and two solo shots. 6 runs before being allowed to stop playing
…wonder if something like that will actually happen haha
Khopper10.
Mr Joke doesn’t realize he’s a joke. So I doubt it.
This guys comment is ridiculous. Just shows how little he knows about the rule. Baseball is never going to contract and the Pirates (however poorly run they are) are operating within the rules. Should the rules be changed? Maybe, but the smaller market teams will never agree to a floor without also having a cap and the larger market teams will never agree to a cap. MLB would be a lot better if the league had revenue sharing just like the NFL and NBA.
3 outs would kill Tigers lol
Disagree about the large market teams opposed to a cap. That would just mean more money for them. The players union, on the other hand, would be greatly opposed to a cap
Fellas, to quote exactly what the rule says off of MLB.com, “…MLB instituted a rule change that requires pitchers to either face a minimum of three batters in an appearance or pitch to the end of a half-inning…..”
The reason I copied/ pasted this is that a pitcher can come in part way through an inning and face as few as one hitter, if there are already two outs and the pitcher/defense gets that third out. The key is the “to the end of the half inning” portion. At least that is my interpretation of the new rule. Right?
That pitcher would be on 24 hour sucide watch after that. Lol
right
This made my head hurt
Do you even know what you’re upset about.
Manfred, MLB, Pirates, profit sharing, 3 batter rule, too much run scoring, and watered down competition. I think that’s it.
And $8 beer
$8 where? I would take that in a heartbeat.
At spring training games!
Selig referred to your proposal as “contraction,” and he went so far as to name two likely possibilities—the Twins and another I don’t recall. Whatever you call it, the problem has less to do with enough talent to go around, more with the financial imbalance that creates haves and have nots. Somehow in the NFL Green Bay can compete and win a championship, but in MLB the number of competitive teams, or the number of teams that consider themselves competitive, seems to be declining. Clearly, the reverse-order draft has not facilitated more competition, nor has the luxury tax. That said, let’s try something different. The idea of a slavery floor is a good place to start.
Might want to edit the last sentence.
So competitive is judged by how much money you spend?
We can say that a $56MM payroll budget is uncompetitive. So, yeah, within certain guidelines how much money you spend relates to competitiveness.
The word giving is appropriate as he sure as hell ain’t earning it.
I’m fine with the Pirates rebuilding under Ben, but last year and the previous few were unacceptable.
In 2018 Marte got suspended 80 games and they didnt even have a competent 4th OF in his place.
In 2017 the Pirates traded Gerrit Cole and never brought in any sort of replacement, which later lead to the infamous Archer Overpay.
Incompetence is worse than not spending, but you at least get bandaids and veteran depth when you spend.
Pirates were both incompetent and cheap. Hoping they’re just cheap under Ben C.
MLB would be better off by giving Nutting the Marge Schott Tx from the rest of owners & commissioner.
But it won’t happen. Owners who don’t consistently fund an entertaining product may get rewarded a la Loris.
Paragraph 5 says “ir”, should be “it”
21st word
Fire him.
The union should be careful. The only way to ensure a team like Pittsburg spend more is to implement a hard cap in baseball where every team is required to spend a minimum on salaries which also leads to a maximum on salaries.
So a salary floor, not a hard cap?
The only way it ill pass both the owners and players is if BOTH a salary floor and a hard cap are brought in. The players would be happy to have the lower payroll teams spending more and most owners would be happy to have the higher spending teams reined in. Take the average payroll right now and make a range of +/- $20 million and make that your salary range. It would stop the high payroll teams from just buying the postseason every year and force rebuilding teams to pay veteran free agents instead of using cheap AAAA players while they collect prospects. I doubt it will ever happen, but I truly believe it would save baseball.
I like the theory, but I think that would cause a couple teams to fold
Not fold. Maybe relocate. No one folds a team these days. And maybe that is the impetus to shake up the minor leagues structure. Put pressure on cities to build a major league park, and other cities to build better facilities. Well, at least all that construction would stimulate the economy, LOL
I’m not so sure they can’t get a floor without a cap. The money the Pirates are not spending is coming to them from team’s like the Red Sox and Yankees. While I doubt those owners care the players are unhappy about the size of their piece of the pie, if I’m Hal Steinbrenner I’d want the money I’m giving these teams spent as the CBA dictates. If, not, and it’s going in an owner’s pocket, I’d expect that pocket to be mine.
So I would think, assuming efforts to scrap revenue sharing fail, big market clubs would find a salary floor in their own interests. They spend well past them anyway.
Without more equitable revenue sharing, a la the NFL model, this is neither going to happen nor fix competitive balance.
Are you implying the NFL has more competitive balance than MLB?
How many NFL teams are tanking in training camp? Not nearly half, like in MLB.
In the past 5 seasons every NFC team except the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have made the playoffs, so yes the NFL definitely has more competitive balance.
NFL and NBA have already morally tanked. Please don’t emulate anything either of those sports have done incorrectly the past few seasons and let them continue to go off the deep end where they are headed.
