Manny Machado's $300 million deal doesn't heal MLB's labor woes

The San Diego Padres shocked the baseball world out of its long winter slumber on Tuesday by coming to terms with free agent Manny Machado on a 10-year, $300 million deal. The Padres!Three hundred million! It's wild.

The deal hasn't officially been announced yet because Machado has to complete a physical and sign on the dotted line, but the huge payout takes some of the urgency and empathy out of Major League Baseball's burgeoning labor woes. For the second straight year, this offseason has seen some of the game's most prominent players publicly decry a system that no longer rewards players like it did just a few years ago, before a new collective-bargaining agreement that increased penalties on teams blowing past baseball's luxury-tax threshold.

Some who hear about Machado's $300 million payday will never again be willing to abide the complaints of those who earn millions to play baseball, even if it appears teams are reaping an increasingly large portion of baseball's ever-growing revenue without reinvesting it in payroll. But a couple of other developments on Tuesday underscore the real issues the MLB Players Association now faces.

For one thing, Machado finding a new baseball home highlights the fact that Bryce Harper - like Dallas Keuchel, Craig Kimbrel and Marwin Gonzalez, among plenty others - remains unemployed. And a less-heralded transaction Tuesday put third baseman Mike Moustakas back on the Milwaukee Brewers on a one-year deal worth $10 million with a mutual option for 2020.

Moustakas turned down a $17.2 million qualifying offer from the Royals after the 2017 season under the then-reasonable assumption he'd score a multi-year contract in free agency. He is currently 30 years old, he has largely been healthy, he is a two-time All-Star who has hit 66 homers over the past two seasons, and advanced stats suggest he's better than an average everyday player. Yes, he's making $10 million to play baseball this year, and many people can never feel sorry for a guy like that. But an MLB regular of Moustakas' age and caliber settling for two consecutive one-year deals would have been unfathomable as recently as 2015.

Elsewhere, credible big-leaguers like Curtis Granderson and Derek Dietrich have inked non-guaranteed minor-league contracts. MLB front offices are a lot smarter than they used to be, and less willing to spend on average players and bench pieces they feel they can replace with young guys making the league minimum. And there's some logic to that, for sure.

But the young guys get jobbed, too. In Blue Jays camp, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is going about his business undeterred by the fact he seems clearly ready for prime time and will undoubtedly start the year in Class AAA ball so Toronto can manipulate his service time and maintain control over him for an extra season. Guerrero got a big signing bonus at age 16, but minor-league pay scale awards guys less than minimum wage for their work.

Teams are getting better at maximizing their players' value, which, again, is smart. They're operating as efficiently as they can within the parameters set forth by the CBA. But the fallout is that more of fans' money lines the pockets of owners and less of it pays the top-tier entertainers who thrill us with monster homers.

The system needs a full-blown overhaul, no matter how much Machado got.

The MLBPA needs to secure a much larger minimum salary for players in their first three years in the league, which will in turn compel clubs to more often reward mid-tier Major Leaguers with guaranteed paychecks. And though the union is dominated by veteran players with veteran interests, it would do well to take measures to fix the service-time game that teams now regularly jockey - perhaps by putting Major and minor-league service time in the same capped bucket, taking away any impetus clubs have to keep guys like Guerrero down on the farm.

Machado's contract is a good thing for the league and its players both, but it's by no means the end of hostilities between those sides. As more and more teams learn how to work the system, it becomes increasingly clear that the system needs to be re-worked.

Tuesday's big winner: Patrick Warburton

David Puddy was one of the funniest and most memorable characters on Seinfeld. Actor Patrick Warburton is good in almost everything and an in-demand voice actor for obvious reasons, but he's not above reveling in Puddy's glory at events like the New Jersey Devils' 90s night promotion. Warburton, as a face- and chest-painted Puddy, dropped the puck at the game and raised $25,000 for charity in the process. Then he wiped out leaving the ice. High-five.

Quick hits: Tebow, slow golf, tall Dirk

- The hype around Tim Tebow's baseball endeavor has died down a bit, but he's still at it. The former Heisman Trophy player is in Major League camp with the Mets, doing extremely nice things for people and facing all the associated cynicism. Our Charles Curtis argues that he's an inspiration. I'll say this much: What Tebow has already done in baseball is astonishing. He did not play the sport for 12 years and turned himself into a credible Class AA player with some shot at reaching the Majors. There are first-round draft picks who never reach his current level.

- Baseball isn't the only sport with a pace-of-play issue. PGA Tour golfer J.B. Holmes and his group took five and a half hours to play their final round in Holmes' win at the Genesis Open over the weekend, and many - including our Andy Nesbitt - think it's time for the governing body to step in and penalize him. It's sort of the same thing with baseball pitchers: We have so much information available now and these guys are so exacting, understandably, that they take forever in preparation to make sure they execute appropriately. They're trying to win, which is the whole point for them, but in doing so they're making their sport less entertaining, which is the whole point for us.

- Nick Schwartz ran down a list of the lamest nicknames in sports. I like a bunch of these. The lamest nicknames in sports are the uncreative ones that riddle baseball, in my opinion. Just adding a -y to the end of someone's name is not a good nickname.

- Dirk Nowitzki would appreciate it if parents stopped pointing out to their children how tall he is. That does seem kind of rude, but so does approaching anyone over 6'8″ and politely asking if they play in the NBA.

Weird sport Wednesday

Have you ever been playing someone in chess and thought, "man, I wish I could just wale this guy in the face instead?" Well, you're in luck: Chess boxing is a real thing, not just something the Wu Tang Clan made up. Competitors alternate between timed chess and boxing for 11 rounds - six of chess and five of boxing - and can win by checkmate, knockout, timeout, or on points.

Follow Ted Berg on Twitter at @OGTedBerg. Email him at AskTedBerg@gmail.com with questions or feedback about the Morning Win newsletter.