Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Collective Bargaining Agreement

MLBPA Reportedly Willing To Reopen Talks On 14-Team Playoffs

By | at

TODAY: The league and the MLBPA have scheduled a meeting for tomorrow, according to Ken Rosenthal (Twitter links).  The union will be presenting responses, in writing, to the league’s last proposals.

MARCH 4, 8:55 pm: Jeff Passan of ESPN writes that the union’s “ghost win” proposal would actually function as akin to starting a three-game series up 1-0. Under that scenario, the division winner would only need to win one game to move on to the Division Series, while the Wild Card club would need to win two straight games.

4:58 pm: In an effort to finalize a new collective bargaining agreement before the league’s imposed deadline to avoid regular season game cancelations, MLB and the Players Association reportedly agreed to move forward with the framework for a 12-team postseason field. With that deadline having passed with no overarching agreement and the league having since scrapped the first two regular season series, the union is apparently willing to reconsider a more expansive field.

Buster Olney of ESPN reports (Twitter link) that the MLBPA has informed the league it’s amenable to reopening talks on a possible 14-team playoff. That has been an important initiative of MLB’s throughout negotiations, with a broader field giving the league more postseason games it can sell to television providers. Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported this week that a 14-team playoff would see MLB recoup an extra $100MM annually as part of its broadcasting agreement with ESPN.

That makes the 14-team playoff an enticing carrot for the league, one the union would no doubt make contingent on movement from MLB in other key areas. Where to set the competitive balance tax thresholds has been perhaps the biggest sticking point in negotiations. The league is reluctant to go beyond a $220MM base tax marker next season, while the union’s latest offer included a $238MM CBT base. That $18MM gap would only widen over the course of the potential agreement, with the MLBPA seeking more rapid increases in future seasons than the league has proposed. The parties also disagree on the amount of money that should go towards the pre-arbitration bonus pool and the league minimum salary, among other issues.

Reopening talks on the 14-team playoff could serve to kickstart talks as the parties regroup following MLB’s game cancelations. However, it’s worth noting that the 12-team postseason framework already marked a notable concession by the union. The status quo, of course, had been a 10-team field. Merely agreeing to bump from 10 to 12 teams created the possibility for extra playoff rounds and a corresponding windfall for the league. Marchand reported that a 12-team format would itself have led to around $85MM per season in extra revenue for MLB, again per the terms of the league’s broadcasting agreement with ESPN.

Approximately $85MM per season isn’t $100MM per season, though, so it’s little surprise the league had sought a 14-team playoff for most of negotiations. The union has maintained that it’d prefer a 12-team field. The MLBPA has expressed concerns that allowing 14 teams in would disincentivize clubs from ardently upgrading their rosters. The MLB postseason is more variable than those of other leagues — the playoff team with the worst regular season record won the World Series just last season, as an example — and the union fears those fluctuations could allow teams with already-strong rosters to be content not to push hard for further upgrades. That could have a trickle-down effect of limiting teams’ urgency to spend in free agency, a behavior the MLBPA wants to avoid.

The previous 10-team format offered a powerful incentive for clubs to try to win their division. Wild Card qualifiers were tossed into a one-game playoff, leaving little more than a 50-50 shot for any Wild Card team to advance to the Division Series. MLB’s proposed 14-team playoff setup would offer a first-round bye to the team with the best record in both the AL and NL (as in the case with the NFL’s system). However, the relatively minor favors for the other two division winners over the four Wild Card qualifiers — the division winners would get home field advantage and have the right to choose their first round opponents from among the bottom three Wild Card teams — weren’t significant enough needle-movers, in the players’ eyes.

Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive subcommittee, expressed reservations with that setup earlier this week. “It really came down to a format issue,” he told reporters (including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). “In a 14-team playoff structure we felt that competition could be eroded in that area. … (When one team gets a bye), solely home-field advantage was not going to be the advantage to go out and win the division.”

Scherzer’s comments leave open the possibility for alterations to the league’s playoff format that could still see 14 clubs qualify. During earlier stages of negotiations, the union floated the concept of a “ghost win” for the first round. Under that system, the two division winners per league that did not receive a bye would automatically get the equivalent of a 1-0 advantage in a best-of-five series against the bottom two Wild Card qualifiers. Thus, the division winner would only need to win two out of a potential four games to advance to the second round; the Wild Card club would need to win three out of four to move on. The top two Wild Card teams in each league, meanwhile, would face one another in a standard best-of-three set (via Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic).

