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2021 CBA

MLB, MLBPA Reach Deal On Health And Safety Protocols

By Connor Byrne | February 9, 2021 at 10:55am CDT

Feb. 9: The league has formally announced this year’s health-and-safety agreement. The on-field alterations include the return of seven-inning doubleheaders and runners on second base to begin extra innings. Any player is permitted to work as a pitcher in a given game — a departure from the rules the league had previously planned to put into place that prohibited position players pitching until a certain inning or six-run deficit was in place.

There will also be “strict” enforcement of of unsportsmanlike conduct violations that break physical distancing guidelines (i.e. players and coaches going out of their way to argue in an umpire’s face, bench-clearing brawls, etc.).

From a roster construction standpoint, the standard roster size will revert to 26 players until a September expansion to 28. In the event of a Covid-19 outbreak within a club, those teams will be permitted to add players to the MLB roster and return them to the minors, without burning minor league options or placing them on waivers, once their infected players are cleared to return from Covid protocols. Teams will again travel with five-man taxi squads.

MLB is also enforcing facemasks “other than for players on the field during a game or during pre-game warmups,” enhancing its contact-tracing capabilities and adding mental health resources for each club. Players who come in contact with a confirmed positive case of Covid-19 will now be subject to a week-long quarantine and must test negative on the fifth day of said quarantine.

The full scope of the changes and a detailed, point-by-point description can be seen in MLB’s official press release.

Feb. 8, 9:31pm: It looks as if we will see a 10-team playoff in 2021, Sherman writes. A 26-man roster that expands to 28 in September may also be in the offing, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com.

8:19pm: Major League Baseball and the MLBPA have reached an agreement on health and safety protocols for spring training and the regular season, Joel Sherman of the New York Post tweets. Hannah Keyser of Yahoo Sports previously reported a deal could be in place as early as tonight.

According to Keyser, the league will keep seven-inning doubleheaders and the runner on second base in extra innings around during the upcoming campaign. However, there will not be a universal designated hitter in 2021, meaning pitchers will go back to hitting for at least another season as the league and the union negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement before ’22 (Sherman confirms Keyser’s report). Questions about the universal DH have loomed large this offseason and affected such high-profile free agents as Nelson Cruz (Twins) and Marcell Ozuna (Braves), though those two sluggers have agreed to new contracts in recent days.

The league and the union haven’t been able to agree on much lately, including MLB’s 154-game regular-season proposal for 2021. But there’s at least more clarity on how the upcoming season will look, thanks in part to Monday’s news. Barring any COVID-related changes, spring training will commence Feb. 17 and a 162-game season will start April 1. However, between now and next winter, MLB and the players still have a lot of ground to make up in order to avoid a work stoppage.

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2021 CBA Coronavirus Newsstand

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MLBPA Rejects MLB’s 154-Game Proposal

By Connor Byrne | February 1, 2021 at 10:09pm CDT

10:09pm: The league would have been willing to push back the season without expanded playoffs and the universal DH had the MLBPA made a counterproposal, Heyman tweets. The union declined to do so, as Heyman notes the players would rather start the season on time because of concerns over injuries.

8:48pm: Major League Baseball proposed a 154-game regular season for 2021 to the MLBPA over the weekend, but the union announced that it has rejected the offer. MLB’s offer would have meant delaying the start of spring training and the season by about a month because of COVID-19 concerns, though the players would have received full pay.

In explaining why it turned down MLB’s plan, the union said, “Although Player salaries would not be initially prorated to a 154-game regular season, MLB’s proposal offers no salary or service time protections in the event of further delays, interruptions, or cancellation of the season.”

The league did offer to remove language that could have allowed commissioner Rob Manfred to cancel or postpone the campaign, Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports reports. An expanded postseason “presumably” was on the table, too, per Brown, though Jon Heyman of MLB Network reported earlier Monday that the players have not been in favor of that. This may also eliminate the possibility of a universal designated hitter in 2021, which would greatly affect such free agents as Nelson Cruz and Marcell Ozuna, who have been awaiting clarity on whether the National League will keep the position for a second straight year.

“In light of the MLBPA’s rejection of our proposal, and their refusal to counter our revised offer this afternoon, we are moving forward and instructing our Clubs to report for an on-time start to Spring Training and the Championship Season, subject to reaching an agreement on health and safety protocols,” the league said in its own statement.

As of now, camp’s scheduled to begin Feb. 17 and the season is slated to start April 1. A full season would be a welcome development for baseball fans after the league’s teams played just 60 regular-season games apiece in 2020, though it’s alarming that MLB and the MLBPA continue to fight over key issues. The two sides have had a contentious relationship over the past couple of years, and with the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire in December, an eventual work stoppage looks all the more realistic.

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2021 CBA Newsstand

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MLB Issues 154-Game Proposal To Players

By TC Zencka | February 1, 2021 at 4:02pm CDT

FEB. 1: The union “doesn’t like expanded playoffs” in the league’s proposal, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets. It’s no sure thing the union will even put forth a counterproposal, per Heyman.

