Reports: Jerry Reinsdorf not among owners drawing hardest line
Along with “Leury Garcia is a tribute band,” one of my long-running, probably-wrong-but-not-yet-disproven theories is that the White Sox won’t be able to enjoy an actual golden age until Jerry Reinsdorf fully resists the urge to try to break a union, and this lockout poses yet another test.
Reinsdorf hasn’t passed up any of the previous opportunities to swing away, including an unapologetic starring role in the 1994-95 labor stoppage that ended up derailing the most promising White Sox era in decades. This history has made it easy to assume he’s a hardliner this time around, especially a report from SNY’s Andy Martino circulated about a four-pack of owners who said Major League Baseball’s laughable last offer to the MLBP was too generous.
But Evan Drellich was finally able to get the names of those owners, and Reinsdorf is not among them…
Four Major League Baseball owners — Bob Castellini of the Reds, Chris Ilitch of the Tigers, Ken Kendrick of the Diamondbacks and Arte Moreno of the Angels — objected to raising the competitive balance tax to the levels the league ultimately proposed most recently, three people briefed on an owner-wide call held this week told The Athletic.
… although Reinsdorf’s reputation being what it is, he was the only uninvolved owner Drellich was compelled to mention by name.
One person briefed on the call noted that White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a hawk in the 1994-95 dispute, was not among those to stand in the way.
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It’s still fair to harbor suspicions, especially since Reinsdorf only speaks publicly to take victory laps on things like Harold Baines’ Hall of Fame induction and the White Sox’s first division title in 13 years.
It’s also not entirely wishful thinking that things might be different this time around. The White Sox have a top-five payroll in terms of committed money, and they’ve gotten to that number in a way Reinsdorf prefers. Rick Hahn was able to contain some of the salary escalation of his productive young players with numerous early-career extensions, while the free-agent spending has been targeted to the players at the tops of restrained markets. The best shortstop like Carlos Correa might cost $300 million, but the best catcher only cost $74 million because he was in his 30s, and a top closer commanded $20 million less.
And even if Reinsdorf is among a larger group of owners urging restraint from Rob Manfred, it’s possible that even he’s embarrassed by the cost-cutting proposed by these four owners. Drellich again:
One of the league’s efforts that irked the players was a proposal to incorporate meal money and the stipends players receive into the luxury-tax calculations. MLB, in other words, wanted to count the amount of money players receive for food against the amount of money teams can spend before they are taxed.
The luxury tax already includes some player benefit costs — it’s not just a strict accounting of player salary. But players were angry, sources said, the league would try to add something as fundamental as the cost of food as a reason to spend less on payroll.
Say what you will about Reinsdorf’s track record and willingness to open his wallet, but once players are in the fold, none of them seem to complain about how they’re treated.
It’s not “so far, so good” because everything is still so bad, but it could be worse. He’s merely cleared the lowest of bars, though, and Martino says that while these four owners felt like a penny above a $210 million luxury tax threshold was too high, he warned about a bigger cluster of owners who aren’t willing to go beyond the slightest of increases.
The tone of the Zoom call, according to three sources, made it clear that even more owners would land in the “no” camp if the first CBT threshold rose above $220 million, the number they were about to propose.
While the MLBPA is mulling a response to the dead-on-arrival proposal they received in Florida, it’s made a nice little PR maneuver by teaming up with the AFL-CIO to pay employees that are on the owners’ payrolls.
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The Tigers and Angels are basically begging the league to stop them from agreeing to ridiculous contracts instead of…you know…not agreeing to ridiculous contracts.
Fun part was old man Ilitch didn’t give a rip about the CBT, he specifically said if there was someone available he thought would help them win a title then he’d go over. Then he said “I’m not supposed to say that”
The son, on the other hand, seems like he wants it lower so he’s not expected to spend over a certain amount.
