Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 149 | MLB Proposed Massive Pay Cuts to the Players

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

The league made its first official financial offer to the MLBPA on Tuesday, and it has not been well-received. Trevor Plouffe got some tidbits from around the league, and the guys break down what all of the reports mean moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to talking baseball. MLB has made a proposal. MLBPA has a week to decide if they want it or renegotiate or whatever. Let's do it. Welcome to talking baseball. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Jimmy. I got Trevor Plouffe with me.

I got Jake Storelli with me. We got producer BBD in the home plate on the bottom. We've got a second proposal sent to the players for Major League Baseball. And we've got a rough deadline. kind of on when this needs to be completed, kind of to fit into the proposed plan. But first and foremost, this episode of Talking Yanks is brought to you by a bunch of lovely new patrons.

We got Ashlyn Scott Mansplayed Baseball elsewhere. Samantha Lee, Amelia Casper, Jack William, Erica Block, Fernando Alba, Max Koza, Kyle Kenny, Isaac Brisson, Hannah G, and Bator 60. Bator 60. Those are our most recent patrons We appreciate you very much Thank you for supporting this show

But I psyched you out Those people didn't bring the show to you It was actually coveragegear.com Wow Yeah, big all, big all boondoggle hoodwinked you, faked you out They really didn't bring this episode It was coveragegear.com

Coverageure.com, every baseball team They got hats, they're subtle Number of the team, color of the team For the Yankees, I know they have like a DJ LeMay who won, They got stadiums. It's all kind of subtle and creative. This baseball hat that I wear all the time is from coverage gear.

It's basically a clip art baseball. It cracks me up because it's so basic and boring. I like it. Can we get Trev and Aaron Judge hat already? Yeah, we'll do that. What he's asking us for? I think they have like an all-rise dad hat. So we'll get you that.

If you use code John Boy, you get 20% off at coveragegear.com or your entire order for free. I forget which one it was just order. something, test it out, and you'll find out. Thank you to coverage gear. Trev, how are you doing? How is your weekend? Oh, boy. The chat says I said talking yanks. Did I say talking yanks instead of talking baseball at one point? I don't know. Me either. Whatever. Whatever. How's your weekend, Trev? As you know, I'm running a little hot right now. I had a big weekends. I drove the Montana with my brother and sister,

hung with my grandpa, he passed away on Sunday. So tough weekends, but it was a good also. It was like a good weekend for that. We got to see him and he was very happy. And I think he went out peacefully. Well, sorry for your lost trap. Thank you.

But that's not why I'm hot. Like I said, I'm happy my grandpa lived a great life. He's the man. But I am running hot. We'll discuss that on the show. Car ride went well. You guys both did really long car rides. Yeah, I did two 19-hour days.

Damn. Did you and the siblings open it up in there? Did stuff get heavy? I know you like a good conversation. Okay. No, we're good. We're like, we're like as siblings. We don't like fight.

We don't like... Yeah. Good, man. I had a great time. Besides, you know, I'm like, Graham passed away. It sucked. But like, again,

I think it was like a beautiful weekend. We all were there together. Enough about me. Yeah. Jake, how's your drive? Kind of sucks. I can't brag about my driving because you want up me there.

Yeah, he got you bad. You got me good. Cranked out today as we record 10, 10 hours or so. And then 10 hours before the week. weekend. And yeah, man, I mean, we were outside, which was awesome. My mom and the girlfriend's family, which is good, but you know, you're just, you're eating too much, you're drinking too much. I would think they expect me to talk more, and that's probably surprising people. But like, I don't know, I like to listen. And like a lot of my stories, like, I don't know, people are lighting

fireworks over the lake. And, you know, my fireworks stories are still like, oh, yeah, we used to light off smoke bombs and have Harry Potter fights with Roman candles. And my mom doesn't love those stories. So I can't exactly tell those. So it was great. It was good to be outside. It was like great to be outside and not be in New York City. So that was good.

And now, uh, now we're back and we're happy to be back and like do kind of our home routine a little bit. So, uh, would have like slightly better baseball news. Um, but we'll, we'll get to that. James, what up with it was really good. You remember when in college when we were hung over and we were driving around our neighborhood and we had a bunch of fireworks and we would just drive. And if we saw someone we knew walking on the street, we just would light a firework and drop it by their feet and drive away. You can't you're not sharing those stories.

You're young and dumb once, BBD. Just remember. Treve, we got our we got our friend, uh, Reckinwald so bad. He was just walking on the street. And we had one of those fireworks that was like a string. You know, like you light one and the whole thing just it goes forever. just just lit it from the passenger seat drove by slowly what's up what's up man laid it by his feet and drove and we weren't good enough friends with him to do that i don't think no but yeah we were but we weren't

yeah yeah yeah um so that was good times yeah jick i get the same thing katy and her family like i'm very quiet i'm only talk when there's a microphone in front of me trev you're you're talking of guy though. I can be if I like you. Cool. All right. Well, speaking of, speaking of liking stuff,

we got a proposal. Let's talk. Let's talk. Dark day for baseball, but I put out my official meter, and it's a no. But I already hit such a dark,

dark spot, Treb that I'm, like, I couldn't get deeper. So I'm on the crawl up right now, actually. I know you got some tidbits for us, but the first word that we've heard, and it is day ones, is that MLB presented, well, first we heard they were going to do the deferments. And we were like, yeah, awesome, cool.

Then we hear it's not deferments. They're just offering a sliding scale of pay cuts and asking their biggest earners, the guys who make the most money to cut the most money, and the guys who make the least get paid in full. Now, will this maybe get the owners to the final, number that they want to land at? Yeah. And is that like if the owners have a number and they want to land there, like I don't care. Like, you know, get there. But to, to even present this, like if anything, they should say, or they could say, this is the number we want to get to. You guys come up a

proposal and how you think we can get there. Right. So the MLB, offering the sliding scale pay cuts is really just, in my opinion, a negotiation tactic to divide the ranks of the union because now, you know, how many baseball players are there, $1,500 or something? Yeah. Oh, it depends. On the 40-man roster, I mean, 40 times.

