Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Collective Bargaining Agreement

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.”

MLBPA Rejects League’s “Best And Final” Offer

By | at

3:23 pm: The union’s player leaders voted unanimously to decline the league’s offer, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN (Twitter link). A person associated with the MLBPA told Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press, “We are done. This was always (the league’s) plan.” That’s in line with other allegations by those on the players’ side who believe the league exaggerated the extent of the progress made last night in order to frame today’s lack of agreement as the fault of the union.

3:17 pm: Major League Baseball made its “best and final” offer before their imposed 5:00 pm EST deadline to avoid game cancelations. The union is planning to reject that proposal, reports Jon Heyman of the MLB Network (on Twitter). Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet hear from a source involved with negotiations that talks are “over.”

For fans, it marks a disheartening end to the past week and a half of daily negotiations. Those proved last-ditch efforts to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement before the league’s self-imposed deadline (originally yesterday at midnight, later delayed to 5:00 pm today) for a CBA to be in place to avoid the cancelation of regular season games. That’s all but a certainty now, and Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets that the league is expected to formally announce a delayed start to the regular season upon receiving the union’s official declination.

Throughout the lockout, MLB has maintained that canceled games would not be made up. That’s likely to mean lost game checks for players; the union has previously said that in that event, they’d respond by refusing to agree to an expanded playoff field for the 2022 season. Postseason expansion — from which MLB would stand to benefit financially — has been a goal of the league’s throughout negotiations, and the parties had reportedly decided to proceed with a potential 12-team format last night.

That decision, as with everything else discussed in collective bargaining to date, is up in the air after today’s developments. Commissioner Rob Manfred is scheduled to speak with reporters in Jupiter at 5:00 pm EST. He seems likely to announce a delay to the start of the season at that point, marking the first time since the 1994-95 player strike that regular season games would be lost due to an official work stoppage (although one could argue that the contentious run-up before implementation of the shortened 2020 schedule served as something of an unofficial lockout).

Manfred has previously called the possibility of lost regular season games “a disastrous outcome for the industry.” Many fans would no doubt agree with that characterization, but the league has apparently reached that point. Given the response to today’s discussions from those on the players’ side, some may question whether the commissioner and the league would genuinely consider today’s outcome “disastrous.” The league, after all, instituted the lockout — ostensibly as a means of kickstarting negotiations — but didn’t make a formal proposal for over a month during its early stages. MLB could lift the lockout at any point and proceed under the terms of the 2016-21 CBA, but there’s no chance they’ll do so.

The league suggested in talks with the union yesterday they’re willing to scrap a month’s worth of regular season play. How many games will be canceled remains to be seen, but the mere loss of any contests will surely drive away some fans frustrated with the entirety of the work stoppage. It’s also not clear what the next steps will be in terms of a resolution, as the parties are no longer expected to continue to bargain on a daily basis.

MLB Preparing To Make Its “Best Offer” To MLBPA Before 5pm Deadline

By | at

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.

Latest On Potential For Expanded Playoffs

By | at

An expanded postseason field, and the accompanying surge in annual revenue, is perhaps the most critical issue for Major League Baseball during the ongoing wave of collective bargaining talks with the MLB Players Association. MLB has continually pushed for an expansion to 14 teams, and while the MLBPA has acquiesced and shown a willingness to expand the field to an extent, their latest proposals have included a slightly smaller 12-team field (as a trade-off for myriad other potential gains/wins for the union).

ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported yesterday that in the event of a push to 14 teams, ESPN would pay MLB an additional $100MM in television fees for the newly created games and postseason content. That’s all the explanation needed for why the league views expanded playoffs as an imperative, but even a move to a 12-team format would be immensely beneficial. Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports that even expanding to 12 teams would net MLB an additional $85MM in revenue from ESPN. Those figures are critical to keep in mind, as they provide context for the gains the union hopes to achieve through its own asks in negotiation.

