Earlier tonight, the MLB Players Association voted against a MLB proposal to start the 2020 season — seemingly setting the stage for commissioner Rob Manfred to order a season schedule based upon the late-March agreement between the parties. But there’s no imminent plan for Manfred to do so, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports (via Twitter).
Just what Manfred and the owners are planning next isn’t yet clear. Further delay could provide some public relations cover for ownership, which has sought to drive down labor costs by staging a shorter season. But such a tactic risks strengthening the players’ case in a potential future grievance action. The agreement required Manfred to make “best efforts to play as many games as possible.”
Manfred and all thirty team control persons will speak on a conference call this evening, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post (via Twitter). But the league’s next move may not even be decided on the call. One might have anticipated that there’d be greater internal clarity by this point, but it seems the league still has a need for further deliberation before it decides how to handle the players’ (widely anticipated) rejection.
i’m not want to comment on here, but this is just getting ridiculous.
what a joke for everyone involved….
Manfred’s legacy is on the line…
He’s a commissioner of baseball, has very little impact on history. His legacy doesn’t matter. His job in this situation is to do what the owners tell him to do.
Previous commissioners have risen above being solely focused on ownership before, the question is will he in my view (he doesn’t have to set a schedule after all).
I agree, the 2020 MLB Season is nothing in the annals of history but I wasn’t going there…
Spelling error, Dawg. One two many “n’s” in “annals.”
Well played sir, well played
Have to disagree with your assertion that other commissioners have risen above being just for the owners.
Fact is the owners hire the commissioner. He will always do their bidding. This has been the case since Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
It’s not Manfred it’s the owners. Manfred works for them. They’ve made him look bad during this negotiation process.
100% Manfred will fiddle fart around until the magic date for 50 games to work comes around. Then it will “all come together” magically.
Nah he won’t let it go that far. The magic number right now is about 60-63 games. Assuming a week to report, a couple of days for tests and a 3 week spring training. I can’t see them waiting 10-13 days to do something.
My guess is they are going to decide between just calling the season off due to covid or whether they go ahead and still play even though many teams will lose money on the season.
And before anyone tries to spin this as baseball having endless money, teams like the Brewers will lose money if they play a 55 game season without fans and they don’t make extra playoff money. It won’t be a small amount of money either.
endermlb
That number of games is based on no virus. We have a virus. We’ll need more off days for testing. If you play game after game after game, what good is testing? You’ll be contagious before you test positive. To keep it contained, you’ll need off days.
Even more reason to agree to set up a schedule to space games out and allow testing!!!
boo. hoo. to. them. sell the team.
They’re billionaires, they can afford to lose money this season. If they don’t play this year they risk losing fans for many seasons to come.
Since baseball fans are, for the most, idiots there is no chance of losing fans. They let the owners and players play them all the time like a cheap violin and hold neither accountable.
azbravesfan –
They’re multimillionaires, players can afford to lose money this season. If they don’t play this year they risk losing fans for many seasons to come. If fans are gone payrolls will shrink, and veterans will go unsigned at unheard of numbers while young cheap talent fills in the rosters.
Meanwhile, I’d be interested in knowing what the splits are in ownership interests for every team.
I don’t think outside a handful that many teams are 100% owned by a single individual anymore outside those held technically by corporate interests and then shares held by others.
It’s easy to call a group collectively billionaires, but when you reduce team value by liabilities then chop it into ownership shares I’d wager the top 100 players in MLB have similar net worth and greater yearly income than many who hold ownership shares in a team.
AtlSoxFan – net worth? Not a chance. Check out franchise valuations sometime, and consider that, based on sale prices, teams have been among the fastest-appreciating assets around.
As for ender’s claim that teams like the Brewers will lose money, those assertions would be a lot more believable if even one team would fully open its books. That they won’t, even in negotiations supposedly necessitated by their prospective loss this season, is at least a little telling.
Two valid questions, but I don’t see the gap between players and owners’ net wealth close at all. A Rod had two of the biggest contracts in MLB history and he still needs a billionaire partner to get in the game to buy a franchise. Jeter is a minority partner, as are Magic and Jordan.
