MLBPA Launches Fund For Workers Impacted By MLB Lockout
10:00am: The league is also in the process of setting up a fund for impacted workers, tweets ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.
9:06am: The Major League Baseball Players Association announced Friday that it will launch a $1MM fund for workers impacted by the ongoing MLB lockout and the cancellation of regular-season games. The MLBPA and the AFL-CIO will administer the fund and provide aid to “stadium workers and others who face financial hardship through no fault of their own due to the MLB franchise owners’ lockout.”
“There are a lot of people who make our game great,” MLBPA executive board leaders Andrew Miller and Max Scherzer said in a joint statement. “Many aren’t seen or heard, but they are vital to the entertainment experience of our games. Unfortunately, they will also be among those affected by the owner-imposed lockout and the cancellation of games. Through this fund, we want to let them know that they have our support.”
“This fund is intended to support workers who are most affected by the MLB-impost lockout but whose livelihoods have been disregarded by the owners in their effort to pressure Players into accepting an unfair deal,” said MLBPA executive director Tony Clark in his own statement.
The ongoing labor strife between Major League Baseball and the Players Association reached a tipping point earlier this week, when the union rejected the league’s “best offer” prior an MLB-imposed deadline to avoid the cancellation of regular-season games. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Tuesday that the first two series of the regular season will be canceled — not postponed — as the two sides continue to work toward an agreement. The widespread expectation is that additional games will also be wiped from the schedule.
While the players, owners and the negotiators leading these talks have been at the forefront of the labor dispute, the subsequent stoppage has a broad-reaching effect that will impact thousands throughout the industry. There are plenty of team employees (scouts, for instance) whose careers have been placed on hold, but stadium workers and the businesses surrounding MLB stadiums/Spring Training sites that depend on baseball for revenues are, in particular, adversely impacted. The financial impact felt by third parties throughout the sport will only mount as negotiations continue.
Today’s press release indicates that the MLBPA and AFL-CIO will work together to “determine the hardest hit communities and align resource distribution to those who need it most.”
Canceled Regular Season Games Raise The Possibility For A Dispute Regarding Service Time
Major League service time is awarded not based on games spent on a big league roster but rather by total days spent on the Major League roster (or injured list). The Major League Baseball season is 186 days long and a “full year” of service time is defined as 172 days.
A full year of service can be accrued over multiple seasons, of course. A player called up with 72 days left in the regular season, for instance, would accrue 72 days of service time in the current season and need 100 the following year to get across that one-year threshold. Assuming said player spent that entire second season on the roster, he’d have a year and 72 days of service time. For written purposes, service time is displayed as: [years].[days]. So, the player in this example would have 1.072 years of service following that second season. Two more full years of service, and he’s at 3.072 and into arbitration by virtue of crossing three years. Three more years on top of that, and he’s at 6.072 and eligible for free agency by virtue of accruing more than six years of service time.
With that quick and admittedly rudimentary crash course for the uninitiated out of the way, I thought it would be pertinent to take a look at how the recent cancellation of Opening Day by commissioner Rob Manfred could potentially impact players from a service-time vantage point — specifically those who could, at least in theory, stand to see their free agency delayed by a season.
At present, the league has only canceled the season’s first two series. Theoretically, if MLB and the MLBPA were to agree to a new deal this weekend and Opening Day were pushed back only a week — a pipe dream, I realize, but humor me for the purposes of this example — the season could technically still contain 179 days. Players could, then, receive a full year of service even in the absence of a week’s worth of games being wiped from existence.
What if, however, we reach the point where anything more than two weeks of games are canceled? The moment 15 or more days are nixed, there are 171 days on the schedule — which is technically not enough for any player to accrue a full year of service in 2022 alone. For players like the hypothetical one I described in the first couple sentences, that might not be a huge deal. My 1.072 player would only need 100 days of service this season, and so long as he got those 100 days, he’d cross into the two-plus service bracket and his timeline to free agency would remain unchanged. However, a player entering the season with exactly three years of service time (or two years, one year, etc.) would suddenly be looking at a calendar that literally doesn’t have enough days on it to keep their free-agent trajectories on track. Since arbitration is also based off service time, there’d be major implications on that front as well.
