J.C. Bradbury goes looking for collusion and finds none. In my opinion, what’s going on is that clubs have better information, so their initial bids are going to be close. It’s probably good for the union to call collusion every once in a while to keep the clubs on their toes and make their members happy, but the chance of it actually happening now seem rather small.
Yeah right, competitive pricing in an industry that is a monopoly exempt from anti-trust regulations and which shares revenues. Hoo boy.
Maybe thats why John Henry shouts about eliminating revenue sharing, perhaps a threat to teams dependent on it if they dare overpay and drive up prices for the big market teams who depend on signing FA’s to fill holes. They might lose a good thing, so with the SABER types saying power and driving in runs are not that important, they have a good excuse for their fans to pass up guys who hit HR and drive in runs. Good glove guys are a dime an dozen and will always be cheap, not so guys who can hit 35-40 HR, they are always a relative rarity.
The absence of evidence is not disproof. I worked in a global industry controlled by 3 companies, and the CEO’s met on an annual basis to “collude”. I heard that from the companies President over drinks. Nothing gets written down, it’s a handshake agreement. Anyone breaking it risks price wars (lower prices of goods services) and employee raids (wage inflation). Nobody wants this, competition, yes, but within limits. Full competition is a capitalists worst nightmare.
So they honour the agreement (sometimes stretching it, and if caught they hear about it). Try proving it, no way.
If Bradbury ever did find evidence and wrote about it he might find his sources and access to MLB FO types gone.
@ptodd: What global industry did you work in?