I’ve stated multiple times a hard salary floor should have been imposed years ago when revenue sharing was forced upon owners and the last CBA, when additional freebies imposed? All the more reason.
Put the hard floor at around 100m. Don’t reach it? Rest goes into some kind of fund any owner wouldn’t generally fund.. Say pre 1979 MLB player’s retirement fund where player’s don’t receive as so called “modern” ballplayers do. That will force them to spend.
Can’t do that? fold, or move. That simple. No whining.
The NFL and NBA are no more morally “tanked” than any other entertainment based industry.
@wkkortas solid point. But if you’re looking at championship caliber team’s I think MLB is much more balanced.
It’s also quite a bit easier, many would say too easy, to make the playoffs in the NFL.
Baseball, by the standings last year was actually almost perfectly balanced. Out of 30 teams 15 teams had winning records, 1 team had a .500 record, and 14 teams had losing records.
You’ll never have payroll or revenue balance based solely on the fact that some owners have more money and some teams generate more revenue.
Derek Jeter got to play for a team with unlimited resources and now runs a team that basically clips coupons. The Dodgers have the second biggest media market in the game and yet Friedman still spends like he’s in Tampa Bay. There’s no perfect solution beyond maybe implementing a year after year evaluation system that if you didnt use your revenue sharing dollars on player salaries this year you don’t get revenue sharing dollars next year.
@Lanidrac, you obviously have NO clue! Baseball and basketball need an overhaul to level the field! Football has it right along with hockey!
Uh, no, please. Caps hurt baseball, it won’t help it. Floor? Yeah, that may help, and should certainly apply to revenue-sharing.
But the owners ill never approve of a floor unless a cap comes with it. And it won’t hurt baseball at all. It’ll just bring the Dodgers and Yankees of the world back to the pack so they can’t just buy the postseason every year.
How do caps hurt? Keeps a level playing field and a floor will only force the Scrooges to pry open the wallets.
How does the dodgers and Yankees buy postseason?? Again how just because you spend money on talent for their decline years or prime years doesn’t mean you buy a postseason. Look at the astros, Red Sox, Detroit tigers, LA Angels, the rangers, these are other teams who spends money on talent to fill in gaps that their farm can’t fill. But yet you have teams who does spend money on talent only to know it bust in their faces. Free agency is a risk/award system either you get lucky or not. It’s all about chemistry with players together. The success that teams build for. So get out of here teams spending money with the dodgers and yanks. And do research.
You don’t know that. Many of the owners may be just as sick of cheapskates like the Pirates and quite willing to institute a floor without a hard cap.
The Pirates get aprox. 200m a year in revenue sharing before the season starts. The union has a point in calling them out. Should also call out the Rays, Marlins again as well.
Please cite your factual source on revenue sharing. Otherwise, stop posting garbage as fact.
google.com/amp/s/www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/201…
The ACTUAL number us around $90 million.
Nearly half of which they are apparently pocketing and not spending on the team.
So payroll is 57 mill and the Pirates get 90 million in revenue sharing. So, 33 million in profit plus the profits from tickets and sponsorships. Sounds like the Pirates owner has been profiting nicely the last 20 years. Plus the value of the franchise has increased over 900 million. Sounds like the Pirates fans are the suckers.
Well they do have to pay all their non-player employees and their minor leaguers so the % they are spending is a lot higher than just what their player payroll is. But I am sure they are still making profit that isn’t being reinvested just not half of their revenue sharing.
Yes pirates fans are suckers, but you won’t find many pirates fans in Pittsburgh.
Mainly just a family activity for summer. No one actually cares about the Pirates and tickets sales keep falling dramatically
Who said Billionaires don’t participate in welfare checks?? Take a look at those small market owners living off the doul. Revenue shaving. Funny stuff.
Wow where did you get that number from. If that’s the case then I am pissed!
Hard floor
Hard cap
Maximum one single player is allowed to make (maybe 15% of total payroll or of maximum cap that given year)
Every sport should have these simple caps in place. After all, sports are meant to be fair. Equal chances for every team to compete. Players should be choosing teams on friendhsip, cohesion, location, family etc instead of….max money!!
Every team should have a base salary minimum/maximum. You want to make 100 million a year? Fine, unlimited performance bonuses all around! This also eliminates the Cespedes factor that handcuffs a team with zero player motivation to get back on the field once his contract is inked.
100 million team max, 75 million team minimum. If you are under, you lose draft picks. To get passed the minimum, a team can rework a player’s contract to reward him for past achievements. Right there is your pro Union argument. A player like Anderson, who overachieved,could be awarded a higher base salary this year, that would push them back over the 75 million dollar threshold. Or spread it around across the mlb roster based on days on the active 26 man roster. There are ways it could be argued in favor by the union. I wonder how much the Yankees are paying their disabled list guys? Probably a LOT more than done teams’ entire payroll.
Done = some.