The Players Association has previously suggested the possibility of a “ghost win” for division winners — that is, the winners of each division who do not receive a bye would effectively start a series up 1-0 over their Wild Card opponents. The Wild Card clubs would be tasked with winning one more game than the division winners in order to advance to the next round, with the union’s general belief being that this structure would incentivize teams to push to win the division rather than “settle” for a Wild Card.

ESPN’s Buster Olney tweeted that one potential iteration of a 12-team playoff field would give each league’s best two teams a first-round bye, while the remaining eight teams would compete in best-of-three series. Olney doesn’t indicate whether that’s a union- or league-proposed structure, but that seems to diverge rather notably from the union’s prior “ghost win” scenario. It’s possible Olney’s scenario is one way the league envisions a potential increase to a dozen teams, but there’s been no firm agreement on postseason expansion anyhow, so the specifics are still very much up for debate in negotiations.

One potential alternative, if the league considers the “ghost win” unpalatable, could be to stack home-field advantage for the better team, although it’s not clear whether the union would consider this enough incentive to win the division. Still, as MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz wrote in 2020, in a theoretical best-of-seven series played between two evenly matched teams, his own historical research has suggested the home team would win 59% of the time. Add the revenue and allure of hosting that series (gate, parking, concessions, surrounding developments), and there would indeed be some incentive; alternatively, however, some clubs might balk at the notion of reaching the playoffs and yet not playing host to a single contest.

There are countless permutations that could be explored, but the crux of the matter for the union — beyond wanting to ensure that they receive sufficient compensation for agreeing to the change — has been some wariness that an expanded playoff field will actually disincentivize teams from spending. Increasing the field to 14 teams, for instance, would’ve allowed an 83-win Reds team that slashed payroll last offseason and an 82-win Phillies team to enter the 2021 postseason. The general concern that teams might feel the expanded format can help them skate into the postseason without making meaningful offseason upgrades obviously has its detractors, but the union has regularly pitched it as a central focus.

In general, anti-tanking measures have been a key talking point for the MLBPA during negotiations, and The Score’s Travis Sawchik tweets that the league and union at least discussed the possibility of awarding monetary bonuses to teams small-market clubs who are making an effort to compete. The funds would be allocated at commissioner Rob Manfred’s discretion, and it remains unclear just where the parameters for receiving said bonuses would be set. Presumably, that’d be its own set of negotiations, though win totals and reaching the postseason make for natural benchmarks — at least in concept. The source of these additional bonus funds remains unclear, though Sawchik does add that revenue sharing would continue in addition to this hypothetical concept, so it’s not a straight replacement scenario.

There’s about three hours to go until the latest “deadline” from MLB. Manfred has termed any cancellation of regular-season games a “disastrous outcome for the industry” and made no indication of any possibility of rescheduling missed games. However, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post reports that the MLBPA has been holding out hope that, in the event games are ultimately stricken from the regular-season calendar, the two sides can negotiate a means of making them up somewhere down the road in 2022.

Whether that’d come in the form of additional doubleheaders, the addition of some makeup games on would-be off days or in some other capacity isn’t known. MLB was, in 2020, staunchly against pushing regular-season games into October — although last year’s regular season included three games in early October. The logistics of trying to reschedule any missed games would bring about its own complicated set of negotiations, and both sides would surely prefer to simply agree to terms that facilitate an on-time start to the season. We’ll know just how feasible that is before too long.

MLB Proposals To Union Have Included International Draft

By | at

Major League Baseball pushed its deadline for a labor deal to 5pm Tuesday, bringing about some renewed hope that a new collective bargaining agreement could be agreed upon without the cancellation of any regular-season games. Both the league and the union made some notable offers overnight, with the players showing a willingness to drop Super Two expansion from their proposal and the league dropping increased overage penalties for teams exceeding the luxury tax.

It’s frankly staggering that after a months-long lockout, the maintenance of the status quo in those regards feels like progress, but there are larger elements at play in other areas of negotiation. One key item that has not drawn much attention to this point but is currently a part of the league’s proposal, per Evan Drellich of The Athletic (Twitter link), is an international draft. The implementation of an international draft would be seen as a sizable gain for the league and would presumably require them giving something back to the players in return, though at present it’s not clear just how feasible its inclusion will be.

