Today's Fantasy Rx

While I'll return to my normal articles next week with FAAB-worthy prospects and the normal LPR articles, I wanted to use the All-Star break to take a break from the normal fantasy-intensive discussion of this column. Jess has plenty of material to discuss on her column, so I covered our experiences from All-Star Sunday at the beginning of this week, followed by a look at our roster for CDM Mid-Season Fantasy Baseball yesterday. I hope to spend the next two days looking at players who either drastically improve or decline after the break, but first I'd like to try something a little different. I was quite amused by several articles on Monday night that featured phrases like "Baseball union fails to set a strike date." These writers apparently were hoping for a strike, and while I agree that a work stoppage provides a lot of news for AP writers apparently otherwise bored before NFL games begin, a headline of "Union Doesn't set strike date" indicates less bias. Between those comments, the hideous "children of light" hour-long delay of the All-Star game, and a suggestion on a CDM BBS, I decided to compile Rotohelp's ranking of:

The 9 Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppages

A little background is necessary before I discuss our list. The players formed the Major League Baseball Players' Association in 1954 over a dispute in their pension plan; Bob Feller was the first president. For several years the owners paid for the MLBPA legal counsel, a practice that no one apparently realized was illegal. The union finally retained Marvin Miller in 1965, leading to the first comprehensive collective bargaining agreement in 1968. Included with the first changes Miller successfully obtained, the players would receive an owner contribution of $4.2 million each year to fund the pension plan, the minimum salary jumped to $10K a year, and formal arbitration procedures were established. The grievance procedure designated the commissioner as the final arbiter, and when General William Eckert first ruled in favor of a player, the owners fired him after only four years of service. Bowie Kuhn replaced Eckert, and he remained in office from February of 1969 to September of 1984. Peter Ueberroth, succeeded Kuhn, and Ueberroth was followed by the unfortunate Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, and Bud Selig. Don Fehr ascended to head the MLBPA after the players rapidly grew dissatisfied with the uncommitted Ken Moffet; Miller had retired in 1982 but briefly returned in 1983 after the players ousted Moffet.

Selig and Fehr have remained the opposing leaders in talks since Vincent's forced resignation in September of 1992, the second-longest period with no changes at the pinnacle of either MLB or the MLBPA since Miller and Kuhn fought from 1969 through 1982.

With little written and published by Selig and Fehr, I will quote from the autobiographies of Miller and Kuhn whenever necessary to help you understand the rationale behind each side's positions.

The Least Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#2: Owners lock out players in 1973 on February 8th for 12 days, delaying the opening of Spring Training camps.

Beginning negotiations in November of 1972 for the third CBA, the players were ready to work towards free agency following the Curt Flood decision. In the Flood case, the Supreme Court again refused to reverse its ruling from 1922 where they decided that baseball was a sport, and therefore not trade and not subject to interstate commerce laws. However they did call the 1922 decision "an aberration" and suggested the players seek legislative relief.

The players weren't truly prepared to fight for free agency, so they first accepted the owners' proposal of salary arbitration. As of the 1973 season, all players with two years or more major league service could have an impartial arbiter decide their salary. The owners were quite happy that they didn't have to deal with free agency at the time, and even instituted the 5-and-10 rule, giving a complete no-trade clause to any player with five years of service time with one team and a total of ten years with in the majors.

Perhaps the next seven stoppages wouldn't have happened if the owners had just capitulated on free agency now, especially since arbitration might never have grown into such a power, but as always, in the pursuit of short-term economic gains, the owners neglect the long-term stability of their industry against inevitable changes.

The 8th Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#4: Players strike in 1980 on April 1st for 8 days, eliminating the last eight days of Spring Training.

Negotiations didn't even really start here until a month after the previous agreement expired in 1979. The MLBPA wanted to reduce the service time requirement for free agency from 6 years to 4 years and eliminate the five-year waiting period for a player's second free agency. However the owners wanted to weaken free agency by adding a major leaguer in addition to the existing draft choice compensation for free agents, in effect limiting the signing of free agents to a forced trade with the free agent's previous franchise. I'll let Bowie Kuhn explain the owner's position on the two primary issues involved:

"The compensation plan stated that if a free-agent player was selected in the November reentry draft by a substantial number of clubs, the club losing him would be able to select a player not on the fifteen-man protected list of the club signing the free agent. This meant that the 'losing' club would have an opportunity to get a major-league player in return, although not the quality of the player lost. The clubs saw this as basic 'equity.' They also saw it as a natural evolution of the free-agency system adopted in 1976 that both sides had recognized as 'experimental'.