Performance should be a definitive factor in all these contracts. You suck, you get paid less. You do well, you get paid more. You know, like real life in a capitalist country.
By real life I assume you mean not athletes. I hate to break it to you, but even in real life, you are mostly compensated for your past performance and not your current performance.
But in real life, you stop performing, you stop getting paid. It catches up with you.
Sure, but what does stop performing mean in an office or factory? Baseball players don’t stop performing, they just don’t perform as well.
A manager knows non-performance when s/he sees it. This isn’t rocket science. People are fired every day for not doing their jobs.
Most pertinent post here. No perform? no pay.
But that is how it is in baseball. Erik Kratz isn’t making the same amount of money as Mike Trout.
Again its Pittsburgh and not Pittsburg
The A’s laughed at the Union last year and showed all the offers to FA like EE and others they offered more then the eventual signing price. They were like we have offered money FA dont want to sign here nothing they can do. Then they took the team to the highest payroll in team history with in season trades the very same year.
You don’t need an absolute floor, or cap, to change the incentive to spend. Just redefine the distribution for revenue sharing. Try this:
Teams receive no revenue sharing reimbursement for the first $50m in yearly qualified spending, pro rata basis.
After the first $50m pro rata, they receive 50% reimbursement on every dollar spent on a qualified expense, up to a seasonal cap of (insert rev sharing cap here).
What’s that mean? If you’ve got $50m in contracts/allowed expenses on the books, you get ZERO. Any team should earn $50m/yr, relocate, or retract.
If you’ve got 60m in expenses? Each week mlb sends a check for half of what that 10m in expenses cost you in the previous week.expenses go up week to week? So does your check for rev sharing. Expenses down? So goes your check.
Any money left over at the end of the year? Split it. 1/2 goes back to revenue sharing payors, the other half to some type of MiLB player benefit pool.
Rev sharing paying clubs want it because they get rebates. Non rev sharing clubs (pay or get) like it because there’s less bottom tier trash home games on the schedule so gate revenues go up with the ticket prices and attendance. MLBPA likes the extra spending – it means rev sharing clubs effectively pay half price on a bundle of contracts they handout. Even rev sharing clubs who are spending don’t care because it doesn’t hurt them.
Only teams that dont like it are the Rev sharing recipients who are on the take and lose their free profits.
And around and around we go…
The easiest thing to do would be to implement a ‘floor’ tax where small market teams that don’t spend up to the floor would no longer get revenue sharing profits and possibly could get a CBT fine as well. You’d see an immediate change in behavior if they instituted this type of rule.
On a side note, enough of the grammar police. Most of the writers on this site are volunteers; I can live with a few grammar mistakes given that we do not have to pay to access such a great site.
Lol @ volunteers
Grow up Peter Pan.
Grammar police? I corrected something the writer would want to know about. Take your participation trophy home. These guys get paid.
Your grammar policing is boring and a waste of space.
This is the most logical solution I’ve seen yet in regards to a salary floor. Instead of teams being forced to give fringe major leaguers more money just for the sake of reaching a certain number, have it be a soft floor, a carpet if you will. If you wanna claim you are rebuilding with a low payroll, that’s fine but you’re not going to get any benefits from revenue sharing if you’re not spending.
That may be enough to finally make Nutting sell the franchise.
Best solution right there.
Taxing someone for not spending money is the most left wing liberal idea in the history of sports business. A basement cap can work, like in the NHL, but they dont have the revenues MLB does and that would also require a hard cap ceiling. Good luck getting that past the union.
It’s not a tax. Its refusing to give someone benefits when they’re not doing their part. Why should the Pirates receive revenue sharing when they refuse to have a payroll over $90mil?
Very good point. And actually, the revenue sharing without requiring them to spend borders much more on socialism.
You seem to just like to throw terms around. Revenue sharing without requiring owners to spend, would mean that the owners make more money. How is that socialism in any form?
I’m not really political, but from what I’ve seen anyone who says something is socialism doesn’t actually know what real socialism is. Without failure this is always the case.
The only way that is socialism is if the owners had no say in how the money was allocated. They did. In the CBA that allowed for revenue sharing in the first place. Socialism is more like public schools where you get taxed for them, but have zero say in how they spend that tax money.
Yes and no. You are right in that public schools are a form of socialism. You are wrong in that you don’t have a say in how they allocate resources.
Every school district I know in the US has a publicly elected school board that decides leadership and resource allocation.
The union shouldn’t care about that I don’t think. While the richer teams couldn’t spend as much, they’d just have to make the floor high enough where that money is made up through the smaller market teams spending. Hopefully it would even out the competition in the process as well.
Ya that’s not a tax. Idk how you can say it is. Just means you don’t get your portion that was taxed from others.
MLB and the players should just give in, and work together to reshape the divisions. Hasn’t the time come? Imagine a grouping of the Pirates, Orioles, Tigers, Marlins and 1 other. Playing each other 18-19 times a year? That’s excitement!