Whatever. Probably, how many guys make, like, over $20 million? Like, not very many. 20? So you're pitting like, yeah, you're pitting like 20 guys. versus 800 guys, and you're trying to divide the ranks when MLB shouldn't even have any say in that. They should be like, hey, this is the number we need to get to. Bring us a proposal of how you think we can get there that works for you guys.

So this just seems like negotiating through the media. And it's smart because, again, what the owners are doing is making the players be the ones to say no. So that's my thoughts. I don't know if you want to interject. Like there's no reason for them to propose the sliding scale, is my thought. Yeah, look, we've talked about this before. It happened in the last CBA. It's a tactic that they've used.

We've seen it multiple times. Now it's a divide and conquer tactic. They, in the last CBA, it was the international draft. And they basically pitted, you know, the Latin players versus the American players. And now they're going to go after. Big name guys, and then the rest of the league, which is so stupid because typically the guys earning that much money are your most marketable, most famous guys in the league.

And your tactic is to make them look like bad guys. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? I got your big daddy. Jake, Jake's got his hand raised. I, uh, so I, I told Jimmy this the other night. I, I kind of had a low. moment. I consider myself a pretty lucky person. You know, I just mentioned the Roman candle

fights pretty casually. There's a lot of moments in my life that one thing goes another way, Roman candle to the eye, my life's very different. And I've got a few of those stories that if you've listened to enough of these dumb podcasts, you can piece them together if you want to. And I had a moment over this weekend where I, you know, full disclosure, I told Jimmy on J.J.R. I was like, you know what, I'm just going to be uncomfortable this week. I'm going to have anxiety because it's, It feels like whatever happens between this MLB fallout is going to dictate a weird chunk of my, like, future life trajectory, and that sucks. But then, after I had that conversation with Jimmy, I was appreciating my last few minutes in South Carolina. Me and noodle the doodle dog, we went down to the dock.

We sat on the dock. It was beautiful. I was looking at the lake. I said, you know what? I am lucky. Everything's going to be good, whether there's baseball or not. I was kind of a, and now the voice that's been talking in my head is kind of Taylor Kitch as he played David Koresh in Waco. And I've seen it.

And I know the answers. And they're all right in front of me. And there's three things. Besides how goofy and dumb I am, I have a weird way of being able to put logic to situations. This offer from the owners has three potential outcomes. Okay. This is a three true outcome sport. Three true outcome pod.

Three true outcome. What is it? Yes. Yeah, okay. Three true outcomes here. Here we go. Three true outcomes from three to really. Three T.O.

Slash. Taylor Kitch playing David Koresh. So one. These are contract negotiations. We know that. And what this offer was was the owner showing that, hey, we will pro-rate salaries. Like, we're willing to work that in the mix,

but we're going to start as low as possible. So you guys have to come in, and we're going to continue just chipping away as slowly as possible at this damn thing. Boom, that's option one. Okay, I'm going to play a sound effect for each of the options. I think that option sucks. I'm out.

And it does, Trevor. It sucks, but let's think about it. These are contract negotiations, and people are going to start as wide and work their way in, and that's one potential outcome of what's happening here. Second potential outcome is that the owners are already at grips with essentially everything needed to play this season. Because think about everyone you're hearing has had this calm confidence, the duration of this time period. Jeff Passon's been confident. Colin Cowherd tweeted out after all this.

He's like, baseball is playing. And I know Calhurt kind of gets a bad rep. But everyone, and you guys know this too. Trevor, I know you've been talking to a lot of the players. But everyone's been like, they're going to figure this out, right? And so I'm thinking that maybe the owners have already in their heads been like, hey, if these are all the players demands to be healthy and get their prorated play, we're fine with that.

But let's fight for everything we can because that would kind of make sense with everything we've heard. And then the final options. I'm trying to find the sound drop for option two, but option two was the owners know baseball will be played? Yes, the owners are already at- For every dollar. Yes, they're already at grips with the players

and their prorated salaries. So they're just going to fight and see what the players do give in on, and then they're good with that. So they're just fighting for gamesmanship almost. And then my last option is- I'm not thinking. never thinking. I'm not thinking I'm never thinking. And then my last option is that the owners very much truly do believe, which is possible that they are going to lose their asses in this,

and they don't realize that the players have already made their money concession and they're willing to risk kind of their lifestyle and health so they're not giving in any more on that that we're not playing baseball this year. And I'm at grips with that. Um, so those are the, are you crazy? Those are your three true possible outcomes. And I don't think there's any other detail that's going to swerve how I feel about. I don't understand how one and two are separate options. One was the owners are going to make the, the owners are just starting low to climb the money up. And two was the same thing, but the owners know it's going to happen.

So two was the owners are playing with house money. Like they're like, hey, we're already happy with this damn thing. Let's just fight for the sport of it and see what happens. That's why everyone thinks they're already going to play and all of that. Number one is that there's still negotiation that needs to happen for the owners to still truly believe that this is a thing. Like they need the players to come down more and the players need to give more. Like there's still true negotiations that need to happen. The owners aren't bought in and they need to find a middle ground.

Two, the owners will concede at some point. They're just fucking around a bit until they, they've reached that breaking point. And then they're like, okay, just joking. Three, no baseball. Yeah. Okay. Those are the three true outcomes. Trev, your thoughts?

I don't really know what to think about all that. Yeah. You know, I don't think that they've accepted. that they'll just pay the pro-rated salaries. Because time is of the essence, man. You could say that if this is an off-season and we had two or three months to get through this. I mean, they want to get this done in like a week.

So if they were like set on pro-rated salaries, then they wouldn't have gone this drastic on their first offer. I hope what you're saying is true, and this is just the first offer, and they're willing to come up a bunch. But from everything I'm hearing, that's not. And that this is kind of what they're trying to do because I don't know why.

Dude, I don't know. I've been trying to wrap my head around this and I want this to be a fair pod. Clearly, I typically speak from the player's perspective. And we still haven't figured out why. As you should. Mostly because that's who I talk to. Do I have people in the front office who I talk to?

Yes. Do I have agents that I talk to? Yes. but most of the time I'm talking to players. I was a player. I did this. I did this. Clearly, I have a lien.

Okay, but on this pod, we tried to be as fair as possible. If the players are doing some stupid shit, I would call them out on it too. That is not the case. Okay, we've been saying this from day one. All we need to do, you made an agreement in March. You didn't necessarily like that agreement too much after you made it. So, let's defer those payments. just defer some of the payments.