The salary scale would have created a stipulated annual maximum salary for players with less than six years of major-league service. All contracts for such players would be for a single year. I supported…compensation and felt as strongly as [any owner] that compensation was necessary for baseball. [Owners] liked to talk about the 'equity' of the proposal and that was fine. I talked publicly about its 'fairness to the fans' who, I felt, should see something a little more like a trade, albeit a badly balanced one, when their club lost a top free-agent player. As a fan, I would have been appalled to see stars walking away from a club with no professional joining the team in return. I was also convinced that compensation would help us maintain competitive balance in baseball."

Bowie either never understood or never cared that compensation clearly restricted the ability of free agents to seek out gainful employment on their own terms, as is the right of non-athlete employees. The players walked out of the last week of Spring Training, and while they played for the first seven weeks of the year, they were prepared to strike in late May when they reached a settlement at 4 AM on May 23rd, the date a strike was due to begin. The four-year agreement involved little substantive change but included a provision allowing the reopening of the issue of free agent compensation the following year, directly leading to the 1981 strike.

The 7th Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#6: Players strike in 1985 on August 6th for two days, wiping out no games.

Peter Ueberroth, fresh off running the successful Los Angeles Summer Olympics in his role as President of the 1984 Olympic Organizing Committee, replaced Kuhn in 1984 after the owners wanted someone to take a firmer stance with the union. Fehr wanted to increase the pension contributions following the quadrupling of baseball's existing television contract, as well as eliminate the free agent compensation pool from 1981. The owners wanted to weaken salary arbitration.

Ueberroth persuaded the owners to open their books to the union after the clubs claimed a "serious financial situation", claiming a $42 million loss in 1984. The MLBPA's economist estimated that MLB had actually turned a $9 million dollar profit. With this dissent and existing issues clouding the bargaining, the players struck after Ueberroth threatened to invoke his "best interests of baseball" clause.

A five-year agreement was reached in two days that increased the pension contribution, eliminated the player compensation for free agents, and increased the service time requirement for arbitration from two years to three.

Unfortunately Ueberroth, aside from the public negotiations, developed an illegal strategy of collusion wherein owners simply wouldn't bid on free agents. Among many other bizarre situations, the most intriguing was probably Andre Dawson's decision with his agent to give the Cubs a blank contract for the 1987 season; while obviously irritated at Dawson's decision, they still signed him to a contract that decreased his salary by 60% from 1986. The players, finding no takers for their services, suspected a problem, and filed a suit that eventually resulted in a July 1988 arbiter's decision that found the owners guilty of collusion, ordering them to pay damages to the affected players; a 1990 settlement set damages at $280 million.

Much of any current financial problems in baseball result directly from Ueberroth and collusion, as the 1993 expansion fees paid for the collusion damages, and the 1998 expansion resulted after Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit against MLB for denying them a team.

The 6th Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#7: Owners lock out players in 1990 on February 15th for 32 days, wiping out part of Spring Training but no games.

I theoretically agree with pay-for-performance in concept, but since no acceptable metric exists over a decade later to measure the contributions of players against each other, and such a system would require a set percentage of revenue dedicated to the players, the idea was doomed from the start. The owners also wanted a salary cap set at 48 percent of pooled income from only ticket and broadcast revenues.

As the players also wanted to lower the service time requirement for arbitration from three years to two, a provision they desired partly as recompense for collusion, they were able to bargain without losing any previously obtained rights. The MLBPA trounced the owners in negotiations, giving up most of their modest proposal in exchange for the owners dropping pay-for-performance and any idea of a salary cap, as well as gaining minimum wage and pension plan increases. Perhaps most importantly for pending developments, future owner collusion now results in triple damages.

Fay Vincent's role in the settling of this strike began the process that led to his ouster by Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf, thereby setting the stage for the 1994 strike when the owners finally decided they would not capitulate to the players, right before they capitulated to the players.

The 5th Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#3: Owners lock out players in 1976 on March 1st for 17 days.

While the lockout was not particularly memorable, the cause for the lockout altered baseball forever. Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally didn't signing 1975 contracts, forcing their respective teams to exercise the reserve clause and binding them to their teams for an additional year. Under the relatively new independent arbitration, Messersmith and McNally won a decision from arbiter Peter Seitz that essentially established free agency, changing the face of professional sports forever.