It’s for this reason that the union is widely expected to fight tooth-and-nail for full service time to be awarded even in spite of missed games/missed calendar days. The MLBPA will argue that it was the league who implemented the lockout and the league who canceled games early in the season. An attempt to withhold service time would quite likely be perceived by the players as something so damaging that they’d be willing to sit out indefinitely. That service time is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the players.
The union is also expected to push for full pay rather than prorated salaries on the season, although it’s quite arguably the service time that’s more valuable, given its future implications. The two sides will butt heads over these issues, to be sure. MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes tweets that he expects the eventual compromise to be one that sees the players still receive full service time but not be paid for any missed days. As Tim points out, there’s precedent for both of these in the past.
At the moment, there’s a fair bit of talk about the possibility that all of April is lost to the current lockout. Much of that stems from Ken Rosenthal’s recent report at The Athletic, wherein he revealed that most television contracts don’t call for teams to issue rebates to their broadcast partners until “around 25 games” are missed. This has led to several players, Willson Contreras and Jason Heyward among them, accusing the league of deliberately seeking a reason to wipe April games from the schedule. April attendance is generally poor relative to the rest of the season, and the allegations put forth by the players accuse ownership of effectively only taking on the operating costs of five-sixths of a season while still receiving a full season’s worth of television revenue.
Feel free to discuss that theory all you like in the comments, but I’m setting it aside because the specifics of why we might miss the month of April are irrelevant for the purposes of this exercise. What matters here is which players would be most harmed by the possibility of April being wiped from the schedule and MLB subsequently trying to withhold their service. It’s quite unlikely that the league would succeed in these efforts, to be clear, but the hypothetical is still worth investigating.
Opening Day had been slated for March 31 (one day of service), and there are another 30 in April, of course. Striking April from the record would drop the season to 155 calendar days. Any player with even 17 extra days of service toward another year (i.e. 1.o17, 2.017, etc.) would be able to move their service time up a year. Any player with 16 or fewer toward another year (i.e. 1.016, 2.016, etc.) would be out of luck. MLBTR has obtained a full record of official service time for every current Major Leaguer, which is the source for the service-time data used in this exercise.
First, a few caveats. As this pertains mostly to players who have not yet accumulated six total years of service (i.e. reached free agency) or signed a long-term contract that renders such service time considerations largely moot (e.g. Fernando Tatis Jr.), I’ve excluded those players. I’ve also, admittedly subjectively, chosen players who have a decent chance to last the whole season on a big league roster.
All that said, let’s take a look at each service bracket and who’d technically come up short. As you might expect, there are some rather notable names:
Five-plus years of service time: Trey Mancini, Manuel Margot, Grant Dayton
Four-plus: Frankie Montas, Jack Flaherty, Ryan McMahon, Reynaldo Lopez, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Jordan Hicks, Brad Keller, Shohei Ohtani
Three-plus: Lucas Luetge, Austin Adams, Lucas Sims, Tyler Kinley, Brett Phillips, Adrian Houser, John Means, Kyle Higashioka, Josh James, Rowdy Tellez, Dylan Moore, Chris Paddack, Nick Anderson, Pete Alonso
Two-plus: Jorge Alcala, Lane Thomas, Nico Hoerner, Adrian Morejon, Jared Walsh, Aristides Aquino, Kyle Finnegan, Jorge Mateo, JT Brubaker, Jake Cronenworth, Anthony Misiewicz, Brady Singer, Codi Heuer, Cristian Javier, David Peterson, Tejay Antone
One-plus: James Kaprielian, Chas McCormick, Akil Baddoo, Andrew Vaughn, Garrett Whitlock, Jake Brentz, Jonathan India
Put another way, if the league were to somehow succeed in not only canceling the first month of the season but also withholding service time, you’d see the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Trey Mancini, Manuel Margot, Jack Flaherty, Frankie Montas, Ryan McMahon, etc. all watch their gateways to free agency be delayed by a full year. The huge loss of earning power that comes with getting a year older — to say nothing of the potential for injury and/or decline — is where the aforementioned “hundreds of millions of dollars” in value to the Players Association that I referenced stems. And, if we see a portion of May, June, etc. canceled, further names will be added to this list.