Okay. Does that just pass the debt off another year? Yeah, but at least we have time to figure that out. Okay? Like, we need to get baseball in right now. If you want to prolong these negotiations, it just kind of tells me you don't really want to play baseball. That's kind of where my head's at right now.

And like I have a ton of other thoughts, but like just going over what you're saying, like I'm thinking they're out of outcome three. That's outcome. They don't even want to play baseball. This is their proposal. they're like look we're going to we're going to dig in because we don't not only have these negotiations to go through but we have a cba expiring at the end of next year and if we give ground now we're

going to give ground next uh next round two so i think they're digging in right now that's kind of where i stand and it's it sucks to be there like mentally i am like i'm upset what about okay i was going to move on but we'll stay there yeah i i just dude i i i i i to me, it's just kind of doesn't make sense and I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a negotiator, I'm not anything.

Why the, why MLB offered the sliding scale? Like why? You know what? I know why, Trev, but it's like, come on, guys. But like, what, what's their reason for doing that? So, like, the sliding scale says a player that's set to make pro rated say pro rated 285k which is minimum wage for like you know a guy just

came up he's going to make 262 so you know it's not that big of a difference but a guy that's set to make 10 million pro rate it's really you're going from 20 to 10 and the players conceded on that because you know we're playing half the games pay us half that guy his 10 million now becomes five so you're really you're what 25% of your salary there that you were guaranteed with your contract but it did have a clause in there for this 17 million dollars you're making 7.8 like those are the numbers that pass in this thing I just don't get why would you do this why would like so why wouldn't you just be like hey this is the percent we need to land that you come to us first the only reason to do this is to play

games with the whole process, right? Because, and MLBPA needs to just make a counter proposal. I thought they should have led with the proposal before they got a proposal. That's what I. That's also like, are they just waiting for MLB to make these moves? Make a move first, the union. Honestly, that's, that's kind of the way it should be like in a fair, in like fair negotiations. They should be waiting on MLB to propose.

okay but like it's not a fair negotiation like if bob nightingale is getting the proposal before every single player that i texted was like wow like USA Today had the proposal before we did like that's a joke and that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a tactic that they're using and they've continued to use it like that shouldn't be the case dude but like here we are man yeah social media is a hell of a weapon Dude, it's good that they came back from the 50-50. So maybe, you know, this is just another game. Like the 50-50 revenue split proposal was clearly just a game.

MLB backed off that so quick. They're like, ha-ha, yeah, we were just joking about that. Dude, that was just rumors. That was just the lead to the media. Yeah. Well, whatever. So whatever. Maybe they'll back down from this just as quickly and they'll find a happy middle ground.

I hope so, man. I just don't want to be a labor dispute pot anymore. But I think, you know what? We're damn good at it. I think we might be the best labor dispute pot out there. Can we put that on a shirt? Number one labor dispute pod. I've seen that in the reviews, BBD's writing.

And yeah, I just think the numbers, the numbers need to be stated a little more there because Jimmy, Emotion and Jimmy Math, I think we're getting nervous to talk for a second. But yeah, if you're a 10, million dollar player which um you know that's sure that's that's some real life money and let's bring it bring it into real life let's say you make a hundredk a year you're doing pretty solid not bad and then your job comes back and says hey you're going to do half the work it's going to be under

really weird circumstances um and we're going to pay you 29 5k because that's what it is it's 2.95 million. And I think people need to feel those real numbers a little more because it's, it really is crazy. And, you know, we've done the whole speech, you know, yes, ballplayers make crazy money. And it's because they have a different skill set than the rest of the population. But also their time frame to make that money is tight. So they try to make as much as they can.

I can do this at age 31. I can do this at age 61. A professional athlete cannot. They got a tight window to make some money. Oh my gosh, it's tight. Father time is okay, BBD, BBD timestamp that. I'm a lucky one who got figured some shit out right after. Not a lot of guys are able to do that.

Yeah. And you have a whole life for this little window that's supposed to be profitable. If you put the work in and figure it out and have, you know, good at this, and then you're going to get a situation. Like, there's just like this little chance, dude. What about this idea? What if the players concede, maybe not to that length, but they concede some salary this season.

In return, they get a salary floor for next season. Because free agent signings are going to be so low next season. All these owners that have lost money and taken a hit aren't going to spend. free agency is going to be terrible. Mookie Betts, George Springer, a lot of these guys, you know, counting on huge paydays. They're not going to be there. They might have to sign one-year deals until the market gets back to normal if it ever does. What if they say we want a one-time salary floor so you guys have to spend money in free agency next year and get this thing back?

I mean, that only affects free agents, but the union as a whole wins something there. Well, I mean, is it accompanied by a salary cap? No. Because usually a floor is. No, it's not. It's not going to happen because of that. But what do you think about that? It's one time salary floor, too.

Yeah. I mean, if there's no salary cap attached to it and it's a salary floor. I mean, it's ridiculous they're even talking about this. That's what I think they are. I think, did I, is that, has that been presented? I don't know. You just said it. I just said it came from my brain.

It came from your brain. Okay. I think it's not a bad idea because we already know. This is what's so confusing to me. Okay. And you're going to, I'm, I'm, Trev's hot. This is hot Trev's hot. I've, there was an attempt that, like, I don't even want to say what's going on.

Behind the scenes, possibly dealing with some stuff. Okay. But we already know the owners are going to take whatever loss. Happen this year and just throw it on to some other shit Free agency being one of them. They're going to non-tender a bunch of players that are very good players. Just a non-tender because why not? We've got to save some money down the road.

That's what they're going to do. So if I'm the owners, what are you doing, dude? Like let's put a fair proposal out there, get baseball back. And then you can just swindle your way back into profit another way, dude. Like we know you're already going to do anyway. So they want to double dip here. They're taking a bite out of the nugget. And they're like, I didn't put enough barbecue sauce on it.