JAN. 31, 8:56PM: According to multiple reports, one of the MLBPA’s other concerns about the league’s offer is that the players believe commissioner Rob Manfred would have too much extra power to modify the schedule (or cancel games outright).  The players are under no obligation to negotiate any sort of altered procedures for the start or length of the 2021 season, and thus without a new deal in place to modify the terms of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the players would proceed as usual towards the scheduled starts of Spring Training and the April 1st Opening Day.

1:32PM: MLB and the Players’ Union continue to haggle over conditions and rules for the upcoming season. On Friday, MLB made another attempt to find an acceptable solution, submitting a proposal to the MLBPA for a 154-game season without prorating player pay, per Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter). The proposal also includes delaying the season by a month and expanding playoffs. Joel Sherman of the New York Post adds that the universal designated hitter is also included in this offer. The MLBPA leadership are mulling the offer this weekend.

As it sounds, this deal has everything both sides want: full season pay for the players, expanded playoffs for the owners, and a delayed start for the health and safety of everyone involved. These are the basic conditions that we’ve been heading for all along, or so it has seemed. After all, while MLB has never been in favor of pushing the playoffs deep into November, this year there is a particular benefit to pushing the season in that direction. It would almost certainly mean a greater number of participants – and fans – having been vaccinated against COVID-19. November baseball may be colder, but it’s almost certain to be safer as well.

And yet, for the players, there are still some long-term implications that could prevent them from simply signing on the dotted line. As noted by the Athletic’s Eno Sarris (via Twitter), caving on expanded postseason gives the players very little leverage to carry with them into the CBA negotiations at the end of the 2021 season. Besides, the MLBPA represents a large body of players, most of whom have made preparations for a season to start on time, as notes MLB Player Agent Rafa Nieves (via Twitter). All told, the expectations are the MLBPA will reject this newest proposal, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

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2021 CBA Coronavirus MLBPA

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Talking Collective Bargaining With Labor Lawyer Eugene Freedman

By Tim Dierkes | January 21, 2021 at 1:30pm CDT

Eugene Freedman serves as counsel to the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and also writes about baseball labor relations in his spare time.  On January 19th, Eugene was kind enough to chat via phone with me and answer my collective bargaining questions.  If you’re interested in baseball’s labor talks, I recommend following Eugene on Twitter.

Tim Dierkes: Can you explain your background a little bit?

Eugene Freedman: Sure. So I work for a national labor union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. I work in the office of the president and handle a lot of different things, including collective bargaining for the union. I’ve been involved over the course of my career in approximately nine term contract negotiations and not all of them with the air traffic controllers. When I was in law school, back in, I guess it was the fall of 98, I clerked at the National Labor Relations Board full-time. So I have some experience being on the side of the labor-neutral but the rest of my career has been on the union side.

Dierkes: Do you think it would be beneficial for the players to attempt to extend the current CBA by a year to allow teams to recover economically before hammering out a new CBA?

Freedman: I think it’s hard for me outside to say exactly whether they should extend it. I know that that’s something that has been put out there publicly. I don’t remember where I saw it originally. My guess is that it came from one of the sources that frequently puts things out there on behalf of management, and so I’d be wary just from the source of that original suggestion that it really came from Major League Baseball, not someone independently viewing the situation.

I do know that the Players Association has a lot of things that it wants to address in the next negotiations, some of them are very public, like service time manipulation. Some of them are probably less obvious, in terms of what the priorities are. I guess there’s a couple different ways to view the financial aspects of pay and there’s an idea that you can either spread the peanut butter thin or you can you can allow it to clump in certain areas. Right now, it’s very clumped and there is some thought to raising the league minimums, things like that, that would spread the peanut butter a little more thinly but allow for more players to see the benefits. And I think that that’s something in the next CBA negotiations that’s going to be a big deal in terms of how they share revenue not just among players and the league but also players among themselves.

There’s a big concern about loss of free agency benefits for players over the age of 30. I think the compensation system is something they want to get at quickly in terms of team-to-team free agent compensation, the draft pick compensation aspect of it. Delaying negotiations means one more year that players who are at the league minimum, players who are not premier free agents, may not see benefits and I don’t know that it’s in their interest for the Players Association to extend the current deal.

Dierkes: If we reach December 1 without a new CBA, what would you expect to happen then?

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Freedman: So it’s kind of difficult to predict at this point because we don’t really have a lot of reports about whether they are at the table negotiating right now. I suspect that they’re doing some of the lower-hanging fruit.  Some of the articles in the CBA won’t be renegotiated, they’ll just be “rolled over,” is the term that we use in labor negotiations. Where the parties basically say, “We’ll tentatively agree that this article won’t be changed in the CBA.” But of course that’s subject to negotiation of the entire package. So I think that a lot of those things are going to be resolved relatively quickly and easily and then you’ll get down to the more complicated issues.

I think that one of the big things that was kind of obscured throughout the restart of the 2020 season was the fact that part of the big issues that were being negotiated were the revenue split for the playoffs. There obviously was going to be no gate or very limited gate. The CBA talks about the players’ share being based on gate receipts. And then you had reports of Major League Baseball signing a bigger package with I believe it was the TBS-Turner deal for the playoffs and that wasn’t going to go into effect right away, but it was something that was on the horizon as a big issue for how that money was going to be split. And so they didn’t resolve it for 2021 as part of those negotiations, and I saw that as pivotal.

