MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that he would not be surprised if a collective bargaining agreement was in place with the players before the current agreement expires on December 1. But anything else would really be the surprise.
If you wanted to buy the Seattle Mariners today, you’d have to put up $1.2 billion. Too much? Okay, go cheap then with the Chicago White Sox for only $1.01 billion. Still too much? Hit the bargain basement and you can grab the Tampa Bay Rays for only $675 million – if you act today!
And if you wanted to, you could hire Clayton Kershaw , Zack Greinke, or David Price for a night. Any one of them would be happy to make one of their starts for you – for a cool million dollars.
Or maybe you’d like to see a power display from one of baseball’s best hitters. No problem. Robinson Cano could hit one of his 39 home runs last year for you for only $615,384.62.
News flash! Baseball is a money-making machine. You have to be a complete idiot to not make money in baseball, whether you are an owner, a player, or even Rob Manfred, who reportedly has a net worth of $25 million.
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So why should anyone be surprised that both sides want to keep the gravy train rolling?
Sure, there’s talk of “stumbling blocks” like the length of games and what can be done to shorten them. And whether there should be a “World Draft”. Which I guess is a good idea since it would cut down on the traffic in the waters outside of Miami coming from Cuba.
But other than those feeble attempts by Manfred to create drama to where we might think there could be no baseball in April, he could only say, “You’ve got to weigh those things and figure out what set of changes you can make over a period of time to get the sort of result you’re looking for.”
Yup, the “result” you’re looking for.
Rob, don’t play me. The results you are “looking for” are tied to profits. And there’s no problem with that. Continue to put a good product out there and no one will have a problem with how much you or anyone else involved in the game makes.
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This is not 1981 when the average baseball salary was $196,500 and the players walked off the job. Today, the minimum salary alone is nearly two and a half times that.
So cut the crap. Quietly sign the deal and let’s move on.