One of them has to not be last lol. I think it’d be the Marlins, but still what a ride.
the pirates and marlins actually have solid teams when compared to the tigers or orioles.
The past several seasons, the Pirates could have easily remained contenders. All they really needed was a few pieces here and there but Cheapskate Owner Bob Nutting refused to participate in free agent signings of even the middle to lower-tier salaried players, as usual.
Just bumping the team salary up 10-15 million by getting some outfield and pitching depth would have easily kept the team in contention for the playoffs.
Problem is then one of those teams gets in the postseason. Several problems with that…
Go sign Big Sexy for 30 mil a year out of the Mexican League.
Another volley in the forthcoming CBA battle.
I wouldn’t get too excited if I was a Bucs fan (or a Marlins, Rays or A’s fan either). ONE way to cure the ill is to force teams to spend more. But ANOTHER way is to cut the supply, i.e. to restructure Revenue Sharing.
If I’m an owner of a big-boy team, which do you think I’m in favor of.
The Rays are the ones who will throw a wrench in this… Tough to say, “You need to spend more money” when they’ve been doing well with the players they have at the money they’re spending…
The fact that the Rays (and the A’s) have spent their wisely neglects the possibility of them having a greater level of achievement if they HAD spent the money. They’re both nice stories, but one can assume either might have been in the World Series if they opened their wallets a bit.
And in a way, that’s more of an argument for cutting back Revenue Sharing than looking at the Pirates., who obviously have the further issue that they’ve made some poor decisions.
And that will be the owners point. It’s time to stop patting the Rays and A’s heads and telling them how well they’re doing. And time to start holding them to the same standard of other teams. Their method of operation has seriously hindered (the A’s) or completely destroyed (Rays) the MLB brand in their market. And THAT affects every team.
It’s a natural consequence of RS that everybody from Marvin Miller to Charlie Finley saw immediately. It can be fixed (denying RS funds to teams that don’t use it, as has been mentioned), but the reality is the current system encourages mediocrity, inspires “tanking”, and shrinks franchise values.
bobtillman.
If a team is not going to spend money, why should teams give them money.
No one is forcing a team to spend money. However, teams are being forced to give other teams money.
I agree that the Rays and A’s should not be subsidised. Right now people like to talk about how good they are in development when they get extra competitive balance picks and higher international spending room. I am not a fan of that. I guess they do better than some of the other low revenue clubs, but let them compete equally with everyone.
Maybe MLB will grow up and implement a cap and floor, and allow the trading of picks. You know, pretend to follow modern sports league models.
Under present system the small market teams are just a feeder of talent to other teams. Can see this happening in the other major sports. Big markets!! Big TV revenue. MLB has issues outside of about 12 teams.
a good attorney will say “an effort to improve its performance on the field” is literally signing 4 guys to league minimum deals…..”your honor, each of the signed plays has a 0.3 career WAR. If they did not sign them, this team would have won 1.2 less games. Therefore, Pittsburg showed they were trying to improve the team by signing those individuals.”
Baseballs welfare system isn’t working
Love this ^^^
Pirates made $39M (per Forbes) last year with a CBT payroll of $83.8M. They are about $20M below that so far this season. So tell me, why should they be a revenue sharing if they can make that kind of money and not spend anything?
Personally, would be all for getting rid of competitive balance picks and revenue sharing.
The scary thing is most baseball fans would rather have the owner pocket the money than “waste it” on veterans
57 million starting payroll? All that money from profit sharing, concessions,tv revenue, tickets and so on lining someones pocket. I agree that baseball needs some kind of financial restructuring. If you don’t want to field a competitive team, sell it, move it,dissolve it, whatever. If you CHOOSE to not maintain a minimum, competitive payroll you should forfeit your draft picks, international picks or be charged a penalty similar to the OVER budget tax.
The penalty has to be financial, not draft picks. You don’t spend $125MM, you don’t get revenue sharing money.
If you cannot afford at minimum 100 mil for a roster
You need to either sale the team or relocate the team
Pittsburg and Miami being cheap
Las Vegas As and Montreal Expos
Get it right you trolls its Pittsburgh and not Pittsburg
You got to relax, man.
Half do it on purpose, half are lazy, and the other half won’t understand your message.
(paraphrasing Yogi)
Some people aren’t good at spelling, others don’t punctuate where necessary. I won’t criticize your terrible punctuating skills if you give others a break for misspelling the name of a city/team nobody really cares about.
Or you can factor in my phone auto corrects to Pittsburg
No one cares and no one cares about the pirates owners. They are cheap.
Pittsburg
Afford has nothing to do with it. The Pirates are extremely profitable, and they don’t need to be competitive or worry about attendance to make their profits
As such, why would Nutting spend on payroll to placate who scream “field a competitive team”. Far easier to pay lip service, throw in a few fireworks nights, pierogi races and bobble heads
Even Mark Cuban said last year that it would be ridiculous for Nutting to sell
I think modern Pirates fans have the right idea where dinosaurs like me miss. Enjoy the game, the sport, the night out, good opposing teams and young Pirates stars while they are here. They’re never gonna compete while Nutting is owner.