What happened, if you recall, was that the players were asking for a 50/50 split on the increase in television revenue – not the base package that they had in place but whatever the increase was going to be. At the same time Major League Baseball was offering a flat amount because they recognized that there weren’t going to be gate receipts and they proposed $25 million. At the last minute as they were they were coming to a deal Major League Baseball and the Players Association agreed to a $50 million flat amount that was going to be the players’ share of playoff revenue split among the players.

I saw that small negotiation as really what the big negotiation was going to be about for 2021. When the parties go into that negotiation, they’re going to have to resolve those issues of revenue splits of new revenue. A lot of these things were not contemplated – streaming revenue, things like that, in prior CBAs, and because of that Major League Baseball  received either the lion’s share or basically all of those new revenue streams for the ownership groups.

And so the players, to the extent that those owners have not passed that along through free agent contracts, that seems to be an imbalance and perhaps one of the imbalances that the media has picked up on. I see that as something for this year. Recently the articles have been talking about whether they’ll reach an agreement to expand the playoffs for 2021. I think that however they decide to split the revenue this year – if the playoffs are expanded – that will serve as a template for the next CBA. And so, if they are able to reach an agreement on basically splitting the revenue and sharing it between players and management on increased television contracts and/or additional streams of revenue, particularly streaming, that will be a template and it will make the 2021 offseason negotiations that much easier.

But if they’re unable to reach an agreement now on expanding the playoffs, that would basically tell us that the parties are going to have long protracted negotiations and it’s likely that we will see a work stoppage, whether that’s management-initiated through a lockout and spring training, or player-initiated through a strike.

Dierkes: If the owners are content with the status quo, at least to a degree, why would they initiate a lockout?

Freedman: Well, I think the question about who’s going to initiate any kind of work stoppage is kind of one of those questions that will depend on the circumstances at the time. The parties will be trying to negotiate, and more management than the union will be trying to negotiate in public. Getting the PR side and their kind of proxies in the media to put out their messages. If you start seeing messages about greedy players, if you start seeing messages about the unreasonable offers coming from the Players Association, but you don’t see similar things saying how the current system is broken and needs to be fixed, and you don’t see parallel things saying how there are there are things that need to be resolved mutually and jointly, which normally would be the message that everybody puts out.

But baseball seems to always take the more aggressive tack in their negotiations and their PR campaign. I think if they start putting out a lot of anti-player press it’s possible that they will engage in a lockout. And the reason for management to do it is not because they want to disrupt the apple cart in terms of the status quo, but it’s to place additional pressure on the players.

I don’t think we’re going to see a situation where there would be imposed work rules and replacement players like we had in 1995 spring training, but I think what you see is the players at the lower end of the pay spectrum, who probably live more like everyday people, would feel the burden of not being paid. They travel from their homes to spring training every year. They don’t get paid in spring training, they get paid from opening day to the end of the season, but knowing that they’re not going to get that first paycheck when they’re on perhaps a split contract or even just a league minimum contract. They’re going to feel the crunch, whereas a player at the higher end of the spectrum likely has sufficient savings to make it through. And that kind of attempt to fracture the solidarity of the players is a tactic that management not just in baseball, but elsewhere, uses, to pit the more junior employees against the more senior employees. They have the same long-term interest and they have the same interest in benefiting the bargaining unit as a whole but they do have different individual financial interests as the negotiations are ongoing.

Dierkes: I wanted to get at that topic of public opinion a little bit that you touched on. From what I can sense, I feel that the players will struggle there just based on some polls we’ve run with our readers. I do think that the majority of baseball fans feel that they’re overpaid or greedy. Plus you kind of have a different dynamic here in my opinion where the players are seeking a radical change from the status quo, as opposed to ’94 when the the owners were attempting to impose it. I’ve seen some of the things that Marvin Miller expressed where it seems like he really didn’t care what the public thought because he knew they were wrong. Do you think it matters what the public thinks and do you think the players union takes that as a major concern and should they try to shape it or should they try to ignore it?

Freedman: So I would say there are a couple aspects of that. First, in terms of changing the structure or seeking some kind of radical change, I think all collective bargaining is making changes around the fringes. It’s very rarely making a major change all at once and I think the idea of getting younger players paid earlier in terms of whether it’s raising the minimum or making arbitration eligibility earlier, I don’t see those as radical. I see them as things that are smaller. Changing it from Super Two to perhaps after Year 2 for all players, or removing the disincentives for teams signing free agents. Those things are within the current system. They’re not big radical changes.

Number two, in terms of the media presence. Major League Baseball has a significant number of writers on their own payroll, not directly through Major League Baseball, but some of them do work for MLB.com, many of them work for the TV arm of Major League Baseball, and then others work for the individual teams. And so they do a lot in shaping public opinion just through spreading around their own money and the Major League Baseball Players Association can’t counter that. They have to look to, I guess I don’t know how to describe them other than independent journalists, who are stating facts rather than stating positions and sometimes it’s very hard for the average fan to parse that difference because they see certain people on TV and they recognize them and they accept them as as experts, even though they may be publishing a company line.

