Link

 

Credit: ESPN.com

 

Vladimir Guerrero, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Tejada. Big names that should get big money this offseason during the free agency signing period.

 

And if they don't get what they think they deserve, the players' union certainly will be watching -- at the very least.

 

According to the Los Angeles Times, the union is considering filing a grievance that alleges that the owners acted in collusion to fix salaries during last winter's signing season.

 

"It's important that the owners know that their actions of last year won't be swept under the rug," a person close to the union told the Times.

 

Is the union just trying to push the owners? Donald Fehr, the union's executive director, would not comment to the newspaper. Sources close to the situation told the Times on Wednesday that they did not know whether the union would act on its conviction that owners violated the bargaining agreement last winter or would just use the threat as warning for this signing period.

 

Before the start of the 2003 season, the union requested ownership documents related to player negotiations during the preceding offseason, according to the Times. These documents, along with notes obtained from agents, led the union to the following conclusions:

 

 

That the owners reported all offers through what one agent called a "central command" or information bank in a New York office.

 

 

That the owners employed the 60-40 rule, not allowing clubs from having debt larger than 40 percent of assets -- similar to a salary cap. Owners were found by arbitrators to have conspired against free agents following the 1985, '86 and '87 seasons; management settled those cases in 1990 for $280 million.

 

"It's not an easy thing to prove," one agent told the Times, "but there was a lot of circumstantial evidence out there last year. The clubs will argue that the signings of guys like Jim Thome [$72 million for six years]and Tom Glavine [$32 million for three years] serve to dispute collusion, but the union's focus is on what happened at the median level."

 

He referred to one-year, $1 million offers that players such as Kenny Lofton, Reggie Sanders and Robert Fick signed.

 

"Did the market look different last year?" Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president of labor relations, told the newspaper. "It looked different for legitimate reasons. I mean, it should not have been a shock that it looked different."

 

Manfred cited the new labor agreement, a slow economy and a tightening of credit markets in general, and "the fact that there were too many clubs too deeply in debt and losing too much money," he said.

 

"Even so," Manfred continued, "there were several big signings like Thome and Glavine and competitive bidding up and down the line. The market was different, but it didn't look anything like the collusion years of the '80s."\

:lol :lol :lol :lol :o :thumbdown :wacko : :blink:

that's idiotic