Not sure why they’d opt to move to a Vegas or Montreal, but I’ll be glad to help them load the moving vans
So you want a team to go to a place where they couldn’t afford players and drew less in attendance and revenue like Montreal? There is a reason they do not have a team anymore. Many reasons, in fact.
Here’s another idea – players should simply NOT sign with the Pirates. Oh wait…
What’s wrong with putting the revenue sharing money into a savings account and spending it on the right franchise players that are willing to lockup long-term extensions?
Because to a lot of people around here building a financially sustainable and balanced team doesn’t make sense. Spend the money when you have core players who are under team control and don’t spend the money when you don’t. Many teams follow this type of business model.
If you don’t want to spend money, don’t spend money, but don’t expect other teams to send you a check for not spending money.
This isn’t complex. It’s a pretty good idea.
I wonder what the Yanks ROI per fiscal year is compared to the Pirates…hence the need for revenue sharing. I think players should get paid based on their share of the revenue. Caps mess with that.
Mlb should have a minimum floor. $95 mill must be spent whether that’s extensions with young players, short deals with high AAV, whatever. But in return mlb deals are no longer fully guaranteed. Teams can give partial guarantees like the NFL. If you want teams to spend you have to offer them incentives for committing money. Could also stop the silly service time manipulations if a team is forced to commit more to younger players early.
Should also allow teams to trade draft picks rounds 1-10. But you can’t trade your own picks back to back years.
Also, cut the revenue sharing and pick compensation.
Teams should still be compensated draft picks if they lose players and lose picks of they sign players.
4 WAR + players net a 1st
3-3.9 WAR net a 2nd
2-2.9 WAR net a 4th
1-1.9 WAR net a 6th
0-0.9 WAR net a 10th
Sign a 4 WAR + lose 3rd and 4th
3-3.9 lose 5th and 8th
2-2.9 lose 6th and 9th
1.19 lose 8th to 10th
100
I still don’t understand why people feel like teams should lose draft picks for signing a FA. I am all for teams getting compensatory picks for losing someone, but you don’t have to take away picks. Just add the picks and be done with it. That would also stop good free agents from sitting around until June like Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel.
What like it used to be?
It was never like that. Teams have always lost draft picks for signing premier free agents. My point is that they shouldn’t lose anything.
They should lose something or the team should gain something significant.
Why should say Padres lose Fernando Tatis Jr to a big market team and they get a 1st round pick (33, 34, 35 whatever) and the big market team gets Tatis Jr and keeps their 1st which is 10 or 5 spots ahead? They get Tatis Jr and a better prospect than the Padres would get? Doesn’t make much sense.
Now if you wanna say the comp pick falls right after the Padres own pick sure. Padres get say #9 their own and #10 pick in the draft for losing Tatis Jr. Then you can argue for a team keeping their own picks if the team losing big time players recoups significant value while the acquiring team loses nothing of value.
If the Pirates had to meet a floor of 95 million, they could make a playoff team.
If every team has to field a 95million dollar team, they could all field a playoff team? Or lesser players get higher salaries to make up the value. Then better players get higher salaries and the big spenders become bigger spenders. If you have a floor, you need a cap, otherwise, all salaries go up.
still amazes me they lumped TB and Oakland into the original grievance.
They are cheap, and they don’t spend money.
Any time a player makes anymore they dump him.
yeah but they actually do well in spite of that. as much as they arent spending they certainly arent going to throw millions and roster spots away if it isnt going to actually improve their teams.
corey dickerson was an all-star with TB in 2017. the following off-season they didn’t tender him a contract because he was going to earn too much. dickerson had another all-star caliber season in 2018 playing for another team, so TB can’t make the argument they let him go in an effort to improve their roster.
They should be fined heavily for doing this
Neither can the Pirates for giving Dickerson away for free to the Phillies this past season. Hanging on to him would have helped replace the loss of production of the recently traded Starling Marte.
Maybe MLB and MLBPA can do us Pittsburgh fans a favor and force a sell.
I reckon a salary cap would fix the spending issue. It takes the big spenders down to a level where the smaller budget teams graze, allows contracts to be more competitive/affordable.
I still like it the way it is though.
Why punish teams with a bigger fan base and more money? And won’t it piss off even more people and players that owners of huge market teams pocket everything after their cap is hit?
Take away money from the performer that everyone goes to see so the employer can pocket the money?
A floor fixes that problem. It evens out the playing field if the right cap/floor combo can be found. The only people it hurts is the teams that can afford to eat 30 million in dead money year in and year out.
they already have revenue sharing for this. why would the PA want a solution that makes the players less money overall?
Everybody is supporting the pirates side. 118 million million in revenue sharing for the small market teams. The pirates need to quit pocketing the extra money and spend on better players or players they have. I agree with the union, we need bob to sell the team or invest.
