Baseball used to regularly be described as America's favorite national pastime. Sadly, that phrase is getting closer to retirement with every passing year, as attendance at Major League Baseball games has been falling steadily since 2007.
So it's unfortunate for baseball fans that the collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the players' union has expired — meaning the first lockout in more than 25 years. The lockout prevents players from using team facilities, and free agents can't sign new contracts until a new agreement is reached.
Moneyball
The issue at play is, unsurprisingly, money. Unlike the NBA or NFL, the MLB has no direct mechanism for players to benefit from rising league revenues. That's partly contributed to why the median salary for MLB players has fallen by 30% since 2015. During that time the median NBA salary was up 50%.
One of the core issues is the disparity between teams. The New York Yankees pull in 10x the local revenue of the smallest teams, making negotiations a little unbalanced. As the Oakland Athletics General Manager put it in Moneyball: "There are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then, there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us" — that dynamic remains true today.