That said, I don’t think that public opinion is a huge factor in shaping the negotiations. I think that Major League Baseball, going all the way back to the teens and perhaps a hundred years ago or perhaps even before then, owners were calling players greedy. Just look at the Black Sox Scandal and the conflict between Charles Comiskey and his players. I think that there’s always been that conflict. I don’t know that it’s going to go away and there’s always been a disagreement about who he is greedy and who is just seeking fair compensation.

It’s interesting. My ten-year-old daughter said to me the other day, “What does that mean, ’owner?'” And I said, “Well, they own the team.” Then she says, “Do they manage the team? Do they coach the team?” And I said, “No, they don’t. They just collect the profits off of the other people’s work.” And she said, “I don’t know why we need them.” It was kind of an interesting viewpoint because she sees teams she’s played on and there are coaches and there are players, but there’s not someone collecting money for everybody else’s work. So perhaps we missed the boat on it, and I don’t know too much about their structure, but the Green Bay Packers ownership structure may be the fairest where it’s municipally owned by shareholders who live in the city as opposed to an individual or group of individuals collecting revenue off of other people’s work.

But that’s more of an economic philosophy argument. With regard to the PR side of it, I think, one thing that the Players Association has to do is maintain the confidentiality of negotiations as best they can. I know that MLB frequently leaks things. I think that it would benefit both parties for the negotiations to go on quietly and privately to the greatest extent they can. I think that the negotiations that went on during Michael Weiner’s tenure as executive director [of the MLBPA] were the quietest we’ve probably ever seen. I think they announced that there was a new CBA before anyone even knew that they were in negotiations. That’s really how it should happen.

Most industries though aren’t followed by dozens of media people in each city. So it’s a little bit different than UPS negotiating with the Teamsters. But that said, it can be done quietly and it can be done confidentially. It really takes both parties to achieve that though and when one party is constantly bashing the other publicly, it does lead to friction at the bargaining table. I’ve been there. I’ve been at the table in contentious negotiations when there were dueling press releases or public statements all the time. It meant that every single day the first 20 or 30 minutes of our bargaining was actually discussing what was out there in the press and not the actual issues that we were negotiating and it really distracted from the negotiations themselves. So I would hope that this negotiation happens more quietly and it happens behind the scenes at the table and not publicly in the press.

Dierkes: What do you think about the possibility of an offseason lockout by ownership perhaps as a way of freezing free agency? Do you think that that’s a plausible scenario?

Freedman: It is possible. As I mentioned, creating that tension between the lower-paid players and the players who have more tenure and have received their first big contract who might not be economically affected by the loss of income for a few months, that would create a tension also with another group, which is the group of players who do not have a contract. They’re not going to be signing. They’re not going to know what team they’re playing for.  Obviously their whole family living situation will be in flux for an extended period of time. It is a pressure point. It is a way to try to separate some players from the solidarity of the larger group.

Dierkes: How likely do you think a scenario would be where the owners are willing to start the 2022 season without a new contract, putting the onus on to the players to strike?

Freedman: That’s a good question, because the the threat of strike is almost as powerful as the strike itself. Because if they’re operating without a contract the players could go on strike basically at any point and that could create chaos for management. It would create a situation where they would potentially lose television revenue, lose gate, if fans could actually go to the games by 2022. There are a lot of risks to management of the threat of strike and it’s very possible that they would use a lockout as a tactic to avoid giving the players control over the situation.

I think that the players, though, are less likely to strike than they were back in the 80s, particularly. It’s not something that has happened in many of their lifetimes. You’re talking about the last strike in 1995. So you’re talking about 25 years. It’s not something that is every three or four years the parties are looking at at a strike or a lockout as they were in that period of the 80s through 1995.  And when it happens that frequently you’ve got players who were in leadership roles in the union like Paul Molitor and Tom Glavine, who had lived through other negotiations, had lived through other strikes or lockouts.

Now, you’ve got an entire generation of players who never even lived during the time of a strike or lockout. And so the mentality is different. The mentality is more, “Hey, we’ve got a good system here, we can change it and we change it through bargaining, not through economic pressure.” Then again, we don’t know how the internal leadership of the union is. There were a number of players who were very vocal during the restart negotiations. They spoke very strongly of solidarity. They came out of the negotiations very unified. And so I think the fact that this happened only 18 months before they were going back to the table for term negotiations probably helped the union in terms of developing and building that solidarity that they’ll need going into these negotiations that otherwise they might not have had.

Dierkes: I would assume that now even with the salaries stagnating a bit, even adjusted for inflation, that the salaries now for players are probably a lot higher than they were in the 90s. Do you think that as salary has gone up does that that make solidarity more difficult?

Freedman: I think it may be more difficult in terms of basically that gap. So you’ve got players who are making approximately $30 million a year and you’ve got players making the minimum which is a little bit more than $500,000 so that’s a 60 times differential. I don’t know and I haven’t looked at it but I would suspect that that differential is one of the largest it’s ever been, at least in the collective bargaining era. I imagine when Babe Ruth was making $100,000 a year, he was probably making more than 60 times the lowest-paid players in the league, but in the collective bargaining era the the salaries have been more compressed in terms of their ratios. And I think that that’s something that could affect player solidarity.