Let me put it back in. That's not okay. We don't double dip, dude. Like, you're already going to get your money back from free agency. Why do you have to go and delay the start of baseball this year? Trevor's operating in essentially option two there, where it's the owners already know how they're going to get out of this. But they're just. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.

that would be option two for going back to the option okay option two uh okay what about what about wait hold on hold on yeah good because i had no idea it's sad that we're even discussing this okay it's sad that we're even like hey they're just going to pass it off on the other guys anyway and like we're like okay with that like we've seen it happen before the last couple years you know last year like free agency was okay because there was massive paydays you know but the two years prior to that, it was horrible. We just accepted it. And we're like, oh, yeah, they colluded, but whatever.

Like, the average fan, that's what they think. And they're just like, whatever. I do think there's a number the owners need to get to. Like, I do think that without fans and with everything. What's that? That would be option number one. Option one. I do think, no, I'm saying that, like, I do think that,

I do think that if the owners just go strict pro-rated, that they lose a lot of money. I do, like, I know we haven't seen their books, so we don't know the real numbers, but I do think the owners need the players to help them out somewhere on this season. If it's deferred or not deferred, I don't know, Trevor. You're going to give Trevor a heart attack.

I'm so hot right now. You've taken the cheese. Because, dude, let's just think about the last 10 years. Was there ever a point on the flip side of this where the owners were like, Dang, man, we are crushing it. And it's because of you guys. So here you go.

Let's share some of these games. No. I didn't see that happen. I didn't see that. It didn't happen. I missed it. I could go into a lot right now. I don't know how deep you want to go into like.

Lindsay Adler. Lindsay Adler, friend of the program, just had a real fun thought tweet. Oh, man. Let's go. Lindsay, what she said. I love that. She said, Erin.

And Judge was due $8.5 million this season after his first raise from arbitration eligibility. Judge has had the top selling jersey across MLB for three consecutive seasons and would make something like $2.5 million this season under the proposal. So judge has probably brought in, judge will probably bring in more by them selling his name on a jersey than, I mean, those jerse are expensive. and they cost nothing to make. So he will probably bring in more money by people buying his jersey than he will get paid for playing baseball over these 80 days.

That was the same, same Aaron Judge that we mentioned that Trevor Plouf is looking to get a hat from coverage gear earlier on in front of coverage, gear.com, yeah. I like coverage gear, nice hats. I like Aaron Judge, the California guy. Flash Trevor Plu.

The bombs. I think, I think the question is, You don't, you don't dislike NorCal? No, I let NorCal. Okay. Let's not divide California within all this. Trevor, I think the question that I think the common person and Jimmy was hinting to is, and it was kind of leaked out this week.

And again, maybe this came through some of your little birds, was there were rumors that the players were willing to come off the pro rated to a degree. Or at least there were some tweets hinting, towards that. Do you think there's any truth to that that players would come to 90% or 80% or what would it take for that to happen? Or do you think that they're not budging off the pro-rated at all? Every single person that I've talked to said we had an agreement in March. I haven't pressed anybody enough to be like, well, what would it take to get off of that? And this is just my idiot brain thinking. This is not a tidbit. But like, how about this? How about they're like,

let's come off the 50-50 or the, excuse me, the pro-rated salary. Let's come off that a little bit. And then we'll see what we do in the postseason. We're adding two teams. If we generate a ton of revenue, we'll share some of that revenue with you as well. Then maybe we can get there and then everyone's happy. I don't know if that makes any sense. I haven't heard that anywhere. All I've heard from everybody is we made an agreement and we want them to stick to it. So I don't know. I don't know what the I've we've been saying for weeks here deferred payments are okay. Again, I haven't heard that from any players. That's just what we think is the best solution. Right. Right. This is the perfect segue for this.

because the artist response to that is we're just we're just going to have this problem next year okay we don't know if we're going to play with fans next year either we don't know right i hope so my goodness okay but basically they're saying is we're going to have to do this later and we don't want to do that we want to address it now the problem with that i've been around rich people now for quite some time like i live in a like a rich person neighborhood like people would made way more money than me so i like try to pick their brains and whatever dude i am seriously not bragging right now i'm just saying like this is what i found from them i know okay is they never want to spend their own money okay i always thought

coming up buy a house pay it off it's a great investment rich people don't think that way they say put as little amount as you can down, pay as little amount on the principal as you can, and let your money work for you. Put it somewhere else. What these teams do is they take loans out against their franchise. As much money as they can borrow, they take. And then they start to improve things. Okay. They improve things around the stadium. Maybe they buy some real estate. Artie Moreno just bought the surrounding area around the Angels and now it's furloughed this entire organization, which is a joke. Okay.

So now they have loans out. So then they make profits on the year. Okay. And instead of profiting, well, they have to pay these loans back so that they pay these loans back, which have nothing to do with baseball. It's just accessory capitalization of their franchise. They're paying those loans back. And now that's how these teams are saying, we don't make a profit.

Well, you would have made a profit, but you made some. Gambles, smart gambles, to be honest with you, those are smart gambols, except now there's a pandemic going on. So those smart gambles turn to not smart gambols because of unforeseen circumstances. So they're leveraged right now. They're all super leveraged, all these teams. They have to pay these loans that they took out, and the revenue is not going to be what they're used to. And now they're like, wow, we have a problem. Let's figure out a way to do this.

And right now the way is let's tell the players, sorry, you're going to have to bite the bullet here. I don't think that's right. Does it make sense financially? Like, hey, we're doing these things. We got caught. Like, wow, we need some help now? Yeah, I mean, I get it, dude. I totally get it.

I think a lot of people understand the financial ramifications of what we're going through right now. But don't make this about baseball. These are some plays that you made that aren't you're not going to pay back, maybe. So like that's kind of like the one thing I want to make clear here is like these are, they're, they're, they're overreached. They're not as liquid as they should be because they made some financial plays that now are looking tough. And that's all I got. I'm going to shut up now because I'm just getting hot and I'm going off a little bit. But that's, this is, that's the truth, dude.

Hot Treve. Hey, speaking of our commissioner shirts are all up on, on the website. You can go get one. You vote for your commissioner by buying a shirt. There's Commissioner Trev shirts, Commissioner Jake's shirts, Commissioner Johnboy shirts, and at the end of the year, we'll see who's commissioner. And then next season, that guy's commissioner. We'll just have to go back to the drawing board.

