Why Aren't Baseball Players Be Athletic?

[Cornbread Maxwell]

I'm not sure your post offers much insight into the game of baseball, but your impeccable usage of grammar more than makes up for it.

[Boris]

Football players tried to strike and look what happened to them. They got spanked by the owners and entered into one of the most one sided labor agreements I've ever seen; well except for baseball. But baseball is one sided towards the players. The ability to organize and strike is not sufficient to give one group tremendous bargaining power.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
Football players tried to strike and look what happened to them. They got spanked by the owners and entered into one of the most one sided labor agreements I've ever seen; well except for baseball. But baseball is one sided towards the players. The ability to organize and strike is not sufficient to give one group tremendous bargaining power.

[/ QUOTE ] As someone already pointed out, the pool of available talented players to play in the event of a strike is incredibly small.

Also when players go on strike, it hurts the owners far more than it does the players. So in the case of MLB players union, they in fact have tremendous leverage when they threaten a strike.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
Basketball salaries are heavily skewed towards the very best players in the league.

[/ QUOTE ]

FWIW, both mean and median salary in basketball are about 2x of baseball.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Basketball salaries are heavily skewed towards the very best players in the league.

[/ QUOTE ]

FWIW, both mean and median salary in basketball are about 2x of baseball.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think having less players has something to do with that. I can't recall, which one has a higher minimum salary for rookies and veterans? I think baseball might be higher for rookies, but NBA is more for vets.

[Ulysses]

Baseball recently increased rookies from 200 to 300. Basketball starts at 350 and goes to 1M. A cursory Google search did not turn up the MLB veteran minimum, but I'm sure it's easy to find.

Anyway, I don't agree with Boris' contention that the highest paid athletes are the most athletic. Just wanted to point out that even if that contention were true, it would point to basketball, not baseball.

[Boris]

[ QUOTE ]
As someone already pointed out, the pool of available talented players to play in the event of a strike is incredibly small.

[/ QUOTE ]

No [censored] Cracker. You wanna know why the pool of available players is so small? It's because baseball requires a higher level athletic ability. Athletic ability is the scarce resource. The more you got, the more dough you get. See when the football players go on strike the owners don't give a rats ass because they can easily find replacement players. You know why they can find replacement players? Because football players are a dime a dozen. Because relative to baseball, football doesn't require that much athletic ability.

[ThaSaltCracka]

touche then.

I agree with you.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Baseball has the minor leagues, which are full of players fighting to get into the majors. Do you know what happens if they cross that line? No MLB Players Union for them, and none of the rights afforded to those members. Therefore it behoves anyone with any chance to make it to the majors to toe what is essentially the party line and not cross the strike line. Besides they still play minor league baseball even if the majors go on strike, and there are thousands of minor league players because each major league team has 3 full time minor league teams as well as 3 or 4 developmental minor league teams. Therefor the pool is very small of available "scab" players.

Football is different. There is no official minor league system but there is the Arena football league, the CFL, and NFL Europe. None of these players are in anyway affiliated with any NFL team. Not to mention the thousands of ex college players who didn't make it to the NFL. So therefor the NFL owners have literally thousands of players to choose from who have next to nothing to lose by crossing the strike line.

The difference here is not in the amount of players playing the sport outside of the professional level, it is the willingness of said players to actually cross the strike line and play. Those attempting to play baseball have much much more to lose if they are able to play Major League Baseball after the strike is over than football players do if they are able to play in the NFL after a strike.

In fact there are a few players in the majors who crossed the strike line in 94 and none of them are in the MLB players union, so IIRC correctly those select players do not have guranteed contracts like the rest of the players, which coincidentally is something NFL players have to deal with as well.

[goofball]

supply and demand.

12 players on an NBA team.
25 players on an MLB team.