The untold story is the players who have a career for 1- 3 seasons and never cash in on a seven figure contract, paying huge taxes and wind up not being millionaires at all. Those guys are over 60% of the union membership, but how many of the gang of 38 do they have? None, I’d say.
60% of 30 of the 38, I guess, using your numbers. The 30 team reps hold a vote for their team, then send one vote into the union. They’re supposed to cast their vote in line with how the team voted. I have no idea if they have/allow bad faith electors or not. Nor do I know how they handle it if their team has an unbreakable tie.
Braves have open books, I guess you have to believe now.
JP8 and those books show insane profits, which doesn’t even include revenue from MLBAM. blogs.fangraphs.com/braves-print-money-for-liberty…
67redsox – agree 100 percent…..and like sheep they will pay higher and higher ticket prices gladly….
AtlSoxfan – you got it. Many of the players have more wealth than many of the individuals in the ownership groups
Insane profits is a magnificent stretch. Craig Edwards isn’t an accountant or a financial analyst by any stretch of the imagination.
Liberty Media invested 625 million into the battery and stadium. He refers to the Depreciation and Amortization of a piece of that investment as essentially an accounting trick to pay no taxes. That shows a fundamental lack of knowledge about the topic he’s speaking about.
Craig is a great baseball scout/analyst. Would not listen to him for financial analysis.
Why would Manfred implement more games than were offered in the last proposal, when every chance they’ve gotten, the owners have cried poor and more poor the more games played.
The owners had a chance for expanded playoffs for two years, increased advertising rights, increased on field coverage capabilities, and freedom from grievance liability at 70 games (the players last offer).
The playoffs are too long now, you can’t have multiple 7 game playoffs, unless you decrease the games to allow 2 more teams in each league!! Time to shake things up, each team leading the league by All-Star game and end of the season leaders get automatically into playoffs!!
No team has opened their books so the Brewers losing money is not true. There is so many streams of baseball income that never mentioned. Open the books!
I really don’t think anybody cares about a baseball season anymore
Manfred is a joke he’s going to lose his job over this crap
and so is Tony Clark.
This is the actual root cause of the issue in my opinion.
I think both sides look awful but either Clark or Manfred have to go before the CBA negotiation. You cannot start a deal off with both of these guys still representing their sides. To be honest I think they both should be fired. The owners should have started with much better offers and the players stopped caring if a deal was made a month ago and didn’t even try.
Ender, they both opened with equally horrible offers.
Remember, MLBPA’s first offer expanded the season to run with a Christmas time world series.
He’s not going to lose his job. The owners are telling him what to do and say. They pay his salary. He didn’t apply for the job online at job2careers website
It’s like watching a comedian bomb on stage, or a singer that can’t sing – it’s the same uncomfortable, make-it-stop feeling. Pathetic, truly pathetic.
Well put
The players believe the owners will play the season. In order for that to happen, the owners need to lose less money having a season than cancelling the season.
Why should the owners have a season if it’s going to cost them money?
Because they have a contract that requires them to play “as many games as possible’.
And as possible could be zero. And it talks about “with fans”.
It’s not an irrelevant caveat.
That’s a tough position to support with the proposals and statements that have been made.
There could easily be secondary grievances based on no fans in attendance or not willing to play past Sept 27, but those terms only require discussions and the parties made their intentions clear early in the process. I don’t see either of those claims going very far.
What is a tough position to support is forcing the owners to lose more money opening their businesses. This isn’t the airlines.
I keep saying, how did the Kris Bryant grievance work out? That’s as slam dunk as slam dunk can be. I was really hoping Bryant would win.
The agree meant was based on fans, fans are not there. And based on what has happened this last week, I don’t think the Union has a leg to stand on.
I did not expect Bryant to win his grievance. A team is allowed to keep a player in the minors for financial reasons. There is no agreement to prohibit that. This is far different.
The requirement for “as many games as possible” is based on several grounds, none of which is the owners don’t want to pay the players. There is “economic feasibility”, a claim which will require them to open the books quite a bit.
There is nothing in the agreement that says prorated salaries are based on fans attending games. That would have to be stated explicitly, which it wasn’t.
