Letters to the Editor
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why negotiate publicly?
By redtiger's logic, Feilder is not pubicly complaining about his contract, he is negotiating with the Brewers by putting meida leverage on the team. I have two problems with this*. The first is that no matter how much Feilder is underpaid compared to all baseball players, all baseball players are completely overpaid. Second, Prince Feilder unlike most working slobs is able to leverage the media to try and get what he wants. I didn't see any one at the last press confrence I called to pubicly air out my own employment greivences. King's suggestion that these guys keep it between them and the team should be well healed advice, but it's a pretty altruistic stance given the realities of the status these playes are falsely elevated to. It seems again the player's managers are giving out bad advice.
*Disclaimer: not in anyway an attack on Mr. Fielder, the Brewers, Bud Selieg, the players union, Pepsi-Co, the Republican Party or The artist formarly known as Prince.
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Thought Experiment
Which of these two scenarios is more likely:
(A) It's 2008. Brewers management says, "Hey, we don't have to give the kid (Fielder) a raise of more than a couple hundred thousand (if that!), and we negotiated hard with the union to establish the current compensation system. But you know what? He's a great player, and a profit machine for us right now, so we're going to share some of that love and give him way more than Ryan Howard 2nd-year money. Let's say, $3 million for 2008, and everybody wins!"
(B) It's the year 2012. Prince Fielder has had a monster career so far, and he's licking his chops to test the free agent market as he enters his prime 27-year-old season. But he's also been active in the player's union, and wants to lend his voice to the cause of young MLB players. He tells mlb.com, "Remember back in '08 when I was complaining about my contract renewal? I thought it was unjust then, and in my current role with the union, I hope to do something about it now. Lots of guys beat huge odds to become major leaguers, but for various reasons they don't make it to 3 years, when they can really cash in. I think guys fortunate enough to be in my position should be willing to share so that those guys can have a bigger piece of the pie. I used to be in their shoes, and I remember how it feels!"
Caution: thought experiment may cause headache.
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Paying for Statistics
Statistics don't bring money in the door. No one pays to go see Troy Tulowitzki play shortstop for the Rockies. They may pay to see the NL champion Rockies (I imagine Coors Field will be full all year), but if one has discretionary income one doesn't go and say "let's go see Troy T. play today" or "let's not go, I understand Tulowitski is taking the day off."
Yet, baseball's salary arbitration rules take statistics and service time and pretty much nothing else into consideration. Result is that you can have a pretty bad team of highly paid players (witness the Cubs, Orioles, Rangers, etc. over the past decade), and they can all demand and get raises.
There's only one baseball player who can demonstrate statistically that he consistently puts money into the owners' pockets by putting bodies in the seats and ratings on the tube, and he can't get a job.
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Whaddya mean "why negotiate publicly"?
If we are going to persist in the mindgame of pretending that baseball players are just another kind of worker...
Traditional "workers", (let's arbitrarily define that as those making salaries/wages below $100,000 and aren't management) negotiate publicly all the time (and rightly so).
Walk-outs, strikes, GOING TO THE MEDIA when there are workplace problems, like unsafe conditions, underpayment, scoundrel CEOs stealing pensions. Unions demand workplace justice, changes in laws and working conditions. Federal and government workers use whistleblower laws to air workplace problems. Remember the UPS strike? The recent Writer's Guild strike? The media played a central role in disseminating information to gain public support and/or awareness.
I know its not on the same level of social justice, but I just don't see the problem with Fielder saying he's not happy he just got re-upped. The guy is making half a million and would easily get 15-20 million on the open market. He's a fat dude; his skills probably will erode earlier than most and what if he suffers a career ending injury before 2012?
He's going to play hard this year, and now Melvin, Attanasio are on notice. Seems fair enough to me, and not worth the article King wrote.
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these players need some tact
But are they the ones calling press conferences to complain about it??? Or is it reporters stirring the pot??
Brady Quinn handled himself pretty well the other day (in a similar, yet unrelated topic).
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Moreover,
At least as I understand it, the only reason Fielder can make so much money playing baseball is because the current labor rules are drawn up to create a semblance of competition between big and small market teams. Without a salary cap, the Yankees, Sox, Mets Braves and Angels (and now the Tigers too, it appears) can pretty much buy a contender every single year. However, with the rules that restrict the earnings of young players, even small market clubs can make a run at the playoffs once or twice a decade. They have to draft smart, make good trades, build a good farm system and time the development of their young starts-to-be so they all reach the majors at the same time. It can happen, however, and it's what keeps baseball alive in cities like Minneapolis, Oakland, Cleveland and, yes, Milwaukee.
What happens if teams have to pay market rate for all of their talent all of the time? No Minnesota dynasty in the earlier part of this decade. No success for Billy Beane (he can Moneyball all he wants, but without Barry Zito for basically free the As don't make it to the playoffs in 2001-2004). Cleveland doesn't stay competitive this year if they have to pay Fausto Carmona full price, and probably wouldn't have made it to the playoffs last year if C.C. Sabathia got market rate. Baseball slowly dies in all but maybe 6 or 7 cities. That hurts the players; baseball can only collect record revenue when it offers an exciting, competitive product. It can't do that if 2/3 of the teams never have a chance.
Nor does this setup actually cost the players any money in the long-run. The millions the Yankees can't spend on Prince Fielder go Ryan Howard or to Jason Giambi instead. Prince Fielder will also get an opportunity to be overpaid for a declining skill-set when he's in his 30s. Barry Zito contributed to the health of baseball as a sport by making the As competitive in the first four years of this decade, and now because baseball is healthy he's getting eight figures to pitch indifferently. Everybody wins.
So quit complaining about a lack of respect, and thank god you don't live in the age of collusion or the time before free agency.