Again, this is an exercise in hypotheticals, and I can’t imagine a scenario where the players willingly shrug and accept the loss of service time for days that were lost to a league-implemented lockout. But the two sides are absolutely going to negotiate over this, perhaps in heated fashion. If you find yourself asking “what’s the big deal” regarding the potential for missed service time — the “big deal” is another year that the likes of Ohtani, Alonso, Flaherty, etc. are under club control via arbitration rather than having a chance to hit the free-agent market.
Latest On Sixto Sanchez
Marlins right-hander Sixto Sanchez is “taking a bit longer” to recover from July’s season-ending shoulder surgery, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, which has pushed back his readiness to appear in a game setting. Obviously, with the entire season in limbo right now, Sanchez won’t be missing any immediate games, but Heyman suggests it’d be midseason before the touted 23-year-old would be ready to return. It’s a change in tone from when Sanchez himself went on record earlier this year to say he felt “100 percent” and expected to be ready to go when the 2022 season rolled around.
Sanchez was a bright spot for the 2020 Marlins, graduating from top prospect status to a successful big league pitcher at just 22 years of age. The centerpiece prospect in the trade that sent J.T. Realmuto to the division-rival Phillies, Sanchez logged 39 innings of 3.46 ERA ball with a 20.9% strikeout rate, a 7.0% walk rate and a massive 58.0% grounder rate. The strikeout rate was perhaps surprisingly low for a pitcher with Sanchez’s combination of pedigree and raw stuff (98.8 mph average on his heater, plus changeup) — but Sanchez was making the jump straight from Double-A to the big leagues. He also turned in a huge 12.8% swinging-strike rate and 38.7% opponents’ chase rate, both of which point to the possibility for more whiffs down the road.
Sanchez missed time early in the 2021 season, first due to a lengthy stay in Covid-19 protocols during Spring Training and later due to shoulder discomfort. The Marlins eventually shut him down until early summer due to that first bout of shoulder pain, and he was shut down again when the discomfort returned between bullpen sessions. Eventually, a small tear in Sanchez’s posterior capsule was discovered, which resulted in an early-July procedure that ended his season.
While there’s no concrete timeline for his return, the broader cause for concern is that a decelerated rehab program only causes further concern regarding Sanchez’s surgically repaired shoulder. It’s already been nearly 18 months since Sanchez pitched in a big league game, and while he couldn’t work out at Marlins facilities anyhow because he’s on the 40-man roster, it doesn’t sound as though he’d be ready to take the mound had Spring Training been underway as originally scheduled. At the time of the surgery, general manager Kim Ng announced that Sanchez would resume throwing in three months’ time but wasn’t likely to pitch in winter ball. That timeline now rather clearly appears to have been pushed back.
Even without Sanchez, the Marlins boast an enviable crop of arms, headlined by newly extended ace Sandy Alcantara, who signed a five-year, $56MM deal prior to the current lockout. He’ll be followed in the rotation by Trevor Rogers, Pablo Lopez, Elieser Hernandez and Jesus Luzardo, though Miami has plenty of arms beyond that top quintet. Righty Edward Cabrera is regarded as one of the game’s most promising pitching prospects and already made his MLB debut in 2021. Flamethrowing righty Max Meyer, the No. 3 overall pick in 2020, is also considered among the game’s best arms and could open the year in Triple-A.
Other depth options on the roster include Braxton Garrett, Nick Neidert, Daniel Castano, Cody Poteet and Paul Campbell — all of whom have pitched in the big leagues. Further down the pipeline are righty Eury Perez and lefty Jake Eder, the latter of whom will miss the ’22 season due to Tommy John surgery but is as highly regarded as any arm in the Miami system.
That deep reserve of pitching talent notwithstanding, Sanchez is a key piece to the Marlins’ future and, had he been healthy, would’ve been viewed as a vital rotation candidate for the upcoming campaign. The team isn’t likely to issue any kind of formal statement on his outlook while the lockout is going on, but his status will be a key storyline to follow for Marlins fans whenever the lockout lifts.
