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Collective Bargaining Agreement

Details On The Athletics’ Revenue-Sharing Status

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Reports surfaced in February that the new collective bargaining agreement would see the Athletics once again become a recipient of revenue-sharing funds, and indeed, that proved to be the case once the CBA was (at long last) finalized between the league and the MLB Players Association.  Susan Slusser and Matt Kawahara of The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the details of the Oakland revenue-sharing situation on Thursday, and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal had some more specifics in his recent notes column.

For one, it will take four years (of the five-year span of the collective bargaining agreement) for the A’s to receive a full share of revenue-sharing monies, as Rosenthal notes that the team will be phased in via 25 percent increments.  For instance, Oakland will get 25 percent of a full share in the first year, 50 percent in the second year, etc.

It is also possible that the A’s won’t even get to that full share unless they make significant progress on their long-desired new ballpark.  As per the terms of the CBA, if the Athletics don’t have “a binding deal” for a new ballpark in place by January 15, 2024, they will no longer receive any revenue-sharing funds.  If an agreement for a new stadium has been arranged by this date, the A’s will retain their revenue-sharing recipient status until they move into that ballpark.

Of particular note to Bay Area fans, the agreement specifies that the 1/15/24 deadline applies to a new deal for a ballpark in any city, not just Oakland.  The A’s have been exploring the possibility of a move to Las Vegas, and yet most recently, it seems there has been renewed momentum to a stadium in Oakland at the Howard Terminal site.  Back in May, the league publicly supported the Athletics’ plans to look outside of their home city for potential new stadium sites, so it makes sense that the CBA wouldn’t put any limit on where the A’s might direct their search over the next 22 months.  The club’s lease at the RingCentral Coliseum is up following the 2024 season.

CBA Notes: Arbitration, Waivers, Schedule, PED Testing, Minor League Salary

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MLB and the MLBPA finally reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday, ending a contentious lockout that spanned over three months. The major elements of the deal, such as the CBT levels and the bonus pool for arbitration-eligible players, were reported on as the negotiations transpired, but some of the minor details are still trickling out. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com revealed one such detail on Twitter, writing that, “Beginning after 2022, salary arbitration eligible players who settle with their teams on a salary for the subsequent season without going to a hearing will be eligible to receive full season termination pay, even if released prior to the start of the season.”

This is a small change that could potentially have significant ramifications. Under the previous CBA, arbitration contracts were not fully guaranteed until Opening Day, with players cut during Spring Training only earning a portion of the agreed-upon salary. If a team released a player more than 15 days prior to Opening Day, they only had to pay the player 30 days’ salary as termination pay. If the player was released less than 15 days before Opening Day, they would get 45 days’ pay.

This makes for an interesting tradeoff. On the one hand, this could be viewed as a gain for the players, as they now have access to greater security, knowing that the salary they accept will be locked in once they agree to it. But this also gives them incentive to accept terms without the hearing, perhaps leading to them accepting lower terms than they otherwise would have earned, thus benefiting the teams. It is well established that teams put a high priority on stifling salaries as much as possible. In 2019, it was revealed that MLB holds an annual symposium where the team that best succeeds at opposing the players in arbitration is awarded a wrestling-style championship belt, something that surely didn’t help with the animosity that’s lingered between the players and the league since the signing of the last CBA. This wrinkle in the new CBA could help the teams further those goals, but at least could give some borderline non-tender candidates the silver lining of greater financial security.

Elsewhere in the CBA, Jayson Stark of The Athletic provides an interesting nugget on Twitter. “If a team has already claimed a player once on waivers that season, it can’t claim him again until every other team has passed.” Stark aptly refers to this as the “Jacob Nottingham Rule,” in reference to the fact that Nottingham was the centerpiece of a game of hot potato between the Brewers and Mariners last year. Beginning the season with the Brewers, the catcher was put on waivers in April, claimed by the Mariners, who put him back on waivers on May. The Brewers brought him back on a waiver claim, only to send him back onto the waiver wire two weeks later. On May 2oth, Seattle claimed him again, before putting him back on the wire in early June, when he finally cleared. Waiver claim priority generally goes in reverse order of the current standings. (For the first 31 days of the season, the standings of the previous season are used.) In the case of Nottingham, there would have been some teams that never even had the ability to make a claim on him for most of that sequence last year, as he would have been scooped up before their turn. Going forward, they will have a greater chance to interrupt such a unique back-and-forth as occurred with Nottingham last year.