They can try to make it about health reasons, but with what they’ve proposed so recently, those claims ring hollow.
The owners still don’t want a grievance and would be willing to negotiate to settle it, but being stuck on the same salary amount won’t get them there.
A team is not allowed to keep players in the minor leagues to manipulate his service time.
And it’s as clear as clear can be that’s exactly what the Cubs did.
Service time manipulation is allowed. The arbitrator ruled that they can do exactly that. The grievance was based on a claim of bad faith. There is nothing prohibiting the practice, and that’s why he lost the grievance.
Patrick, you miss the part where the requirement for Manfred to implement a schedule falls to approval of 75% or more of owners.
The players could’ve played more games by accepting an earlier proposal at reduced salary.
I don’t think the text said “play as many games as possible at full prorated salaries”… it said as many as possible. More games were offered players.
Also, players never finished or ratified a health and safety protocol. Can’t resume games without that, it’s cart before horse.
MLBPA asked for training and team facilities to reopen before protocols after teams closed them due to health and safety concerns… now you’ve got infections running through staff and players.
The claims and defenses are almost limitless, and likely so overlapping and convoluted that nothing comes from them.
Lol.
Time to shut down this clown show. The stranglehold this phony “union” has over mlb has got to end. Shut it down until 2022. I think everyone will be just fine.
So I made a mistake in watching Field of Dreams the other night and I almost lost it when James Earl Jones gave the speech at the end about how despite whatever has happened to America over the years, baseball has continued on.
Can we just get a season already?!?!?!?!?!?
Is a 50 or 60 game season with no fans really a season??
It’s no ones favorite tv show.
They just want to grab whatever money they can, and think that we will all tune into the postseason like its actually something.
People talk about the long term damage to the game if they dont play.
What about if they try and pass off what they are able and/or willing to do as an actual season?
That’s worse in my mind.
I’d still watch it. Baseball is actually my favorite TV show right now as well. Mostly because all of my favorite shows got awful or ended in the past few seasons. Heck I even find myself watching old games between teams I don’t care about at all because nothing else is on TV.
I’m watching my son play PS4 major league baseball the show. A lot of times it’s better than the real thing.
Yeah I play OOTP 21 quite a bit but that still allows me to have something on the TV at the same time, thus the old baseball games~.
I feel you. TV is just trash. The ONLY redeeming thing about tv was sports. Get yourself a PS4 and MLB the show 20. Its awesome
The players will pout and suck on purpose. Guaranteed. Why would anyone watch half ass effort. It’s hard enough to get Machado to run out a ground ball. He won’t even take step out of box on any grounder this year. ⚾️
I wonder if baseball can recover from this because I don’t see how all this isn’t a critical wound to the sport. Whether you believe one side or the other is correct..or maybe just MORE correct, both sides are coming off as tone deaf and greedy.
The cheating scandals were already a pretty bad blow to baseball but after all this, I am starting to take more seriously the option for myself to just walk away from baseball.
I’ve resisted talking about this because if I were to post something like “that’s it, Im done with baseball” I fear I would just be an addict running back to his muse.
It surprises me more and more how much baseball fandom is like a failing romantic relationship. You want to walk away but you know you still love your partner.
Replace “your partner” at the end with “your deadbeat abusive partner and stepchild who steals money from your wallet”
LOL! Ya I guess that captures the nature of the relationship better.
The number one sticking point has moved from the number of games played to the right to file litigation. The players are putting it back in the owners without comment or request. Now they just want to litigate.
I am happy that Manfred did not do what Boras expected him to do. I just hope the owners just use the virus as cover to cancel the season.
That would sadly be the best solution at this point in time.
The issue is Tony Clark. Manfred stopped short of saying as much on ESPN. The plan proposed by the owners and mlb was fair- these players are losing fans by the minute at this point.
The problem is Scott Boras just like Trevor Bauer pointed out. He has the attitude that the players are 100% of the game. But he forgets that without owners and fans they are not millionaires.