Then again, if you have players who are at the top end of that salary scale like Mookie Betts and Mike Trout and others who are supporting the union’s efforts and saying that they’re going to do the right thing for the 25th or 26th man on the roster, that would go a long way towards building solidarity and ensuring that there aren’t fractures in the membership.

Dierkes: Do you feel that the players have sufficient chips to bargain with, or does that matter, having chips?

Freedman: Well, yeah, every negotiation is about power to some extent. There are obviously other factors that play into it and the players do have the ultimate issue which is, they are the product. Without them, there is no baseball. We talked about negotiating around the fringes. There are things that management wants that aren’t necessarily related directly to player compensation. We saw a lot of changes in the area of the Joint Drug Agreement over the last decade. We’ve seen other changes in play on the field.

The expanded playoffs is a big deal to management. Expanded playoffs for 2021 can’t happen unless the parties agree to it and they’re not going to agree to it unless they agree to some kind of financial arrangement around the split of revenue. And that’s why I think that issue for the 2021 season will really lay out the idea of whether or not it’s going to be an easier collective bargaining agreement or a more difficult one. Because that’s probably the number one issue on management’s mind, is expanded playoffs, and they can’t get there now without the players union.

You talked about the possibility of going into the 2022 season without a CBA in place and just carrying forward the existing CBA as they negotiate. They won’t have extended playoffs in 2022 under that scenario either. And so I think that that being a big driver for all of management’s interests is something that the players have significant leverage over and it’s something that I think they need to focus on in terms of this upcoming negotiation. I’m not saying they’re not focused on it, but I think that it is the primary area that will give us an indication about the next term CBA.

Dierkes: So if we saw an agreement for this year for expanded playoffs and the accompanying agreed-upon split, that would increase your optimism for avoiding a work stoppage, would you say?

Freedman: Yeah, I would say and and partially depends on the structure. If it winds up being a fixed pool again, I’m going to consider it a one-off, but if it involves some kind of revenue sharing arrangement, no matter what that arrangement is, I’ll see that as a very positive thing that the parties are working collaboratively to reach a mutually beneficial agreements.

Dierkes: How do you think having Democratic control of the government might come into play with these CBA negotiations?

Freedman: I think there are a couple aspects to that. One is the National Labor Relations Board. The National Labor Relations Board General Counsel position I think will be vacant in June [editor’s note: On January 20th, the Biden administration asked NLRB general counsel Peter Robb to resign, and subsequently fired him]. That will be filled by someone who will be more union-friendly and because of that it means that if management were to engage in an unfair labor practice or something that is unique that hasn’t been heard before by the Board, it’s more likely to result in a complaint being issued. And if a complaint is issued, then it goes through the quasi-judicial process and ultimately judicial appeals process.

Also the Board itself, the makeup of the board will switch from three Republican members and one Democratic number right now by, I think it’s the fall, to three Democratic members and two Republican members. And in that scenario, it means that cases that were more on the borderline are more likely to be resolved in favor of the unions. It doesn’t mean all cases will result in in in in the union winning versus now all cases management winning. It’s more of those close cases wind up more likely to be in favor of one party or another and so you’ve got that that aspect of it which is the kind of regulatory and legal aspect of it.

But then you also have the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service should the parties need a mediator to participate in negotiations. That’s something that the president’s appointment to the FMCS director is important. In the Obama Administration, George Cohen was the director of the FMCS and George mediated the NFL situation, their negotiations. I’m not familiar at all with the NFL, I don’t follow it. So I don’t want to misspeak on any of the details there but George had been engaged in collective bargaining for 50 years. He knows how agreements are reached. He actually was the counsel who argued the case of the ’94-95 baseball strike in front of now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He had represented the NBA players back in the 70s. He’s retired now, but he was one of the greatest labor lawyers in US history. And so he was a great person to lead that body, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and he could basically, any two parties who could not reach agreement, he could help them reach agreement. Because he could see things differently than they could.

President-elect Biden hasn’t yet named a director of FMCS. That’s usually a later person in the process. They’re probably vetting people now, but they haven’t announced publicly whom that person might be. That director could play a key role. Also, I just think that the tone of the President plays a big role in it as well because President Biden has said publicly that he’s going to be the most labor-friendly president in the in the nation’s history. If there are these close calls, I think he will use the bully pulpit of the White House to weigh in on issues. And if you’re talking about that PR campaign aspect of it, if you have the president of the United States saying, “The players are right. You should reach a deal. I don’t think management should lock the players out,” those are things that are kind of incalculable in their value in the PR campaign, and the public support or opposition to one of the party’s positions.

Dierkes: Can you explain the concept of an impasse as it relates to collective bargaining?

Freedman: Impasse is frequently misunderstood or misused as a term in the media, unfortunately. Impasse is basically a temporary state of affairs. It’s not a permanent fix situation. So normally, throughout the course of negotiations the parties negotiate over different things at different times and they may set certain things aside to deal with later, especially if they’re thornier issues. Compensation frequently comes last in negotiations. So the National Labor Relations Board basically defines impasse through its case law and it’s a combination of things. It basically uses a totality of the circumstances test and factors in things like how long have negotiations gone on, whether the positions of the parties have become fixed or whether they’re still making progress on certain issues. It can only occur over mandatory subject of bargaining. Those are the things that the parties have a duty to bargain over –  their wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. They can’t reach the impasse technically over permissive subjects, which are the subjects that there’s no duty to bargain over.

