4:07 pm: Next steps remain unclear. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports that there’s no set date for negotiations, but it’s possible discussions resume next week. Key league personnel will be in Orlando from Tuesday through Thursday for a scheduled quarterly owners meeting. Union representatives are expected to be available if a date for the next set of sessions is finalized. Commissioner Rob Manfred has a press conference scheduled for Thursday, and Nightengale writes he’s likely to formally announce a delayed start to Spring Training at that point.
2:25pm: Major League Baseball has offered the following response to the MLBPA’s statement:
“Our goal is to have players on the field and fans in the ballparks for Spring Training and Opening Day. With camps scheduled to open in less than two weeks, it is time to get immediate assistance from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to help us work through our differences and break the deadlock. It is clear the most productive path forward would be the involvement of an impartial third party to help bridge gaps and facilitate an agreement. It is hard to understand why a party that wants to make an agreement would reject mediation from the federal agency specifically tasked with resolving these disputes, including many successes in professional sports. MLB remains committed to offering solutions at the table and reaching a fair agreement for both sides.”
While the league maintains it is committed to “offering solutions at the table,” it has yet to respond to the proposal issued by the MLBPA on Tuesday or provide a timeline as to when such an offer might be put forth.
12:45pm: One day after Major League Baseball declined to issue a counteroffer to the MLBPA’s latest proposal in collective bargaining talks and instead requested federal mediation, the MLBPA issued a statement rejecting that request. It reads as follows:
“Two months after implementing their lockout, and just two days after committing to Players that a counterproposal would be made, the owners refused to make a counter, and instead requested mediation.
After consultation with our Executive Board, and taking into account a variety of factors, we have declined this request.
The clearest path to a fair and timely agreement is to get back to the table. Players stand ready to negotiate.”
It’s a wholly unsurprising outcome, given the manner in which meetings between the two sides have played out thus far. Major League Baseball’s suggestion for a federal mediator was always eyebrow-raising, given their lack of any kind of new proposal. There’s nothing to mediate, after all, when one side declines to even bring an offer to the table. As Sheryl Ring points out (Twitter thread), mediation of this nature is generally a measure taken when both sides have submitted a good-faith proposal to resolve a dispute, and a third party then helps foster progress toward a resolution.
The MLBPA submitted its most recent proposal on Feb. 1, wherein they offered only a marginal drop from a proposed $105MM pre-arbitration bonus pool to $100MM but also agreed to a league-proposed framework regarding changes to service time for young players. Specifically, MLB suggested awarding compensatory draft picks to teams that rostered young prospects who went on to finish well in Awards voting. That, in theory, would give teams some incentive to carry top prospects on their Opening Day roster rather than hold them in the minors for three weeks to secure an additional year of club control, as is so often the case. The union, in addition to its extremely modest drop in the pre-arbitration bonus pool, reportedly made some yet-unspecified tweaks to the league’s latest service-time proposal.
While details remain unclear, it’s evident that the league was nonplused by whatever ostensible were put forth by the players. A counter-offer was said to be in the works, but MLB instead shifted the onus back to players in a different and unexpected manner when it made its mediation request.
The end result is another several days with no progress, little to no actual negotiation, and a narrower window to conclude matters before the season begins. It’s already a foregone conclusion that Spring Training won’t be starting on time, and a best-case scenario now appears to be a truncated version of spring camps that still leaves enough time for players to ramp up for the regular season. There’s no guarantee that’ll happen, however, and the longer the interminable deadlock in negotiations lingers, the likelier it becomes that the regular season will be impacted.
As things stand, it’s not at all clear when talks will resume. Several players — James Paxton, Zack Britton and Whit Merrifield among them — have taken to social media to express some frustration with the lack of an MLB counterproposal (all Twitter links). They’ve joined up in offering a unified message that “a significant part of collective bargaining is… actually bargaining” — a message that other players are continuing to echo in greater number.
Now that the mediation request has been denied, one would assume a league counteroffer to be the next logical step, though MLB has yet to offer a rebuttal to the union’s latest statement.
Alternative title the union turns down mlbs pr ploy.
Why would they? How would accepting the aid of a mediator harm the union’s position?
A mediator in the pockets of the league? Gee I wonder.
Do you understand how federal mediation works?
It’s a FEDERAL mediator. Not one provided by the league. MLB would have zero input on who the mediator is.
@stan whatever
True. It certainly would be a stretch to imagine billionaire owners would have ins w their stooges in the pristine federal government. You’re right.
If the players turned non-biased mediation down because they think it’s some “massive conspiracy to keep them under the big bad owners thumbs”, they deserve the loss of pay
Omg, dynamite, please stop embarrassing yourself.
The quote about not being surprised when only one side has presented a proposal is just stupid. Granted there are different types of mediation but sometimes there are no demands or offers before the hearing. You go because either a neutral has been appointed or more often because the sides agreed on the mediator. Here, if the sides could agree on a mediator (big if), the mediator’s role is to find common grounds to narrow the differences and to suggest compromises. If they hurt both sides, their probably good for the sport. Nothing will happen until both sides feel pain in the wallet. Oh wait, they’ll just find more ways to stick it to the fans…
Mediator has no power. Its all for show, and doesnt advance the negotiations one iota. All this would do is delay the next round and add one more person in the room that wouldnt be able to do anything.
This is all a game of chicken where the player and owners both know the players have been getting the short end of the recent CBAs. MLB wants to make the fewest concessions possible and are daring the players to make it hurt for both of them enough to leverage what they want. Players share of total earnings have been going down for a while, and I for one have looked at the names of the owners and man F*** all those guys getting well over 50% of the money while we all get up charged at the park for everything. Cant go to a cheap game ever anymore, but the people we pay to see shouldnt be the ones getting paid? At least they make sure to invest in their home and adoptive communities and reinvest in businesses and stuff, instead of just adding to super rich guys “holdings”.
Look at the ROI on when you buy and sell a team its insane earnings. They dont need all the other money too!
I will support the owners when they stop paying the minor league players below the federal minimum wage, since nobody signed out of the top 10 rounds has “life changing money”. 15K to a college senior and then 800 bucks a month while having to train and perform like a professional athlete is insulting…
Ok, but fairness one way or the other will have close to zero impact on the negotiations’ final product. It’s about leverage, risk tolerance, time preferences, and the relative pain to each side associated with the failure to agree. The players have gotten shellacked because the owners have held better hands going into the last several CBAs.
Owners have the clout when it comes to manipulation. In the real world, money talks!
No one is forced to be an athlete. They choose to be knowing it can be feast or famine. Just like a struggling actor. My heart goes out to those struggling on Broadway during the pandemic just like those in the minors who didn’t play in 20. it’s hard to change the system when new owners billions. I feel more for fans who get priced out and can’t afford to take their family. it should cost a weeks pay inany cases between seats, parking, food and modest souvenirs. Remember it’s the fans that allow the game to pay so well. Different sport but just months ago, the football Giants rewarded season ticket holders with a medium Pepsi!
MLB and MLBPA would have to agree on who the mediator is, so they do have input. Its an NLRB appointed mediator.
Rejecting the federal mediator is on the players and union.
No sympathy for the players … especially when Scherzer will be making $14,000 for every pitch he throws and Seager gets $325 million. And why did some of Boras’ top clients suddenly sign before the lockout?
So the players and Union are really fighting for the the younger players. Yeah, right!
Literally logged in after 4 or so years so that I could upvote this post. Screw the billionaire owners, these players deserve every dollar they can manage out of the system.
I’m so tired of the owner shills and bots that seem to comment here. These are professional athletes that have worked their entire lives for a chance at wealth. They are the product. They deserve everything they have coming to them.
Who put a gun to the owners heads and made them give out that kind of contract? It was due to wealthy owners egos and greed of ownership.
You really are not paying attention to what the union is asking for are you. Its truly sad that you are so jealous of a guy making great money for working his behind off for 20+ years doing things you are not capable of doing or willing to do.
The union’s 4.7% reduction in their pre-arb bonus pool demand was just as much a PR ploy, and it was also a provocative insult directed at MLB.
Both sides are guilty of PR ploys, which is common in these types of negotiations where each side always tries to steer the blame to the other side.
I agree that minor leaguers should make more, but it is completely false that they make less than minimum wage. They were at EXACTLY the federal minimum wage ($290 per week) prior to 2021, and then got bumped up to $400 a week at the lowest level last season. And more for higher levels.
We’re in a recession. Many are struggling to buy food and keep their homes. Sorry but I have no sympathy for those who choose a feast or famine career when their feasting is at the expense literally of the fans. I still can’t comprehend how the cost of nice box seats in Yankee Stadium went from $6 to about $200 in 40 years. Based on inflation, Google shows the cost should be about $30 or less.
Agreed Fever. The way to get this done is without the press, a mediator they both trust and then lock them in and continue around the clock until it’s done. When they both start to feel the threat of financial losses, they will hopefully start to truly discuss.
What about the starting out actor having to hustle with side jobs or the person just out of school? Entry level positions in most careers is not meant to be anything more than an opportunity to get your foot in the door.
Jays – Athletes that have worked their entire lives for a chance at wealth?
I can think of five players off the top of my head that signed guaranteed contracts of between $10M-$50M at the age of 22 or 23 without ever playing a MLB game.
Name one other job where you can make that kind of money at that age before you even start the job.
ken – In two ways, fans put a gun to the owners heads and make them give out enormous contracts.
One, many fans will not attend or watch games unless their favorite team is good enough to compete. So some owners feel pressured into signing the best players, otherwise ticket sales and TV revenue will drop.
Two, fans are the ones driving up player salaries by paying ridiculous prices for tickets, concessions, merchandise, etc. If those high-priced seats go unsold, prices will come down and the teams will spend less on salaries.
Dewey – You mention 40 years ago.
In 1980 Nolan Ryan became the first player in MLB history to have a million dollar annual salary.
Also in 1980 the median household income was $16,400
Now we have guys making over $43 million a year, but the median household income is just $67,500
So while the median household income is now 4 times what it was in 1980, you’ve got the highest paid player making 40 times what the highest paid player in 1980 was making.
I can tell ya why Boras clients signed before the lockout. Boras knows player salaries are on average going to decrease after this CBA and ultimately the owners will win. He wanted his clients to get paid under the old CBA. That alone should tell ya a potential strike is imminent. Scott Boras is the one man who would know where both sides stand inside and out, as many clients and relationships he has. That was the canary in the coal mine.
Sad but logical.
However, no one gets paid if baseball cancels the entire 2022 season..
Boras’ clients signed for money promised only if the games are paid.
Otherwise, they get the same ZERO as everyone else.
And that is the direction in which MLB is tracking.
You know what players like Gausman, Ray, Verlander, Stroman, Baez, Yates, Gray, Kluber, Graveman, Matz, etc all have in common?
They all signed free agent contracts just before the lockout, and none of them has Boras for an agent.
Anybody who thinks ownership is gonna tell the biggest agent in baseball that they intend to sign free agents prior to the lockout is delusional. Why on Earth would owners tip their hand by revealing their plans to the guy who would obviously use that information to get bigger contracts from his clients.
Common sense is all Boras and other agents needed to figure out owners and especially players would want to finalize deals prior to the lockout.
Right cause that’s what Mathers said? Was that his name? Rotary Club GM got fired for saying “MLB is waiting for players to come hat in hand” he also said some racially insensitive things, but headline take away for me was the fool got fired for saying MLB wants to fleece the players?
