Max Scherzer took questions on the lockout and what the players want in a deal. Two things interest me. The first:

So, is this about paying younger players more?

Scherzer: Well, that’s the kind of third key component to our economic proposals. When you look back at the history of our union, we made a deal called the grand bargain. The grand bargain is that you make less money early in your career so that you can make more money later in your career. Teams have shown that they’re not willing to pay for players’ past production for a whole slew of reasons. And if that’s the case, that’s the case. But if we’re going to look at players that way, then we need to then allocate more money to players earlier in their career. We’re seeing that happen more than ever now, of front offices chiding away middle-class free agents. That’s going at the fundamental part of the grand bargain, and a solution must be found to balance it.

UnitedNewsPost.com

This grand bargain is like not bunting to break up a no-hitter, an unwritten rule. The owners wanted to control players as long as possible; Marvin Miller wanted a limited supply of free agents so that bidding would be high. Most players never got paid later because most players aren’t good enough to stick around long enough to become free agents. It looked like a grand bargain, but it really was the owners not realizing for a long time that they were paying for declines.

The second has to do with tanking:

Honestly, I believe that because what we’re fighting for is integrity. It’s about how the game is being played and how the rules of the game are affecting the competition of play. It’s obvious that we see teams tanking. I’m not here to sit here and say an owner is an evil person for tanking, because the strategy can work. But we feel the tanking has increased because of the rigid slot values of the draft picks. The amateur draft and the international market have incredible surplus value. That’s why the top picks are so coveted. The only way the CBA allows teams to get those players is by losing. That has become the winning strategy, yet that shouldn’t be a winning strategy in professional sports. That doesn’t sit well with players, and it affects a lot of different markets and guys’ ability to live out their dreams to play baseball. Additionally, when you have that tanking component in there, it also leads to service-time manipulation. As these teams gear up for their window, watching teams manipulate prospects’ clocks is wrong. It’s changing free agency from what it was supposed to be. Free agency’s supposed to be six years, and they’re manipulating it into seven years and that’s not OK in our book. And that’s a work stoppage issue for us. And so, like I said, all the players understand that and we’re willing to fight for that.

I pretty much agree with everything here, but I also don’t remember the MLBPA fighting against this issue when it was introduced. It would be nice if the MLBPA took the position that all amateurs should be free agents, but I suspect the players will agree to some kind of lottery, which won’t make a bit of difference. At least get rid of limitations based on the draft slot.