In a detailed column about the CBA, Stark adds some details about the schedule changes that will begin in 2023. While it had been previously reported that teams would play all 29 of the other squads in the league each year, with the number of divisional games being reduced, the details were not known at the time. Stark lays out the format that will begin next year, with each team playing its divisional rivals 14 times per season, down from 19, for a total of 56. Teams in the same league but not the same division will be played six times each, a total of 60. When it comes to interleague play, each team has a “rival” that they will play four times, with three games against the other 14 teams in the opposite league. That amounts to 46 total interleague games. All of those categories are evenly split between road and home, except for the final one. In the case of the 14 non-rival teams that are in the opposite league, the home team for the three-game series will alternate from year to year.

Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com has a couple of other details in his rundown of the CBA. In terms of PEDs, he says, “There will be an increase in the number of in-season urine tests for performance-enhancing substances and drugs of abuse, as well as adjustments to the scheduling of these tests to make them less predictable.” He then adds that, “the program will now utilize dried-blood spot-testing rather than venous blood draws for hGH testing, making Major League Baseball the first professional sport drug testing program to adopt this new technology.”

Finally, while the increase in the minimum salary for MLB players was reported throughout the negotiations, there is also a bump for some players in the minors. From Kubatko: “The minor league minimum salary for players signing a second major league contract or with prior big league service will increase from $93,000 in 2021 to $114,100 in 2022, $117,400 in 2023, $120,600 in 2024, $123,900 in 2025 and $127,100 in 2026.”

MLB Gains Flexibility To Set Trade Deadline Between July 28-August 3

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The traditional July 31 trade deadline may be no more under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, as outlined in the official release of the CBA today.  As per the new rules, “The Office of the Commissioner shall have the flexibility to set the Major League Trade Deadline on a date between July 28th and August 3rd.”

This may not be as a major a change as it initially appears, given that it hasn’t been uncommon for the trade deadline date to be altered.  Just this past July, in fact, the deadline was moved to July 30, whereas in 2016 the deadline was moved to August 1.

In both those situations, July 31 fell on a weekend day, when afternoon games were scheduled.  While playing games on any deadline day throughout the week can lead to some awkward situations (i.e. a team suddenly having a shorthanded roster after dealing multiple players a few hours earlier), having the deadline on a weekend creates the possibility of even more chaos, with trades being consummated while actual games are taking place.

The new wrinkle to the CBA may simply formalize a process for deciding the deadline’s date.  Notably, this coming July 31 is on a Sunday, so it seems likely that the deadline will be pushed ahead at least one day.  Given the later start to the season, it seems plausible that August 3 might be this year’s deadline, just to give teams as much time as possible to plan.  Looking ahead, this season is the only time during the 2022-26 campaigns (the length of the new CBA) that July 31 will fall on a Saturday or Sunday, so 2022 might well be the only time Commissioner Rob Manfred chooses to wield this particular bit of authority.

MLB, MLBPA Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement

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After 99 days, the MLB lockout is finally drawing to a close. The Major League Baseball Players Association has voted to approve the most recent counterproposal from ownership, setting the stage for a new collective bargaining agreement to be ratified, as first reported by Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extra Base. The new CBA covers the 2022-26 seasons, and the transaction freeze associated with the lockout has been lifted. The Score’s Travis Sawchik tweets that the proposal passed by a vote of 26 to 12 among the MLBPA’s 30 team union reps and eight executive subcommittee members.

Increasing pay for younger players, advancing the competitive balance (luxury) tax thresholds in a meaningful way, implementing anti-tanking measures and eliminating draft-pick compensation took center stage among the players’ must-have goals. MLB, meanwhile, sought to further expand revenues by widening the postseason field and adding advertising patches to player uniforms. The league also pushed for, and was ultimately granted, the creation of a fourth tier of luxury-tax penalization. Additionally, ownership saw to it that a handful of grievances filed by the MLBPA over the past several years would be dropped.

Among the more notable gains for the players, they’ll now see the luxury-tax threshold jump from this past season’s $210MM up to $230MM in 2022. It will rise to $244MM over the life of the agreement. Given the manner in which the competitive balance tax has begun to function as a soft salary cap among the sport’s top-spending teams, notable advancement was vital. The 9.5% jump in the first year of the new CBA marked a notable gain for the players’ side, even if it fell shy of their initial ask.