There’s no indication the league was on-board with the “ghost win” idea, but it highlights the possibilities for the sides to find a mutually-agreeable solution in this area. The MLBPA would likely prefer a standard 12-team playoff group, but agreeing to 14 teams seems to be the best way to get the league to move on other issues the union considers important. It stands to reason the MLBPA will push for strong bonuses (like the “ghost win” concept) for division winners as the parties reengage on the 14-team postseason.

That might reinvigorate talks between MLB and the union, but the league’s call to cancel regular season games now looms over all discussions. Rosenthal tweeted this morning that the MLBPA is preparing a response to the league’s final pre-cancelation offer, which the union rejected on Tuesday to end a stretch of nine consecutive days of negotiation in Jupiter, Florida. The parties are expected to schedule their next talks fairly soon, but they’ll face a whole host of new challenges whenever they do meet again.

Commissioner Rob Manfred is on record as saying the league is of the opinion that players shouldn’t be compensated for lost regular season games. MLB has been adamant those games are officially canceled and won’t be made up. Union lead negotiator Bruce Meyer has unsurprisingly argued that the MLBPA will pursue compensation for salary lost to game cancelations. As MLBTR’s Steve Adams wrote yesterday, the union figures to take an especially hard-line approach to making sure players aren’t forfeiting service days as a result of the lockout. The MLBPA has also previously indicated they’d refuse to expand the playoff field in 2022 if the league cancels games and strips players of any salary (as it since has). That all sets up even more difficulties for leadership on both sides to work through, but the hope is that the union’s willingness to reconsider a 14-team postseason could be a catalyst for progress on those issues.

MLB Cancels Spring Training Games Until At Least March 18

By | at

MLB Spring Training games will not begin until at least March 18, the league announced on its website. Exhibition play had previously been scrapped through March 11.

It’s not a surprising delay, as it’s improbable there’ll be a new collective bargaining agreement in place to begin Spring Training games any sooner. There seems likely to be at least a week between the finalization of a new CBA and the start of Spring Training games. Teams will still need some time to conduct the remainder of their offseason work. Players will need at least a few days to report to camps before diving into gameplay.

MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem and union lead negotiator Bruce Meyer met informally yesterday, but Jon Heyman of the MLB Network writes (Facebook link) that sit-down “provided little in the way of progress.” The league and Players Association don’t have any further talks currently scheduled — although Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic tweeted this morning that the MLBPA is currently preparing a counteroffer to MLB’s last proposal. Talks are expected to resume some point soon, and it’s hoped the union’s reported willingness to again discuss a 14-team playoff field could kickstart negotiations.

Of greater concern to most than the start of Spring Training is when the regular season will kick off. The league has thus far canceled the first two series of the regular season, with the league’s website listing April 7 as the date for the first scheduled contests. It seems likely that’ll soon be further delayed as well, as commissioner Rob Manfred has indicated he wants a four-week Spring Training period (from the start of players reporting, not from the start of the first Spring Training game). MLB announced the cancelation of the scheduled March 31 Opening Day 30 days in advance. There are 34 days until April 7.

MLBPA Launches Fund For Workers Impacted By MLB Lockout

By | at

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.”

Four Owners Voted Against MLB’s Most Recent CBA Offer

By | at

March 4: Angels owner Arte Moreno, D-backs owner Ken Kendrick, Reds owner Bob Castellini and Tigers owner Chris Ilitch were all opposed to proposing a $220MM CBT threshold, per Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Drellich and Rosenthal add that some concerned owners have pointed to the spending of the Dodgers and the Mets as reasons for trepidation with pushing the luxury tax threshold further north. Martino tweets, rather unsurprisingly, that the Mets and the Yankees are among the teams open to a “less punitive” CBT setup.

The Athletic report also indicates that the players were particularly irritated when MLB proposed counting the cost of player meals against the luxury tax. Whether that’s among the issues recently raised by Blue Jays righty Ross Stripling isn’t clear, but Stripling contended that the league “tried to sneak some shit past us” in the proposal’s “fine print” during the wee hours of Monday night/Tuesday morning negotiations. Health insurance and other player benefits already count toward the luxury tax under the terms of the prior CBA. League special assistant Glen Caplin called reports of MLB trying to include meal money within the CBT “grossly mischaracterized” as part of a statement included in Drellich’s article.