This is all just pure stupidity, they are worried about the money instead of the game we all need, damage has been done much like the strike, will be hard for either side to be seen as a keeper of Americas pastime, so sad, I, like many i’m sure are totally pissed off at both sides, no one has more blame, both have to share the blame and admit it, otherwise my favorite sport is going down the toilet like after the strike, and if they are worried about money now, just wait and they will see the fans response, it will not be pretty…
This is like watching two teams in the World Series that I don’t like.
I’m going to pay attention, but I really don’t care who wins.
You said it, brother.
The primary issue has been the owners’ unwillingness to play as many games as possible and pay the players prorated salaries, as they agreed to do in March. That is the basis of a grievance.
There is a clause in the agreement that requires the parties to discuss playing games into October. The owners shut that down immediately, as they can do.
There is a clause that requires both parties to discuss the economic feasibility of playing games without fans or at neutral venues. Nothing requires the players to take salary cuts beyond prorated salaries. And they made that clear last March.
There is a clause that allows the parties to agree to expand the playoffs. And they did that. That benefits the owners.
The players constantly coming back with schedules that end after Sep 27 and the owners coming back with more salary cuts was a complete waste of time.
When the owners finally agreed to prorated salaries, they proposed 12 games fewer than they had proposed just five days earlier.
It’s all so disingenuous.
NEW YORK (AP) — Details of the agreement Thursday between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, as obtained by The Associated Press:
STARTING SEASON
There must be no government restrictions on mass gatherings or travel restrictions throughout the U.S. and Canada, provided the commissioner will consider “appropriate substitute neutral sites where economically feasible.” The commissioner must determine, after consulting with the union and medical experts, “that it does not pose an unreasonable health and safety risk to players, staff or spectators to stage games in front of fans in each of the 30 clubs’ home ballparks.” MLB and the union will discuss the economic feasibility of playing games at neutral sites or without fans. The commissioner has the right to suspend or cancel games after the start of the season if government restrictions or travel conditions change.
apnews.com/dd87bcc774d608e53624594fe56fab0c
Wonder what appropriate neutral sites are left with the sunbelt seeing record infections… even if you disregard all the other language about travel and safety issues for all concerned including spectators.
Seems like a grievance-killing silver bullet
Play will resume at some point and all this fan anger and angst will all be in the past. Just like always. Ho hum.
Can we get Bud Selig back? I mean I never thought id say that lol. Manfred is a joke
Phillies have 9 players and coaches infected. No way to move forward. All facilities shut down now. Owners will cancel season.
That is exactly what should happen. I really hope teams stop dealing with Boras and his puppet Clark
They made a deal in March so if the players rejected this new deal how does Manfred not have a decision on what the season would look like set in place? He has had plenty of time to talk to his bosses the owners to discuss what it should be and when to start. Every other league is trying to find a way back to playing except MLB. Man I miss baseball.
50 minutes before that tweet he said that Manfred would be implementing a 60 game season so forgive me for being skeptical about any Nightengale breaking news.
And then based on more information he said not so fast.
When news changes, so do opinions.
And I would consider that if not for the fact that Nightengale flip flops alllllll the time.
Any owner, who rejects playing a season (and its crap we can no longer get the expanded playoffs- MY TEAM NEEDED THAT) needs to be publicly revealed. They should then be forced to sell the team to someone who WANTS THE GAME PLAYED
How do you force someone to sell their business?
Ask Donald Sterling and Frank McCourt.
It’s not their business. Its MLB’s, who allows them to franchise.
Owners are just as entitled to vote their personal interests, or what they feel those are.
No different than those union reps and execs that torpedoed the best chance of having a season earlier tonight for… what? A right to be obstructionist? To inflict pain on fans? To file grievances that the plain language of the march agreement torpedoes under defining conditions for start of season requirements?
This is the same union that protected the Astros and the same Commish who was afraid to hammer them. Wimps all the way around.
Union doesn’t get to pick and choose which dues paying members they protect. They have to protect all of them, no matter how lousy they are.
Its a problem all unions eventually have to face. An employer i used to work for had to fire the same employee three different times before they could get rid of him. And we all wanted him gone too. Ultimately he ended up rather vulgarly sexually harassing a coworker in front of a half dozen witnesses and then the company was finally able to get rid of him. If he kept his mouth shut he’d probably still be dead weight there.