The owners don’t care about the fans, they care about extracting as much money as possible from ticket sales. When tickets become hard to get because they’re selling them out, they’re happy to raise the prices.
Yankees payroll has been ~200m since 2005. Did the price of tickets stay the same?
Also because the Yankees love their fans so much, they’ve removed about 5000 seats since New Yankee Stadium opened.
You can’t possibly be this naive.
@ TrueOutcomeFan
You can’t possibly this cynical.
My guess is the players wouldn’t be awarded what they want by a federal mediator. For instance, the pre-arb bonus pool. The owners offered $10 million and the players asked for $100 million. A pre-arb bonus pool of any kind is unprecedented and the mediator would likely way precedent very heavily. It would be viewed as the players asking for something that never happened before. The owners could drop their offer of $10 million all the way down to zero and the mediator would still likely rule in the owners favor. The mediator may also consider the fact that MLB players are the only sport who has fully guaranteed contracts with no set player or team maximum contract or salary cap. Considering that in if of itself is unprecedented in American sports outside of baseball, the mediator may rule that the pre-existing service time structure is fair trade off for that since players have already agreed to it before. My guess is a mediator would rule that there needs to be an increase in league minimum that falls in line with the average percentage increase in previous years as well as an increase in the amount a team can spend before hitting the luxury tax. Those would be good for the players but I doubt they would be massive increases. They would probably just be par for the course. Outside of those 2 things, I doubt a mediator would really rule in favor of much else for the players. Typically, when one side is asking for something unprecedented they don’t get it. If the league continues to ask for things that are precedented, the mediator is likely to side with them. The $10 million bonus pool offer is a lot closer to the $0 precedent than the $100 million player ask is so my guess is the owners would win that one pretty easily.
The mediators job is to help get negotiations moving a long but they also don’t want to be responsible for any major unprecedented change in the structure unless both sides want it. A mediator really wants both sides to agree while also being personally responsible for as little change as possible.
Please Hammer — Your first line says it all: “My guess is the players wouldn’t be awarded what they want by a federal mediator..”
MLB is asking for a MEDIATOR not an ARBITRATOR. Not that I’m on the side of the owners, but only arbitration is binding. If the MLBPA doesn’t like what the Mediator suggests, they can walk away from the table.
I read that the players felt that, in the past, mediation was not helpful, but I can’t be sympathetic to any group that refuses to at least listen to suggestions from a neutral party.
You make so many assumptions about what the Mediator would do, and you—like me—have no idea what he or she might suggest.
@Pete: That’s a good point, too. If the players don’t like what the mediator says they can always refuse to comply. It does seem like a relatively low risk way to get discussions moving along and have a third party point out to both sides when they are asking for too much of something. Maybe the players are afraid of the optics of them turning down the outcome? They could be worried that the mediator would say that based on precedent some of their demands are out of line and then when they ignore the mediator’s decision the owners splash it all over the media. I could see the owners potentially using the players decision to ignore the outcome as a way to get fans on their side by saying the players are being unreasonable. A third party agreeing with that could only make the players look worse. The players really are asking for a lot relative to other sports. Considering there has never been a pre-arb bonus pool before you would think the players would consider any money going towards that a step in the right direction. Especially since precedent dictates the owners don’t have to give them any at all. I thought they might accept the $10 million as a starter and over the years try to get it higher. At least the $10 million gets their foot in the door and that has never happened before. Instead they are demanding a lot more than that. It seems like the players want every single thing to switch in their favor over night. You should try the bonus pool program our for awhile before you start demanding $100 million be poured into it every year. The owners are really not obligated or expected to offer any kind of unprecedented money like that so them even offering $10 million really is a gesture of good faith. If the owners continued to offer zero no third party would make them pay anything towards that because it has never happened before.
I totally get why some players are irritated at being under team control for so long at low salaries. The problem is that all players aren’t created equal though. Some get good and rise to the occasion very quickly. They produce for teams almost immediately. I totally understand why they would hate the service time system. But then there are late bloomers. Guys like Josh Donaldson, Adam Duvall and many others who take much longer to develop. Those guys could be very bad for teams in a shorter service time structure. Imagine drafting a guy and paying him a nice draft bonus. He’s a late bloomer so you have to spend years developing and training him before he’s capable of playing to his potential and make a major contribution. Then, after spending all that time, money and effort developing him, he leaves your team as a free agent once he’s finally a good or great player. You spend all that effort and time just to watch some other team reap all the benefits. Because baseball is such a skill oriented sport, some of these athletes don’t even really figure out how to play it until they are around 30 years old. I could totally see some teams not wanting to put all that time, money and effort into these guys just to watch them leave as soon as all that work pays off.
@Please,
You’ve summed my thinking up well here. What is “fair” is subjective, what is “precedent” is not. The owners are reasonable in saying the New CBA should be the Old CBA + (Insert inflation factor for cap, min salary, arb salaries). Most CBAs work around the margins.
There was no reason for MLB to agree to a bonus pool of any kind. Instead of viewing this as a concession that the MLBPA can exploit in future CBAs, the players submit a passive aggressive offer of $100M instead of $105M. The players feel like they’ve been wronged in the past few CBAs and think it’s time to get back the gains they feel they lost plus interest, but I doubt it pans out that way.
HAMMER – Exactly. I think where I am most sympathetic to the players is (a) minor league players should get a fair wage for their time in the minors. I realize this is of little or no interest to the owners and none at all to the MLBPA. Any way, it is not part of the current negotiations.
(b) The MLB minimum should be raised to $615k.
(c) I think arbitration should come after two years, not three, allowing younger players to start getting more in their earlier years IF THEY’RE PRODUCTIVE. I do not think players should automatically get increases. In fact, I think their wages should go down if they are not productive.
I think most of us would be pretty happy with $615,000 a year, even if we’ve been in the minors for 5 or 6 years. The average MLB player makes $4.8M a year!
That isn’t to say that Manfred and the owners have my support. They do not. But as a former business owner, I understand that the employees cannot demand money just because the owner(s) are making more money than they are.
Unfortunately, the disparity of management to workers’ salaries has become obscene in the U.S. But MLB player salaries simply are not under the same heel as other American workers.
Well, the owners didn’t agree to a bonus pool of any significance.
$10 million from the central fund
spread across 400+ players with less than 3 years of service time
who also get their minimum salaries become maximum when they’re fixed
The owners would MAKE millions on that proposal
And of course owners view the bonus pool as a way to distract from moving the arbitration eligibility cutoff back
The narrative that the players want to make back all the gains that they’ve lost in past CBA’s is really getting old
They should be asking for a much higher minimum salary
The $245M proposal for a CBT threshold is very reasonable when $225M just covers last year’s inflation
They’ve given up on less than six years service time for free agency
They never even proposed any meaningful way to stop tanking or service time manipulation
They’re getting their asses kicked again
The MLBPA doesn’t represent those in the minors. As I said before, those in the minors choose the career usually because of the big money opportunities. Very few play for the sport. I believe the teamsvare to now fund for the players to live. That makes sense along with a cost of living daily allotment based on the area’s costs. That’s fair since minor league players have no say in where they are playing and they have to live near the ball park. After that though any guarantee could be met with a ceiling, which of course no player wants.
The ONLY way that the owners can end the lockout and put the honus of the labor stoppage on the players is if a NLRB mediator declares an impasse. No mediator, no impasse.
Then, and only then, could the owners have ended the lockout, imposed a new CBA, and hired replacement players (read scabs) if the player’s union went out on strike. As it is now the owners are legally bound to come back to the table and negotiate. They cannot end the lockout.
The owners PR tactic failed. Now they have to actually negotiate.
bronyaur – Accepting the aid of a mediator puts negotiations on a direct path to an impasse, which would allow MLB to institute their final offer. The union knows this, that’s one reason why they don’t want a mediator.
And I think another reason is because there’s a really good chance the mediator would side with MLB.
Players are not underpaid, and they have good working conditions. One look at all the massive contracts signed by young players with very little or no experience, as well as the even bigger contracts signed by veterans, would likely make it difficult to convince an arbitrator that players aren’t getting paid fairly.
Fever Pitch Guy — Where does it say that if the MLBPA walks away from the mediator’s suggestions that MLB could then “institute their final offer”? And how would that be binding?
I’m not being snarky, I really want to understand the dynamics.
Pete – I didn’t write that. What I wrote is that if they both agree to a mediator, and the mediator declares an impasse, then MLB can institute their most recent (aka final) offer.
It wouldn’t be binding for the players, they could go on strike. Without a CBA owners can lockout players, and players can strike.
In 1994, the owners declared an impasse and implemented their terms unilaterally, including:
– a salary cap
– eliminating arbitration
– eliminating the anti collusion provisions of the prior CBA
The players appealed to the NLRB, who agreed with them and filed an unfair labor practice charge in Federal Court. The court issued an injunction striking down MLB’s action and ordering that the terms of the CBA would continue while the parties continued to negotiate. The players then called off their strike and two seasons were played without a CBA
A mediator can declare an impasse, and that might help MLB’s cause, but the mediator doesn’t implement anything.
The players don’t want a mediator because MLB could use it to arrive at an intentional impasse. Their proposals on CBT penalties amount to a much harder de Facto salary cap, and they’ve shown no inclination to compromise. The players don’t want to split the baby between that and the status quo.
Fever Pitch Guy – Thanks for the clarification.
I volunteer to mediate. Guaranteed non-ias, random fan.
@Max_Scherzer
We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as caps, allows younger players to realize more of their market value, makes service time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminate tanking as a winning strategy
Dear Max
A lot of people want a lot of things in this world. I would like the winning power ball ticket. Want in one hand and poop in the other buddy
What you want is to be lucky.
What he wants is actually good for the players and the game.
He is going to get his because he is the product being sold.
You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than fulfilling your wish.
Well Max, none of the players’ proposals being reported presently would put the slightest dent in service time manipulation or tanking. Not one bit.
I SUPPORT THE OWNERS!
So when there’s not a season, are steriods gonna be allowed again? Mac maguire sammy sosa
They’re allowed in many places in the Caribbean, and without a CBA the League has no standing to drug test… so… yeah. There’s gonna be juice baby!
>>are steriods gonna be allowed again>>
That brought a short-lived boom, followed by a longer and still lingering loss of attendance and tv ratings from fans who were disgusted by the perversion of the game.
Have you ever seen a sport more capable of driving away its most loyal customers?
Aight ima go cry
Don’t cry, we’re gonna get another home run race
They gonna have Elvis putting up Juan Gonzalez numbers next year or whenever there’s a season
WTF! Why?
Mediation means there would be likely be small changes, but not the substantial changes the MLBPA is looking for. They don’t want to “settle” per say, they want to make big changes.
Not necessarily.
A federal mediator can caucus with each side privately, letting their real grievances be heard and their real motivations be heard.
A federal mediator can demand people with decision making authority be made available at all times.
A federal mediator can get the sides to agree on what they agree on and limit the number of issues left to be debated.
There’s no limitations on what can and can’t be changed. It just forces people with authority to actually work on a deal instead of what is going on now.
and that is the way it gets done.
Exactly.
I agree with you regarding the idea of mediation in general. However, if the owners promised to make a counter-proposal to the MLBPA’s recent proposal and then refused to do so, that is not acting in good faith.