Jim, I'm going to fight you on that a little bit because Trevor's already commissioner of baseball. Of all, no, he's a commissioner of all baseball. He is a commissioner. This is commissioner of talking baseball. Maybe you and I can either go for MLB or I might find my... I might be commissioner of dancing baseball and figuring out what that means. Okay. I mean, nationals are coming for you.

Three possible outcomes, people. It's a shitty situation. Let's just say that, dude. It's not a good situation for the owners. That's fair. It's a horrible situation for the owners. Okay, like I just laid out, like probably not so great, but I tried. Like, they made smart plays.

that a global pandemic shot down. And a lot of people are in that situation. I think what was getting emphasized this week through the media was kind of the point you made earlier that, you know, let's say an owner has owned a team for 10 years now. You know, the last nine years was on you to be profitable and you probably did pretty good on it. how how you did with that profit whether you bought the parking lot across the street or whether you bought the you know that that that's that's a great you and yeah that's how you know that's a there's different ways you can mix up your scrilla write that down bbd hell a scrella just an investment thing yeah don't don't it's not for the fans to make like an instagram video after that just know

there's different ways to mix up your scrella hellasgrilla got blurp with hellas grilla it is uh You know, it's an interesting way to look at it. And there's almost not a counter argument when you say, you know, hey, those not, the last nine years when you were making money, you weren't kicking it back to us. So if you have to bite it this year, then you're going to have to bite it. That's why you're the owner. But yeah, man, I, uh, yeah, the owner, I don't know. Assumes responsibility for this stuff in any other business, in any other business. It is true, you know.

It's not the player's job to ensure that the owners can pay them. Their job is to play as best as they can. That's the player's job. Support the organization, be an ambassador for your organization. You sign a contract. Go out there and play baseball because that's what you are. You're a baseball player. Everyone always said to shut up and dribble.

Is this going to land at deferments and, you know, they're just getting there, Jake? Is that? sneaky option one yeah i mean dude that's and that's i think the last thing i saw today before things went off the deep end with the offers were you know what what the owners may have been bringing to the table this offer was truly that we're open to the idea of deferred payments like that might have been the actual negotiation in this offer um and then it'll be the players coming back saying yeah we're up for deferred payments if you give us us a, you know, 11% interest rate on that. The owners will come back and say, no way in hell,

we're doing that. We'll give you 80% of the contracts. I don't think it's necessary. But it's, dude, it's just, it's negotiation. And we are friend of the family and one of your closest buddies, Jack Flaherty, you know, he started tweeting a little bit, uh, this week. And he was actually, he kind of went at passing a little bit, which was a little fun because Passon wrote one of his cheeky articles about the CBA. And guess what? Jeff Passon doesn't want to write CBA articles. So he's just trying to make some jokes to keep it cheery.

Jack Flaherty, the young stud that's on a potential like Hall of Fame pace. I know you're not supposed to say that about a young guy, but he's doing special things early. He's worried about his career and his livelihood. So when he sees someone making jokes about his livelihood, that doesn't excite him. But I just don't know where this land, man. The A's. Well, I actually do. There's three outcomes.

It's three possible outcomes, Jake. The A's are just... Your Azing it up. They just told all their minor leaguers that they're... Hey, you know that $400 a week we've been given you? It's stopping this week. It's stopping. So what's that mean?

They're not going to continue it. Stop spending it all at once. I mean, what's that mean for those minor leaguers? Can, I mean, can they just? What's fuck? Are they still part of the A's, dude? Wait, what are they, do they still have to be loyal? Like, they're still in contract, even though the A's aren't going to pay them?

Yes. Yes. They're not playing. They're not working. So they're not going to get paid. But we still own you. You still own you. Dude, I've lived off $400 a week.

That's what I was living off when I started this damn company. I think it was less. How was that for you? Is that fun? Jake and I lived off $1,000. bucks a month all of 2018 and 2019. But we're supposed to keep yourself in tip-top shape to be a professional baseball player and then be ready and be back to call to go do something.

You know, I guess so they can't go get another job because you need to be training. If they said, hey, shut it down. We're not going to have you for the rest of the year. Okay. I don't think that's what's happening. I don't know. Dallas Brain had a great tweet. He said, I'm flipping out, man.

I've seen better proposals on a Jumbotron and then posted a video of him doing a backflip into his pool flipping out. I like Dallas. Yeah, Dallas is awesome. Yeah, I don't know, guys. I don't know. What's that?

I want to do a segment because I feel like we just been doom and doom this episode. Let me just tell me what the segment is and I'll play the proper sound bite. I want to do a segment where each of us give what we'd rather be talking about on May, 26. Okay. But we should be talking about

May 26. I want us to give our simulated day today. Okay. The Memorial Day was yesterday. Big days. We have cool, like, camo jerseys and shit. Like, let's do that. All right. Jake, go first. Jake, you're up first. Nothing I say should be important

to anyone. I have a little bit of a leg up on this because Trevor one night my baseball anxiety woke me up at 4 a.m. couldn't go back to sleep, so I just played my little baseball simulation game just for shits. So, A, I'll give something from that, and then I'll give something from baseball talk before the season. My big thing before the season was I just think Dylan Bundy stinks, and the angels traded four prospects for them. They're not real prospects, but I mean, they're young bodies. I mean, if you can get them, if you can get them around a stay, you get good value out of them. And Bundy's just been garbage.

Like you could get, there's better free agents to be had for cheaper. So I'll say Dylan Bundy just got moved to the bullpen and he has an 864 ERA. So I'll go Jakey Nostradamus there. By the way, if they play this year, he's going to shove. He's just going to make me look dumb. And then I'll, I guess the other hot takes that were coming from the game. game. We're, uh, the, the Blue Jays were figuring it out. And they were currently a wildcard team. So I, I'll say, we'd all be on here talking about how awesome the baby Jays are. And, uh, you know,

Rew's been great for them. And they're, they're just a good, young, fun team. I like that. Yeah. Um, so what I got for you, Trev, is that the Tigers had a four game set versus the race, you know? And I think what we were going to be doing was Austin, mine's just going off. And then we're saying, wow, do you think the rays are going to trade for Austin Roe Mine? Because they need a catcher. So that, do the rays need a catcher?

Who's the Raves catcher? They had Darno last year. They went through like 10 last year. You know, like they bring in. Who'd they bring in? Zanino. Yeah. Yeah.