Many unions have issues with seniority giving disproportionate benefits to members with less service time. MLB is no exception. If the players gave up something at the top of the scale, the vast majority of it’s members could benefit greatly.
If you cut salaries above $20 million, how much would that free up to give everyone else a nice raise?
They always say there’s no plans for counter proposals yadda yadda yadda. 24 hours later theres a counter off. 12 hours later its rejected. I expect manfred to do something by Wednesday
With 40 plus positive infections the owners are going to cancel the season. At least they can easily justify that against a grievance
For players union to try and argue that the “discussion about economic feasibility of baseball going forward without fans” language had nothing to do with how much players eould be paid is just ridiculous. Tony Clark shouldn’t have accepted the additional contract language if he wasn’t prepared to make further adjustments of player salaries when season was played without fans (which was a very high probability scenario).
It’s not that the clause about discussing feasibility of playing without fans has :”nothing to do” with cutting salaries, but the clause does not require players to agree to further salary cuts. It’s not stated and not implied. There are other clauses that provide for making up revenue, including playing into October and expanding the playoffs. Those are in there. Nothing about salary cuts at all.
Of course not. Manfred will try to string this out a little longer to get a shorter season. This likely would have been settled by now if the owners had not asked the players to give up their right to file a grievance. But that is on both sides, as each side has offered up proposals with items they knew the other side would reject.
Its like going to a concert that begins at 8 and now its 10 and no musicians in sight. the fans get restless and start to riot. Next time around nobody will go to their concert because how they were treated last time. that is what the owners face watching their product go down the drain.
At this point, I hope there isn’t a season and the players get nothing.
Strange comment there, amc, for someone to post on the MLB rumors website. If you hate the players, how to you care about MLB season? Do you like watching the owners in their luxury box? Or, if you just like watching a game played by just anyone, you could go to an amateur game or pull up a replay. Nah, we all like MLB because the players are so damn good!
I love the GAME more than the players or owners.
I agree. At this point the union and the players are just posturing for their grievance. I too hope the season is canceled, next year as well and some people pay with their careers for the MLBPA’s stupidity. Reminds me of when Richie Philips busted the umpires union with his mass resignation stupidity .
I don’t understand why people are upset over a shortened season. It sucks for statistics and I love having so many games. I just don’t get the argument about the best teams not making the playoffs. It shouldn’t take more than 50 games for a good team to be good.
May I introduce you to the World Champion 2019 Washington Nationals.
Time for a fan strike. Don’t watch, don’t buy merchandise, don’t pay any attention.
Predictable move by Manfred, the owners are going to want him to stale and drag this out someway another week so they can get the games reduced to around 55 games but needs a few more days to hit that spot.
Next step is clear.
The MLBPA Clownshow gets in front of some cameras to say:
“Tell Us When and Where”.
Bye Bye, MLBPA
It appears neither side wants to play. They just volley the ball back over the net and point and say “look they don’t want to play”
BREAKING
Ben Nicholson-Smith
@bnicholsonsmith
·
1m
MLB owners voted unanimously to go ahead with the 2020 season under the terms of the March 26th agreement per league release. So there will be baseball this year – pandemic permitting, that is.
This is complicated. I will admit that I almost always side with the players, so there is a bit of bias on my part. First, the owners and Manfred have been delaying the start of the season since the start of these negotiations. They essentially proposed the same plan to the players three different times. 2nd, Contrary to popular belief, a large majority of players in the majors are not making millions, they have a short window to capitalize on their talents, and they are the ones exposed to the coronavirus. (Doesn’t even include the risk anyone outside of the majors is exposed to) 3rd, I want baseball as much as anyone. Play 50 games, hell play 40 games, I don’t care, I just want to see the game. Depending on how much of a spike we see in cases over the next few days will determine if there is a season. I just hope that 2021 looks more optimistic than 2020 at this point. The new CBA is coming and both sides are pretty fed up with the other. The game being played is the most important part IMO, please make that happen.
Is that woman in the picture his bodyguard?
Lies.