{"id":1375253,"date":"2022-03-14T05:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1375253"},"modified":"2022-03-14T08:02:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:02:09","slug":"the-baseball-settlement-fans-got-isnt-the-one-we-deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-baseball-settlement-fans-got-isnt-the-one-we-deserve\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baseball Settlement Fans Got Isn\u2019t The One We Deserve"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-baseball-settlement-fans-got-isnt-the-one-we-deserve%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1375253&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/manfredclark.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>After months of uncertainty and a 99-day lockout by club owners, Major League Baseball\u2019s management and players finally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/33470321\/sources-mlb-union-reach-tentative-agreement-new-cba-salvage-162-game-season\">reached a labor agreement last week<\/a>. The agreement didn\u2019t take long to move to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/33399466\/mlb-mlbpa-reach-labor-agreement-everything-need-know-lockout-ends\">implementation phase<\/a>, as an abbreviated spring training started over the weekend, with exhibition games beginning on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The timing of the deal means baseball fans will get to see a full, 162-game season. Opening Day will come on April 7, one week later than originally scheduled. Postponing the season\u2019s start date by a week means teams will play more double-headers to get in all 162 games, but may help fans in the Northeast and Midwest, who often have to brave frigid late March conditions when the season starts so early.<\/p>\n<p>Just as important, the season will be in full swing by April 15\u201475 years to the day after Jackie Robinson (re-)<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/03\/ken-burns-new-documentary-reminds-fans-why-they-love-baseball\/\">integrated baseball<\/a>. For baseball not to play games on a milestone anniversary of the most important cultural event in American sports history would have represented a major failure of the sport\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n<p>But for all the upsides of the game returning, the agreement comes with several drawbacks. Notably, the National League will now adopt the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/down-with-the-designated-hitter-rule-mlb-rob-manfred-national-league-professional-baseball-tradition-11645566010?mod=opinion_major_pos6\">designated hitter<\/a>, going along with a trend started by the American League nearly half a century ago. The move won\u2019t just mean that pitchers will never have to learn how to hit to play in the majors. It also means that aging veterans can hang on to their careers even if they become too slow or clumsy to play the field, expanding baseball\u2019s version of the welfare state.<\/p>\n<p>A similar theme runs through other elements of the agreement. Instead of attempting to solve what ails baseball through market incentives incorporated into the agreement, it instead will try to do so through regulatory edicts. As with government, baseball could learn the hard way that clumsy solutions imposed from on high bring unintended consequences.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"analytics-in-overdrive\"><strong>Analytics in Overdrive<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/2022\/02\/22\/baseballs-greatest-threat\">February column<\/a> from Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated demonstrated the \u201cstory behind the story\u201d of baseball\u2019s labor strife all winter. In his telling, baseball players felt burned by their last labor deal and wanted a reset.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few years, teams\u2019 newfound interest in analytics has made them less interested in signing mid-career free agents in their late 20s or early 30s. With players having shorter careers, the players\u2019 union pushed for big increases in minimum salaries, so young players can \u201ccash in\u201d right away. They also wanted an increase in the \u201cluxury tax\u201d threshold, where teams with payrolls above that threshold must pay revenue to other clubs. This in many ways functions as a <em>de facto<\/em> salary cap.<\/p>\n<p>Other problems related to analytics plague the game. Defensive shifts\u2014in which players congregate to one side of the infield\u2014make it more difficult for batters to put the ball in play. The shifts, along with analytical metrics, encourage teams to prioritize home runs. The combination of overpowering pitchers\u2014who don\u2019t have to throw for many innings, due to deeper bullpens\u2014and hitters swinging for the proverbial fences leads to more strikeouts.<\/p>\n<p>Verducci noted the end result of all these moves: A game with more walks, more strikeouts, and more pitching changes. Not just a slower game, but a more boring game too, with less action, and fewer balls being put in play.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball tried to address some of these pace-of-play issues in the labor agreement, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JonHeyman\/status\/1500613355270291457\">appearing to set the table<\/a> for a pitch clock, and a ban on the defensive shift, for the 2023 season. But it could have done a more elegant job at reforming the game by instead relying on the old maxim that time is money.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-better-solution\"><strong>The Better Solution<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Rather than relying upon a pitch clock as an arbitrary and controversial way to speed up the game, baseball should have used incentives to do so. Specifically, baseball should have linked important financial metrics players cared about\u2014like minimum salaries and the luxury tax threshold\u2014to reductions in the average game time over a 162-game season.<\/p>\n<p>To provide a hypothetical example: As of March 1\u2014when baseball postponed Opening Day after both sides failed to reach an agreement\u2014the owners <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/01\/sports\/baseball\/mlb-lockout-manfred.html\">proposed<\/a> a luxury tax threshold of $220 million for three years, while the players wanted a threshold starting at $238 million this year, rising to $263 million in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The owners and players could have agreed to the players\u2019 numbers, provided that the average game length gets reduced by 20 minutes. If the average game length stays the same, then the owners\u2019 numbers control. If the average game length goes down by 10 minutes, then split the difference between the two.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, baseball players and owners could fine-tune these types of details. But the basic premise holds: Tie players\u2019 aggregate compensation levels to their ability to speed up the game. It could work far more effectively than setting arbitrary limits like imposing a pitch clock.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it: Which would more effectively get you to speed up your play\u2014someone ordering you to do so, or you knowing that the extra practice swing in the batter\u2019s box, or additional nervous twitch on the pitcher\u2019s mound, could cost you thousands of dollars in salary? The question practically answers itself.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"a-quicker-game-is-a-more-popular-game\"><strong>A Quicker Game Is a More Popular Game<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Baseball has a serious pace-of-play problem. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/leagues\/majors\/misc.shtml\">average game length<\/a> has gone up by 22 minutes since 2005 and now totals 3:11. Lest one think a longer game equates to a better or more dramatic game, consider that Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, in which Reggie Jackson became \u201cMr. October\u201d by hitting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hDMYVtzHGuI\">three home runs on three straight pitches<\/a>, took a total of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retrosheet.org\/boxesetc\/1977\/B10180NYA1977.htm\">only 2 hours and 18 minutes<\/a>\u2014almost one hour less than the <em>average regular-season game<\/em> took in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Although last week\u2019s labor agreement didn\u2019t contain explicit financial incentives to speed up the pace of play, Major League Baseball should still offer such incentives to the players. Even if it costs them some money up-front via additional incentive payments, cutting the average game time by, say, half an hour would yield huge financial benefits for baseball. More fans willing to go to games would yield more ticket sales, while more fans watching faster-paced games on TV would create bigger revenues from media contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Tying financial incentives to an increased pace of play represents the ultimate \u201cwin-win\u201d solution for baseball. Which, come to think of it, is probably the reason baseball hasn\u2019t tried it.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/chrisjacobshc\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee\u2019s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law\u2019s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After months of uncertainty and a 99-day lockout by club owners, Major League Baseball\u2019s management and players finally reached a labor agreement last week. The agreement didn\u2019t take long to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}