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June 9, 2020 By: Woody Paige

Woody Paige: Thanks to MLB owners, there will be crying in baseball

There’s decrying in baseball.

It’s way past time for the National Pastime to solve the basebrawl over a 2020 season.

Instead, the guardians of the game – the owners and the players — are denying, implying, belying and defying.

The public has no trust in this extrapolated public trust.

About the only negotiated agreement between the antagonistic sides in almost three months is that if the season does ever open, both leagues will have a designated hitter.

Gee.

According to Forbes.com, the 30 MLB ownerships finished 2019 with a combined record gross revenue of $10.7 billion. The greedy group would have surpassed $11 billion if this fully had played out.

Approximately 800 players would have earned a $4 billion total.

The two factions reached a tentative accord guaranteeing that the players would receive a pro-rata amount of their salaries (50.6 percent) based on how many games actually played. The owners recently proposed an 82-game schedule (of 162 games) by considerably slicing their proposed offer. The players responded with a 118-game schedule to begin in July.

The owners’ representatives have just stated they won’t even counter.

Meanwhile, the NBA, the NHL and the NFL owners and players mutually, and mostly professionally, have completed their deals and are in the process of resuming games next month in basketball and hockey. The NFL plans to start its training camps in July, then open the regular season. All three will not permit fans at their games, at least initially; the NBA will recommence with 22 teams based solely at Disney World with a condensed conclusion to the regular season, then play-ins and playoffs, and the NHL will go directly into the postseason with 24 teams positioned in two locations.

Baseball strikes out.

Where have you gone, Nolan Arenado?

The Rockies’ third baseman was to collect $35 million this season, but, in the March 26 pact, his income would have been reduced to under $18 mil. In the owners’ latest scheme, Nolan, as a top-tier player, would earn less than 30 percent of his contract.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has acknowledged that individual players could choose not to play at all if the season is unlocked.

If so, Arenado maybe has played his last game with the Rockies, especially considering that CEO Dick Monfort and general manager Jeff Bridich have shown enough rock-headedness to trade the game’s best third baseman.

But, then, it can be noticed that Monfort and Bridich publicly haven’t uttered complete sentences in months, and practically nothing since Monfort predicted 94 victories and Bridich got into a childish tantrum with Arenado. Maybe the Meatpacker and the Genius bunkered together in the bowels of Coors Field. Neither has commented individually on the coronavirus or the racial troubles affecting the United States and Colorado.

What did you expect — personal stands and understanding for the Rockies and the pair’s fellow citizens here?

The baseball owners claim they will lose $4 billion this season no matter what. It’s a threat. It’s also a lie.

So what?

Every team in Major League Baseball except the Marlins is valued, according to Forbes, at more than $1 billion (with an average of $1.85 million per). Four teams are worth more than $3 billion, and all market values will gain again once normalcy returns. What about a hardware store owner losing everything?

In 1992 a group of investors raised $140 million (including $92 mil as the franchise initiation fee) to buy the Rox. Dick and brother Charlie Monfort, and their limited partners, now own a team with a $1.75 billion evaluation — a number that would be higher if the Rockies hadn’t succumbed to one of the worst local TV revenue packages, while the other four division teams possess long-term contracts securing billions of dollars.

The owners’ idea of a 50-game-type regular schedule is beyond ludicrous. A five-round draft this week (instead of 40 rounds) is laughable. The possibility of some franchises not paying the poor, young minor leaguers their small stipends beyond June is preposterous. The Rockies, as suspected, haven’t announced their intentions and won’t even admit they’ve released 34 players.

As usual in financial disputes between sports factions, for some unfathomable reason, a high percentage of fans favor the owners. But everybody is a loser in this mess.

There will be crying in baseball.