So, so the Tigers just got, yeah, Tigers just got wrapped up with the raise. And Romine. swung a big stick, you know, because he's, that's his old division. He likes playing against the race. And we're like, someone's going to pick up, Roma and catchers always get, get traded, and he's going to the raise. Okay.

Yeah. What do you have, Trevor? I mean, you guys know what kind of mood I'm in right now? This beer I'm thinking is helping me out. Like, I'm, it's chilling me out of a little bit. Look thick. Look, looked like one of the, looked like a hazy IPA. Yep.

Yep. I drink. Cool. No big deal. I think this one's going to hurt people, but I do believe this is going to happen. I think we'd be talking about how much we hate that the Astros are still in first place in the AOL West. Oh, okay. And that we want, it's all because there's no fans in the stands.

There should be fans in the stands. They should be getting booed, but instead they're just going out and they're raking. And everyone's pissed off about it. That's what I think we'd be talking about on May 26th. I actually just got a vision of Bregman's slash line. It is bad. I think Bregman's probably going to go off. No, he actually, he got replaced by Toro.

Yeah. At third, and Bregman had like a breather this weekend. Did he get sent down to the miners? He's pulling, you know, Roger Maris during the 1961 season, he just started losing his hair. The stress was getting to him. So much hate mail, he would take off his hat and there was just hair in it. Bregman had like a lot of hair checks this weekend and it wasn't good.

So they, they sat them. They sat them. Yeah. I've got a, I've got a good one on that. That's some good sports radio talk. It would be like a good cut to commercial. It's the,

if the Astros were struggling, they'd go, you know, the only thing that's louder than booze is silence. We're back in five. It just hurt me deep inside. What was that? I don't know.

Silence. Silence. Do good. Yeah. So, Bregman's out. Romine's going to the Rays. Rays aren't excited about it. Breggman Raking.

Oh, you have Altuvae's traveling. Yeah, Carlos Corre has accepted his role as the MLB heel. Mm-hmm. And it's just going off. Yeah. Correa. This would have been, this would have been a really good segment with the Cespitus guys,

because they're kind of deep cuts. Mm-hmm. They would have had some, they would have had some stuff that had us all kind of disgusted. I got a text from Cessbus. I got a text from Cespice, Jake, today. You was like, dude, I'm scared.

You say Cacucci. You say Cacucci. I say, Macucci. You say, Jake Fraley. You see, Jake Fraley goes two for three with a double. Oh,

I know. Shed Long comes up, pops a couple homers, tweets double birds at Jake. We're beefing hard. Yeah. Do you think Carlos Correa has talked to Cody Bellinger? Do you think they've reached out to each other? No. I think he got a small world, man. They both live fantasy lives, though.

They don't have to. Carlos Corrie got beat up on a massage table and he says he wants to box or do MMA or whatever. Dude literally broke his rib on a massage table. I don't know, Carlos. I don't know if you're made out for the ring because Give it a try Your masseuse, I say with huge

quotation marks. Your masseuse broke your rib on the table. Yeah. All right. I mean. Do you have any tidbits? I can't, man.

Like, yeah, I do, but like let me you guys talk about something. Let me look at my phone. Jim, see what I can divulge.

Out of the three possible, out of the three possible outcomes, what do you think is the most realistic at this point? One. Negotiated and there's still actual work to do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The owners decided if we get 80% and deferred payments,

we'll actually roll this out. Just stop using the media. There was no reason for them to tell the MLBPA what players get what. I have a tidbit that I can... Okay, well, hold on. Wait for it. All right, guys. Welcome to Trevor's tidbits.

Do you guys know Michael Jordan listened to that song? Yeah. Some. It's pretty sick. Back in the day, yeah. Yeah. So we talked about 50-50 revenue split, right? Yep.

And that's a non-starter. And they leaked that to the media. Never was formally proposed to players, but we've talked about it. Non-starting starter. Non-starter. Non-starter. From a source, today's proposal, as is, would have players taking home 42% of the revenue. So we went backwards.

It was coming down from 50, right? It was coming down from 50, right? Yeah, 50-50 is a non-starter. 42% surely is also a non-starter. Wait, so you're saying that the final number that, MOB land on is projected to be 42% of revenue? I'm saying if the players accepted the proposal as is, they would be attaining not 50% of revenue this year, but 42% according to a source.

A source that has information on how much team is making shit. According to the proposal. Yeah. So they went backwards, which is, you know, that's fun. That's a good way to start off. You went from non-starter to proposing an even bigger non-starter. But that's, yeah, that's proposed revenue. That's like, but they were offered a revenue split.

When last week there was the rumored 50-50 split, they were in this offer. There's a 42% of the revenue. Yeah, was I not clear about that. I feel like I was pretty clear. I got it. Thank you, BPD. So they were like, hey, you can do the sliding pay scale or you can take 42% of revenue. No, like if they were to take the sliding pay scale and accept the proposal as is,

they would be, players would be accumulating 42% of the revenue. But I'm confused. I'm confused because how do they have those numbers? Because when it was 50-50, the players were like, well, you got to open up your book because we don't know how much you actually made. They did send numbers over. Not all of them, but they did send numbers over. Man.

Okay. Dude, the Yankees players would be Because they have a lot of high salary guys It's a lot It's a lot of salaries dropping And hey, that's another point That I feel like we skimmed over for Quick

And it was my knee-jerk reaction To this whole thing Is that, you know, are the best players The highest paid players? Not necessarily, but there's some there's some degree of correlation yeah i yeah i i went to you know i went to summer school for probability and statistics okay there's some correlation between the best players and the highest paid players don't get caught up on jacobi elsberry um the concept that you mentioned

the fact that baseball is willing to do this and have their best players come back at a discount when every other sport has done so well at putting their best players out there, the NBA, every star player, the NFL, every quarterback. And baseball comes back with this. Say the players took it. Say there's a goddamn mutiny and the players just wanted to get out there. If this got signed, Garrett Cole's not playing. Mike Trout is not playing.

you would have a list of, I'd say out of MLB's top 25 players, I would assume 15 of them would not be playing if this got signed today. And if you're baseball, and again, this goes back to probably options one and two, they're just playing a goddamn game. And that's the part that sucks. I agree with the last thing that you said, but I don't agree with there's going to be 15 to 20 players that would sit out. You want to know why?

because it says on our quarter or something like that like on a coin that we have united we stand divided we fall okay the players association will be united i promise that okay as many attempts as there is to break it down it's not going to happen okay the people i do worry for that fights out this season are guys with underlying health issues obviously and then guys who have to think about like hey man I'm a free agent after this year.