The MLBPA deserves a counter-offer in which the MLB makes some concessions prior to attending mediation. The owners are trying to unfairly further their position by having the MLBPA make concessions, and then take that new offer to the mediation as a starting point without giving up anything on their side.
@halos An NLRB mediator can do none of those things.
nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national…
All they can do is be in the room when 2 parties choose to negotiate. Listen to both sides. Then try to help them see the other parties point of view to reach a middle ground.
Oh, and declare an impasse if there is not movement after some undeclared amount of time.
The owners NEED an NLRB mediator to declare an impasse so that they can end the lockout and impose a new CBA. They are hoping the players would then strike so they can take the PR high ground and hire replacement players.
As it is the owners cannot end the lockout. They must, by law, return to the negotiating table. They must start making good faith proposals.
That’s not really how mediation works in the real world. Halos is right in how mediations tend to proceed. Both parties can be in the same room, but most often each party is in their own room and the mediator talks to each individually and hears their concerns and position.
Then the mediator takes that to each side, and let’s each side know the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and tries to get each to agree on some middle ground to resolve. Most mediations require someone with decision making power to be present for both sides, otherwise there is no point to the mediation.
Halos is wrong when it comes to NLRB mediation. You can go read exactly how it works.
While I have never been present for a federal mediation involving the MLB and MLBPA, I am an attorney and have been present for many mediations. They always work the way I described in my experience. Maybe this mediation would not work that way, which would be strange, but that would be new on me.
Ownership can not impose a new CBA. They can, however, open their doors under the terms of the expired CBA and agree to operate under those terms while negotiations are ongoing. The players would then have to decide between playing under last year’s terms indefinitely while negotiations continue, or strike trying to force the issue.
What “substantial changes” does the MLBPA want from what’s left?
Two years’ service time for arbitration is the biggest ask and that is negotiable
The minimum wage and CBT proposals are right in line with the current structure
The owners demands on making the CBT de facto salary cap even harder are the most substantial changes. Thankfully, they gave up abandoning service time in favor of an age based free agency and abandoning arbitration altogether in favor of an algorithm. MLB’;s proposals have been far more radical from the start.
Any change to the arbitration system is a big ask, along with a substantial increase in the minimum salary. Some think these are minor asks by the players and should be granted, but those people are wrong.
There are still more SM owners than large, and these changes will drastically hurt the small-markets to the extent it does matter, and a lot. There are always unintended consequences when changes are made and these teams need to protect themselves from these consequences the best they can.
This negotiation is also happening with the end of the pandemic not yet in sight. Another variant that this time evades vaccination or prior infection and the SM owners will lose their ass again because most still rely on attendance to make a profit because of small local TV contracts.
So now we seem to have the players wanting too much too soon, the opposite of what Colin McHugh said the players should do. In pandemic times, less is more, because it’s still a gain, with the next CBA likely being negotiated without a pandemic environment, the players can gain some more of the revenue pie lost to the owners over the last 4-5 CBA’s.
Why do you think this is the case?
Sorry – meant to reply to downsr30. I agree with you, Halos.
What “substantial changes” does the MLBPA want from what’s left?
Two years’ service time for arbitration is the biggest ask and that is negotiable
The minimum wage and CBT proposals are right in line with the current structure
The owners demands on making the CBT de facto salary cap even harder are the most substantial changes. Thankfully, they gave up abandoning service time in favor of an age based free agency and abandoning arbitration altogether in favor of an algorithm. MLB’;s proposals have been far more radical from the start.
Because it was nothing more than a stall tactic and PR ploy by MLB. Will take weeks before a mediator is assigned and up and running, wasting valuable time the sides could be negotiating.
There is absolutely nothing stopping them from continuing to negotiate while that process happens
They’ve made it to the table 3x in 2 months, u really think that would happen
No, but how would that be any different than not using a mediator? At least in the mediation case, there will be something that helps move things along coming down the road. Without it, they will continue to not get anything done with no help coming.
Actually, there is. Read nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national…
Once a party to labor negotiations requests an NLRB mediator, no further bargaining sessions can be held until a mediator is agreed upon and is present.
This is terrible. Clearly, baseball needs an adult in the room to get anything done.
The last adult in the room (for the owners) was Fay Vincent, and Selig, Reinsdorf and the other hardliners couldn’t wait to chase him away.
I think it was the same story with Ueberroth.
Ok, but the players could’ve easily accepted and maybe finish this faster. Both sides are in the wrong and no one is the bad guy or good guy. Just the fans getting hurt by the people that they pay millions each year to go watch. SMH. If the owners won’t budge, the Players should realize that they won’t get payed if there is no season
That is exactly the reason MLB has tried to stall and draw this out, hoping the players capitulate to their demands because lost games means lost wages for the players. Getting a mediator takes time. The government would not just assign one right away. So no, a mediator isn’t going to settle this any sooner. Only slow the process down.
Both sides in the wrong? No, this one is squarely on the owners. THEY locked the players out. They were the ones who shut down negotiations in December. They are the ones stalling now.
And you think the greedy players are not at risk? Oh but its all because owners make a lot more than the players?
Geez… Maybe all the people working for Elon Musk should go to war with him because he makes so much more than them… But hey, that’s just the truth all around the world.
Even people that work in smaller businesses make way less than the actual owner of the business… And it’s not like MLB players are poor, even the minimum salary in MLB is a decent salary that can set you up for years.
Like it’s been said several times… The only ones losing here are the fans.
I get it. People who want to make the best possible living from their own work or business are smart. Other people who want the same things for themselves are greedy. And that’s pretty much all we need to know about how that word is used, every time it is used.
Have you wondered if a player making 30 mil a year pays their personal driver 10 million a year? Probably not… Yet if the driver demands more and threatens to stop working he gets fired. But that player will demand more than the 30 mil being paid to him and threaten to stop playing if he doesn’t get it.
Yes, I call that greed.
No, I try not to wonder about such silly and pointless things.
I have actually heard people defend MLB players and say that the minimum league, which is close to 600K is considered a poverty wage LOL WTF!
If you don’t wonder even for the smallest of things then your curiosity is not enough to fully grasp most concepts.
You get paid for the VALUE you create. A baseball player making $30 million per year is one of the top 30 people at what he does out of 7 billion on the planet and one of the top 30 of approximately 1200 people on the 40 man rosters of a business that made $12 billion in 2021 and is set to make more in 2022.
A driver’s value is minimal because practically any adult can replace him. That driver can ask for more money, and many are right now, but his leverage is small because so many people can replace him. He can only push it so far.
Hard to replace a player that is one of the 30 best in the world. He earns that kind of money because he creates more in value for the team that employs him.
Last but not least, the MLBPA is not asking for more money for the guys making $30 million per year. The market will set the price for the biggest draws. The player’s union is asking for more money for the guys making less than $1 million per year while still being one of the best 1200 people in the world at their jobs.
In my line of work, the top entry level people in the world are making a half million per year and there are 4-6 thousand of them each year. That is substantially more than pre-arbitration eligible players in MLB.
There are 160,000 members of SAG/AFTRA. The minimum is $686 per day, but the top actors make in excess of $50 million per year. Why? More people want to watch them than the entry level union members They provide more value for the employer.
So your premise is incorrect.
Are you saying that a professional MLB players is as replaceable as a driver? I’m not sure where you Owner Praisers get your meds from but they sure are strong
Easy to replace a driver
The best player in the world can stop playing right now and the next one in line will take over anyway… It’s a game after all, being a driving and having people’s in your hands is an actual job.
Every single current MLB player can quit playing right now and the rosters can be filled again and can attract fans to the stadium just the same.
And the ones that pay for their contracts? It’s us fans, indirectly.
Yes, a baseball player can be replaced just the same… The Nationals traded Bryce Harper away and they won a WS and developed Juan Soto… Thats just an example of how easy you can replace a superstar.
No. Its entertainment. The best entertainers get paid exceptionally well and they are almost impossible to replace. That is why they get paid so much.
Wrong. Baseball wins as a team. The player that replaced Harper was not Soto, it was Adam Eaton.
Look at where the Nationals are now. Last place. Not so easy to replace superstars.
They’re not even close to impossible to replace… Even Mike Trout is replaceable.
But if the best players are so hard to replace… Then what do you make of the actual owners who run the whole show? There are less team owners than MLB stars out there.
If drivers are easy to replace, then MLB players are like cooks and maids to the owners.
But my driver example was just an analogy, drivers are obviously easier to replace than a player but is nonetheless someone that gets paid by the player. Obviously I used a pretty generic and simple scenario and the message rocketed over some people’s heads.
Oh so… In one comment players are almost impossible to replace and in the next comment you contradict yourself by agreeing with me that baseball is won by a team and not 1 player… Which shows pretty much how easy 1 player is to be replaced.
Way to put your foot in your mouth.
No the only one with their foot in their mouth is you. If MLB owners tried to axe all of the best players and run replacements out there they would become a mockery of a league. Goodbye billion dollar tv contracts, goodbye merch sales, goodbye tax exemptions. They would be begging the stars to play again and throwing out the same money players are asking for. This idea of replacing them with nobody’s only works in the saddled old minds of people who perversely liked it better when ballplayers had to have second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet
Pads Fans well it was pretty easy to replace Harper and Eaton won a world series for the Nats that year … Also tell us how many has Superstar Harper won?
Of course employees of small businesses make far less than their employers. As a collective though, I bet labor costs most small businesses closer to 75% of revenues than 50%. And sure they don’t have stadiums, but to them the cost of their store, warehouse, office building might as well be a stadium. I dont think there is any value in bringing in small business references to this argument. It just doesn’t scale.
And yet… It’s been done before and nothing happened afterwards, the world kept going.
Funny you said I’m the one with my foot in my mouth and then followed up with something completely irrelevant to what I said.
I didn’t just bring up small businesses, I also mentioned Walmart, Amazon, Google and Elon Musk… Just saying…
I can’t fathom picking a side in this so loyally that you would think only the owners are to blame. If you want to say MORE to blame… ok. But acting like the players are faultless is insanity.
TigerDoc616 — How do you know” the government would not . . .assign (a mediator) right away”?
He clearly doesn’t know much about any of this.
Players are greedy too.
The owners got you fooled, that’s the only thing we can know for certain from your post. The players are prepared to not play and have a fund for this. The union is strong. The owners are hoping they’ll blink. Don’t bet on the union blinking here.
The MLBPA has got you fooled, that’s the only thing we can know for certain from your post.
No kidding. Muting him.
People are picking which side they want to support here rather than looking at the entire picture.
Had the owners not locked the players out, the players were going to go on strike. After all, they built up a war chest specifically for a work stoppage.
We were getting a stoppage either way.
The two sides met for 9 minutes the day the CBA expired. You can’t tell me either side was working in good faith to get a deal done yet thought 9 minutes was enough to do it.
@halo You missed some salient points. The players cannot strike until the owners impose a CBA and the regular season begins. The owners can’t impose a CBA until a federal mediator declares an impasse.
Owners can not impose a CBA. You can’t impose an agreement. A CBA is a contract. The players can strike whenever they want. The owners can lift the lock out whenever they want.
What? The players absolutely could strike at any time.
In reality, that would have happened later in the season.
And MLB can end the lockout right now. Absolutely
The player’s union is being ran by Scott Boras! Wake up!
That’s hilarious. Its also incorrect. The head of the union is Tony Clark and the lead negotiator is labor lawyer Bruce Meyer.
Considering Boras is one of the best negotiators on the planet it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he was involved, but then he would have to give up a career that pays him about $27 million a year.