Baseball was better when the Yankees outspent everyone by a trillion dollars without any ceiling and teams weren’t punished by losing draft picks or paying taxes just to give a guy a stupid contract. I miss the good old days.
It’s a lot better when the Red Sox outspend everybody.
I guess it was moronic and a wild hair that signaled the Pirates to trade for Chris Archer. This has to be one of the stupidest trades they’ve made recently. They forget they are cheap, thrifty and can’t win regardless. I think the goof up was thinking the old “worse case scenario” when all fails trade him away for similar package clever move. Nope! First of all Archer makes to much money and 2nd he turn out to be a big time flop. Now because of this, the Pirates are trash that doesn’t fit in the dumpster
Unions are great entities. But Gomerist unions are not so good. From where I sit, as a Pirates fan, the MLBPA and the rich fraction of the owners collude to supress the ability of the low revenue teams to compete for championships. The MLBPA only cares about inflating player salaries, not supporting fair competition. So, the player’s union can suck it. The union affirms a labor aristocracy and corporate culures that rips off the fans and taxpayers of those low revenue teams as well as the non-fans who foot the bills for ballads with limited use.
You hated on socialists and big-business in that thread – that’s pretty tough to accomplish whilst making a point.
I didn’t hate on socialists. I hated on a reactionary union that co-sponsors rent-taking behavior for some of its members and the owners.
I personally would support a salary floor more than a cap. Owners would never approve, but what’s the point of even fielding a 75 million dollar team. Might as well contract them if they cant get enough fans interested in seeing them play or enough players interested in going there to support a 90 million payroll
So, based on Forbes the pirates pocketed $38 million? What about the Dodgers who made 1 billion and spent $200 million on payroll. Did they pocket $800 million?
If that is even partially true the players association is chasing the wrong billionaire.
Baseball is broken. The growth in revenue for the sport is in the hands of large market owners. A salary cap where every team spends 200 million on their rosters is best for the union and the sport.
Just a thought.
No way, then the billion dollar owners pocket more, while the star can not negotiate his own salary. I think they should stop with the welfare and not consider the caps. Teams make What they make and spend what they want. Players negotiate what they want and teams pay them or don’t. You simply cannot regulate both sides of this so let nature take its course.
If an owner cannot field a team without revenue sharing, they should’ve never been approved to.
You can’t really blame the small market teams for not wanting to spend money. They don’t have the resources to sign the top free agents. So, you’re basically trying to force them to overpay average players that will most likely end with them being stuck with terrible contracts.
If Michael Bloomberg never made another dime, he could pay the Pirates payroll for over 1000 years.
Just to put how much money he has in perspective….he could buy all 30 MLB teams and still probably have enough money left over to buy all 31 NHL teams.
IDK if he’d even be a nominee for owner lol.
id love to see a Nutting attack ad authored by Bloomberg’s people.
AD: Bob Nutting is the only owner who successfully employed MLB players in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Without Bob Nutting, PNC Park would close.
Bob Nutting is the only person in America that sells Pittsburgh Pirates licensed clothing, which employs hundreds of people around the world.
Bob Nutting is the best candidate to run the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bob will get it done.
Bob Nutting: “There is nothing wrong with me pocketing that $38 million, since I installed some new seats at the ballpark this spring (which the city reimbursed me for).”
For YEARS, Mark Cuban begged to buy this team and promised to spend on players, which he would have, but MLB locked him out. Face it, MLB enjoys having about 5 or 10 teams they can use as farm teams for the Yankees, Dodgers and other big market clubs. Successful big market teams = $$$, while it doesn’t matter if small markets succeed or not.
The Pirates will spend more money after they move to Las Vegas.
It’d be ironic if the the two sports franchises named the Raiders and Pirates went to Vegas.
They are not moving. you keep saying that. Why would they move when nutting is pocketing money. You keep making the same moronic statement
new fanbase may make them more money, especially if the league provides an extra financial incentive.
They would move because no one in town wants to buy them because it’s a mediocre market with a bad fan base and an out of town owner wanting to move them will make the highest offer?
Why would he sell? Because once he’s paid off the financing (essentially a mortgage for the team) he can sell it for a billion dollars and he’d rather have a lump sum of a billion than $50 million each year.
That’s why.
FWJBT, I used to really feel your posts but this Vegas harangue and slamming the fan base makes me think that perhaps you are in fact the Super(sized) Genius.
This is my warning wrapped in a prophecy.
Enjoy the team while it lasts OR fight to keep it up BUT the status quo won’t just go on like this…
Amen to all of that brother.
Lot’s of talk about cielings and floors. The owners would love a salary cap but the MLBPA would never agree. A floor for payroll the owners will never agree too. This entire issue is a showndown between millionaires and billionaires and its the fans that get hurt the most.
anyone who pays any money to support the Pirates is already hurting themselves
You aren’t wrong.