March 3: Major League Baseball’s most recent offer in collective bargaining proved unpalatable to the Players Association, which rejected it despite knowing the league was likely to follow by canceling some regular season games. Various members of union leadership described that as an easy decision, with the MLBPA particularly dissatisfied with the league’s proposals on the competitive balance tax thresholds and the amount of money that would be allotted for the pre-arbitration bonus pool.

While the union found the offer too slanted in favor of the league, some on the MLB side apparently viewed the proposal as going too far towards the players’ asks. Andy Martino of SNY reports that during a video call between all 30 ownership groups and MLB leadership, four owners voted against the terms of the league’s final offer to the union on Tuesday. MLB needs approval from 23 of the 30 ownership groups to agree to their end of a new CBA, so the league was able to proceed with its offer with the assent of the other 26 owners.

Obviously, the terms of that deal weren’t sufficient to get the union’s approval. Yet some of the owners who were on-board with the league’s proposal Tuesday are evidently hesitant to move any further in the players’ direction. Martino writes that the call “made it clear” that more owners would oppose any offer that pushes the base CBT threshold above the $220MM mark the league put forth. The MLBPA, meanwhile, proposed a $238MM base tax marker in 2022. Martino writes that the union refuses to entertain any offer with a 2022 tax threshold lower than $230MM.

There’s currently an $18MM gap on the luxury tax for 2022, and the parties are even more divided on the marker’s long-term future. The MLBPA has sought more rapid escalation of the threshold over the term of a potential CBA than the league has offered. Under the parties’ latest terms, the $18MM gap would rise to a $33MM divide by 2026 — the players were looking to set that year’s figure at $263MM, while MLB proposed $230MM for that season.

Martino’s report sheds some light on the challenges that remain for finding a mutually agreeable settlement on the CBT, which has proven perhaps the biggest sticking point in negotiations. The union has pursued a rapid expansion of the threshold, pointing to team spending habits suggesting the CBT has served as a de facto salary cap for clubs. Last season, five teams finished with CBT payrolls within $5MM of the $210MM base threshold. Two clubs, the Dodgers and Padres, pushed their CBT number above $210MM. Given the union’s longstanding opposition to any form of salary cap, it’s little surprise they’ve sought to dramatically increase the numbers this time around.

The league, meanwhile, has pursued the opposite initiative. MLB’s early CBA proposals included harsher penalties for tax payors, provisions that would’ve presumably made clubs even more reluctant to do so. It dropped the push for tougher penalties this week, but it hasn’t shown the appetite for the kind of higher thresholds the union seeks.

As MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes explored in December, the past two collective bargaining agreements have seen limited growth in the CBT thresholds. From the time of the tax’s introduction in 1997 through 2011, it wasn’t uncommon to see the CBT jump by more than 4% year over year. Since 2012, however, that growth has slowed considerably. The base CBT marker has moved from $178MM that year to $210MM last season, an average hike of less than 2% per year.

The league’s offer to move from $210MM to $220MM would represent a 4.8% year-over-year jump. MLB would presumably posit that’s a meaningful enough increase to be favorable to the players. However, it was followed by no movement on the tax in each of the following two years and minor increases in each of the two seasons thereafter. The union, meanwhile, seems intent on pulling in a more dramatic spike in the tax threshold to somewhat compensate for its slowed progression between 2012-21.

It’s not clear how many owners are inherently opposed to pushing that number beyond $220MM. Martino’s report hints at the conflicted interests that can arise among the ownership groups themselves. Presumably, some large-market clubs that are planning to exceed the CBT anyhow would be on-board with the union’s efforts to encourage penalty-free spending. Others could be anxious to draw a harder line, particularly with the league reportedly content to miss a month’s worth of regular season games in order to pressure the union to move in their direction.

If more than three of the owners who voted yes on MLB’s latest proposal are stringently opposed to going further, the league may be hard-pressed to find the votes to go past $220MM this year. That’d seemingly be unacceptable to the union. If there’s that kind of fundamental disagreement on the luxury tax, it’ll be essentially impossible for the sides to put a new CBA in place.