He only represents 175 of the 1200 players on the 40 man rosters and hence in the MLBPA, so I doubt that the players would vote him in as the head of the union in any case.
Baseball pays its players less than any other sport across the board, because it offers low salaries, can manipulate the amount of time it takes for players to reach free agency, and has a very slow scale for pay raises.
The MLBPA knows this, and they aren’t about to fall for some sham attempt to make them look unreasonable. This is their only chance to change the system.
As of 2020 MLB players had the 2nd highest average salary in sports behind the NBA.
Exactly, that’s why Kyler Murray picked nfl over mlb
He picked NFL over MLB because he had a better chance of being a starting QB than a starting SS and way faster too… Same way Tom Brady got drafted by the Expos but rather play in the NFL
Kyler Murray picked football because he would get paid more money at the front end of his career. He had a chance to make way more money as a baseball player, but didn’t want to deal with a minor league salary for at least 2 years. That’s not the same thing.
He picked being an NFL QB over playing baseball. Are you really advocating that MLB pay players like NFL QBs, so that never happens again?
Not a great example. He picked being a top pick QB over several years in the minors and six years of MLB service time. If he was a 7th round WR he picks baseball guaranteed.
Those poor players are only making 6 million a year. I can understand why they would be upset. Hardly close to living wages.
An individual’s salary should have no bearing on the argument, but glad the ultra rich dudes convinced you otherwise.
If they weren’t ultra rich, then they wouldn’t be able to pay the players so much… Thats what people don’t understand… It is only natural that the owners make way more than their employees.
They don’t pay the players anything. You and I do. WE spend the money that pays the players salaries. The owners just take a cut of our money off the top.
I don’t remember signing any paychecks to a player… But I get it… You just wanna argue.
Any intelligent person knows we pay the money that is used to pay the players with.
maximumvelocity – Not taking sides here, but Major League players make an average $4.8M annually. One year of half of that and I could retire forever.
Well, we’ll have March Madness, some decent boxing and UFC cards, that should get us to about April.
There’s always the Indy 500.
We aren’t getting baseball for a long time.
The USFL — whose season begins in April — is going to get GREAT TV ratings since it won’t have to compete with Major League Baseball.
They couldn’t have picked a better time to start that up
Whether the USFL fails or not will have nothing to do with baseball
i get to play nba2k, fifa and madden games.
I think this is good. My perception is that MLB is trying to bully the MLBPA because they blinked first. So I think it’s good they declined. Get back in a room and talk this out. It’s not hard. Stubbornness and pride are all that stand in the way of an agreement.
totally agree. Based on reports the owners haven’t submitted proposals in good faith hoping the PA would negotiate against themselves. Then at the first sign that the PA has dug their heels in the owners pull this stunt which just shows us how out of touch these owners are (not that I think they care)
How on earth does federal mediation have anything to do with this?
The players aren’t giving anything. Its not that they dropped $5MM off the pool, because currently there is no pool. They are asking for $100,000,000.00 for the pool. I don’t care how big the pile is, $100,000,000.00 is a lot. Nice starting point! Let me know when they agree to drop a roster spot, or to fly coach, or stay at Motel6 when on the road. The owners are offering more, and not expecting any concessions by the players. They get to keep everything they already have.
What a ridiculous sentiment. Fly coach? Motel 6? Rug salesmen don’t even have To do that. The owners really have you old dudes hypnotized.
When someone has a contrary opinion to yours, do you always automatically assign a “flaw” to them, in this case old age? What’s “old dude” to you?
Not expecting any concessions?
Increasing the CBT tax at the lowest level from 20% to 50%?
Plus draft penalties and loss of international bonus money?
Converting the minimum salary for 500+ players to maximum salaries?
In exchange for $10 million for a bonus pool?
Pass that joint!
Sorry, but when MLBPA counter-proposal was to drop the pre-arb salary pool 5 million, that was done in bad faith. As many pro-MLBPA posters on this site noted at the time, it was like giving the owners the middle finger. Not siding with either the owners or the players.
Will I miss baseball if the season is delayed or cancelled? Yea, but there are lots of other things to do and after a while, I will not even notice that MLB is gone.
Personally, I think both sides should be concerned about improving the product they put on the field. Over the last half decade, I’ve been to MLB games that were less exciting than t-ball games. The current MLB game is played with little or no imagination, little or no creativity. It is way too scripted, seems everyone follows the same analytics.
Skeptical – I agree the PA offer was crap. But someone has to start being the adult in the room. They made the last offer so ball is in the owners’ court. They should put on their big boy pants and be the side that gets serious about the process.
$5 million was equal to 50% of the owners total offer. Bad faith?
They’re not going to negotiate against themselves.
Been involved in negotiations. If the other side makes a crap offer,. an offer that is just flipping you the finger, often the wisest move is close your binder, look across the table, and say, “We’ll talk when you want to get serious.” I don’t think either side is serious or able to get beyond their inflated egos.
@PatrickOKenndy, $5 million cut was a joke, not a serious offer. Doesn’t matter what percentage it was of the owners counter, it showed absolutely no consideration of compromising with the owner’s position. Personally, I think the pre-arb pool is a bad idea. I’ve worked in industries that offer performance bonuses for “star” performers. Lots of problems with implementing, morale, pi–ing matches, etc. If the negotiators for MLBPA were really serious about helping younger players, they would fight for a far higher minimum salary. Instead of an pre-arb pool, they should have targeted a one million minimum.
Aging fan base, shrinking fan base, deteriorating product, competitive alternative products (NLF, NBA, NHL, MLS, esports, etc.), a general population that seems to be shifting from watching to doing, declining support for taxpayers building stadiums, and these clowns (owners and players) want to play hard ball with each other? Good luck.
An offer of a $100M bonus pool for over 500 players is perfectly reasonable, and serious. An offer of $10 million is not a serious offer, especially when it’s tied to other complete BS terms like converting the minimum salary to a fixed salary.
The players could either offer something or offer nothing, or make a significant adjustment and negotiate against themselves.
I agree that the pre arb pool is hogwash. It’s the owners substitute for getting more players into arbitration, and they want to offset that by taking from those making minimum salary. The players should focus on higher minimum salary, earlier arbitration, a salary floor/ tax on lower payrolls, and requiring that revenue sharing be spent on player salaries.
Wake me when the owners begin to make a serious offer. They haven’t yet.
The owners hid their intentions in plain sight when we were told right after the lockout was imposed that its purpose was to put pressure on the players. Not to get both sides to talk terms but to sweat the players. Then no ownership proposals forthcoming for over a month, just in case we didn’t get the message before that this was never intended to be a good faith negotiation.
Who cares? The Scout is on. Steve Nebraska 4 lyfe
Well, more time for reading, writing and running in the Spring weather. Pity these folks couldn’t sit down a little more and posture a little less. But generally people don’t get to be billionaires without knowing how to extract a lot from a negotiation.
Just spend more time hunting & fishing or whatever. (Although I will miss listening to the games while I’m driving.) Now, no matter what, I am one of those knuckleheads that’ll return to the game no matter how irritated *both* sides eventually make me.
But I do wonder about more casual fans.
A lot of people learned how to live without sports in 2020. Do wonder how the more casual fans’ll react to an extended loss of the season.
But. Be like, Mike.
Get outside, fellas.
Ima be watching the hell out of some high school and college baseball this spring.
Creepy
I’ll go watch some 40 year old with a beer gut make a diving play at 3B and he and his teammates hit 6 HRs at my local softball diamond. Watching an average Joe demonstrate some former athleticism is more exciting than MLB’s boring, homer or strikeout product nowadays. The byproduct of how owners and players both allowed the PED era to “save” baseball from that labor morass. I’ve been a baseball fan for 50 years. Labor strife aside, I miss a hit and run, a guy dancing off 1B distracting a pitcher, a single in the hole not fielded by a guy playing deep second base. I’ve been on the verge of not watching for years because of the product itself.
It took exactly three weeks before fans started showing up and watching NFL replacement players in 1982. People cheer much more for the name in the front than the name on the back of the uniform.
So you’re basing your opinion on something that happened in another sport 40 years ago. Good talk gramps
The 1982 NFL strike canceled 8 weeks of that season; only 1 week was made up while the playoffs were revised for that season only. The 1987 NFL strike saw 1 week of games canceled and 2 weeks with replacement players before the union caved.
Coincidentally, baseball got a big boost in both of those years.
Why do you think it would be different now, junior?
If an agreement isn’t reached by feb 28. Fine every owner a $100M. And reduce every players salary by 50%. That give them some incentive to get chit done.
Players don’t get paid until the season starts…however long that is
Who is fining them? Who would collect these salary reductions? This work stoppage has really warped brains. Or maybe just exposed them
Players Assn declines the league’s stall tactic. Good. Eff both sides, but just get this over with, and fast!
Good for them. They clearly see through the owners BS.
Alright boys time to call in the scabs. Dust off your cleats and hit the batting cages. THIS IS OUR TIME!
It’s Brucie’s time to shine, baby!
I’m down. I’d be happy with the league minimum. Hell they can cut that in half for all I care
Would you still be fine with it if you were mostly in the minor leagues, and only got about 2/3 of a season in pro-rated league minimum across 3 years, and then you would be unemployed without tons of job skills, because you spent your teens and 20’s practicing to hit a ball with a stick rather than like… health care skills?
Baseball salaries seem great, but as a distribution they’re not:
1) Most players are only in the league a couple of years and never go beyond the minimum. They don’t even get the minimum, because they aren’t called up for a full season of games.
2) A small number of players get truly crazy money.
3) Many other players are trying to just get one solid free agency contract (let’s say 8-20m) which will be their lifetime income from their main skill they learned for 20 years.
4) Even for amazing players, pre-arb years mean that one bad injury means that none of those big money things happen. You’ll just be making small money in the minors and doing rehab, hoping that maybe you go make your big check or not.
I’m not saying I’m crying for these guys, and it beats football (where you’re generally out in a couple of years AND your body has broken pieces), but you can see where everybody wants to get their money sooner and bigger
There is no shortage of young men willing to accept what is on offer in order to enter the tournament that ends up with a handful of them in the major leagues. There is very little incentive for owners to pay them more. Fairness is an important idea in making a good society, but doesn’t matter much in big stakes bargaining processes.
Which is why minor league players should get a fair wage, and the first year MLB minimum should be raised.
But the MLBPA is not truly fighting for those players that make it to the bigs 2 years and then out… They’re fighting for those who already got millions of dollars for being picked in the first round and will be due a big salary once their years of team control are over.
@petesView
How is half a million not fair? I paid for my college. I wasn’t on an athletic scholarship. I have to work my way up by acquiring experience to get the better paying job, and it don’t pay HALF A MILLION!!! You don’t make that, either. Bet you’re happy in your job!
Nobody pays to watch you work. What you get paid is irrelevant to intelligent discussion
Is that why you have opted to to contribute anything if value to this discussion? Grow up.
We can collectively do this! By April, I’m going to be 100% healthy and in the best shape of my life. Just bat me 10th in the lineup.
time to get the old soup bone lose
Been working on my forkball…
Maybe Tom Hanks will coach and we can get the All American Girls Professional Baseball League up and going! Can’t wait to see all those short skirts!
Can’t play center anymore—not even sure about the outfield, but I can probably handle third.
already looking ahead to 2023. We’re screwed this year.