Moore: Witt Jr. Will Have Chance To Make Opening Day Roster
We don’t know when Opening Day will be for Major League clubs, but Royals president of baseball operations Dayton Moore told reporters this week that when it does, top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. will have the opportunity to break camp with the team (link via Pete Grahoff of the Kansas City Star).
“He’s very talented and we’re going to give him that opportunity,” Moore said of his organization’s top prospect. Because Witt has not yet been required to be added to the 40-man roster, Moore is able to freely discuss him and Witt is able to interact with club personnel and make use of club facilities.
By now, most fans are quite familiar with Witt Jr. — the son of 16-year MLB veteran pitcher Bobby Witt. Selected with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 draft, the now-21-year-old Witt Jr. is regarded as one of the game’s top three overall prospects. He’s played primarily shortstop in the minors and figures to, before long, be given the chance to settle in as the Royals’ long-term option either at short or at the hot corner.
The 2021 season was Witt’s first full year of professional games, thanks to the canceled minor league season in 2020, but you’d hardly know it based on the numbers. Splitting the season between Double-A (61 games, 279 plate appearances) and Triple-A (62 games, 285 plate appearances), Witt batted a combined .290/.361/.576 with 33 home runs, 35 doubles, four triples and 29 stolen bases (in 40 attempts). That production came not only in spite of extremely limited pro experience but also in spite of the fact that Witt was three years younger than his average opponent in Double-A and five years younger than the average Triple-A player.
Even in 2021, there was some talk that Witt could be considered for an Opening Day roster spot, although that always felt like an extreme long shot, given that he’d yet to play above Rookie ball. Now, with a dominant season in the upper minors under his belt, Witt would seem to have a legitimate chance at making the roster, so long as he performs well in whatever iteration of Spring Training is put together.
Just where Witt will line up on the diamond remains to be seen, as the Kansas City infield is rather crowded. Nicky Lopez solidified himself as an elite defender at shortstop this past season, and while he’s no lock to repeat his .300/.365/.378 batting line, the glove should continue to play no matter what. Two-time All-Star and 2021 stolen base champion Whit Merrifield can handle either second base or any of the three outfield spots. The ultra-talented but oft-injured Adalberto Mondesi remains in the mix for playing time, be it at shortstop, third base or in right field. Corner infielder/outfielder Hunter Dozier is entering the second season of a four-year, $28MM contract and will be looking to rebound from a dismal 2021 effort.
If the Royals prefer to leave Lopez, a Gold Glove finalist at shortstop, at the position where he broke out this past season, the natural move might be to slide Witt over to third base. The organization prepared for this to some extent last year, giving Witt 17 starts (and 18 total appearances) at the hot corner throughout the season.
The frequency (or lack thereof) of prospects of Witt’s caliber making their respective teams’ Opening Day rosters has been a key talking point in ongoing labor negotiations. The Royals, however, generally haven’t shied away from promoting top prospects out of the gate, rather than keeping them in the minors for a few weeks early in the season to secure a seventh year of club control. As recently as the 2020 season, the Royals gave Brady Singer a full year of service time, when keeping him at their alternate site for even a week would’ve delayed his path to free agency.
None of that is presented to spur debate on the merits of service-time practices that have become increasingly commonplace throughout the league. However, it’s notable context that Kansas City has generally taken up the stance that when the front office feels a player is ready, he’ll be added to the big league roster. Whether that means a full year of service in 2022 remains to be seen, as MLB and the Players Association will need to haggle over just how the canceled games will impact service time and pay.
Setting that aside, though, Moore’s confirmation of what was already widely assumed now gives Royals fans an additional reason to be excited for big league camp … whenever that may be. If Witt does indeed crack the Royals’ Opening Day roster and accrue a full year of service time in 2022, he’d be controllable via arbitration through the 2027 season before reaching free agency in advance of his age-28 season.
Lead Negotiators For MLB, MLBPA Meeting Today
Deputy commissioner Dan Halem and MLBPA lead negotiator Bruce Meyer are expected to meet today at an “informal” one-on-one sitdown in New York, tweets Evan Drellich of The Athletic. It’ll be the first time since Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the cancellation of Opening Day earlier this week that representatives from the two parties have met in person.
