Talkin' Baseball... Negotiations (Say Hey!)

Over the weekend first the players and then the owners proffered counter proposals in the collective bargaining agreement negotiations. The owners termed the players' proposal "regressive bargaining". The players said the owners proposal still looked "very much like a salary cap." And the wheel goes on.

As the players and the owners play their game of poker hoping that the other will fold while chipping in $7 million revenue money a pop into the pot, three days and change remain in the negotiations. The luxury tax proposals did seem to be getting much closer but rather are becoming more and more multivariegated-percentages rise with each offense or thresholds change over time. I guess we should be happy that they are still at the table.

I am left, however, trying to reconcile their numbers. Even Doug Pappas' peerless baseball business website cannot help. The luxury tax numbers are almost always referred to by percentages and thresholds that are set independent of the team salaries. However, the reportage of the revenue sharing funds reveals numbers that just don't add up.

Here is what I mean: Using the ESPN article today and Doug Pappas' current negotiation status page as sources, in 2001 revenue sharing stood at 20% which translates into $167 million. That would mean that local revenues in total would be $835 million (if 20% of X is $167 M, then X = $167M /.2 = $835 M).

The latest proposals are 36% from the owners ($263 based on 2001 revenues) and a phased-in 33.3% from the players ($242.3 million based on 2001). The only thing is that the actual percentages don't match those numbers. Here are the numbers for each proposal, percentage and its impact based on 2001, plus the actual percentage based on 2001 total revenue ($835 million) and the resultant total revenue if the provided percentage were multiplied by the actual 2001 revenue:

 Proposal      Pct   Actual Act. Pct Resultant Revenue 
Current ('01) 20%   $167M   20%       $835 
Owner 1       N/A   $282M   33.77%    N/A
Player 1      N/A   $235M   28.14%    N/A
Owner 2       37%   $270M   32.34%   $729.73M 
Player 2      33.3% $242.3M 29.02%   $726.9M 
Owner 3       36%   $263M   31.50%   $730.56M 

The reported percentages are based on numbers that are at least $100 million less than 2001. Also, the percentages reported are off by almost $4 between the owners and the players. Maybe this can be accounted for in the rounding with such large sums. But the $100 million difference is still there. I hope there is just something that I'm missing in this, and they don't reach an agreement with the wrong numbers. I would hope that with nine-figure dollar amounts being thrown around somebody at the talks has invested in a good ten-dollar calculator.