So in terms of negotiations, obviously it has to be good faith negotiations. I mentioned the length of the negotiations. The importance of the issues on which there is a disagreement plays into it. Whether both parties agree that they’re not making progress plays into it. I mentioned that it is a kind of a moment in time. Any changed condition can terminate an impasse. If the players were to go on strike after management says there’s an impasse, that strike could could break a pre-existing impasse.

There are other things to kind of play in sometimes behind the scenes like unfair labor practices. If one of the parties is violating the National Labor Relations Act and engaging in bad faith bargaining the Board frequently will say that an impasse cannot exist because the one party was not bargaining in good faith. Good faith and bad faith are kind of things that have been thrown around primarily by management last time but I think Tony Clark said it at one point as well in a press release or on a press call. So take those for the grain of salt as well because the National Labor Relations Board has tests for bad faith bargaining as well. And a lot of the time the parties will kind of throw the term around when it doesn’t become legal standard.

Some of the issues are like if there’s a break in bargaining and the parties are no longer meeting, that could create an impasse, or it could be seen as no impasse because the parties haven’t met and shown that their positions are fixed. I mentioned that the parties sometimes set aside certain topics to be dealt with later. If they’re at an impasse on one of those issues, that doesn’t suspend your bargaining obligation of all the other unsettled issues. So they still have to negotiate everything else to conclusion and withdraw any permissive proposals to actually declare an impasse in bargaining. The other important thing about an impasse is it doesn’t remove the duty to bargain. So if the parties mutually believe they’re at impasse that doesn’t mean that management can do whatever it wants. It can unilaterally implement its last best offer, but that doesn’t eliminate its duty to bargain. If it were to try to change anything else, it still has the duty to bargain.

It’s based on the totality of the circumstances. Disagreement doesn’t mean impasse, a stalemate on one issue doesn’t mean impasse over the full collective bargaining agreement. It just means that the parties are not working on that one thing right now and they still have a duty to get back to it. There are going to be stops and stalls throughout the process. The more complicated issues are going to be the ones that they leave for last. It’s just always how it’s done.

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Latest On 2021 Season Structure

By Anthony Franco | December 6, 2020 at 10:19pm CDT

Much about the 2021 season remains unsettled but some clarity might be on the horizon. Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association will ramp up discussions about the season next week, reports Ken Davidoff of the New York Post. Talks won’t be starting completely from scratch; Davidoff notes the two sides have had “cursory” conversations about next season since the conclusion of the World Series, but nothing has begun in earnest. Part of the delay, it seems, was the MLBPA’s desire to settle upon the composition of its eight-player executive subcommittee before beginning detailed negotiations. That group (Zack Britton, Jason Castro, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor, Andrew Miller, James Paxton, Max Scherzer and Marcus Semien) was finalized last week, per Davidoff.

There’ll be plenty of issues for the parties to sort through, both on and off the field. Most obviously, there’s the question of whether to retain rules changes (seven-inning doubleheaders, universal designated hitter, runner on second base in extra innings among them) instituted for the 2020 season. The number of postseason teams and playoff structure also remains up in the air.

The MLBPA has already rejected a league proposal to institute the universal DH for 2021 in exchange for another one-year postseason expansion. It stands to reason the sides could revisit that general framework, albeit with additional concessions to the union. Certainly, both sides would be best served by a quick decision on the status of the National League DH.

Even more difficult to resolve than the on-field measures are the economic issues that’ll arise if/when the 2021 season is impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems improbable teams can anticipate a full 162-game slate with capacity crowds from the beginning of the season. The two sides will have to decide, then, whether to attempt a full season and how to sort out player compensation if the season length is affected. Looming over all the uncertainty is the scheduled expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement in December 2021. The parties will have plenty to sort out, and that work will really get underway in the coming days.

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Latest On The Universal DH

By Mark Polishuk | November 5, 2020 at 2:12pm CDT

After the designated hitter was used in both leagues in 2020, it remains to be seen if the National League will again have a DH next season or if NL pitchers will get one more crack at the plate.  Commissioner Rob Manfred recently said that all rule changes made for the 2020 season wouldn’t carry through to 2021, and such ideas like a universal DH would have to be settled with input from both the league and the players’ union.

There has been some level of discussion on this front, ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan writes, with Major League Baseball offering the players implementation of the DH in both the National and American Leagues in exchange for the MLBPA signing off on an expanded playoff structure in 2021.

As Passan puts it, “understandably, the players don’t find that to be a particularly equitable trade.”  Bringing the DH to both leagues would open up more employment opportunities and contract money for position players, as NL teams would need to address their lineup depth and veteran players with less defensive mobility would suddenly have more options.  That said, the money available in an expanded DH market pales in comparison to the potential tens of millions in extra revenue the league would generate in TV revenue from extra playoff games.  The format for this expanded postseason isn’t known; Manfred has floated the idea of a 14-team postseason in the past, rather than the 16-team format used in 2020.

It has long been assumed that the universal DH would eventually be implemented, perhaps as soon as the 2022 season since the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the Players Association is up after the 2021 campaign.  However, with those CBA talks looming, negotiating even a one-year issue like a DH for the 2021 season inevitably leads into the tangled web of bigger-picture talks, like an expanded postseason.