It’s not that I think nothing needs to be done. The luxury tax doesn’t do a good job bringing team payrolls closer together. You still have great examples of this between the Devil Rays and Yankees. Over large courses of time their payroll differences have been dramatic.
But I am less concerned for that and more concerned for the fans. All that money that players and owners are fighting over is from us..the fans.
Salary cap with a floor. Problem solved. Don’t like it, sell the team.
“Revenue sharing” is just another name for socialism…MLB owners are ok with an economic safety net when it’s amongst themselves, but somehow it would ruin our country if implemented on a national scale?
Shenanigans!
Sorry, I know politics=bad, but it seems relevant
You seem to be missing the point. Revenue sharing is NOT working in MLB as currently constituted. But MLB is a closed system. The owners need to support small markets to hold up the brand and keep young fans across the country interested.
And yeah I’m gonna go here…Socialism would ruin the country if instituted on a national scale. It has never worked anywhere in the world. Even it’s best results show how unsustainable it is. Taking away incentive to work harder and innovate has disastrous results. Why would anyone want to develop a new product if all the money gets taken away from them.
The same people that espouse Socialism do so on their iPhones. Hilarious.
Still got Vazquez
It’s easy to shop with someone else’s money. In reality it’s hard to dictate to teams that they have to spend. All that will happen is teams will spend their revenue sharing money, and only their revenue sharing money if that’s what it comes to. You can’t force Nutting or anyone else to spend beyond that amount, whatever that amount is
Yankees fan, so I am admittedly biased. Revenue sharing is a good thing. But it would be a lot better thing if the recipients invested in putting a competitive team on the field. I can see big market team’s obligations to contribute to the overall league’s economic and competitive health. And I have nothing against small market teams making a profit. I’m just dubious that any team should be pocketing all their revenue sharing if they won’t invest. Maybe the answer is to have a soft floor enforced by escrowing revenue-sharing distributions. 50 cent reduction for every dollar above the floor you don’t spend. You want to put an inferior, cheap team on the field…fine, but it will cost you some (not all) profitability. These guys are smart business people. They should be able to figure it out.
MLB laments attendance figures and losing young fans. Do you think a kid gives a crap about pitch clocks and 3 batter rules? Nope. Kids want to see their favorite players. If you are a kid in the Pittsburgh area, outside of tradition/family, why would you?
Steelers fans get to see: Big Ben for his entire career, Hines Ward, Jerome Bettis (for most of it), Troy Polomalu
Pens fans get to see: Crosby, Malkin, Lemieux, Jagr (large portion of it)
Pirates fans get to see: Bonds leave for $, ARam traded because of $, Cole traded because of $, mediocrity (at best) because of $.
No wonder kids are not exactly flocking to baseball. A kid watches their fave teams start every season with NO shot, have to trade their best players, and then get games blacked out so they can’t always watch from home. We can blame the pace of play and addictive technology all we want…but they continue to ignore the MAIN reasons. Love how baseball is the only sport where whether you’re actually good at baseball is one of only several factors. Football, basketball, and hockey come down to: good choices and good play. Not your “market size.”
I’d like to live in a beer temple. Does anyone know how that can be arranged?
Place 25 pallets of beer in your living room. Tunnel your way to the middle and start drinking your way out.
Where I come from, that’s just another name for “man-cave”!!!(See above)
The rest is up to you
I see what you did there.
Nicely done.
Ich vergessen, was ist die frage?
But that is over double the major league minimum.
I haven’t read all of the comments, so if someone else got to this, then forgive me.
OK, so the Pirates do not receive $200M/year in revenue sharing. Here is how it works:
48% of every team’s revenue is put into a pool of funds. That pool is then divided by 30 and the result is given “back” to each team.
So total revenue in 2018 for MLB teams was just shy of $10B. So $4.8B is then divided by 30, giving you $158.32M
Let’s compare how this affects the Yankees and the Pirates.
The Yankees brought in $668M in revenue in 2018. $320.64M is deducted from that number. Then, $158.32M is added, giving the Yankees a working revenue of $505.68M instead of $668M.
The Pirates brought in about $254M. 48% of that is $121.92M, which is subtracted. Then you add the $158.32M, giving the Pirates a working revenue of $290.40M.
As you can see, it basically closes the gap a little bit, from $414M to $210M, thus “balancing out” competitive advantage.
What I am not sure about is whether “every” revenue stream is included in these numbers. Are they just local, or local and national? Both plus ESPN, etc.? If this represents TOTAL revenue, then the Pirates received $36.4M in 2019 in Revenue Sharing funds. FAR CRY from $200M.
That’s pretty interesting. I’m a Pirate fan. I watch or listen to almost every game. And this year they have a good, but young team. I don’t want them to go out and blow 30mil per year on a Harper or Cole. I am exited about seeing how they continue to build. Boston spent a lot and now everyone here says they suck and need to spend more. SanDiego spent a lot and everyone says they need to spend more on pitching, yet they have good, young pitching coming up.