Yeah, the old misaligned incentive. The old man would’ve given an arm and a leg (figuratively and maybe literally) to win a title, but the kid 1) needs it to last longer and 2) may be of the Manfred mindset that the trophy’s just a piece of metal.
oh so NOW arte moreno is complaining about spending money lol
i would guess that Jerry is in the latter camp of owners who don’t want to raise the CBT much albeit not hardlining. the Sox running as a team with a mid- top ten salary total is perfectly reasonable to me tbh. they’re a big market team and should be acting as such, but i’ll admit they aren’t a huge-market team like LAD, NYY, BOS, and CHC. They should spend on players broadly on par with Atlanta, Houston, Toronto, Washington, the Mets, Angels, San Francisco, etc. Right now
I have more complaints about how they’re spending it (Keuchel, Kimbrel) and not spending it (would like to see them go heavy on analytics) than the total amount spent.
Keuchel was a second choice who signed a pretty short contract and contributed well in the first year of that contract. Kimbrel was widely regarded as the best reliever available at the deadline. Folks reasonably argued whether or not he was worth the opportunity cost, but nobody argued he was overpaid on a pure dollar basis until after he fell apart with the Sox. Two reasonably good decision making processes didn’t result in reasonably good results, but that’s the luck of the draw.
On the flip side, you get lucky with guys like Rodon and Garcia – two very questionable calls when first guessing that paid off pretty well in terms of value for money.
This is what pisses me off about their lack of serious activity after the 2020 season. No reasonable observer would have assumed Keuchel could repeat a 1.99 ERA and top-5 CYA finish, yet they made virtually no effort to bolster their starting pitching staff (which still managed to be arguably the best in baseball thanks to Cease having a breakout and Rodon suddenly being what we all thought he was after years of falling well short of our hopes) and willingly went with predictable flops in areas they could easily have improved.
The Sox were 50M behind the Astros last year, hence the results in October. I’ll believe the Sox will be in the top tier of payrolls when I see it, when the season actually starts and that is still the case. They are only like 10M away from being like 10th, would not surprise me if they are not even top 10 by the time all is said and done.
At their current payroll I think they would have been 7th or 8th by 2021 standards. Once free agency reopens I think they’ll probably wind up somewhere in the 7th-10th range depending on which teams get chippy with their dough, but that’s assuming they don’t salary dump Kimbrel or Keuchel somehow.
Moreno being on the list of holdouts over an increased CBT just lends credence to the opinion that owners do not care about winning. On the one hand, Moreno HAS spent money on his team, though much of it rather poorly. He is now in the unique position of having the best player of this era at possibly the tail end of his prime, the reigning MVP entering his prime, and one of the best third basemen in the game, but an underwhelming supporting cast and an almost completely barren farm system. Basically, the only way he can put this team over the top is to be able to spend his way to the playoffs, but a low CBT would just make it harder for him to do that.
I’m 99% sure that the multiple reports on which owners opposed that level of CBT are true, however I think we should keep in mind that leaking this info can be part of a negotiating strategy, As in, implying that the players can’t possibly get a higher CBT, because some owners opposed even the one that they already offered.
That goes both ways, and I think it’s an unsafe to assume that the owners are a bloc. Some of them want to play and I can’t imagine Ilitch and Moreno like to see their name in the paper and disadvantaged for free agents when the time does come to play. This could be moderate owners telling players, “see $220 is a pretty good deal.” It could also be player friendly owners (such as they are) telling their peers, “stop being a jag or I’ll continue to name and shame you.”
That’s not Reinsdorf’s game or interests. He runs a business, not an ideology. He takes a strong stance with the union when he thinks he needs to. But he is not trying to break them or anything. He honored pension commitments for staff when other teams were trying to break them.
They’re not union, though. He enjoys setting the terms, which is one of the reasons why he opposed Manfred.
Agreed. Jerry is benevolent at his discretion, not by trade. So, yeah, he’ll dole out an above-market contract for a personal favorite like Abreu (along with a custom ring for hitting for the cycle), or give an ineffective Paul Konerko a few million for a retirement tour, but if it’s something put to paper as policy then he will set the terms in his favor to the maximum he can get away with.