This being said, the league’s offer may have been something of an “aim high” initial attempt just to see if the players would bite.  Some executives tell Passan that they think the NL will have the designated hitter next season, with the MLBPA agreeing to a concession that isn’t more playoff teams.

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Quick Hits: Winter Meetings, Revenue Sharing, CBA Talks

By Mark Polishuk | October 31, 2020 at 9:12am CDT

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact almost every facet of normal Major League Baseball business, both in the immediate future and looking ahead to what may be a tumultuous 2021 season.  The latest alterations include two expected changes to a pair of major offseason events, as both the Winter Meetings and the annual owners’ meetings have both been changed into virtual events rather than in-person gatherings.

The Winter Meetings have long been the focal point of the offseason calendar, often collecting just about every major power broker in baseball (owners, general managers, top free agents, player agents, media, etc.) under one roof for a four-day span.  While the rise of electronic communication over the last couple of decades has made it easier for teams to swing trades and signings at any point in the offseason, the Winter Meetings is still a major hub for winter business, whether it be completing transactions or laying groundwork during those four days that results in completed deals a few days or weeks later.

This year’s Winter Meetings were set for December 7-10 in Dallas.  The Rule 5 Draft has traditionally fallen on the final day of the Meetings, and while MLB’s press release made no specific reference to this event, it can be assumed that the Rule 5 Draft will be conducted in the same virtual manner as last summer’s amateur draft.

The owners’ meetings, which were set to be held November 17-19 in Arlington, aren’t as well-known to the casual fan, though naturally there is plenty of import whenever the sport’s owners gather in person.  Ironically, the owners and league officials have more to discuss this year than in any other offseason in recent memory, though the many discussions about how MLB will proceed under the threat of the coronavirus will undoubtedly continue throughout the coming months.

For one, revenue sharing between teams is likely to be eliminated again in 2021, according to Evan Drellich of The Athletic.  Some form of revenue sharing plan between larger-market and smaller-market teams has been in place for the better part of 25 years before the shortened 2020 season halted the regular plan this year.  As one club executive noted to Drellich, this was a greater detriment to smaller-market teams than the pandemic: “The big markets have lost anywhere between $150 to 200 [million], middle markets about $100 [million], and the small markets really, haven’t lost anything.  They got crushed because they got no revenue sharing.”

Labor talks with the MLB Players Association also loom this winter, as the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in December 2021.  Drellich notes that there is a chance the league could explore an extension on the current CBA, delaying talks about a new deal for at least a year until baseball’s business looks at least somewhat more normal.  Working out a CBA extension would obviously be a huge undertaking unto itself, however, as the players’ union has long been eager to rework the terms of what it felt was an unfavorable contract in the last set of negotiations.

That said, Drellich writes that the players could have extra leverage in any CBA extension talks, if the league truly is eager to forestall any bigger-picture labor negotiations.  Any number of short-term concessions could be floated by the MLBPA as conditions for extending the CBA, though given the wide range of issues the players have with the current deal, an attempt to make wholesale changes might as well amount to unofficial CBA renegotiation already.

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Bryce Harper Stumps For Spencer Howard To Make Rotation

By TC Zencka | July 18, 2020 at 12:15pm CDT

Philadelphia Phillies top third base prospect Alec Bohm understands the dynamics of service time manipulation, and he understands the business sense behind holding him back in the minors to start the year, per Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “That’s a smart business move,” Bohm said.

Bryce Harper isn’t quite as accommodating, speaking out recently about the possibility of Spencer Howard – another top Philly prospect –  not making the Opening Day roster, per MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki. With intrasquad games such a heavy component of the ramp-up to Opening Day this season, Harper has seen Howard’s stuff up close and personal – and he’s impressed.

The Phillies rotation is set with Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Jake Arrieta slotted into the top spots with some competition for the final two roles. Still, there are plenty of capable veteran arms on hand, giving the Phils some plausible deniability when they decide that Howard needs more seasoning. Vince Velasquez, Zach Eflin, and Nick Pivetta all spent time in Philly’s rotation last season, and some combination of the three figure to get the early turns on the bump.

Howard, 24 in ten days, has a higher ceiling than those three, but he’s only pitched as high as Double-A – he made just 6 starts in Reading last year after starting the year in High-A. Given traditional development paths, it would be surprising for Howard to make the rotation from the jump – but that’s not to say he’s not capable.

As for Bohm, the 23-year-old is the long-term answer at third base for the Phillies. Like Howard, he made it as high as Double-A last season, hitting .269/.344/.500 across 270 plate appearances. His case for making the big league roster out of camp gained some traction over the winter, but all indications were – under normal circumstances – for Bohm to continue to develop in Triple-A at the start of 2020.

As in the rotation, the Phillies could certainly make room for Bohm if they so desired, but there’s more than enough veteran talent on-hand to make due. Jean Segura and Scott Kingery can split time between second and third, and veterans Josh Harrison and Neil Walker are also in camp as non-roster invitees. Jay Bruce slots in as the regular designated hitter – another veteran totally capable of handling a starting role, even if he might be better suited to the bench. In a vacuum, there’s room for Bohm, but it’s also not against baseball wisdom to give the vets a couple of weeks or more to prove they’re still capable of handling starter’s minutes.