The Rays and the A’s make more sense to me than the Roulette Wheel of Free Agency.
So let’s just let them play the games and enjoy!!! It’s ALL BASEBALL!!!!!
My understanding is that in addition to the 48 perecent you referred to … the national tv $$$$ is then split
90 plus million. Yes. But there is also about 119 million they received as part of the national tv revenue.. it’s a crime and mlb should do something Generations of pirates fans have been lossed. It’s sad
Every offseason since pre-2013, I have run a simulation in which I build a team from scratch on a strict budget, out of available players. My budget is the same as the lowest team in the league from the previous Opening Day minus whatever 100,000 to the nearest, lowest million.
That’s a long time and in that time MLB has seen revenues increase significantly through TV deals. Meanwhile, the lowest salary in the league has barely risen, even dropping in certain seasons. That’s a huge problem that should be addresses in the next CBA via a floor, and a cap as it has been previously noted, which will get the owners on board.
As for revenue sharing, it should be done as any company typically handles a surplus. What did you spend last year? That’s what you’ll get this year. (Within a certain range).
In regard to draft picks, I agree with teams not having to give up picks, but I do believe teams should continue to get picks back if they cant re-sign them.
So it’s Ok for the Miami Marlins to have fire sales. The only difference I see is the Pirates being smart and allocating before hand whereas the Marlins said F it
The problem with these grievances is the timing. The Bucs with the hiring of Ben Cherrington are actually finally (at least appearing) to be attempting to build their team in the correct direction. The grievances might be valid for the past few seasons but now what do you want them to do about it? Like going forward one would assume bringing in Cherrington means they are going to at least start to head in the right direction — so it’s not like you can go back in time and make them change things now.
Nutting has made the all but certainly correct calculation that he can lose with a $40 million payroll just as easily as he can with a $90 million payroll. He’d rather lose to the big market teams with an extra $50 million in his pocket.
One small market team has won the WS in the last 30 years. ONE.
The Pirates are the symptom. MLB’s Harlem Globetrotter like competitive balance is the disease. A hard cap and hard floor system is the cure. But MLB would rather be WWE than the NHL, so…they’ve made their choice. The small market teams will remain the Washington Generals.
Exactly!
As long as there is no salary cap or minimum floor for payroll guys like Bob Nutting will work the system to make money ! MLB gives small market teams a 50 M revenue check every year ,, a nice subsidy for any business,,
Whatever money wasn’t used by the smaller market teams should be returned and allocated to the teams not receiving said money. Maybe that changes the strategy by small market teams, maybe not.
Some teams might not want to throw money at a free agent when they feel a player in their own farm system will be ready to take over that position sometime during the season. Baseball is one sport where prospects take years to grow and develop. Rebuilding teams avoid spending big to keep a pathway open for the up-and-coming prospect.
Hockey fans should not be pushing for the hard cap and hard floor idea. Bad teams tend to spend on bad or over-the-hill players with bloated contracts, causing the prime players at the same position to see a bigger pay raise. The hard floor forces bad teams to do that. Why? Because most prime players do not want to play there. Players desperate for a contract who are past their prime will play anywhere for big dollars. That is what you will see with baseball markets that do not command top free agents.
It will also hurt younger talent who’s MLB ready when they are blocked by a seasoned vet who’s only on the team to push payroll above the floor.
By 2021-2022 there will be a salary floor of $100 million. Capable players with strong backgrounds shouldn’t be straggling around in free agency when there are 10-12 teams that they make better. Teams need to be forced to field a competitive team. They should never be forced to overspend and sign $300-400 million players, but forcing them to make sure they staff a competitive roster around the $100 million mark is just logical.
I’ve been saying on these threads for years that if you can’t field a $100 million team each season, MLB should re-evaluate whether that team should exist or whether MLB must take steps to relocate them somewhere that they can succeed. We keep discussing league expansion, which adding another team would help to get some of these players jobs that are straggling, but the Pirates are in a market where they should be able to spend. The Marlins will eventually be ok, I think. The Rays need a better location. The A’s need a better stadium and perhaps a new location as well. There’s a lot we can do to help some teams spend more by hopefully improving their revenue.
stories like this need to include the amount of “revenue sharing” the teams in question are receiving. Otherwise no real judgement by fans, bloggers or analyists can be reasonably informed.
The A’s and the Pirates Shares have reportedly have decreased every year though only the A’s number are known with some accuracy. I’m not sure about the other teams.
ASSUMING the pirates followed a similar track the A’s have.. the Prates are not receiving very much in the grand scheme of things. back when the pirates where increasing spending the team said “We are increasing payroll while sharing is decreasing”
Along with the wording of the Sharing rule.. the teams are not required to put the money to player salaries. This is why the A’s where included due to their facilities. This is also where a lot of the pirates money was going according to the front office.
All we do know is that teams got money and they spent it. Where they spent it is the question. the payroll questions are not the main question.