What’s on the agenda isn’t clear, though it’s at least mildly encouraging to see two key representatives meet just days after the “deadline” set by MLB passed. After the last deadline (the expiration of the prior collective bargaining agreement), six weeks transpired before the league put forth a counterproposal to the union. At present, it’s the league that made its most recent offer, which the union unanimously agreed to reject.
Of note, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweets that, moving forward, the two parties hope to reduce some of the very public back-and-forth nature of prior talks and keep negotiations closer to the vest. Both the recent week-plus of negotiations in Jupiter, Fla. and the 2020 return-to-play negotiations were public spectacles, to varying extents.
As things stand, the league has only canceled a week’s worth of games, though it seems quite possible (if not likely) that additional cancellations will follow. MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes recently ran down where both parties sit on the issues at hand, for those looking for a quick reference point on the gaps that remain in need of bridging. Now, on top of those issues, the league and union will have to also discuss scheduling matters — the union has reportedly expressed a desire to reschedule canceled games; Manfred indicated Tuesday that would not happen — and the possibility of prorating pay and/or service time based on games missed.
Stripling: MLB Tried To “Sneak Things” Past Union Late In Negotiations
There’s no indication when the 2022 season will start following a contentious set of labor negotiations that resulted in commissioner Rob Manfred canceling the first two series of the year. The general expectation is that further games are quite likely to be lost as well, given the acrimonious nature of talks to date.
On the topic of those negotiations, Blue Jays right-hander Ross Stripling lobbed some fairly eye-opening accusations toward ownership and the manner in which their proposal suddenly changed late in the game. Stripling tells Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet that, as the two sides spoke late Monday evening and into the early hours of Tuesday morning, MLB’s proposal suddenly included notable changes regarding the luxury tax. Stripling implies that the changes extend beyond mere alterations to the threshold levels and penalty rates — instead featuring completely new items that had not been previously presented.
“It got to be like 12:30 [in the morning] and the fine print of their CBT proposal was stuff we had never seen before,” says Stripling. “They were trying to sneak things through us, it was like they think we’re dumb baseball players and we get sleepy after midnight or something. … They pushed us to a deadline that they imposed, and then they tried to sneak some shit past us at that deadline and we were ready for it.”
Stripling went on to echo the sentiments broadcast by Giants lefty Alex Wood on Twitter yesterday, wherein Wood claimed that the reported optimism late Monday was “pumped to the media” by Major League Baseball as a public relations strategy. Wood and Stripling maintain that the players’ “tone” never changed Tuesday, as the league claimed via a statement from an anonymous spokesperson. Stripling, Wood, James McCann and several others have publicly stated that the union never felt the sense of optimism broadcast by the league and that MLB’s suggestions of a “change in tone” were an effort to cast blame on players for scuttling a deal at the last minute.
Stripling’s comments, to an extent, also mesh with concerns raised by union leader Tony Clark at yesterday’s press conference. Speaking in the wake of Manfred’s cancelation of games, Clark revealed that during the late stages of negotiations, the league sought to enact a series of rule changes for the 2023 season that would see defensive shifts limited, the size of bases expanded and the implementation of a pitch clock. While Clark noted that the players were not necessarily opposed, the fact that MLB raised them so late in the process left the union with little to no time to discuss them — an obvious point of consternation.
Stripling is hardly alone in his willingness to speak out and voice his displeasure with the manner in which negotiations transpired. Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic chronicled a series of player frustrations that were broadcast via social media, citing Wood, Evan Longoria, Anthony Rizzo, Michael Lorenzen, Kevin Pillar and others. As Ghiorli examines, the players’ ability to freely speak their minds — and share details like those laid out by Stripling, Wood and others — are fascinating new wrinkles to labor talks that did not exist prior to the social media age. While fans have understandably grown exhausted by the public jabs being traded (whether directly or via reports), the lack of any real momentum regarding a return to play and the general distrust between the parties only sets the stage for further exchanges of this nature.