With the shortened schedule, teams need only keep their top prospects off the major league roster for the first 6 games to secure an additional year of team control down the road. The issue, of course, has been hotly debated for years now, culminating in a grievance filed by Kris Bryant against the league. His grievance was unsuccessful. The issue persists year after year with players like Harper taking up the mantle to speak out for the rights of younger players. Service time manipulation of this sort will continue to be a hot button issue until it’s addressed – in some form or fashion – at the time of the next CBA negotiation in 2021.

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2021 CBA Alec Bohm Bryce Harper Jay Bruce Jean Segura Nick Pivetta Philadelphia Phillies Scott Kingery Spencer Howard Todd Zolecki Zach Eflin

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Exploring NBA’s Model-Based Load Management System For Position Players

By TC Zencka | November 16, 2019 at 9:38am CDT

Studies around the game are investing significant resources into the study of players’ health, and though we know all change is bad and everyone hates it, baseball could soon turn to the model-based resting patterns that has swept through the NBA in recent seasons, per The Athletic’s Eno Sarris.

Technological advancement has already clung to the pitching side of the game, where Driveline and pitching labs have entered the common vernacular. Studies continue to work towards a better understanding of pitcher health, including looking at spin rate changes as an indicator of future injury. The naked eye can only gauge so much in terms of a player’s fatigue level, and the goal here is to put as much precision into the process as is scientifically possible.

Pitchers’ rest has obviously been a key part of the modern game, but it’s the position player side that might lean towards an NBA-style model-based resting program. It’s not uncommon, of course, for players to want to play everyday or even insist that their play improves the more often they’re in the game. Sarris provides Marcus Semien as an example – Semien feels days off knocks him out of rhythm.

There’s certainly validity to Semien’s line of thinking, but the counter would be that a day or two of feeling off in the box is worth it in the grand scheme of a 6-month long season. Tracking acute stress versus chronic stress is one of the key issues in managing player fatigue, and there’s more than one philosophy on how to manage it. It’s difficult to quantify the impact of fatigue on player performance, but there’s little doubt it plays a significant role in the game. In fact, it very well might be the area of greatest impact of which we know the least.

Of course, getting enough information to make a model-based resting program would mean cooperation from the players. There’s a fair amount of data acquisition possible through wearable technology, but if players aren’t invested in these programs, it will be difficult to progress. Players have plenty of reason to invest themselves in this brand of technological advancement, but they also have cause to be wary. If data collected is owned by the teams, players are put in a vulnerable position – as said data could be used against them in contract negotiations.

As pitcher velocity rises and injuries continue to threaten their livelihood, expect this conversation to gain traction, and don’t be surprised if the data ownership conversation spills over into the next round of CBA negotiations. In an increasingly flattened competitive landscape, teams already view health as a new frontier to gain a competitive advantage. To delve further, Sarris’ full article is well worth a read, as he explores this issue in full, citing a number of studies currently working to better understand player load management.

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2021 CBA Marcus Semien

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MLB, Players Association Discuss Prospect Of Mandated Opioid Testing

By TC Zencka | September 7, 2019 at 12:17pm CDT

Major League Baseball and the Players Association have no shortage of topics to talk about these days, but a new issue has forced its way onto the agenda: opioid testing. The autopsy results after the tragic passing of Tyler Skaggs turned this national conversation into a touch point for MLB, and the two sides are discussing the possibilities of including random screenings for opioids into the official drug testing program, per Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times.

Opioids do appear on the banned-substance list – a fine first step – but major league players aren’t subject to testing without reasonable cause. Tony Clark, the executive director of the Players Association, released a statement last Friday in which he said: “For several reasons, including the tragic loss of a member of our fraternity and other developments happening in the country as a whole, it is appropriate and important to reexamine all of our drug protocols relating to education, treatment and prevention.”

As drug testing has been an area of relative common ground in recent years, an accord here could inject a note of harmony to a negotiation largely fraught with skepticism.  Even so, don’t expect anything contractual in the near-term. The opioid crisis is but one issue among many being discussed in the lead up to CBA negotiations in 2021. MLB and the Players Association are meeting about once a month for these “early negotiations,” per The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. While these sessions could not be more foundational to the overall discussions, the goal of diplomacy at this stage is more to about gauging temperature than putting pen to paper.

Both sides cite player welfare as a primary objective of these preliminary talks, though at present, there’s little reason to suspect pervasive use of opioids throughout the game. What information they do have comes from mandated testing for minor leaguers, who lack union protection and therefore are subject to testing and discipline by the commissioner’s office. More than 78,000 tests have been conducted for minor league players, resulting in just 12 suspensions, per ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan.

Still, fentanyl is the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S., and the Skaggs autopsy provided an opportunity to be proactive. The rate and severity of injury puts players at risk for exposure through short-term surgical use, and most players certainly have the financial means to foster ongoing abuse should it become an issue. There is likely to be stronger solution in the new CBA, as leaving the safety of players to the discretion of team doctors is hardly the most comprehensive approach, not to mention the burden of responsibilities it places on the doctors themselves.

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