Having said that, does anyone know what the reason is exactly why we can’t just push the season back a few weeks or a month? is it because football will be back and baseball has to step to the side with all the primetime games?
Trying to play outdoor games in NY, Boston, Minnesota, etc. in November would be difficult at best. There would be massive cancellations and postponements,
That and you nailed it, the network TV schedule is important. Look at how bad ratings were in 2020 when every sports playoffs were going on at once.
Jeez. This might be worse then Democrats vs Republicans.
Nothing is worse than that…
This is becoming like our political process. One side trying to make the other look bad, then later a tit for tat response. Meanwhile, like with politics, it just makes most sane people hate both sides.
Agreed. More important to tell the other side “no” than work towards anything that will get a “yes.”
This is going great
Tony Clark needs to be removed, said it the last time all this went down. he’s not good for baseball
I tend to agree. The longer this drags on the more it becomes apparent he’s in way over his head in all of this. Most of the dissatisfaction on the part of the players right now are directly because he did such a pisspoor job the last time around. But he expects he can undo all of that this time around and that simply isn’t realistic.
Why can’t they just meet in the middle? If there’s no bonus pool (as far as I know) then why wouldn’t the players see a $50 million bonus pool as a gain? I know the owners aren’t offering that but $50 million would be meeting in the middle. That’s much better than no bonus pool as far as I’m concerned. The same goes for minimum salaries. If it’s currently $570,000 then I don’t see how accepting around $650,000 would be “settling.” That would be an increase of $80,000.
Smart and correct move. It’s a PR stunt. MLB hasn’t even attempted to negotiate seriously yet.
One issue is the owners probably aren’t united. I know Manfred isn’t popular, but trying to get and keep 30 owners on the same page is probably impossible. The players may may know there is division among the owners.
That is a fair point about the owners being divided. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if that was the reason for the call for a mediator. But that would mean that a mediator is far more likely to hasten rather than slow movement toward an agreement.
Not true
Could you explain your reasoning?
The MLBPA has been been trying to negotiate, with the goal of eventually finding agreement on a midpoint. MLB, however, is drawing a line in the sand on everything. Negotiations can’t move forward when one side, in this case the owners, isn’t negotiating.
Agreed. The midpoint isn’t what will result here as there are big differences in negotiating leverage between the parties.
So the owners should just “give” the players half of what they are asking? Maybe that’s why the initial ask by the players is ridiculous. They planned on it and doubled the ask!
Can’t they just call up minor leaguers and be done with it?
That would be great
Buy your copy of MLB: The Show ’22 because it may become a collectors item for the season that wasn’t…
i stopped buying that series once they turned rtts into dime and nickel.
Stand Strong MLBPA. Realize the bigger picture here.
What “bigger picture”? The lowest paid MLB players already make more than 10 times as much as the average person.
EXACTLY! Players minimum salary is over 600 K a year… You can’t tell me they can’t pay the bills with that!
And this is not counting the guys that get paid millions and then get released halfway through and still get paid for doing nothing… Or the injured pitchers that get paid millions to rehab the first year of their contract.
Bobby Bonilla is STILL getting paid!
but they create 100’s times more value than what they are paid. that makes them creating millions time more than you do.
Same way Walmart, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Disney employees create millions for their bosses and get paid less… Some of them making as low as 10 dollars an hour while the owners make 10 dollars per second or so.
And let’s say the MLBPA wins… What do you think will happen? Owners will raise ticket prices and concessions because now they gotta pay players more.
In the end… Fans will lose.
ticket prices are set by supply and demand. if you and me and millions others refuse to go to games prices will drop.
That is true… Which is another point, if the MLBPA has it their way, teams like the Rays will suffer given the low revenue they produce and their reliance on having team control over their players.
As an engineer, I create tens of millions of dollars in value for my company every year. That does not entitle me to any sort of percentage of that value because I am an employee, my entire job is to create value FOR THE COMPANY. If I don’t like the compensation, I am free to change my place of employment.
That is the EXACT same thing as the players, the lone difference being they get guaranteed money rather than at-will contracts.
i am an engineer and retired. the company gave bonuses for projects. my son is an engineer and already received stocks options. btw, he is only 28 but has appx. 20 engineers and some support personnel under him.
This.
And that bonus structure was decided on at the time of hire as part of the compensation. Any additional bonuses gained are all optional privileges afforded by the company. None of that bonus money is “owed” to the employee unless agreed to in the contract, as an employee you are still not entitled to any of the money you made for projects that’s not in the contract. No matter how much money your projects makes the company.
@stan lee Yours is a specious argument. How is a major league baseball baseball player in the US supposed to change his “place of employment”? There is only one major league last time I checked and the owners totally control it. That is why this is an uneven playing field. The real solution: Congress should threaten MLB with a congressional act to strip them of their phony “not a business” status if they don’t negotiate in good faith, something they’ve yet to do.
Learn to code.
Vizonaire… I still bet that the owner of the company your son works for still makes tens of millions more than your son.
I’ve seen entry level employees get paid with stocks as well.
This is what happened in 1994. And magically, the two most powerful Senators on the Commerce committee, John MCain from AZ and Connie Mack from FL, found their states awarded expansion teams. MLB obviously did not really want that, as they were advocating for a two team contraction about three years later.
coding is not good at this time. big tech companies are letting go of u.s. educated computer engineers and hire you-know-who’s. my son’s friend went to stanford co-majoring ce and mathematics and now work for uber. 3 years ago it was unthinkable.
@Vizionaire
The fans and the TV networks pay their salaries. All they do is play a game. It’s not necessary to sustain society. It’s entertainment…nothing more.
why do you bother to post heated arguments here, then? it’s nothing more than a game! but i love the game and you just seem to love the owners. i would never in thousand years watch the owners play baseball!
EBJ, How you ask is a bunch of ex-college jocks (if they aren’t capable of playing good enough to make 10 million) supposed to change his employment line if they can’t stand the heat? Well, Walmart is hiring no education necessary!
These guys aren’t forced to quit school early to play either… in fact many go to school to get the chance to quit early for a draft bonus they agree is fair.
Every employee creates way more value than what they are paid. If they only produced what they were paid, there’s no reason to hire. Yes, they create more value than the average worker, but they are already being compensated at way more than the average worker. I don’t blame them for trying to increase their earnings, but I won’t feel sorry for them if they don’t get everything they want, or lose their jobs because the raise the owners are offering doesn’t satisfy them.
Lol. You’re a single engineer. Easily replaceable by any one of hundreds of equally qualified engineers. When you old owner lovers try to equate your bs jobs to pro athletes who get millions spent just to FIND them, I can only laugh at the level of misplaced ego
Not true. If ticket prices were set by supply and demand, tickets to D-backs, Pirates and other teams at the bottom this last year would be close to free by late August. Ticket prices are influenced by supply and demand, but not set by supply and demand.
@EBJ nobody is forcing them to be baseball players. They can do what every other employee in America can do if they have a problem with their employers: find a new employer or start their own company and work for themselves. They chose to dedicate themselves to an industry with only one “real” source of employment and that was their choice. Blaming the owners because there isn’t a competing company is asinine.
@Yadi Dadi and there are hundreds of minor leaguers waiting for their chance to easily replace the major leaguers if they choose to leave. Not sure what the point of that post is.
And millions of fans who pay their good money to see the best players in the world compete, not to watch minor league washouts play joke baseball in major league parks. And that’s exactly what you’ll get because very few players who have any serious hopes of a major league career are going to play as scabs. We’ve been through this all before, and if you aren’t old enough to remember how embarrassing it was for the sport, you should look it up.
I am sorry tired of hearing how the “poor Tampa Bay Rays” will suffer if the MLBPA has “it their way.” How do the Rays routinely get $55-$60 million in revenue sharing each year while their 2020 opening day payroll was $28.2 million? Yet they can’t afford to offer Charlie Morton arbitration? Spare me.
I meant picking up the team friendly team option on Morton’s 2020 salary rather than offer arbitration.
Nobody pays to watch the average person work or gambles based on their performance. Ridiculous irrelevant comment
Lol, there’s no principle being fought for here
What is the “bigger picture” though? Upping league minimum? Ok. Dramatically overhauling service time and arbitration so players get mega bucks long before free agency? That actually devalues free agency and many current contracts, which i imagine would be a cause of internal strife between the players and the union. Larger piece of revenue sharing? Bonus pools? The current MLB players could care less about an international draft. Tanking? Doubt they care as long as they keep getting paid. It all comes down to money in the end.
See you in 2023!
So be it as far as I’m concerned. Onward with minor league ball.
Will there be minor league ball if there isn’t a CBA?
yes!
Both sides are stubborn and unwilling to compromise. Once the games start being canceled on March 31st, the players — who lose salary for every lost game — will realize their only leverage will be to kill the post-season, where the owners receive a huge chunk of revenue.
Perhaps a lost season — and the appointment of a new commissioner after owners lose hundreds of millions for a canceled post-season and refunding rights fees back to FOX, Turner and ESPN — will lead to an agreement in time for what’s left of MLB to return in ’23.
You can put Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela, and Warren Buffet in the same room with both sides but nothing will happen if neither side budges. This isn’t on Manfred.
The players need a real proposal.
I’ve read the Union has money stashed away to help pay players if they strike.. Not sure if they get paid without a strike or if they get paid because of the Lockout?
Look at the Owners & Players Negotiations in 2020 over Games To Play because of COVID. The Owners never negotiated in Good Faith & wound up stalling so they would not have to pay out as much. That suit is still waiting to be solved also. More money for the players in the end, I think.
Time will tell as always, but I think the Owners will be hurting more with loss of income than a lot/most people think. Especially if they loose the suit to the Players Plus they have to pay back Broadcasters for loss of games in 2020 plus any lost games this year. Hmmmmm A Very Expensive Game Of Chicken
College baseball is a great sport that gets basically no coverage. I sincerely hope ESPN and others give college baseball some air time during the work stoppage.
I think the minor leagues will still open regardless of what happens with MLB… If thats the case, I’m OK with watching MiLB games for a while.
I sincerely hope that all TV networks cut ties with MLB over this ridiculous nonsense. I am beyond annoyed at millionaires arguing with billionaires when a huge percentage of the population has trouble just paying bills. Either settle this without missing any games or disband the league forever.
This is pathetic and as a life long mlb fan, I hope they lose Everything
A pox on both their houses–Billionaires fighting with mostly millionaires. My sympathies reside mainly with the players but even they are starting to lose me. The pandemic almost killed MLB, now greed is trying to bury it completely.
Lots of lack of understanding about the federal mediation process in this thread. Please learn more about how this works before spewing the vitriol. fmcs.gov/resources/faqs/#cbm-faqs
With Millionaires arguing with Billionaires. The losers will be the fans.
The players should just take the year off and enjoy themselves. Let the owners take the loss. If they get hard up for cash go play in Japan or Korea.
You do understand that they owners can wait forever while the players, about half of whom make about the league min and have 5 yr careers, cannot?
Not true. Owners just came off a year when they lost money big time, and they do not and will not subsidize their teams from their own pockets. With no revenue this year some of them will be in big trouble. Not to mention the damage it would do to the health of the game for future years. Owners’ investments are just that — investments — and the value of those investments will stop growing, indeed shrink, if there is no product this year.
Are attempting to make the argument that owners are in a more financially precarious position than the players? What is your evidence that more flush owners would not float the very small handful of teams in trouble in order to win this?
