So let's talk about the greedy baseball players. A thread: /1

The average Opening Day salary for an MLB player has remained flat since 2016. During that time, baseball owners experienced four straight seasons of record revenue growth. /2

That made it 17 consecutive record-growth years for owners of MLB teams. Revenue in 2019 was $10.7 Billion. Gross revenues have increased 386 percent since Bud Selig became commissioner in 1992. This is the most profitable era in the history of baseball ownership. /3

So, good times for owners. Would you like to become one? You cannot. Neither can Warren Buffett nor anyone else, except when voted in. This is a closed-loop system of 30 franchises, protected by a federal anti-trust exemption. /4

Rob Manfred says about 40% of MLB revenue is tied to the gate, and thus owners will lose money this summer if fans cannot attend 2020 games. Would you like to see that number proven? You cannot. Neither can the players. /5

(Disclosure: I have a son in the minor leagues. He is not a member of the MLBPA, and thus not a party of any of this.) /6

Because baseball franchises are almost exclusively privately held, they can cook the books to exclude "non-baseball" revenue (i.e., skyrocketing land, stadium & franchise value, surrounding business/housing owned by the investment group, BAMTech sale, etc.). /7

This is Hollywood accounting, certainly nothing new. It's how a movie that grosses $258M internationally can be shown not to have turned a profit. Players do not share in revenue that does not "count." /8

That is to say nothing of the fact that MLB's massive national broadcast deals remain in place, nor that the league's most profitable annual window, the playoffs, will likely expand from 10 to 14 teams. More playoffs = more $$$. /9

"But the owners take all the risk!" You are perhaps thinking of a business in open competition. This is an MLB profit center. Average team operating profit rose 25% last year alone, per Forbes, and year-over-year value increase has been generational. /10

Owners are entitled to make money, right? Of course they are. And they did not additionally compensate players one penny for any of the record recent years of profit-taking. In fact, players' share of "baseball revenues" has been declining, not gaining. /11

Now, after years of run-up, the owners want the players to cushion them against some potential short-term losses. But they won't open their books to show their negotiating partners what those losses might look like, or why. /12

Manfred, a Harvard-trained labor lawyer, is an expert at spinning this particular strain of horseshit. The upshot is that players may appear either ungrateful or spiteful. That's an odd approach, considering the players are the product. /13

The players still have to negotiate. Whether they do well or poorly by themselves is on their leadership. The last CBA was a walkover win for the owners, and it won't get fixed in the next two weeks. /14

But the next time your sports-fan buddy - or media dude - gets up on two hind legs to bleat about how the stubborn players are preventing America from being bathed in baseball's soothing balm, know what's really happening: /15

The owners are using the occasion of a pandemic to try to re-write their deal with players - and it's a deal they're already winning. Who's greedy again? /End