After repeatedly encouraging the sides to work out an agreement, which followed repeated indications that the owners had no intention of voluntarily negotiating away any portion of the reserve clause, Seitz ruled in favor of the players on December 23rd of 1975, declaring Messersmith and McNally free agents. Wrote Kuhn, "There was no doubt in my mind that the game's integrity and public confidence were at stake in the potential destruction of the reserve system". Now the entire basic agreement required bargaining as Seitz's decision would make every player who didn't sign a contract for 1976 a free agent at the end of the season.

Owners closed Spring Training camps to force the players into capitulating as much as possible, but the players knew that the owners wouldn't keep them locked out during the season when the owners need to pay the players despite their refusal to let their players actually play the baseball games. Kuhn opened the camps, ending the official lockout, because he felt the closed camps served no purpose. The two sides finally reached an agreement in July, allowing players free agency after six seasons. Miller understood that limiting the supply of players in this manner guaranteed increased salaries, and the clubs were happy since they still kept their players, although not for the ten years they wished.

Strictly from the economic standpoint of the owners, the best decision would have been to grant every single player free agency immediately. The market would have undergone one drastic upwards shift, with player salaries likely increasing several hundred percent on average, and then it would have stabilized as long as players flooded the market every off-season. Under a rationale closer to protecting their immediate economic interests than anything favoring teams' fans by retaining star players, the clubs bargained to an agreement that limits the available talent each year, driving up the price especially for the top players.

The 4th Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#1: Players strike in 1972 on April 1st for 14 days, wiping out 86 games.

Although not as memorable as following stoppages, the 1972 strike finally established the MLBPA as a negotiating power over a largely irrelevant issue forced by owner incompetence. The New York Times' Leonard Koppett briefly summarized the strike:

Players: We want higher pensions.

Owners: We won't give you one damn cent for that.

Players: You don't have to - the money is already there. Just let us use it.

Owners: It would be imprudent.

Players: We did it before, and anyhow, we won't play unless we can have some of it.

Owners: Okay.

While the players lost $100,000 more than they won from the owners, the owners lost a few million dollars from the unplayed games. The MLBPA wanted to access the accumulated surplus in their pension fund to increase current pensions; the owners refused because they didn't understand that the money was already there and this would cost them nothing. Although this strike didn't substantively affect the baseball labor landscape in specific, the demonstration of union unity should have convinced the owners of the impending changes in the industry.

The 3rd Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#9: Players strike sometime between August 2002 and Spring Training 2003 in an attempt to avoid the owners declaring an impasse in negotiations and thereby finally setting their own rules, potentially eliminating arbitration and free agency if the Bush appointees on the National Labor Relations' Board support the owners.

With a work stoppage of some sort occurring every time the labor contract expired since 1972, we certainly expect to see a strike lasting at least a couple days, although it might not happen until Spring Training. After extending the four-year 1996 CBA for an extra year through 2001, and then beginning the 2002 season without an agreement, the owners again appear set to implement, an unacceptable potential outcome for one of the most powerful unions in the country. Considering the tremendous publicity surrounding this entire situation, I feel quite confident in ranking the 2002/2003 work stoppage here at the moment, though it certainly will move up the list if it lasts more than a few days or results in significant cancellations.

The 2nd Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#5: Players strike in 1981 on June 12th for 50 days, wiping out over 712 games.

Marvin Miller provides an excellent summary of the background of this action when he recollects "What history should record is that the strike was planned by the owners, articulated by Bowie Kuhn…run according to management's timetable, and concluded only when baseball's brass realized that the union couldn't be split and free agency was not going away."

Management invoked the clause from the four-year deal signed in 1980 to re-open the discussion of free agent compensation. Kuhn remembers that "Miller's strike was an inexcusable miscalculation by Miller of the clubs and me. The clubs, having achieved compensation as part of the collective bargaining agreement, were not going to give it up." Of course, the clubs did "give it up" despite Kuhn's concern that "It seemed to me that unless the clubs took a stand at some point, the Players Association would look only to the financial welfare of the players". I thought the goal of any union was to protect the safety, both personal and financial, of its members but Kuhn labored under a different understanding. Despite his apprehension, the owners obtained few gains here while the players successfully maintained the status quo. Andrew Zimbalist summarizes the final compensation system in Baseball and Billions:

"The new plan maintained the amateur draft pick and added compensation from a major league player pool. Each team signing a Type A free agent (a player ranked in the top 20 percent according to various performance criteria at his position) would have to put all but twenty-four protected players into this pool. Teams losing a Type A free agent could select any player from the pool, not necessarily one from the team that singed the free agent. Clubs that did not sign a Type A free agent could protect twenty-six players, and up to five clubs could become exempt from the compensation pool by agreeing not to sign Type A free agents for three years."

