CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – It’s certainly been a great baseball season.
And soon it will be over. Perhaps for awhile.
The conventional wisdom is that there will be a work stoppage as a December 1st. That probably doesn’t mean much… it’s the middle of the off-season. But if there isn’t a new contract in place by February, spring training could be delayed, and with it the start of the next season.
The issue is whether there will be a salary cap… or, in other words, rules to keep the owners from over-spending.
Yet the correlation between spending and winning is imperfect. If it was, the Yankees and Dodgers would have been playing in the World Series. The top five teams with the highest payrolls last season were the Mets, Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, and Blue Jays. The teams in the World Series were the Brewers (19th payroll) and the Rays (25th). Small market teams can certainly compete; big spending teams can still be bad.
The money for modern players in baseball is astronomical. The league minimum is $700,000 for players who ride the bench. Compare that to when I was a kid. In 1972 Reggie Jackson, the biggest slugger in baseball, played for $40,000 a season. Catfish Hunter, the best pitcher that year, was under contract for $35,000.
Usually in labor disputes, I’m on the side of management. They’re the risk takers; the other side are employees. But in this case I’m on the side of the players. Baseball owners are an undisciplined bunch. They spend recklessly and don’t always get good value for their money. It’s not the players responsibility to save management from itself.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the game. Ballparks are full. Fans are engaged.
Here’s an interesting question: if owners were willing to offer a contract extension as-is, that is, the current rules would be extended into next year and beyond… what would the players say?
Chris Conley
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