And like maybe this million bucks, maybe I don't have to make that and I sit out because I'm not sure how this season's going to go. And we're not going to have all of our facilities ready to us. There's probably going to be more games. And I'm not sure. Like, there's thoughts of that. I'm not saying it's going to happen. But there's thoughts of these guys saying like, dude, like, maybe I should forego this weird-ass season.

So I can become, because I'm already getting my service time. maybe I should forego this weird season where like the injury possibility is probably higher than I'm used to and just and just take my chances in free agency. Like my arm, especially pitchers, my arm didn't, I didn't throw anything. I saw the bullets from this year that has to count for something. And that's work into that. But like again, like we said, like I think this is just going to get tossed in the free agency next year anyway.

So I don't know if that's going to happen, but I know that guys are thinking along those lines too. Like, dude, like, is this smart for me to play? just like the owners are like, hey, does this make sense for us to play? Players are doing the same thing. It's a bad situation. It's not good, dude. I think you summed it up.

It's very frustrating. It is day one, and they weren't going to pen this on the first day. It just kind of, it just kind of sucks that the first proposal feels more like a manipulation game than an honest, earnest offer. in my opinion I you know that's what I talked to myself found to I was like okay first day they can come back from this

it's just a bullshit starting point kind of shitty feels like that but we got time we're good you want to know something that's weird yeah always always

literally always so John Heyman your guy put out a tweet and I don't know what it said exactly. Perfect. Okay, I guess I should get it up. Should I get it up?

Heyman. It could help. Heyman said, talks about how MLB released a statement. He unblocked me, so. Oh, you were blocked? Oh, yeah, dude. I used to, every time Heyman tweeted, I would, like, translate it and be like, this is what this means, aka nothing.

Let me get it up, too, so I can see it. It was a loose translation. Hey, man. That's cool. That's kind of a cool last name, really think about it. Okay. Hey, man. So it's plo.

Can't knock his name. Oh. Hey, man is a cool last name. Right? It's kind of cool. All right. So, MLB statement, he said, this is two hours ago. He said, NLB statement, we made a proposal to the union that is completely consistent with the economic realities facing our sport.

We look forward to a response, responsive proposal from the NLBPS. and so I read that and immediately I said I quote tweeted it and there was a tweet the actual tweet said from Pat McCourtney or Pat Courtney who is the chief communicative officer of MLB so he named this guy and said this is what he said for MLB and I quote tweeted it and I said I hereby invite Pat Courtney onto the pod to discuss. Okay. Huge. Right?

Let's talk about it, dude. Let's have a chat. Obviously, he's most likely not going to come on the pod, but I put it out there. I tweeted it. Looked at my tweet. All of a sudden, it was one of those things like, oh, that thing you quote tweet isn't there anymore. John Heyman went and deleted it.

Probably because he got a phone call from Pat Courtney or somebody up and said, don't use my name. Yeah. or because Boris called like, hey, you weren't supposed to do that. You got a call from somebody. So I'll say right now, Pat Courtney, chief communicative officer of MLB.

If you want to come discuss it on the pod, we are here, dude. A civil conversation. Come on down. Civil conversation. Let's talk about it because the fans need to know. We want to bring it to the fans. Like we need to have an explanation for you.

You know, like that's what we're trying to do with this podcast is to bring like, first of all we just want to cover baseball but like we become this like crazy labor pod so now we just want the truth for you guys and you know i'd love to have this guy maybe he can convince me otherwise i'd love for him to do that i'm sad disheartened flabbergasted confused sick of doing math and i want to talk about baseball and that's it if pat wants to come on and talk about it's tough man we can do it um I just wish it wasn't all out and open, you know.

Jake, do you think of a secret fourth option? It's just three, man. Either, you know, we're negotiating the ugly way for a week. And again, another pat on the back for Jack Flaherty when he got mad at Passon's article is, he said, we've been waiting two weeks since the first fake offer. And now we're just going to, now we're just going to hammer things out for a week. Like, hey, that's, that's. The players should have made an offer.

I'm going to get on the union. Either way, 100%. Either way, just be talking. Not like, just be talking. Like, why did we wait until this week with the fake deadline anyways? Because people think the closer we get to the fake deadline, because there is no deadline. There kind of is because.

They still, well, the original ploof dates are still the target, June 10 spring training. Still, right. Still good info people. Don't hate me. And that's where I've been trying. The one question I want answered is why has everyone been so creepily confident this is going to get done? Because we've tried to dance around it with our answers.

That, you know, the owners, they're going to bite the bullet and they'll look proud for the country. Doesn't seem like that's happening right now. There's too much money on the table to be lost. The owners seem to not think that. I just and that's where I think option two came into my head today driving back and I think it might sneaky be the thing that the owners are okay and maybe this gets me chewed out I don't give a shit the owners are okay with the pro rated salaries and doing all this but they kind of looked at each other and they said I mean we still got to negotiate and maybe the fact that they more so have to negotiate for the up coming CBA, as Trevor mentioned. So that's a, I don't know if that gives me some sort of solace or if that makes me sick to my stomach.

Either, either way, we're going to find out in this next week. And Jim, you are right. And dude, think about where we were the first time the fake offer came out on a Monday or Tuesday. By the end of that week, we were confident and happy again. So this week is going to start out ugly, which it has. and then as it goes, it should get progressively better slash positive developments until option three could happen.

You know what I'm going to do? It's 8.25 p.m. We're going to wrap this up. I'm going to go pop a gummy. I'm going to watch Grant on History Channel. How is that? I recorded it the first episode. Is it Ulysses?

I asked you and you didn't respond. Yeah, Ulysses S. Grant. S, not really his middle name. Then they started calling him Sam. when, dude, do you guys know anything about Ulysses S. Grant besides war and president? It's amazing. Can't wait.

