December 19, 2003
The Morning After
Doug's Business of Baseball Weblog has a roundup of links both pro and con on the union's handling of the trade. Doug is quoted in the CNN/SI article:
"The union can't allow this to set a precedent," said Doug Pappas, a New York attorney and an expert in baseball salary structure and economics.
If players could negotiate a reduction in their contracts, he said, "instead of teams eating salaries the way they do currently when they dump salaries in these trades, they'll demand the savings come from the players."
Again, here's where arbitration is rearing its ugly head. The precedent isn't going to be that the union couldn't say no to other renegotiations that came down the line. The precedent would be that in a challenge to the union's no, an arbitrator would conclude that a salary reduction is perfectly in line with the union's decision on Rodriguez. If they never say yes to such a deal, they go into arbitration with the CBA in full force. If they say yes to this deal, they might lose that, and the union won't take that chance.
So I guess the Red Sox are just going to have to muddle through with Manny and Nomar. Poor them.
Posted by David Pinto at
10:15 AM
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But they could also demand more reductions...compare Edmonton's demand that Mike Comrie pay them (essentally) in order to be traded to the Mighty Ducks. In the event it turned out that Edmonton was merely tacking a condition on in order to get a better offer (they traded Comrie to Philly), but there's no doubt ownership would love to do this sort of thing more often.
I still keep wondering WHY this is wrong. Do players never go down in value?? I understand the unions position on this, but I still believe it's wrong. If a player feels like giving up the contract, he should be allowed to. It's not like teams can break the contract. The players aren't powerless in this equation, which too many people assume.