As with all elements of a proposal (from either side), it’s possible that the inclusion of an international draft is little more than a bargaining chip that will eventually be “dropped” under the guise of making a concession. Both parties have done this throughout negotiations, presenting items known to be nonstarters for the opposition before largely backing off as talks reached — and surpassed — MLB’s imposed eleventh hour. Super Two expansion and increased CBT penalties, for instance, have both been generally viewed as non-negotiable by the league and union, respectively, but remained key components of both parties’ proposals until late last night. Whether the league is seeking to wield the international draft in a similar capacity isn’t clear, but to this point there’s no reason to believe the two sides are close to agreeing on this front.

Talk of an international draft has been ongoing in various capacities for more than a decade, although it has not, to this point, been a prominent feature of the current wave of collective bargaining. International free agency used to be largely unregulated within the sport, allowing teams to spend as they pleased on amateur talent from other countries, with only U.S. and Canadian talents being subject to the annual Rule 4 (amateur) draft held each summer.

The 2012-16 collective bargaining agreement implemented stricter classification of which talents could be considered amateur versus professionals and also instituted harsh penalties for exceeding league-allotted international bonus pools. The thought, at the time, was that teams would shy away from exceeding their bonus pools for fear of being significantly curbed in future signing periods. Exceeding the bonus pool by a certain threshold in a year limited teams to bonuses of $250K (and later $300K) or less in subsequent periods.

What unfolded instead was somewhat the opposite. Multiple teams — the Cubs, Yankees, Padres, Dodgers, White Sox and Red Sox among them — showed no hesitation in absolutely shattering their league-allotted pools, either in order to make one-time runs at stocking the farm with enormous waves of amateur talent or to sign the highest-profile talents on the international market. That approach is what led the Red Sox to sign Yoan Moncada for a $31.5MM signing bonus that came with a 100% overage tax — effectively spending $63MM just to get him into their system. The White Sox did the same with Luis Robert, signing him for a $26MM bonus that came with a 100% dollar-for-dollar tax.

The 2017 collective bargaining agreement eliminated teams’ ability to do so — presumably much to the relief of smaller-market clubs that felt they had no hope of signing players in that regard. The union agreed to hard-capped international bonus pools, the overall size of which were tied to the team’s record (just as is the case with the annual amateur draft). In essence, the more games lost by a team, the larger the international bonus pool and amateur draft pool. The increased restrictions on teams’ paths to acquiring amateur talent is now seen by the players as a major component of what they believe to be an anti-competitive landscape in MLB that incentivizes clubs to stop spending money and embark on lengthy rebuilds in the name of rebuilding the farm system.

The specifics of a potential amateur draft remain unclear, but in theory, it could be seen as a means of further limiting the ability to spend freely on amateur talent and further incentivizing prolonged rebuilds — at least if the international draft order is tied to record (and particularly if it is separate from the amateur draft lottery being discussed by MLB and the MLBPA).

It’s also unclear just who’d be eligible for the international draft in its currently proposed state. At present, players who are at least 25 years of age and have at least six years of professional experience in a foreign league are deemed “professionals” and are exempt from bonus pools, allowing them to sign Major League contracts. Padres infielder Ha-Seong Kim and current free agent Seiya Suzuki are prominent recent examples of this. Players who are younger than 25 and/or have fewer than six years of pro experience — e.g. Moncada, Robert, Shohei Ohtani — are deemed “amateurs” and are only able to sign minor league contracts with signing bonuses. The 2017 CBA, as previously mentioned, hard-capped those bonus pools, which is why Ohtani’s bonus was “only” $2.3MM, as opposed to the enormous bonuses secured by Moncada and Robert.

It’s a bit surprising to see such a notable component being moved into the spotlight a bit with time for an agreement ostensibly dwindling, but its inclusion is nevertheless quite notable — whether it’s being legitimately discussed or simply yet another in a long line of leverage plays that has been brandished throughout a contentious set of negotiations.

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