Canceled Regular Season Games Raise The Possibility For A Dispute Regarding Service Time

By | at

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.

Lead Negotiators For MLB, MLBPA Meeting Today

By | at

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

By | at

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.

Lockout Notes: TV Contracts, Miller, Scherzer, Stipends

By | at

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.

Manfred: MLB To Cancel First Two Regular Season Series

By | at

In the wake of today’s league-imposed deadline to reach agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement passing, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced this afternoon that the league is canceling the first two series of the regular season. As Max Molski of NBC Sports writes, that’d mean the loss of 91 total games. The league has stated on multiple occasions they have no plans to reschedule those contests — either via doubleheaders or the rearranging of previously-scheduled off days. In addition to the delayed start to the regular season, the league informed teams it is pushing back the start of Spring Training until at least March 12, as noted by Micheline Maynard of the Washington Post (Twitter link).

The commissioner’s announcement would seem to indicate that a 155-game schedule is the maximum number that’ll be played in 2022. Asked why the league was set on outright cancelations as opposed to postponements, Manfred pointed to the challenges of reworking interleague play in a suitable manner (via Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post). Reports last week indicated that the league intends to merely pick up where the schedule left off if/when an agreement is in place, so it seems each club’s first two series (to this point) will just be lopped off the league calendar.

Unsurprisingly, Manfred added that it was the league’s position that players would not be paid for any games that aren’t played (via JJ Cooper of Baseball America). That sets the stage for a second season in the past three years with possible debates regarding prorated salaries, as the union has maintained that they didn’t believe today should’ve represented a drop-dead date to avoid game cancelations.

MLB instituted the lockout unilaterally and could’ve lifted it at any time, electing to proceed under the terms of the 2016-21 CBA. There was never any possibility of the league taking that course of action, but the decision to set a hard deadline (first last night, later delayed until this evening) for an agreement was also made solely by MLB. The Players Association has never assented to that deadline, and Giants outfielder Austin Slater — the club’s player representative — argued that the union preferred continuing negotiations over today’s outcome.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Slater told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle of game cancelations after the league deadline passed. “The PA has been setting up training camps and in 2020, we showed we could do it in three weeks. .. But that’s their prerogative and Rob’s bargaining strategy was to push up past this deadline and see if they could shove a deal down our throats.”

Others on the players’ side have taken a similar stance, arguing that the league deadline was a negotiating position of MLB’s to press the union into accepting an unfavorable deal. Slater’s teammate Alex Wood was among the players to take to Twitter this afternoon to accuse the league of exaggerating the progress made in negotiations last night, thereby allowing MLB to suggest the union was at fault for the lack of agreement today. Manfred made some references to that effect in his press conference this evening, noting the truism that finalizing a new CBA requires agreement from both parties.

After the past week and a half of daily negotiations didn’t result in an agreement, what’s the next step? Asked by Hannah Keyser of Yahoo! Sports whether the league’s “best and final” offer this afternoon meant that MLB had no plans to continue negotiations, Manfred pushed back. “We never used the phrase ‘last, best’ offer with the union,” the commissioner replied. While he conceded that the parties were “deadlocked,” he indicated that the league was open to continued negotiation. Manfred stated that today’s proposal was only the league’s final before canceling games, not of negotiations entirely. On the other hand, Bob Nightengale of USA Today hears from a source the league did use the “best and final offer” terminology.

That’s an important distinction. As Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times pointed out this afternoon, the possibility that the league had made its “best and final offer” could give way to MLB declaring a formal impasse in negotiations — a decision that could halt bargaining and involve the court system. Manfred declined to speculate on that possibility, but his stated amenability to continuing negotiations would seem to indicate that the league doesn’t plan to pursue that course of action at this point.

When negotiations will pick up isn’t clear, although the commissioner indicated they couldn’t resume talks until Thursday at the earliest. Manfred also made clear he considered the ball to be in the union’s court, stating that the league has made the most recent offer on issues “without exception,” and rhetorically told reporters to draw their own conclusions about which side should make the next move (via Scott Miller of Bleacher Report). That the league has made the most recent proposal may technically be true, although doing so an hour before the press conference with no willingness to continue negotiating today makes Manfred’s pointed barb a bit odd.