The collective value of MLB franchises as of last March – immediately following the 2020 season – was $66 billion according to Sportico’s analysis. Do you understand what that means in terms of access to liquid financial resources? Especially with very few expenses other than debt obligations – which surely can be renegotiated albeit at some cost? The least valuable franchise is worth over $1 bill.
Are you familiar with MLB’s Trust Securitization Fund? 28 teams participate in it, and it is a revolving credit facility with up to $2 bill in commitments. That doesn’t count their facilities fund, which I think is over a billion. These funds are aerated A- and A, which are not exactly indicators of financial stress.
MLB leverage is about 2.5x or so league revenues, which puts it between the NBA 3.3x) and the NFL (1.9x).
Short of a major global capital meltdown a la 2008, there is no universe in which the players can outlast the owners financially.
The players making the league min. are not the ones driving the bus here. That’s the problem.
Exactly. That is how the costs for free agents were negotiated up. That made indentured players a better value, and an ever bigger % of league service time days is ow being accumulated by restricted players.
Finally, some progress.
Just let the sport die already.
Why are you commenting on a baseball blog? Weird.
Joe West didn’t think they’d have a resolution anytime soon, so he retired. At least some good news…
Maybe Joe West can convince Angel Hernandez to retire too.
The season is toast
Kind of frustrating to watch millionaires fighting billionaires over our money when the average population is just trying to keep their heads above water.
The average person tries this with their bosses and they just get fired and replaced with somebody else.
So I don’t mind if the unhappy players just stayed home and let MLB teams call up hungry players ready to play for the league minimum and more.
Not that I’m against the MLBPA or in favor of the owners… It’s just that MLB players are already doing good for life.
600 K is already good enough to open up a nice business and secure your future.
Let’s just start all minorleagueballs coming April 1st. Televise them all
Sounds to me like MLB is playing for time here because they can’t get their own house in order to make a counter proposal. Probably a sub-group of owners that want to play no-compromise hardball that are shooting down everything, and the negotiators simply have no room to craft a counter. These pro sports CBA negotiations are really unusual in the labor world because there are 30 “managements,” not 1. And particularly in the case of baseball they have 30 different bottom lines.
This is to be expected because some teams are in very different situations than others.
You can expect the owners of the Dodgers, Yankees and other monsters to agree with things that the Rays, Pirates and others rather not agree with… I’m sure of these things give some teams an advantage over others.
This why MLBPA is going about the wrong way – you need set a standard of minimum money spent on payroll as a percentage of revenue. Something all 30 teams can agree on then payroll will increase as the revenue goes up.
what is the mlb revenue? i don’t know either. neither does mlbpa.
If memory serves, it requires 75% of owners to ratify a CBA. (Somebody please correct me if that is inaccurate).
That means that they can lose 7 teams, so up to 7 owners’ opinions are irrelevant. So…. Which 7? They could all be at the top (which is how the CBT and rev sharing came into being) it could be at the bottom or it could be some of each. That leaves a lot of latitude for majority opinion among them.
“There’s nothing to mediate, after all, when one side declines to even bring an offer to the table.“
MLBPA lowered their offer from $105M to $100M for the Pre-Arb Bonus Pool without countering with much of anything other than something for service time. That’s basically bringing nothing to the table, if we’re being realistic here.
It’s time for a new Southern Baseball League. Atlanta and the two Florida teams will start this league. The two Texas teams can follow since they are technically in the South but the Astros will have to receive a two-year postseason ban for the sign-stealing scandal since they never actually received legitimate punishment for it. Seven new teams will be added as well…Birmingham, Charlotte, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Raleigh and San Antonio. That makes 12 teams.
If they can find new players maybe. All the good ones are still under contract, games or no games.
congress granted monopoly to mlb. good luck beating their lawyers in court(s).
Rob Refsnyder wouldn’t act like this. I’m voting Refsnyder for Commissioner of Baseball.
A much better selection than the idiot we have now!
I might rather my dog over Rob Manfred
RickPernell – A dead moose would be better than the one we have now.
Wow. The end (of the 2022 MLB Season) is nigh
Legal question: Can MLB invite back players with contracts in force in 2022, and fill the remaining slots with replacement players? If the players with contracts refused to show up, could they replace them, too, and just let every existing contract expire over time?
Thanks in advance for your replies.
The fans need to organize, somehow, some way. Not saying that is easy, or even that it’s been done before, but that is the only way this mess is going to resolve without losing a substantial portion of the regular season.
TWO WORDS:
Binding arbitration.
Caveat: Arbiter gets access to owner’s books -has to know real profit.
It what’s needed but probably never happen.
Until these last 2 days I was optimistic about them getting this done by the EOM and we see some ST games and a season that starts on time.
Not now.
The owners are a long way from where the players want to get. The players do not want a mediator that will probably ask them to move closer to the owners. The owners want to look like they will move…but I suspect barely.
I’m never right, but I’m suspicious the season will be delayed.
A pox on both their houses.
The correct move by the MLBPA.
Let’s recap the owners so far:
They locked the players out on December 1st;
They did not submit a proposal;
They did not resume negotiations for six weeks;
They termed nearly every MLBPA suggestion as a non-starter;
They threatened to cancel games;
They said they’d respond to the MLBPA’s last proposal, and haven’t;
They have made no constructive proposals;
They asked for a federal mediator when they haven’t attempted to negotiate themselves.
A mediator can only work if both sides are open to moving toward an agreement. Right now the owners are not acting like they want to reach an agreement, so a mediator will accomplish nothing. Of course, we also know when they tried this in ’94 it led to a complete disaster.
It’s easy to get lost in the antics, but I wouldn’t. These are all negotiating tactics. They will eventually come to an agreement, but it’s never going to happen until the owners get serious about negotiating. Right now, Manfred is still playing a PR game. It’s possible he is frozen because the collection of 30 owners is split behind the scenes, preventing any movement from management.
So what would it hurt for the MLBPA to call the owners bluff and agree to a mediator?
the thing that would hurt the owner most is a strike close to the post-season.
Vizionaire lol and the thing that will hurt the players the most is a lockout so what is the point.
I have my doubts that the majority of players would last that long.
So they are greedy and overpaid or they couldn’t last a few months without pay, which is it? You Owner Lovers are so contradictory
See my posts about that. The players have nothing to GAIN from allowing a mediator to become involved. Only the owners do.
I’ll agree with Rob M on his assessment.
I don’t know, I’m worried about the owners platform more. Players are the lesser of two evils, I suppose. In my opinion, we really need that CBT threshold raised significantly higher than the owners’ suggested $214m.
Far too often have we recently watched teams treat the CBT as a hard cap, which has heavily influenced the competitive product they put onto the field. The expanded playoff format is just window dressing that will just elevate mediocre play, rather than correct it.
I’m tired of watching off-seasons, where teams—especially the wealthier ones—will let generation talents sit unsigned for months. Or, worse yet, trade them away for pure salary relief.
So, I guess I’m not really hopeful anything gets done any time soon. Manfred did play a huge roll in the way the negotiations played out in ‘94…
@Oost
The CBT only effects the big market teams. 24 of the 30 teams do not take the CBT into consideration because their budget for payroll is based on their revenue. Raising the CBT lets the NY, LA and BOS teams sign one more big ticket player. It might help Correa get signed, but its not going to effect how much Joe Kelly gets. It would create a bigger advantage for the large markets, not create the competition the players claim to want. Other than the top 20 free Agents, I can’t see the majority of players in the union being willing to lose paychecks over the CBT being moved, just so a few teams sign one more player.
There will be no serious movement until the principals start suffering economic harm (reputational harm is simply part of contentious public labor negotiations). The owners don’t start suffering economic losses until spring training games/gates are canceled. The players don’t suffer economic harm until regular season games are canceled. Late February you might see some movement by ownership, if not look for late March as a pressure point. Check back in several weeks.
There is a compelling argument to not follow any of the negotiations, wait for a newsflash that the two sides have reached an agreement, and then go watch games. It will be less frustrating.
Maybe Boof Bonser will make it into the Hall of Fame.
See you in May folks.
This keeps going until at least June/July guaranteed
Somebody be the bigger person please
If the league was committed to having the players on the field, fans in the seat, they would make a counter offer, rather than trying to play the PR game.
Owners care exactly about one thing: the impact of the negotiation and eventual CBA in the value of their franchise. They don’t care about PR except as an input to that outcome, which could turn out to be important. Players could utterly not care less about PR Nelson they feel that fan disgust would lead to lower salaries.
Nelson=unless. Sorry.
They used a federal mediator in 94-95 which didn’t work out well for the players.
The owners should have gone that route instead of a lockout months ago.
After the players make concessions and the owner gave in on nothing, now they want a mediator. It’s posturing BS by the owners, plain and simple!
It doesn’t look good for an on time regular season right now.
They need to get back to the table are work things out like men and women!
Either way the fans lose out if it doesn’t get resolved soon!
Can you explain the way in which federal mediation works that would inherently favor one side over the other beyond their underlying leverage going into mediation? Exactly how did the mediator put the thumb on the scale for the owners over the players in 95?
The players have said that mediation in ’95 was against them. Regardless, this is 2022 and they need to try mediation now. Remember, mediation is not arbitration.
No. They don’t. Only the owners can benefit from mediation and even then its just in terms of PR.
The players didn’t make a concession. They slightly lowered a ridiculous demand. There’s a difference.
Yes the MLBPA did, they dropped their proposal on shortening arbitration years(5 years total rather than 6).
You mean free agency.
The owners proposed an age based system for free agency.
Instead of six years’ service time, players would become free agents at age 29-1/2. Of course that’s a non starter as most players reach FA before that, and players like Correa, Seager, Baez, would still be under team control.
So the players proposed a hybrid system: Six years, or five years if a player is age 29-1/2. That’s what Manfred called outrageous.
So that proposal was dropped, as was the owners’ age based proposal.
Owners have proposed replacing arbitration with an algorithm and eliminating super 2 status for arbitration. Those proposals are gone.
But their draconian penalties for teams that dare to spend more than $214 million on payroll, including an increase in the tax from 20 to 50 percent and draft pick penalties, are still their position.
As long as they hold that position,there will be no baseball.
Cancellation of the ‘22 season seemed inevitable after the debacle in 2020. Too much disparity in what different players earn and different owner’s net in revenue to satisfy everyone. In a sport of haves and have nots, you really need two separate leagues.
Complete joke.
Basically we have Billionaires that do not want to concede to Millionaires and Multi-Millionaires and it’s only the Baseball fans who are going to lose as long as they continue to be stubborn, self centered and spoiled. No wonder Professional Sports are losing fans and support.
@Steve Adams
The last paragraph in each news item in this thread politely puts down MLB for not responding to the MLBPA. It would be more productive to just report the news rather than hinting who you think is “wrong” in this dispute. Neither side is willing to give enough ground to get this thing concluded any time soon.
That was the news. What you believe is right or wrong about it is up to you.
Once again you don’t seem to get my point. After reporting the news, Steve snuck in editorials that take sides. I just don’t think that appearing to take a side is a good look for a site serving customers with a range of beliefs. Steve doesn’t take it anywhere near as far as the tribal politics you see everywhere else and I hope MLBTR never goes there.
Exactly. If MLBTR doesn’t cater to their team owner constituency they could lose up to 30 customers.
I understood what you said, it just wasn’t the point you imagined it was.
