Salary Stagnation

MLB salaries were down slightly in 2018:

The average major league salary dropped this year for the first time since 2004 and for only the fourth time since record-keeping started 50 years ago, according to the players’ association. 
The union said Friday its final average was $4,095,686, down $1,436 from $4,097,122 last year. 

Since the union started keeping track in 1967, the only previous declines had been by $66 in 1987, when owners were found to have conspired to hold down salaries among free agents; a 4 percent decline in 1995 following a 7½ -month strike that wiped out the World Series for the first time since 1904; and by 2.5 percent in 2004. 

AJC.com

For those of you scoring at home, that a miniscule 0.0003% drop; basically salaries stayed the same. Clubs have figured out they can get better value with younger players, something that was fairly clear for a long time.

For a long time, conventional wisdom in the game thought players peaked at age 30, not at age 27. (Players, front offices, and the media all bought into this despite people like Bill James saying otherwise.) That’s one reason teams were willing to give large contracts to older players. In the age of number crunching front offices, however, that is no longer the case.

The union owns a big part of this. When the players started negotiating CBAs, a lot of the owners were stuck on getting the reserve clause back, instead of adjusting to the new reality. So the players in conjunction with owners who were willing to exploit the system to win, drove up prices.

Now the union is stuck in the past. Instead of constantly fighting for shorter time periods to free agency, they worry about days off and club house food spreads. For salaries to go up, the union needs to get players to free agency early. They should fight to cut free agency time down until the reserve clause is completely gone. Level the playing field by making everyone free agents all the time, and salaries will go up again. The young will be making money instead of the old, but the young deserve it.

from baseballmusings.com http://bit.ly/2LzMDEg