IT’S A MADD MADD WORLD. . .

The first offers and counter offers in the collective bargaining talks were exchanged by MLB and the Players Association — and to no surprise flatly rejected — last week, and while the sides are at least not throwing verbal fire bombs at each other, in all likelihood there’ll be a lockout by the owners when the present agreement expires in December. And with the business of baseball shut down, that’s when a deal will be reached. In an effort to address the tanking issue, the owners proposed a salary floor of $1 0 0 million and a first luxury tax payroll threshold of $1 8 0 million. The players liked the idea of forcing a minimum payroll on the clubs, but in the end there are going to have to be some stringent penalties on clubs that don’t comply, in order to both discourage tanking and assure that clubs receiving revenue sharing are not taking advantage of the system. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays receive approximately $6 0 million in revenue sharing and have a payroll of

$7 0 .3 million this year. By keeping their payroll low, the Rays are able to cover almost all of their player expenses with their revenue sharing and then be able to reap a huge profit from all their other millions of TV, radio and marketing revenues. As for lowering the first payroll threshold from the present $2 1 0 million to $1 8 0 million, that was never going to fly. Only a couple teams will surpass the $2 1 0 million this year, but the last thing the players would want is for clubs trying to stay under $1 8 0 million. Presently there are seven clubs with over $1 8 0 million payrolls. … It’s doubtful if this will be an issue addressed in the collective bargaining talks, but judging by the attendances of late, baseball may have a real problem. From Aug. 1 through Sept. 2 , there were 5 3 games in the majors in which the attendance was less than 1 0 ,0 0 0 . A lot of that has to do with tanking (Arizona & Baltimore ), but then you have the Rays who have been in first place most of the summer with 1 0 games of under 1 0 ,0 0 0 . It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues next year when (hopefully) there will be no further COVID restrictions and fewer teams tanking.