Other notable gains for the union include a newly created league-funded pool that will provide pre-arbitration players with bonuses based on performance. After much back-and-forth, the two parties settled on a sum of $50MM (just under $2MM per team) that can be divided among the sport’s top pre-arbitration stars. The exact parameters of how that will be doled out remain unclear, but it’s a notable uptick in the earning power of the game’s young stars.

Pre-arbitration players will also see a sizable increase in their base levels of pay, as the minimum salary will jump from $570,500 to $700,000. That number will grow by a measure of $80K over the agreement’s five years, pushing the league-minimum salary to $780K by the time the 2026 season rolls around.

The players also sought to clamp down on the issue of service time manipulation, and an agreement is believed to be in place that would award a full year of service to players who finish well in end-of-season Awards voting. As with the pool, the finer details have not yet come to light. On the flip side of that equation, teams now also stand to be awarded draft picks if young players on their Opening Day roster finish well in Rookie of the Year voting.

The hope among players is that such measures will bring star players up sooner, as the issue of service manipulation was seen both as a means of tamping down players’ earning potential and also a data point in a long string of anti-competitive behaviors by clubs. Essentially, teams argued that the best players in an organization should be on its Major League roster. Along those same lines, the union pushed for a draft lottery as a means of curbing the increasingly popular multi-year rebuilds that see a team effectively tank for premier draft position. While the lottery that was eventually implemented wasn’t quite as robust as the MLBPA originally proposed, it’s expected that the first six selections of the draft will now be determined in lottery fashion.

Perhaps the key victory for the league was the expansion to a 12-team playoff field — which will reportedly secure them an additional $85MM in annual television revenue from ESPN alone. The additional profits associated with any live game (gate, parking, concessions, etc.) will only add to that total. The league also succeeded in its desire to add advertising patches to player uniforms, which will generate tens of millions in revenue itself. Rates will presumably only increase during the spotlight of the postseason, making the extra games added via the expanded field all the more lucrative.

Major League Baseball secured a provisional agreement to discuss the implementation of an international draft, setting a July 25 deadline for the two parties to come to terms on a format that would go into effect in 2024. If an agreement is reached, the qualifying offer system pertaining to free agency will be eliminated. Absent an agreement on the international draft, the two sides agreed that both the qualifying offer system and the current international free-agent system will remain in place.

It seems we could soon have some rule changes on the horizon, as the league sought the implementation of several measures it believes will improve in-game action and pace of play. While the specifics and timing remain to be seen, the stage is set for measures such as a pitch clock, the banning of aggressive defensive shifts and larger bases — if not in 2022 than in 2023. The universal designated hitter, as has long been expected, will formally go into effect under this new CBA.

MLB also pushed for revenue-sharing grievances against the A’s, Pirates, Rays and Marlins to be dropped and succeeded in having Oakland reinstated as a revenue-sharing recipient. The A’s had previously been ousted from that designation in the prior CBA. A late revelation regarding their proposal was the push for the MLBPA to drop its $500MM grievance that claimed the league did not act in good faith during return-to-play negotiations in the Covid-shortened 2020 season.

Over the days and weeks to come, we’ll break out some of the finer details of the collective bargaining agreement and drill deep into the specifics of every new wrinkle. For the time being, however, the focus shifts immediately to one of player movement and the long-awaited return of the lifeblood of MLBTR: transactions! Owners are reportedly expected to ratify the new agreement on a 6pm ET call, and free-agent and trade activity can begin immediately once that occurs.

Prior to a lockout they all saw coming, teams scrambled to scoop up the offseason’s top free agents before the previous CBA expired. Thirty of MLB’s top 50 free agents were signed in an unprecedented November spending spree, with nine-figure pacts going to Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Javier Baez, Max Scherzer, Robbie Ray, and Kevin Gausman. Now, three months’ worth of remaining offseason signing and trading is expected to take place in roughly a four-week period, creating a frenzy the likes of which we’ve never seen. The salary arbitration process will likely bleed into the regular season. You can review the best remaining free agents here, and our series of posts on the trade market here.