Reynolds: No Extension Talks With Pirates Prior To Lockout
The Pirates probably won’t grab too many headlines of note in free agency once the lockout lifts, but the majority of Pittsburgh fans hope they’ll make another transaction of note: a long-term deal for All-Star outfielder Bryan Reynolds. Likewise, fans from just about every outfield-needy club around the league are hoping the Pirates move the 27-year-old Reynolds in exchange for what would figure to be a major haul of prospect talent. It’s not an either-or proposition, as Pittsburgh could just hang onto Reynolds and control him another four years via arbitration, even without an extension. Whatever path the team is planning, Reynolds himself tells Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he “didn’t hear anything” regarding his future from the team before MLB halted Major League transactions and barred players from communicating with their teams.
Reynolds was a focal point of the 2021 trade deadline, reportedly drawing sizable offers from the Braves and Brewers. The Mariners, Marlins and Yankees have each shown interest in Reynolds as well, and his market undoubtedly spans a good bit wider than just that handful of publicly known suitors.
It’s hardly a surprise that Reynolds has become such a coveted player. He followed a Rookie of the Year-caliber 2019 season with a rough campaign in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but Reynolds bounced back better than ever in 2021 and made that 2020 downturn look like an aberration. Reynolds has played three seasons in the Majors and, in the two full campaigns, has hit better than .300 with a near-.400 OBP and well above-average power. He made his first All-Star team in 2021 — a season that saw him finish out the year with a hearty .302/.390/.522 batting line. Reynolds belted a career-best 24 long balls, racked up 35 doubles and logged a career-high (and league-leading) eight triples as well. On the whole, the switch-hitter owns a .290/.368/.490 line in an even 1400 plate appearances.
Defensively, Reynolds has stepped up as the Pirates’ primary center fielder, although publicly available metrics provide lukewarm reviews of his glovework there. He registered +2 Outs Above Average this past season, per Statcast, but Reynolds also checked in with -5 Defensive Runs Saved and a -5 Ultimate Zone Rating. His overall defense in center rates closer to average when factoring in his entire career, but it’s also worth noting that Reynolds has 10 Defensive Runs Saved in the corners. Scouting reports based on the eye test surely provide a similar range of opinions, but it’s unlikely anyone views Reynolds as a major liability with the glove.
Reynolds is controlled through the 2025 season but will reach arbitration as a Super Two player this year, as he enters the season with two years and 163 days of service time (just nine days shy in that rookie season of reaching a full year). He’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn a $4.5MM salary for the coming season, and he’ll be in line for three more raises based on that first-time arbitration salary.
Historically speaking, there’s a wide swath of possible extension outcomes for players with between two and three years of MLB service time. Mike Trout (six years, $144MM) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (14 years, $341MM) are clear outliers that needn’t enter the conversation when trying to gauge a theoretical price point for Reynolds, but as can be seen in MLBTR’s Extension Tracker, there have been quite a few outfielders to sign long-term while in this service bracket — including a few who were Super Two players themselves.
Back in 2015-16, it was common for outfielders in this position to sign in the range of $25-30MM over a five-year period, as evidenced by deals for Adam Eaton, Ender Inciarte and Odubel Herrera. All of those deals included at least one club option. Minnesota’s Max Kepler moved the needle forward a bit further with his 2019 extension — a five-year deal worth a guaranteed $35MM, plus a club option for a sixth season. Kepler, like Reynolds, was a Super Two player, and his $3.2MM projected 2019 salary was a good bit lower than that of Reynolds. Kepler’s deal paid him $25.5MM for his four arbitration seasons, guaranteed him $9.5MM for one would-be free-agent year and also gave the Twins a $10MM option for a sixth season. Reynolds has a superior track record to this point in his career, so it seems fair to expect that he’d topple that Kepler mark by a fair bit.
