Counter Offer Made

The players have really started the process, sitting down with MLB and making a counter offer. Some things we know :

• They cut out the age based FA thing.  That never had legs for like a million reasons and while it seems like a concession I (and maybe the owners) take it more as something tossed in there to be pulled out purposely to make it look like they were doing something. 
• They reduced revenue sharing to 30 million less to the cheap teams rather than 100 million.  That IS a concession and might slip through?  I think it will be some number... we'll talk about it more in a minute. 
• They nixed two of the owners dumb ideas they threw out there (rewarding teams who start draft pick early with draft picks* and a formula based salary system**)
• An interesting thing I didn't mention yesterday is the "draft lottery" which in the non-playoff teams all have a shot at the first X picks (think NBA). The owners said Top 3 picks, the players said Top 8. I can't imagine it matters at all and it's the dumbest thing being argued about. Teams aren't tanking to get better nor does a single baseball draft pick have that much impact on a team. These ideas will change nothing. 
  
• They still want a raise in minimum salary (will happen), a bump in the luxury tax (will happen). 

Ok well what's the lay of the land?  

The minimum salary and luxury tax are your standard back and forth number arguments that will get worked out one way or another at a compromise number. Depending on how other things work they could favor the owners or the players more but these aren't the sticking points. These are the things they can use to get past the sticking points. 

The sticking points are arbitration and that revenue sharing. 

The revenue sharing is the new version of an old argument. For the players having all the teams be able to spend as much money as possible is good for them. Rich teams and teams going for it spend more, which not only give those players they sign more money directly but raise the market for everyone else. So the more money those team have to spend the better. For the owners... well reverse it. It's not like the owners WANT to have their money shared but it keeps the overall market down, it helps curb their spending influences, and it keeps those one or two rogue teams that will spend anyway under some sort of control. 

That's it in a nutshell - it's a money fight. But both will frame it as competitive balance. The owners will say the teams that receive revenue sharing will have more to spend and will be better - even though that has never actually happened. They just use the money to cover their other costs (and pocket some). The players will make a twisty argument that teams spending more force other teams to spend more because they'd be too bad or something. If anyone really cared there would be a salary floor or a demand all shared revenue go to player salaries, but there isn't. Because like I said it's a money fight - not a competitive balance thing. 

The arbitration is a newer one. For a long time young players got to arbitration in three years. The MLBPA was fine with this because (1) good players could make it up in FA and (2) older players were the ones negotiating. But recently the owners decided that the increase in variance in using younger players was acceptable and so paying market for older (re: like early 30s) FA with similar expectations of production just wasn't necessary. In other words you couldn't make it up in FA anymore. Not as much for as many at least. To counter that - the players are trying to get arbitration started earlier. Arbitration is not market but it's a lot better. Soto is an extreme example but he was getting paid under 600K. Arbitration starting took that to 8.5 million and it'll only go higher. That's a big difference. 

It's such a big difference it could likely be a sticking point for the owners. Their current plan isn't built of paying under market for three years. It's built off paying ridiculously under market to be insulting for three years (and that helping keep the last 3 years of controlled costs down).  This would be a bump in tens of millions in salary that they just pared off. If anything causes us to lose games, it'll be this.  The players need it. The owners really don't want it. There isn't much of a compromise to be had.

*wouldn't matter. A draft pick isn't worth the difference unless it's super high and this won't be super high

**never going to agree on a formula