The bottom line in all of this: baseball is back, and it will be back in a big way. Spring Training games will commence late next week, and April 7 is now the target for Opening Day. Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Trevor Story, Clayton Kershaw, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber and dozens of other free agents remain unsigned, while the A’s and Reds are among the teams expected to be active in trading veteran players coming out of the lockout. Stars like Matt Olson and Luis Castillo are among the most notable names expected to be on the market, and activity is expected  to be nothing shy of frenetic.

As is the case with every trade deadline and Winter Meetings bonanza, we’re prepared to cover the deluge of Hot Stove activity to the fullest here at MLB Trade Rumors. After nearly 100 days with only minor league free agency, labor quarrels and countless “what if” scenarios dreaming of idyllic post-lockout days, we’re just as excited as the rest of our readers to have actual baseball transactions and actual baseball games now on the horizon. Thanks for sticking with us through it all, and let the chaos begin!

MLB, Players Association Could Expand Active Rosters Early In 2022 Season

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MLB and the Players Association agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement this afternoon, in time to preserve a 162-game regular season. The work stoppage dragged on long enough to deal a pretty significant blow to Spring Training, though, which will be shorter in 2022 than it is in a typical year.

With only four weeks until Opening Day, there’s some concern about the early-season workload players will have to assume. One possible solution would be to expand the active rosters a bit early in the season, and it seems that’s on the table. Joel Sherman of the New York Post noted this afternoon that while expanding rosters wasn’t part of the CBA, the parties could circle back to that possibility. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune tweets that some in the industry expect an enlarged active roster early in the regular season.

That move wouldn’t be without precedent. Rosters were bumped to 28 players for the entirety of the shortened 2020 season. That followed a three-week exhibition “Summer Camp” and also came with greater concerns about teams losing players to COVID-19. Still, it suggests the league and union aren’t opposed to adding a little more depth to teams’ rosters if they’re concerned about the shortened ramp-up.

Complicating matters further is the return on the limit of the number of pitchers teams may carry. Over the 2019-20 offseason, MLB passed a rule that capped teams to 13 pitchers at any given time. Under pandemic protocols, that rule was suspended in both 2020 and 2021. However, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported last May that MLB was planning to reinstitute the 13-pitcher limit this season. That seems to have come to fruition, as Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak acknowledged it was in place when speaking with reporters this evening (via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Were active rosters to expand for the season’s first few weeks, that limit on pitchers would probably be relaxed. Whenever teams are faced with a permanent cap of 13 hurlers, though, there figure to be greater challenges for managers in handling their staffs. The CBA also limits teams to optioning players to the minor leagues more than five times in a season, so management won’t be as simple as shuttling fresh arms on and off the roster daily. That could compel teams to lean more heavily on their starting pitchers than they have in recent years (particularly with the introduction of the universal DH removing the need to pinch-hit for pitchers depending on the game situation).

Opening Day Set For April 7

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6:35pm: Tim Healey of Newsday reports (Twitter link) that the league and union also agreed to a series of games or tours in various destinations outside the United States and Canada. During the next CBA, they’ll stage events in Mexico, Asia, Puerto Rico, London, the Dominican Republic and Paris.

5:25pm: Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal reports (on Twitter) that beginning in 2023, the schedule will be adjusted such that every team plays all 29 opponents in each season. The exact format is to be determined, but those games will come attached to a decrease in the number of intra-divisional games teams will play. Previously, teams played 19 games per season against all four of their divisional opponents.

2:34pm: With the new collective bargaining agreement in place, Opening Day will be set for April 7, as first reported by Bob Nightengale of USA Today (Twitter links). It’ll be a 162-game season with full player pay, with the end of the season pushed back three days and doubleheaders in place to compensate for the one-week delayed start. Spring Training games will begin around March 18.

Players will be able to report to Spring Training tomorrow, tweets Jeff Passan of ESPN. The mandatory spring report date is Sunday, March 13, according to Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post.

MLB had announced yesterday it was canceling games through April 13. However, today’s progress in negotiations led the league to backtrack on that stance. Nothing has been made official on the league’s end — presumably, that’s pending this evening’s ownership ratification, which is expected to be a formality. At that point, the league figures to make a formal announcement on the schedule. Presumably, it’d reinstate the originally scheduled games it nominally wiped out yesterday, but there’s been no word on that yet.