The other potential comparable for Reynolds, and one that his reps at CAA likely prefer as a target to surpass, is the six-year, $53.5MM deal signed by Kevin Kiermaier in 2017. Kiermaier was also a Super Two center fielder with above-average power. His defensive accolades had already begun to pile up — Kiermaier won Gold Gloves in 2015-16 and a Platinum Glove in 2015 — but he hadn’t made anywhere near the same level of offensive impact as Reynolds has. He’d tallied 1313 career plate appearances at the time of his extension and owned a .258/.313/.425 line that’s a good bit shy of Reynolds’ career numbers. There’s also the simple fact that Kiermaier’s deal — which paid him $27.5MM for his arbitration years, bought out two free agent campaigns at a combined $26MM and contained a $13MM club option for a seventh season — is now five years old, making for a slightly dated comparison point.
The possibility of a long-term deal for Reynolds is complicated by the Pirates’ organizational spending habits. The Bucs have rather remarkably never topped a $60MM guarantee on any player, and that contract was handed out to Jason Kendall more than two decades ago. Even by the Pirates’ consistent low-spending ways, the long-term financial outlook is wide open. They don’t have a single dollar committed beyond next season, and Reynolds is the only player on the roster who’d be likely to command a significant arbitration payout in 2023. There looks to be opportunity for the Pirates to build around Reynolds as a franchise player, but it may require the single biggest expenditure the organization has made — at least since Bob Nutting took over principal ownership of the franchise in 2007.
A good portion of the fanbase would be in favor of such a move, with Reynolds and Ke’Bryan Hayes expected to be part of a long-term core for the Pirates as they continue with a massive rebuild. Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic wrote over the summer that the Bucs weren’t inclined to trade Reynolds, instead “(intending) to build around him.” That might result in the front office opening talks whenever they’re again allowed to make MLB transactions, but that process apparently hasn’t yet begun.
Lockout Notes: TV Contracts, Miller, Scherzer, Stipends
Major League Baseball’s lockout is entering its fourth month, and the first two regular-season series of the 2022 schedule have already been lost. Most fans have grown weary of the back-and-forth, the finger-pointing and name-calling, instead merely wanting to know when they can expect MLB to again be a part of their daily routines. The unfortunate reality is that there’s no firm answer to that question, as we can’t know firmly when an agreement will be reached — or even when talks will resume.
As Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic outlines, local television contracts don’t call for rebates from teams until roughly 25 games are lost. Jeff Passan of ESPN adds some specifics, writing that avoiding rebates requires broadcasting between 138 and 150 games (with slight team-to-team variation). That plays into the owners’ ability to hold out, as does the general fact that their wealth considerably outpaces that of the players. In cold-weather states, April is a relatively poorly attended month anyhow — at least after the early rush of the opening series.
On the players’ side of the equation, MLBPA executive subcommittee member Andrew Miller told reporters last night that union solidarity is stronger than he’s ever seen (link via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
“We’re prepared,” said Miller. “We’ve seen this coming in a sense. It’s unfortunate. This isn’t new to us. This is not shocking. Our communication, our willingness to see each other’s point of views and find solutions and fight for what’s right is not like I’ve seen before. I can tell you that.”
Both Miller and fellow subcommittee member Max Scherzer broadcast strength and a desire to improve conditions for future generations. Scherzer candidly said he was more than willing to “sacrifice part of [his] career,” noting that he would not be in position to have signed the contract he did without previous generations of players sacrificing portions of their career for him. At the very least, the MLBPA is putting up a strong front.
It’s easier for players like Scherzer, who have amassed hundreds of millions in career earnings, to sit out than it is for players with little to no MLB experience. However, as noted here at MLBTR this week, the union has been preparing for this worst-case scenario for some time, spinning off their licensing revenues into a separate company that allows them to take equity stakes in third parties.
The MLBPA offered $5,000 stipends to members for both February and March and, per Rosenthal and colleague Evan Drellich, will begin offering $15,000 monthly stipends on April 1. Most veterans won’t be applying for those checks, but for those playing closer to the league minimum — or, particularly, those expected to be collecting minor league salaries — it’s a reasonably notable sum. The union has the funds to last the entire season paying out those stipends, although the obvious hope is that a resolution will arrive far sooner.