The players only gain since the advent of arbitration and the free agency system, other than the necessary cost-of-living adjustments in the minimum wage, was the right to salaries determined by arbitration for players nearing three years of service time. Seventeen percent of players between two and three years of service time, the so-called "Super 2" players, now are eligible for arbitration. Other than this change, the players have not received any additional benefit from work stoppages in over twenty years; they've only refused to give back the gains won between 1966 and 1976, gains made after decades of players' involuntary servitude to whatever club originally signed them.

Since Kuhn was not involved with the final stoppage on this list, I'll relate one final quote from his book to further illustrate his position.

"With the advent of free agency in 1976, a century after the founding of the National League, the checks and balances of baseball had gone out of whack. Through the long domination by the clubs before 1976, the game had been run as something approaching a public trust, laying aside the kind of cheapskate practices that had contributed to the Black Sox scandal of 1919. The fans had enjoyed honest baseball and the best prices in entertainment. Management profits had been modest at best in an industry that, remarkably for its monopoly status, had operated at a break-even level. For all their faults, the clubs had shown a sense of responsibility for the long-term welfare of the game and the fans. So, indeed, had their commissioners. Free agency threatened that sense. Player agents and the Players Association were concerned only with the financial welfare of the players. There were no other considerations. There was nothing wrong with that so long as they did not control the game. The trouble was that increasingly they did, given the leverage generated by the short supply of major-league talent."

Even disregarding Kuhn's inability to understand basic economic laws like supply-and-demand, he ignores a few apparently minor issues. Commissioner Landis steadfastly refused to integrate baseball. Despite the relative success of the All-American Girls Baseball League, women continue to be excluded from nearly every aspect of the game. Over half the U.S., including everything west and south of St. Louis, had no access to major league baseball until the 1950s. Competitive balance didn't truly exist in the 50's because of the monopolization of talent in the three New York franchises. While I may be harping on this point, players, unlike employees in every other industry, lacked the right to seek employment with their employer of choice. Finally, if baseball teams weren't making profits, why did they expand in 1962? No industry expands unless they have the ability to generate additional profits in new markets, and the combination of expansion, relocation, and the competitive balance created by increased player movement allowed both owners and players to reap record rewards. Any such "public trust" should reflect the values and laws of the country in question, and prior to advent of the MLBPA and collective bargaining in baseball, I don't believe baseball fulfilled Kuhn's claims.

The Most Memorable Baseball Work Stoppage:

#8: Players strike in 1994 on August 12th until April of 1995, wiping out the remainder of the 1994 regular season, playoffs, and World Series.

As an almost direct outgrowth of the 1990 stoppage, the owners, under "acting" commissioner Bud Selig, finally maintained a unified front in an attempt to force the players to accept a salary cap. The players struck to prevent off-season implementation in the belief that they could settle prior to the playoffs. As is their right, the owners placed their long-term financial interests over more than a century of baseball history, and in their attempt to recoup the MLBPA's gains of the previous twenty years, left us without a World Series for the first year since 1904. The final court ruling by Judge Sonia Sotomayor negated the owners' ability to implement because the owners hadn't collectively bargained in good faith. She also extended the existing CBA through the 1995 and 1996 seasons.

Despite the loss of the playoffs and an abbreviated 1995 season, the two sides still couldn't reach a deal until 1996 after the signing of new TV contracts. Quoting Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, the agreement included "a small 'luxury tax' on overly large club payrolls, with the tax funding a modest amount of revenue sharing for clubs in most need". The owners, in yet another attempt to convince labor to aid management in curbing salaries, a preposterous thought in any industry with continually rising franchise values, left America disgruntled with baseball. Everyone likely knows someone who still refuses to follow their formerly favorite sport, and no other stoppage affected both the history of baseball and the public consciousness to the extent of the 1994-95 strike.