Money. This is right at my alley. And like a gummy plus that? It was so interesting that Katie made me pause it when she like left the room. And she's watching it with me tonight. Grant. Grant's awesome. He, uh, they, they were going to court marshal him where he had to retire from the military.

And he was like, all right, I'll just retire. And then it sucked at, sucked at civilian life. Oh, he tried like seven different jobs, which is so bad at it. In the end, he was working for his dad at like a, like a home goods store, just like sitting there being a drunk reading the newspaper. And then the war breaks out and they ask Robert Lee to, to be the union general. And he says, no, I like Virginia. So he goes on the Confederate side.

And then Grant gets tapped in as like a small, soldier and he just like goes up and up it's and then he becomes the most famous american of his time it's amazing story they're doing a good job with it's cool robert lee not a good choice right there i got to say tough uh it's tough that you decided that one pretty good general um but then i'm also jake i'm gonna get on my face app and i'm just gonna i'm just gonna i'm just gonna i'm just gonna i'm just gonna make versions of ploof i think yeah you haven't really messed around with plufe's face Yeah, do you know about my Twitter account, Trave? It's called You But Different.

I don't. Why am I in the dark on this? Can you mix faces? Like two people's faces? Yeah, you can do whatever I want. I think you're going to like some ploof BVD action. I think that's going to get you in a nice, nice tip-off area. It's my new Twitter account, Trev.

It's called You But Different. And what I do is if someone posts a selfie of themselves, I save it in my phone, I face app it, slightly alter it and then respond to that person the same picture of themselves and it creeps them out real bad um i did it to a stranger total stranger turned out he was 13 and uh he like freaked out so i'm only doing it to people i personally know now okay yeah but i'll do it to you 46 followers you but different it's like a great account and that's what i'm gonna need to do today i'm to watch grant i'm gonna take a gummy probably chug some water because i'm starting to sweat and i'm

gonna face my face app my face off because i'm sad do you want to get really sad before we leave oh no yeah can i read like a text yeah i'm letting guys i'm letting i'm letting i'm letting everyone in on this stuff because it's so did sam fold text you i fucking love sam fold that i didn't hit i didn't hit sam i can't wait to have that joke kills in my head audience every time. I love Sam Fold so much. He's going to come on. I'm going to get him on this damn and Paul. I promise you that. He has to ask for permission though from the Phillies. It's like, yeah, it's a whole thing. After this, watching me chew out everyone, you probably won't come on. I want us throwing a very cold, strong Sam Fold's front office fan base.

Bro, if he is in, if he like ends up calling a shot somewhere, which he will, guess what, whose pod is going to be like in? tasty R-Pod All right give us this text I got oh my God

first line I'm just going to read the first and the last line of this text first line I think 95% chance of no season last line

this also guarantees a strike after 2021 if there is a season even played next year everyone enjoy your bad day so on that note Katie I'm going to need two gummies

Yeah I think this is a good time to tell you Jim I know I signed on here to talk about baseball But I have other skills too I can also talk about other sports Please don't fire me Because there's no baseball left to cover In this damn world

Sucks that I know that It's much easier to start To finish NBA and NHL on that And like I've been telling Jake you can't compare them, but the outlook for the public, like NHL announces that they're going to have a 24 team tournament in a bubble. Party. And it's basically a huge party.

Yeah. It's the best time ever. Hockey's doing an expanded 24 team playoff, yeah. And then this happens. It's just a mess. And dude, baseball was on the come up. We have so many good players, dude.

Yeah. And they were figuring out marketing. They're starting to do. better things. They were changing around. I had to hold. I had to hold back because it was our guy Zillow. But there is a quote from an MLB article today. Oh, Gammon's tweeted it. So I had to click it because I had to know what I had to know what Uncle Pete was up to. Great grandpa. The last paragraph of the article, I took a screenshot of it because I was going to tweet it. And then I was like, no, I can't tweet it. So I'll just talk about it on the air because nobody, yeah, no,

nobody can do anything with that. Okay, picture of me with the dog. Picture me with the dog. Oh, and it's the articles talking about how the different MLBs are dealing with the pandemic. The different, the last quote from sports. No, the different teams in baseball. This is just a baseball article. So it's talking about the Mariners are doing this and, you know, Trevor Williams is going live, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.

And the last sentence is from Zillow and it goes, I think baseball as a whole has, when it comes to looking under different rocks is now really using social media and all of its tentacles to reach as many fans as possible. So baseball is now using social media just two decades late. But they are. He's right.

But they are. They are. But it took a pandemic to make it happen. Yeah. Oh, you're saying like they're doing a good job of using social media in this. I thought that was a joke. If he said that five years, years ago, it's a joke.

But MLB in the last year and a half, especially last season, has really, like, you know, done a better job at getting stuff on social media, making content, trying to get players out there. It's not perfect yet because they just started. But, you know, they have been doing a better job. All through this. Peter Diamonds follows me. All through this, the content has been the players going on there on IG live. Like, I mean, Cole Tucker, who we're going to interview soon, who's a friend of the pod, just had one of the Jonas brothers was on. Like, that's awesome, dude.

Yeah, the Jonas Brothers agent is like getting them out there because they did something else with the New York Giants on draft night. And it was like, what's going on? I got you high. You didn't like that. No, it's just funny. It's like, I didn't even know that. I didn't even know they were Giants fans. When they.

Synergy. Cineries. It's there. It's right, baby. I love there. We need some energy on. I got some people that'll come on. Yeah, we'll do some synergy.

I think we have someone lined up, don't we? We got someone lined up. We got someone lined up. It's Paul Rudd. I feel like we're going to have to have a breaking pod this week. Is that a hot take? It's not Paul Rudd. He's not coming on the show guys.

We're like an hour into this. What's going on? I would love. We've gone off the deep end a while ago. This is like the podcast. host game. We had a Ulysses S. Grant segment. Oh, dude, he's the best.

We had a full-blown Ulysses S. Grant segment. I got to go cook some stakes. I love you guys. All right. Guess what? Hey, for all, everybody, when is this airing? Tomorrow. Yeah.

Tomorrow. All your supermarkets stocked up for Memorial Day, all their meat is on sale, big time. Go buy something and freeze it. Wow. Tip it, baby. Talk about a tidbit. Meet it.

I did that today. I got a lot of fix. Don't forget to freeze it. Jake sucks.