Everything now depends on how quickly the two parties return to the table and whether one or both will blink in the face of historic levels of tension and public pressure. Clark’s suggestion that ownership cares more about “breaking the union” than about getting players back on the field speaks volumes about the rift that remains, and now on top of everything else, they’ll quarrel over potentially prorated salaries and service time.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Click here to read a transcript of Wednesday’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
MLB Preparing To Make Its “Best Offer” To MLBPA Before 5pm Deadline
2:45pm: MLB’s offer to the union, per Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post (Twitter link), includes a $30MM pre-arbitration bonus pool with no yearly increases, a $700K minimum salary with $10K annual increases, and no changes to prior luxury-tax thresholds ($220MM from 2022-24, $224MM in 2025, $230MM in 2026). That leaves a $55MM gap between the union’s proposed bonus pool (which also includes yearly $5MM increases) and a $25K gap in minimum salary. As for the luxury-tax thresholds, the two sides still face an $18MM gap in 2022 proposals, which grows to a $33MM gap by their proposed 2026 terms.
2:10pm: Major League Baseball is preparing to extend its best and final offer to the Players Association before today’s self-imposed 5:00pm EST deadline, a league spokesperson announced to several reporters (Twitter thread via Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald). The league official indicated MLB believed there to be a “path to a deal” late last night and agreed to extend its deadline while awaiting a counteroffer regarding the luxury tax.
The league contends that the union’s “tone” has changed today, whereas MLBPA officials have told reporters that their tone has remained consistent (Twitter link via Yahoo’s Hannah Keyser). The union’s message throughout the day has been that, for all the optimism MLB tried to express last night, a good bit of work remained in many key areas. Giants pitcher Alex Wood, who’s been involved on the players’ end throughout the process, adamantly states that the union has “had the same tone all along.” Wood contends, via Twitter, that last night’s optimism from the league was deliberately feigned in an effort to cast blame upon the player’s side if and when talks ultimately failed to produce a deal. Mets catcher James McCann tweets a similar message, accusing MLB of trying to “control the narrative.”
The MLBPA continues to broadcast a desire to negotiate — even beyond the 5pm deadline the league has set — but the league is now once again drawing a hardline status and implying a take-it-or-leave it style offer will soon be made. The league characterizes the forthcoming offer as “fair for both players and clubs.” Based on the manner in which past negotiations have transpired, it’s hard to imagine the union will view things similarly.
MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets that one dispute still, unsurprisingly, centers around the luxury-tax thresholds. MLB’s latest offer reportedly set a $220MM luxury-tax barrier for the next three seasons before climbing to $224MM in 2025 and to $230MM in 2026. The union, meanwhile, proposed first-level thresholds of $238MM in 2022, $244MM in 2023, $250MM in 2024, $256MM in 2025 and $263MM in 2026. Both offers represent slight movement from the parties’ original proposals, but it’s still a large bridge to cross.
Meanwhile, Evan Drellich of The Athletic tweets that the MLBPA dropped its ask on the pre-arbitration bonus pool from $115MM to $85MM — effectively asking each team to contribute $2.83MM rather than the prior ask of $3.83MM. That pool, per Drellich, would increase by $5MM annually over the life of the collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, the league remains set at $25MM — roughly $833K per team.
As for the minimum salary, Drellich further tweets that the union has dropped its ask to $725K, with yearly increases of $20K throughout the CBA. The league is offering $675K and an annual increase of $10K, as was reported yesterday.
Public relations tactics like the ones characterized by Wood have been employed throughout these negotiations (and not solely by MLB), but there’s a large portion of the MLB fanbase that cares very little about which side is to “blame.” The broader takeaway from the entire situation is that the scheduled March 31 season opener remains very much in jeopardy. Commissioner Rob Manfred has previously called missing regular-season games a “disastrous outcome” while touting his own track record of labor peace, but that disaster feels closer than at any point to date.
To reiterate, today’s “deadline” is only seen by one of the two parties (the league) as a hard stopping point in talks. It would teeter on impossible to facilitate the optimal four-week Spring Training that Manfred mentioned as a target in mid-February, but if the two sides were to continue talking in the coming days, there’s no reason a deal that at least preserves a March 31 or an early-April start to the season couldn’t be salvaged. For now, MLB is drawing a firm line in the sand in hoping that the players accept an offer that, with just 80 minutes until the purported “deadline,” has yet to even be presented to the union.