You don’t seem to get the point that he reported the news. You are the one taking sides.
MLB: “MLB remains committed to offering solutions at the table and reaching a fair agreement for both sides.”
If that’s true, make a reasonable counter offer. It’s a blatant lie by MLB as evidenced by their refusal to do the exact thing it would take to fulfill that commitment – make a counter offer that will be considered as a reasonable attempt at a solution.
Agreed…but the MLBPA hasn’t budged much either. Both sides look bad here.
Agreed, but this round is on MLB. It’s time to make good faith reasonable concessions.
I agree that they could increase the bonus pool and minimum salary offers slightly. Maybe offer a $25-30 million bonus pool instead of $10 million and offer a minimum salary of $650,000 instead of $615,000. The problem is that the MLBPA would still call these increases bad offers.
Bad offers? Maybe, but at least it’s more productive than what’s been done and then the MLBPA could at least make a counter to MLB’s counter to continue negotiations.
Prov356, So if we ;take the players union offer and their pittance of -4% off the 105 to 100 then it is a reasonable offer of 5% added by the owners… hmm they need to tell them 10.5M then … after all that is what the players did in their reasonable counteroffer. Oh and demand to cut the arbitration cutoff from 2.4 years to 2.39 yrs (on average) for super twos. Seems to me that neither side is offering any thing or countering anything!!!
@prov356
Your basing your defn of reasonable on what the players have asked for. None of actually knows if what the players asked for is actually reasonable. If you set your defn based on the owners proposal, then the players ask is unreasonable. I just know that the owners are offering the players more, and the players are saying its not enough. I was happy to get a 3% raise after my company went through the pandemic. Must be nice to argue over how much a raise needs to be. That’s something I will never experience as a participant.
If that is true, make an offer of any kind. MLB has refused to even step up to the table.
MLB owners probably need a mediator for themselves. I doubt all 30 owners are onboard this nonsense.
I do not see pure greed on MLB position. I see a non-United entity, lead by a bad negociador, waiting for union inside their ranks before truly negotiating with the players.
As McKinsey always shows, the problem sometimes is not the problem.
Honest question: why can’t the players, you know, start their own league?
mlb was granted monopoly by the congress.
The Supreme Court, actually. Congress has simply failed to provide any corrective legislation.
Correct. But the exemption is not a ban on a rival league. It just means that the Sherman Act didn’t apply, so MLB didn’t have to worry about price fixing or the other things that run businesses afoul of antitrust law.
There was an attempt,at a rival league like this in the late 19th century. It failed.
FWIW, the American League was originally conceived as competition to the National League. Not that this means it’s remotely conceivable for rival pro baseball league to be formed today, because we know it isn’t.
The Frontier League, American Association, Pecos League, Atlantic League and the Pacific Association are a few pro leagues that show it is conceivable today.
Thanks for the belly laugh stymeedone. That was the funniest thing I have read today. Completely off point, but hilarious.
How much money is any of those leagues making? How many got taxpayers to pay for their stadiums?
Vizionaire —And it’s time that monopoly is busted.
The owners knew all a long that this would be the outcome! They want to make the players look like they aren’t willing to negotiate, even when they are doing all the negtciating. Genius!!
I don’t think that the owners care that much about making the players look bad. They want a deal based on relative bargaining power, which looks to,strongly favor,them, and the players want an outcome that looks inconsistent with the strength of their position.
Obviously, you are not reading any of the articles about the subject. This was 100% a PR move by the owners. Its ONLY purpose was to make the players look bad.
“It is hard to understand why a party that wants to make an agreement would reject mediation from the federal agency specifically tasked with resolving these disputes….”
Makes sense to me and, I suspect most fans who really don’t care about either self-serving entity in this dispute.
“As Sheryl Ring points out (Twitter thread), mediation of this nature is generally a measure taken when both sides have submitted a good-faith proposal to resolve a dispute, and a third party then helps foster progress toward a resolution.”
Points out? It’s an opinion! (A notion about “general” practices and the “nature” of mediation – as she sees it). And what if neither side is submitting good-faith proposals (and who decides how that’s defined, in the first place)!?
So, here’s another opinion: The specific situation here, might very well need “third party help to foster progress toward a resolution”, and her opinion about generalities, brings little relevant context to bear in this dispute.
Both parties have been dug-in, arguably for the better part of two years, and now one of those parties is afraid of even adding a facilitator to the conversation. Paint that however you wish, but to me, it speaks volumes – not just about that parties tactics, but about the cumulative amount of their demands, as well.
Its the definition of federal mediation. Maybe its time you learned about what you are commenting about.
Both sides are missing the letter ‘c’.
They need medication.
Sigh.
Best comment on the thread, Hayzee!
Glad they refused it. I really feel like this is some kind of manipulation from the owners. Both sides need to make an effort
I do labor negotiations for a living and have used mediators from FMCS in bargaining disputes (just this week, in fact). Sometimes they are helpful, sometimes not. But what is always true is that at the outset you have to spend a lot of time educating the mediator on the issues and the matters in dispute, and the more complicated the issues the longer this takes. If the issues are particularly complicated, and there’s a long history of how the parties got to where they are, then the mediator is probably never going to understand the issues (and ramifications of various possible outcomes) as well as the parties. And if they don’t sufficiently understand the issues or the pros and cons of the possible solutions, then they won’t be of much help, and could even harm the process by offering overly simplistic or just plain vanilla “split the difference “ options that might advantage one party or the other and not help lead the parties to an agreement. The best the mediator can do in these types of cases is just to get the parties talking to each other. But of course they should be doing this anyway.
SJKinMD — Despite all that you say about mediation, what is the harm having a neutral party suggest ideas? No one is forced to accept those ideas.
If the mediator’s suggestions are not viewed as fair or even-handed by both sides (by reasonably addressing the interests and concerns raised by both parties), then it could make matters worse. This is apparently how the MLBPA views what happened in 94-95. No one is forced to accept the idea, but it it favors one side then it may prevent any further movement from that side, even if it was a bad/unreasonable idea. The outcome at this point should be an agreement that makes both parties equally unhappy, not one that makes one party happy and the other unhappy.
“No one is forced to accept the idea, but if it favors one side then it may prevent any further movement from that side, even if it was a bad/unreasonable idea.”
This is a circular argument, a logical tautology.
“Prevent” any further movement…? That’s silly, on its face – there hasn’t been any substantial movement on any of the substantial core numbers – from either side – in two effing years!
Now, even a highly skilled mediator/facilitator isn’t particularly likely to get these wheels greased, much. But then again, there’s no reason not to try it – given the reality that things ALREADY couldn’t be much worse! In other words, a mediator won’t prevent a damn thing, that so far, hasn’t already been “prevented”.
So please, Mr. “I do labor negotiations for a living…” – this rarified situation doesn’t meaningfully apply to those subjective generalities that you’re just throwing out there. It just doesn’t.
Here is the harm.
The ONLY way the owners can end the lockout is if a federal mediator declares an impasse or the union agrees to a new CBA.
If the player’s union accepts a mediator and that mediator declares an impasse after an undeclared amount of time, then and only then can the owners end the lockout.
If a mediator declares there is an impasse, which the owners can force by refusing to negotiate, then the owners can end the lockout, impose a new CBA unilaterally, and hire replacement players when the MLBPA goes on strike.
If the players decline to accept mediation the owners cannot end the lockout and are required by law to negotiate. They MUST come to the table. Something they have refused to do.
If I’m the owners. I drop the hammer. And simply state: here’s what ur playing for, if u don’t like it, don’t play. We will find players out there that will. And they will. Players will jump ship and it’ll suck for a year or 2.
I do think one thing needs to change if players are gonna get more money than their contract states. Is that contracts no longer are guaranteed from year to year. Aka if someone pulls a moustakas. They are able to be cut the following year. So as to not tie up so much dead money on a team.
They can’t. Federal labor law. In fact, now that the players have not accepted mediation, the owners are required by law to come back to the negotiating table.
Workers in the Sports entertainment industry have some strange sense of entitlement that is just not the normal in business.
Revenue Sharing – The owners and the Commissioner should decide if sharing revenues with smaller market teams is in the best interests of the game. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Uniform Advertisements – The owners and the Commissioner should decide if they want MLB uniforms to look like NASCAR uniforms all decked out in advertising. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Designated Hitter – – The owners and the Commissioner should decide on rule changes. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Postseason – The owners and the Commissioner should decide the postseason rules. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
** Minimum Salary – The workers (players) union should ensure that there is a minimum wage in place by negotiating with the Owners and Commissioner. Currently it is $570,000 for major leaguers, and for minor leaguers 46,600 for 1st contracts and $93,000 for 2nd contracts.
Pre-Arbitration Players Money Pool = The owners and the Commissioner should decide where the pool money is funded from. – This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Amatuer Draft – The owners and the Commissioner should decide what the amatuer draft rules are. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Service Time – Manipulation is the issue – The owners and the Commissioner should decide what the service time rules are. Teams are responsible to win. The Commissioner needs to monitor, and the Teams themsleves should make the decisions on when to bring up a player. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Team Payroll minimums – The owners and the Commissioner should decide if payroll minimums are in the best interests of baseball and if so, put them in place. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Luxury Tax – The owners and the Commissioner should decide if Luxury Tax Rules are in the best interests of baseball and if so, keep them/ change them. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Salary Arbitration – When workers (players) are eligible are eligible for a raise is for the union.to agree upon with the owners and Commissioner.
Free Agent Draft Pick Compensation – The owners and the Commissioner should decide upon the rules. This is an executive level decision, the workers (players) should have no say in this.
Free Agency – When workers (players) are eligible are eligible to become free agents and thus in better control of their compensation is for the union.to agree upon with the owners and Commissioner.
So, let’s get an agreement on minimum pay, when workers are eligible for raises and when they can negotiatie with any team. Everything else is for the boss/executives/ in this case the owners and the Commissioiner to decide.
That’s how it works at Kwik Fill or Dollar General, so it should be good enough for MLB, is what you are saying?
This is a COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT for the 1200 most talented people at their jobs in the world, not employment at Taco Bell for minimum wage.
@Pads Fans The 1200 most talented Neurosurgeons do not dictate the rules to the Hospitals they work in, they follow the rules that have been set forth by the Boards of Directors of their Hospitals. The 1200 most talented Scientists do not dictate the rules to the Laboratories they work in, they follow the rules that have been set forth by the Corporations that own the Laboratories. The 1200 most talented Pilots do not dictate the rules to the Airlines they work for, they follow the rules that have been set forth by the Airline ownership……and the 1200 ballplayers should not be dictating the rules to MLB. The union should be ensuring a minimum wage for players, negotiating when they can get raises, negotiating when they can work for any team, and also should be negotiating Healthcare, benefits packages, retirement plans etc, just like any other union.
Well that’s a terrible analogy. In none of the industries you mention are all of the employers allowed to collude and impose rules on themselves to reduce the salaries they would otherwise be perfectly willing to pay. But that’s life in antitrust exemption city.
This Millionaires vs. Billionaires soap opera has become rather tedious. Someone has to get amnesia and accidentally marry their daughter’s ex-husband or maybe they could introduce a supernatural element like a werewolf. In any case, the script needs work.
Shut it down for a year or two.
I agree. I’m happy to watch minor league baseball for the next two years and then have some of those players fill the spots of the MLBPA members. When the players come back, it will be for less than they turned down.