We hope you enjoyed our look at the most memorable work stoppages. Unfortunately we're not sponsored by MasterCard, so we don't have the resources to conduct a nationwide poll at this time. However feel free to write me in disagreement with these rankings.

I consulted the Athlon 1995 Baseball Magazine for material on the 1994-95 strike, and I'll leave you with the following quotation.

"In what he called an 'analyzation' of the 1990 negotiations, Selig wrote 'There is no doubt in my mind that the commissioner and his entire office should never again participate in labor negotiations or even labor-related matters'."

The current five-man Major League Baseball negotiations team includes MLB President & COO Bob DuPuy, Executive VP, Labor Relations and Human Resources Rob Manfred, outside legal counsel Howard Ganz, Cubs' President Andy MacPhail, and Orioles' owner Peter Angelos, all operating under the direction and blessing of Commissioner Bud Selig.

Internet Challenge

SP(6)
Pedro Martinez: Sun:@TOR(Loaiza)
Curt Schilling: Fri:@LA(O.Perez)
Mike Mussina: Sun:@CLE(Finley)
Roger Clemens: Fri:@CLE(D.Baez)
Matt Morris: Fri:@SD(Lawrence)
Javier Vazquez: Sun:PHI(Duckworth)
Barry Zito: Sat:@BAL(Driskill)
Kerry Wood : Fri:FLO(Burnett)
Eric Gagne: 3 Home games vs. Arizona.
Brian Lawrence: Fri:STL(Morris)

No starts: Randy and Oswalt.

RP(4)
Jason Isringhausen: 3 Road games at San Diego.
Byung-Hyun Kim: 3 Road games at Los Angeles.
Mike Williams: 3 Road games at Milwaukee.
Eddie Guardado: 3 Home games vs. Texas.
Jorge Julio: 3 Home games vs. Oakland.

We need more offensive flexibility and we don't expect to use Izzy again, so we're going to dump our extra reliever as we use our last free agent pick on Paul Konerko, since we need RBI and prefer the White Sox lineup to that of St. Louis. Albert Pujols is also a free agent, but we don't need more OF and he's $80 more than Paul.

While we should probably start Schilling, we're more confident in Pedro and want to spend as much as possible on offense. Vazquez, Zito, Wood, Gagne, and Lawrence all look like good picks, so we'll deploy Pedro with our cheap pitchers.

On offense, our four Rockies will sit, along with the injured Durazo and Drew; even if Drew returns tomorrow, we'd rather keep him on the bench for a few days anyway. Unfortunately this leaves us substantially over the cap, so we're going to bench Sosa at home given his recent difficulties rather than sit Vlad or Bonds, as they're also both at home. Juan Uribe takes Sosa's place in the lineup as we can't afford anyone better without pulling someone else we really want to start.

The Umpire Hunter(1st lg; 10th overall)
Week 15b: July 12 - July 14

C 	Jorge Posada		990
C	A.J. Pierzynski		460
1B	Jason Giambi		1640
1B	Ryan Klesko		1300
2B	Luis Castillo		1000
2B	Alfonso Soriano		900
3B	Eric Chavez		1070
3B	Shea Hillenbrand	450
SS	Alex Rodriguez		1880
SS	Jimmy Rollins		940
OF	Vlad Guerrero		1880
OF	Barry Bonds		1830
OF	Ichiro Suzuki		1330
OF	Lance Berkman		1320
OF	Adam Dunn		710
OF	Daryle Ward		620
DH	Paul Konerko		1220
DH	Juan Uribe		500

SP	Pedro Martinez		1770
SP	Javier Vazquez		1100
SP	Barry Zito		1080
SP	Kerry Wood		1050
SP	Eric Gagne		500
SP	Brian Lawrence		480
RP	Byung-Hyun Kim		1200
RP	Mike Williams		900
RP	Eddie Guardado		900
RP	Jorge Julio		750

Today's Fantasy Rx: My primary references for the previous material are Andrew Zimbalist's Baseball and Billions, Bowie Kuhn's Hardball, and Marvin Miller's A Whole Different Ballgame. Anyone interested in understanding the development of the MLBPA and labor relations in baseball needs to read these three books. They illustrate precisely why the public should almost always support the players in any dispute against the owners, even in spite of the latent jealousy that affects all of us who we wish we were playing professional baseball.