MLBPA Drops 2020 Grievance Against MLB, Will Not Drop Grievances Against Pirates, A’s, Marlins, Rays

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MLB’s lockout is finally over, although details regarding the late stages of collective bargaining talks are still emerging. One revelation late in the process was that the league was not only requesting that the MLBPA drop previously filed grievances against the Rays, A’s, Pirates and Marlins (which pertained to their usage of revenue-sharing funds), but also to drop a $500MM grievance filed in wake of return-to-play negotiations in the Covid-shortened 2020 season. Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated reports that the MLBPA did indeed drop the 2020 grievance but did not drop the grievances against the Tampa Bay, Oakland, Pittsburgh and Miami franchises.

The now-dropped grievance pertaining to the 2020 season was filed in May 2021 and saw the union seek $500MM in total. The grievance alleged that MLB negotiated in bad faith during return-to-play negotiations and had not done everything in its power to play as many games as possible. The league originally indicated that it hoped to fast-track any subsequent proceedings so they did not impact the looming collective bargaining talks, but that clearly never came to be. The MLBPA was seeking what amounted to 20-plus games worth of retroactive pay, contending that those games could have been played had the league made its “best effort” to return to play, as had been previously agreed upon. That suit will now be put to bed, it seems.

As for the others, the initial grievances were filed in Feb. 2018, alleging that the teams had not sufficiently dedicated their revenue-sharing funds to improving the on-field product. Revenue sharing is collectively bargained, and the spirit of the issue is intended to be one of competitive balance; that is to say, those funds are technically intended to help small-market clubs keep pace with their larger-market peers. The grievances were expanded in subsequent years, as the union continued to contend that those teams were not properly utilizing those funds.

The Rays, notably, authored multiple winning seasons during that time and did put forth a fairly sizable two-year, $30MM offer to sign Charlie Morton. The other three clubs in question spent at more minimal levels and, in the cases of Pittsburgh and Miami in particular, did not enjoy the same level of on-field success. Those organizations figure to contend that said revenue-sharing funds were allocated to other important organizational measures that improve the team, even if not directly through adding to the current Major League payroll (e.g. investments in player development, analytics, international scouting and other less-tangible areas).

Precisely what the union is seeking in relief and just when the grievances might eventually be resolved — either by an arbitrator or, should commissioner Rob Manfred agree that sanctions are needed, by punishing the clubs in question — are not yet clear.

Postseason Expands To 12 Teams; First Round Will Be Three-Game Series

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As expected, the collective bargaining agreement expanded the postseason field from ten teams to twelve. Travis Sawchik of The Score reports the format (via Twitter): the top two division winners in each league receive first-round byes, while the worst division winner and the three Wild Card teams per league will play three-game sets to advance to the Division Series. The worst division winner will face the final Wild Card qualifier, while the top two Wild Card clubs will take on one another.

There is no “ghost win” involved. The Players Association had previously floated the possibility of division winners starting with a one-game advantage in any first-round set against a Wild Card club. MLB opposed that idea, and it didn’t make it into the final agreement.

The union’s push for a “ghost win” seemed more rooted in concerns about a potential 14-team format than with the 12-team arrangement, though. The MLBPA was unenthused by the possibility of going to 14 playoff teams, fearing that doing so would disincentivize clubs from ardently upgrading their rosters if they believed they were already comfortable postseason qualifiers.

Ultimately, the union held firm on the 12-team playoff this time around. Describing that as a loss for the league, which had sought 14 for most of negotiations, wouldn’t be entirely accurate though. Going from 10 to 12 clubs marked a major concession in its own right; the introduction of a new round of the postseason is worth a reported $85MM annually for the league under the terms of its broadcasting arrangement with ESPN. That’s before accounting for gate and concession revenue for clubs hosting those additional games.

With the postseason expansion, the Wild Card game is no more. The one-game playoff between the two Wild Card clubs in each league took effect with MLB moving from eight to ten postseason qualifiers back in 2012. It remained in place through 2021, but the one-game playoff has been eliminated in favor of three-game series moving forward.

Interestingly, the potential Game 163 tiebreaker has also been scrapped. Jayson Stark of the Athletic reports (Twitter link) there are seeding tiebreakers in place in the event teams finish the year with the same regular season record. The specifics aren’t clear, but other leagues have used such things as head-to-head record between tied clubs and winning percentage in intra-league games as tiebreakers. Rather than conducting a one-game playoff between teams that finish tied for postseason spots, a prearranged formula will determine the field.

