In case you haven’t noticed, Major League Baseball, which is run by the worst commissioner in sports (which is saying a lot because Roger Goodell is a thing, though he might actually be getting a little better), is a total mess right now as the struggles to get a plan in place for a season in 2020 continue to be an absolute embarrassment.
Well, things took another ugly turn on Monday and one thing has become quite clear – the owners are quite fine with deploying sketchy tactics to try to make it look like the players are the bad guys in this whole thing, which they aren’t.
The billionaire owners are the bad guys and none of us should lose sight of that. Ever.
On Monday a story was leaked to ESPN’s Karl Ravech who tweeted out the details: “MLB has made proposal to Players. 75 percent Prorated salary. 76 game season. Playoff pool money. No draft pick compensation for signing player. Season finishes September 27th. Post season ends at end of October. Significant move towards players demands and effort to play more.”
That all looks pretty great, right? Well that’s because it was designed to look pretty great with that specific language. It was also designed to make the players look greedy and dumb if they even thought of saying no to that deal.
Because here’s the thing – that 75 percent prorated salary isn’t for their entire yearly salary but rather for their prorated salary for an 82-game season.
This is something Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer laid out on Twitter shortly after that story came out: “It’s actually 75% of prorated amount, which works out to be about 35% of our full salary to play for 47% of the games.”
And yeah, that’s not so cool, is it?
I get that players make millions of millions of dollars to play a game and there are lots of people out there who think because of that they should just agree to whatever the owners pitch and do it for the good of America.
But here’s something else I get: these billionaire owners are pieces of you know what for trying to make their players look bad. Pieces. Of. You. Know. What.
Players shouldn’t have to give up that much of their salaries in the prime of their careers so some old billionaire can try to cut some of the losses from their pile of money that is virtually endless.
Players shouldn’t have to be painted in a bad light by a bunch of greedy owners who continue to show their behinds to the world with these terrible offers.
There’s a good chance baseball doesn’t happen this year and if that’s the case don’t blame the players. They want to play. But they want to be treated better than these offensive offers from their bosses and they deserve that.
If baseball doesn’t happen, which maybe some of these owners want because they’re afraid of losing more money from games played without fans, this will hurt the game for years to come and will hit those endless piles of money even more than it would if the owners threw out a little more cash this year.
If baseball doesn’t happen it’s because of the greedy, no good owners who should be bending over backward to give the men who make their money the money they deserve.
This ain’t on the players. At all.
Quick hits: Kingsbury will support anthem protests… UFC has serious issues… NHL’s relationship with law enforcement… And more.
– Kliff Kingsbury said he would support Cardinals players if they protested during the anthem.
– Dana White and the UFC have some serious issues thanks to some big-name fighters.
– The NHL says it will continue its relationships with law enforcement “artfully and carefully.”
– NASCAR star Brad Keselowski says he doesn’t respect the confederate flag but won’t tell fans “to get rid of it.”
– Lane Kiffin delivered a strong message at a unity rally at Ole Miss.