Manfred also made some ancillary statements about negotiations that are sure to draw some attention. He claimed that the past five years have been “difficult” for the industry financially, an assertion that immediately sparked backlash. As Erik Boland of Newsday points out (on Twitter), the league grossed a record $10.7 billion in 2019. The past two seasons have indeed seen pandemic-driven revenue losses — particularly in 2020, a year mostly without fan attendance — but Manfred’s claim that the entirety of the most recent CBA involved financial hardship is easy to dispute.

The commissioner also discussed the terms of the league’s most recent proposal. He highlighted what he felt to be player-friendly economic provisions (i.e. the creation of the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players) and added that the league was also seeking alterations to the on-field product. Manfred claimed MLB had proposed ways to implement a pitch clock and limits on defensive shifting during their last offer. The league’s desire for a pitch clock has been previously reported, but it hadn’t been apparent that MLB was trying to outlaw the shift this winter.

Of course, changes to the sport’s aesthetics take a back seat so long as core economics disputes continue to rage. The MLBPA released a statement in response to Manfred’s press conference (on Twitter). It reads in part:

“Rob Manfred and MLB’s owners have cancelled the start of the season. Players and fans around the world who love baseball are disgusted, but sadly not surprised. … What Rob Manfred characterized as a ’defensive lockout’ is, in fact, the culmination of a decades-long attempt by owners to break our Player fraternity. As in the past, this effort will fail.“

Union Leadership Reiterates Desire To Continue Negotiations After MLB Cancels Games

By | at

After MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced the cancelation of the first two series of the regular season, a few key members of the Players Association conducted a press conference of their own. Union executive director Tony Clark, lead negotiator Bruce Meyer and two members of the player executive subcommittee — Max Scherzer and Andrew Miller — spoke with the media (including Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post, Kyle Glaser of Baseball America and Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle).

Broadly speaking, union leadership reiterated their desire to continue negotiations after today’s league-imposed deadline passed without an agreement. Clark stated that the union was willing to reengage with the league as soon as tomorrow and pointed out that the union never aligned with the league setting this afternoon as an inflection point in talks. (At his press conference, Manfred suggested the parties couldn’t resume discussions until Thursday). However, union leaders also doubled down on their solidarity and willingness to wait out the lockout in search of a deal they find palatable.

Clark alluded to the progress the sides had seemingly made in discussions yesterday as a reason to keep talks open, but he and Meyer each stressed that the union believes there are significant gaps to be closed on key issues. That’s particularly true on the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players — where there’s a $55MM gap in 2022 between the parties’ latest offers — and the base threshold for the competitive balance tax, which has an $18MM discrepancy. There’s also a $25K difference in the sides’ offers on the 2022 league minimum salary. All those gaps would enlarge over the course of the CBA, as the union is seeking more rapid expansion than the league has offered on each. (The gap on the CBT, for instance, would reach $33MM by 2026).

The league also introduced possible on-field rules changes to the mix late during negotiations. The commissioner stated the league had been pursuing a pitch clock and a ban on defensive shifting, and Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports (on Twitter) they’d also sought to make the bases larger, all of which would’ve taken effect in 2023. Clark expressed general openness to discussions on rules changes but added he was perplexed with MLB raising those issues so late in the process.

Bridging those gaps may prove challenging enough, but there’s also the added tension that comes with the league’s cancelation of games. Manfred flatly stated that it would be MLB’s position that players shouldn’t be paid for any contests lost, thereby raising the possibility of prorated salaries. Meyer disagreed with the league’s outlook, stating that the union will pursue “compensation” for those missed games if they’re not made up at a later date. MLB has maintained those contests are officially canceled, not postponed, but the union has expressed their belief those games could be rescheduled (with full player pay, of course).

How long the lockout will continue is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that today represented a setback in hopes of finding an eventual endpoint. Clark frankly called it a “sad day for baseball,” and it seems possible that heightened animosity in the wake of the league’s actions could threaten whatever progress had been made yesterday. For instance, the union has previously suggested they’d refuse to agree to expansion of the playoff field in 2022 if regular season games were lost and player salaries prorated. That may perhaps be a fatal blow to whatever frameworks of a 12-team postseason were being discussed yesterday, to give a speculative example. What comes next is to be seen, but the near-term future of the sport is shrouded in uncertainty, having officially reached a point that Manfred had previously said would be a “disastrous outcome.”

Show all

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top