Finally, the division series won’t be reseeded, Sawchik reports. The top seed in each league will host the winner of the 4 vs. 5 Wild Card series in the second round, even if the #6 seed beats the #3 seed. That’s a bit of an odd choice on the surface, but it could perhaps aid MLB in marketing the postseason as an NCAA basketball-style bracket.

New CBA Officially Introduces Universal Designated Hitter

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Today’s collective bargaining agreement officially introduced the designated hitter to the National League, tweets Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. That’s certainly not a surprise, as the universal DH had been one of the earlier principles for MLB and the Players Association to settle.

The union has sought a universal DH for quite some time, with more possibility for aging or defensively-limited players to have regular roles. AL teams have increasingly used the position as a quasi-rest day for regular players rather than committing to a true full-time DH, but six players (Nelson Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, J.D. Martinez, Giancarlo Stanton, Franmil Reyes and Yordan Álvarez) tallied at least 400 plate appearances in the role last season.

Cruz, in particular, could be the most immediate beneficiary of the universal DH’s implementation. He’s a free agent but is unlikely to see much, if any, time in the field next year. The universal DH opens up the opportunity for NL teams that may have otherwise been wary to bid on Cruz. Other bat-first free agents like Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler could also see their respective leaguewide demand propped up a bit.

The league, meanwhile, embraced the universal DH as a means of aiding offense. The sport’s ever-increasing strikeout rate has drawn plenty of consternation. The leaguewide strikeout percentage ticked upwards every year between 2005 and 2020, setting an all-time record each season. Last year finally marked a stop to the record-breaking streak, as the strikeout rate marginally slipped from 23.4% to 23.2%. That’s perhaps a bit encouraging, but last year’s number still checked in almost seven percentage points above 2005’s 16.4% mark.

Pitchers aren’t the only culprit for the decrease in balls in play, but they’ve had real issues making contact. Last year, pitcher-hitters fanned at a 44.2% clip. Overall, they hit .110/.150/.142 across 4,830 plate appearances. That’s ghastly production, even by the historically low standards at the position. Their five highest all-time strikeout rates have come in the last five years of pitcher hitting. Four of the five lowest pitcher-hitters’ wRC+ (which compares their overall offensive output to that season’s league average marks) have come since 2017. However one wants to explain that trend — improved leaguewide velocities, specialization that leads to less practice for pitcher hitting, etc. — pitchers were putting up less of a fight at the plate than ever before.

The development figures to receive varying reception from fans of Senior Circuit teams (although many likely considered it an inevitability some time ago). Aside from its implementation as a pandemic protocol in the shortened 2020 season, the NL has never had the position. Most MLBTR readers, however, seem to favor its introduction. In a December poll, 62% of respondents expressed support for an NL DH; 26% were against the possibility, while 12% were generally apathetic.

The universal DH is the only official on-field rules change for 2022, but two recent pandemic protocols did not survive the CBA. Jesse Rogers of ESPN reports (on Twitter) that the nine-inning doubleheader returns, as do standard rules for extra innings. The “ghost runner” provision has been scrapped.

The seven-inning doubleheaders and the extra-innings runner proved divisive provisions among baseball fans in their two years in place. They’d been implemented as part of the COVID-19 protocols, with both provisions designed to lessen player workloads during seasons that could be massively impacted by virus-related postponements. Those concerns aren’t expected to be as prominent in 2022, and it seems neither party was motivated enough to agree to implement them permanently. The league may look to reinstitute those rules at some point down the line, but they won’t be in effect for the upcoming season at the very least.

As part of the CBA, a rules committee will be created in 2023, Feinsand tweets. That committee — a group of four active players, six league appointees and an MLB umpire — will have the authority to implement an on-rules change within 45 days of recommending it to the MLBPA. Previously, the league had to wait one year between asking the union’s approval on a rules change and having the right to implement it in the event the MLBPA refused a bilateral agreement.

