A Contrarian View on the Baseball Negotiations

As we all know, the players have drawn a line in the sand and refused to receive anything less than full pay for any games played in 2020. Yet coverage of the negotiations has generally been more critical of the owners.

My opinion is that the players are being childish. Yes, the owners are rich, but so what? That doesn’t mean that they should bear the full brunt of the losses because the games are being played without fans. And yes, I get that the owners have acted in bad faith over service time and generally lying about their revenues. But that’s also the players’ fault for having elected people who have been poor negotiators for them. Now is not the time to try and make up for past mistakes.

Baseball players are the beneficiaries of massive economic surpluses. What that means is that most of them would play for much less but because there are a limited number of slots and they were born with athletic gifts, they’ve won the lottery. Well the lottery payout is a lot smaller this year. Players should grow up and negotiate in good faith for a 100 game season.