MLB technically no longer has sole authority to implement those changes, though its appointees will outnumber the player reps on the rules committee. That probably gives the league de facto control over rules, and it’s expected the league will try to implement three in particular — the implementation of a pitch clock, limits on defensive shifting, and larger bases — for the 2023 campaign. Feinsand suggests the automatic strike zone could also be a topic of discussion at that point, although that’ll become clearer next offseason.

MLBPA Reviewing Latest MLB Counterproposal

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1:55pm: Heyman tweets that the MLBPA executive subcommittee “appears” to be voting against the proposal, though it’s not clear whether that’s a unanimous decision or whether there’s a split camp among the eight players on that committee. That’s an important distinction, as the MLBPA needs a simple majority among the 30 team union reps and the eight members of the subcommittee — a total of 20 yes votes. In other words, it’s still possible for the union to approve the deal even if the executive subcommittee is against it.

1:45pm: Heyman tweets that MLB’s proposal also requests that the MLBPA drop the $500MM grievance it filed against MLB, wherein the players posited that MLB did not negotiate in good faith during return-to-play talks in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

1:14pm: Heyman tweets that MLB’s proposal calls for spring games to begin around March 17 and for Opening Day to fall on April 5. That would require backtracking on several of the games previously announced to be canceled or “removed from the schedule,” and ESPN’s Jesse Rogers adds that the remaining games would be made up through a series of doubleheaders that, notably, would be nine innings in length.

As notably, Rogers tweets that free agency could reopen as soon as tonight if the two sides reach an agreement and ratify the new CBA today. Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci suggested the same earlier today in an appearance on MLB Network.

1:09pm: The MLB Players Association has received the league’s latest counterproposal, as first reported by ESPN’s Marly Rivera, and is now in the process of reviewing the latest changes proposed by ownership. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports that the newest proposal saw the league up its proposed pre-arbitration bonus pool from $40MM to $50MM. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, meanwhile, tweets that there have been a few more modest concessions made in terms of the competitive balance (luxury) tax threshold and the minimum salary. MLB increased its proposed luxury threshold in 2026 (the final year of the proposed CBA) — slightly closing what had been an $8MM gap. The league held firm on its proposed $700K minimum salary for the upcoming season but offered a $10K increase over the $770K it had proposed in 2026 — up to $780K.

The movement on the pre-arbitration pool is the most notable jump made. The two parties had been facing a gap of $25MM, with the players coming in at a $65MM pool in 2022. However, the larger issue is surely whether that pool will grow at all over the life of the agreement. MLB has been steadfast in its push to keep the newly created bonus pool static, whereas the players have sought a $5MM annual increase to the size of the pool.

On the CBT front, the two parties had previously faced annual gaps of $2MM, $3MM, $4MM, $5MM and $8MM over the life of the potential agreement. MLB has held firm on its $230MM, $232MM, $236MM and $240MM threshold proposals from 2022-25, but they’re now proposing a $244MM threshold in 2026.

Notably, Heyman adds that the league’s proposal requests that the MLBPA drop previously filed grievances against the Rays, A’s, Pirates and Marlins — suits that allege that those four organizations had not sufficiently reallocated their revenue-sharing funds toward improving the on-field product. That’s not a new request, MLBTR has learned, but it’s also not one to which the union has previously agreed. That will be among the many topics considered when the union takes its vote — which ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel suggests could be taking place right now.

Confoundingly, Rosenthal indicates that MLB has yet again attempted to set another “deadline” for players, this one at 3:00pm ET today — a bit under an hour from now. MLB’s repeated attempts to set a deadline have not resulted in a deal yet and have generally served to stall negotiations rather than encourage them. The union hasn’t felt compelled to stick to those league-implemented deadlines, but the fact that they union appears to be in the process of voting right now, rather than outright refusing the proposal, at least offers a notable departure from some of the previous and more contentious back-and-forths that have taken place. Also of note, Daniel Alvarez Montes of El Extra Base tweets that if a deal is reached before that 3pm “deadline,” players will be allowed to begin reporting voluntarily to their Spring Training facilities as soon as tomorrow.

All of this movement comes after a morning agreement in which the two parties reached a provisional agreement regarding a July deadline to negotiate an international draft that would begin in 2024. If a deal is reached by July 25, the qualifying offer system (and the draft-pick compensation associated with it) will be eliminated. If no deal on the international draft is reached, the qualifying offer system and draft-pick compensation will remain in place, and the current international amateur free agency structure will remain in place.

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