No you are not. If you were, you would have been attending their games and subscribing to MILB.tv. Stop lying.
In light of rising inflation, gas & food prices, and mortgage interest rates this situation ticks me off. They are fighting over millions of $$$ while millions are scraping to get by.
2022 the year that MLB commits suicide. Fans won’t be so forgiving this time and if this lockout goes on past opening day it will take years for things to even begin to smooth over. TV rating are at an all time low, attendance for 75% of the team is declining. People just aren’t watching baseball as much because it has become boring to watch either in person or on TV. Look at Dodger games when so many people are there but sitting outside the stadium in the eating areas not even watching the games.
I’m glad the Players Union rejected this ploy at this point and am growing ever more disgusted with the owners’ abject determination not to negotiate in good faith.
There may be a time when a mediator is warranted but it’s way down the road. The owners started this mess with the lockout and if they want a season to start, they gotta come to the table like adults. There are serious issues to work out in this sport and hardballing the players is not going to make progress.
I’m not ready to drop my season ticket plan but I’m inching my way to considering it.
The saddest part of this is that every extra dollar that the players extract from the owners in these negotiations will be paid for by us, the fans. Owners run the companies/teams. They aren’t going to lose profits.
Guaranteed at the end of this prices are going to go up and both sides will blame the other. The only people who are truly getting f*cked in these negotiations are the fans.
The cost of manufacturing (Player Jersey, Baseballs, Bats Ect…) and food and transportation of all goods have gone up, so the price the owners will charge has already gone up before this is solved anyway… This dispute will not be the main reason for price increases.
First thing is first. The only thing I want is baseball. I almost lost my fan hood because of the 94-95 strike, but luckily I was a Mariners fan and it was exciting to get back in.
If MLB counter proposes with a better number, like $40 mil to the bonus pool, it’d just make things easier. If they were that committed to getting the season to start on time, the counter would’ve been made already.
If the owners want more playoff games, give the younger players who are MVP/all-star caliber more money. Owners make more = players get more, how hard is that?
If there’s any particular person that’s swaying the room on either side, get them out of the circle. Only reasonable people need to be in the discussion. Constant bad talk on one side about the other, isn’t creating a culture to get this done amicably.
This is like a bad marriage where compromise can’t be made. At least make a respectful attempt. Stop holding grudges and work together for the benefit of EVERYONE. Be professional and get it done.
This seems easy and they’re just making it difficult. Meet halfway on the issues and boom!! Spring training is on as scheduled.
One thing stupid about players is that they believe the internet. Remember that fool on the Toronto club Bautista? I remember seeing him give an interview saying he wouldn’t negotiate and his value was tied to stock prices and within a year or two he was out of the game.
A lot of the lemmings who are following their union over a cliff won’t be coming back in two years when baseball does.
You’re hilarious. Bautista was almost 40 and earned over 100 million in mlb contracts. And you, a nobody on the internet, have the nerve to call him a fool
I get not having any sympathy with the players, but to actively root for “I hope the owners crush them!” is either some sad little jealousy or some epic “we must get down on our knees and worship The Job Creators!!!” mindset.
I am about to say screw them all and start building model cars or maybe taking up woodworking. I am going to need something to fill the time I used to spend watching baseball..
The MLBPA is finally showing up. It’s good to see.
Some one said it best because mediators usually come out on the side of labor and usually it ls labor asking for the mediation. They must be asking for items that have never been done before or way to far apart. Mediators don’t usually get into setting new precedent on something radically new. It is usually changing the existing precedent.
The owners are the ones who locked out the players. The owners have conceded almost nothing in their proposals. While I think some of the players demands are unrealistic, the owners need to be more willing to come off their positions on the key economic issues. They haven’t. I’ve read so many articles where I’ve read that the owners don’t want anything to change in this area or that area. Well, it is a negotiation, change something. You don’t have to raise the competitive balance attack to $243 like the players want, but you can make a proposal that raises it to like $230 instead of the small incremental increase they proposed. That would at least get the attention of the union. Also, the service time issue. The owners presented an idea to benefit the teams with draft picks, but the idea offers nothing to the players who are the ones who are hindered by delaying a players service time. You have to give the players a little something in that area. I don’t blame the players for turning mediation down because Manfred talks out of both sides of his mouth. Take Manfred & Tony Clark out of the negotiations. Maybe you’ll get somewhere without those two involved
Good Grief Charlie Brown
Both sides in these negotiations are arguing over the contents of OUR wallets people. Every dollar that the Union extracts from the owners will be paid by US. Unless you believe that billionaires are such good people that they are willing to give up a large part of their profit margin WITHOUT raising prices? I wish I could drop a bunch of laughing emojis.
The owners gt $12 billion of our money last season. They passed on just $4 billion to the players. Something is wrong with that picture since without the players there is no MLB games. .
Only 4b? Poor babies. When they invest hundreds of millions of their own money into a baseball organization, maybe they can be on the high end of that 12b. That’s how it works.
@Pads Fans, that puts ballplayers in a good place. Payroll as a % to total revenue for most companies is between 20-30%. Assuming your numbers are correct, the 66% not going to payroll has to cover stadium upkeep, team travel, taxes, utilities, front office and coaching salaries, equipment, stadium employees, etc etc. When reviewing profits after all those payments, keep in ming that Guggenheim paid 2 billion for the Dodgers, Cohen paid 2.4 Billion for the Mets, even the Royals sold for 1 billion! Businessmen who make that big of an investment deserve return on that investment.
This is actually not true. To the extent a team’s revenue is boosted by TV money, that comes out of all TV viewers’ wallets, not just baseball fans. Actually that’s one of the distortions of baseball economics that screws things up, as it means that big markets pull in more money, period end of story, no way to change it. That means small markets can’t be competitive unless they play a Rays style corruption of the game that is about as exciting as watching paint dry. So the small market teams have had it, but the only ways they’ve proposed to fix it screws the young players.
The players are also responsible in part for screwing the younger players in the most recent CBA’s. They’ve fought so hard against a salary cap, and put all their capital into opposing harsher limits on the highest payrolls, that the minimum salary hardly moves, and the result is a 30% decrease in the median salary while the richest players get richer.
We will see whether they put some real effort into helping younger players this time. They’ve talked the talk, but their proposals do nothing to prevent tanking or service time manipulation. Their proposal for minimum salary is much less than it should be, IMO.
If they delay the season I really hope fans take a stand and not show up to games .
Oh God now the Bob Nightengale curse is coming for the CBA negotiations.
I agree with Steve Adams. “To be clear, it is not solely on the league. The MLBPA asked for some things it knew would never be considered, and their recent “concession” came down $5MM on their initial ask from the pre-arb bonus pool wasn’t really a concession at all.”
The $5 M adjustment was far more reasonable than the owners’ $10M total- for over 500 players. That kind of proposal didn’t deserve any serious movement. The owners want them to negotiate against themselves.
A bunch of whales protecting their sizeable investments versus a baseball players association. I suppose David did get a result with his slingshot. It’s an interesting fight nonetheless.
This is just so ridiculous. Baseball players (employees), being compensated in the hundreds of thousands or multi millions, retirement age between 35 to 40 years old and not only set for the rest of their lives but, quite often their children & for a few even their grandchildren. And who’s gonna get it up the ying yang again? US, the poor old sap fans!
If you don’t like it, go get hired to play ball old man
If it was that easy to do, don’t you think we would have already done that junior?
Looking forward to April for MILB. I might get season tix for my local team and take a year off from MLB if they have a shortened season. 2020 season was a joke and 2022 may be headed in that direction.
9lives. I like going to Minor League games and the prices are SO much cheaper.
Then go to independent league ball, otherwise you are putting money in the pockets of the MLB owners.
Honestly as a fan this just sucks. I just want baseball to start this really sucks I guess I’ll be watching a lot of Milb.
For the good of the fans it should only be pay for performance CBA and Free Agency are counter productive. They only raise prices. Superstar contracts leaves little money for league average players who should have a separate scale to follow. Renewed contracts pay for past performance not for projected or expected performance. The league suffers and only the agents win, total scum.
Figures, as soon as the mariners start to get good we loose a season.
I SUPPORT THE OWNERS. If the “players” push this into a situation where they forfeit the entire season, so be it at this point. In fact- let the “players” forfeit 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029 while they’re at it- all at once. Just tank the entire garbage thing at this point. I SUPPORT THE OWNERS!
I think this just posturing by the league. I’m thinking MLPA is saying, “hey, we put the work into a quality proposal with concessions and you’re not putting the same level of effort, MLB. Improve on your deal and we’ll bring in a mediator.” I think because MLB is too far away the MLBPA doesn’t want to do all the work and concessions if MLB won’t budge. I’m betting if we have a 22 season, it starts May/June, so 100-120 game season.
Bored with the players. If I honestly thought they were being screwed, I would be on there side, but I don’t see that at all. When you keep asking for more and more, eventually the owners just say the hell with it. Player=employee Owner=Boss
If players want to call the shots, run your own business. Until then realize what you have, is damn good and make the most of it.
Yep. Don’t care so much.
A lot could change to get players paid earlier which could benefit the game, but in the end I just don’t care care either way. Any MLB player with two years of service time is a millionaire. Owners are billionaires. Maybe the fans should unionize and negotiate a cap on food and ticket prices. They would all love that!
In what scenario do employees get to tell employers the conditions for employment? Ball players are already a privileged bunch and are way overpaid. Consider a Neurosurgeon that does 15 years of training, countless sleepless nights, has enormous responsibility every day and in a best case scenario makes 1.2 million dollars a year and the lowest tier players make more than that. Get lost! I have no sympathy for their greed!
But can the surgeon hit a curve ball?
Can Aaron Judge remove a brain tumor?
Can Bryce Harper fuse a cervical displaced fracture?
Let’s get real! Players are overpaid!
Does the owner of a hospital(or however that works) make 100s of millions, or possibly billions, each year?? No, so you’re argument isn’t even an argument. Doctor’s actually have an argument for getting paid more……they prescribe all the drugs and use all the medical equipment where the real money is made.
How exactly does an MLB owners boot taste? Do you fully insert the boot, or just lightly smooch it? Do you remove your dentures first? I’m genuinely curious
“In what scenario do employees get to tell employers the conditions for employment?”
During collective bargaining negotiations when they have leverage over the owners.
Yawn…..
They were playing chicken at 100 mph and no one budged so now we the fans will suffer from their grossly inflated egos
Not sure how “fans will suffer” because of owners locking out players. We might miss a few games that we would have otherwise enjoyed watching, but “suffering” is a pretty strong word. In fact, one might argue that fans not wanting the players to negotiate what they feel is a fair deal for their labor because fans have no patience for the time it takes to work out a complicated contract with multiple interested parties is a reflection of the fans “grossly inflated egos”. Although we all want baseball, no one is “suffering”. These things take time. A deal will get done and we will have baseball. If you don’t like it become a soccer fan like our friend ChuckyNJ is suggesting. Those guys roll around on the ground as though they are suffering even when they haven’t been touched!
lark – The “fans suffering” comment is just another sign of how pervasive a sense of entitlement is becoming these days.
Sometimes it seems like everybody wants to be a victim, everybody wants sympathy.
These comments. Maybe suffer was too strong a word for your fragile minds. I actually enjoy baseball if you want to go watch sensitive uber rich crybabies fighting over money maybe switch to basketball while baseball still has a chance. ✌
My mind isn’t fragile. I’ve seen suffering. It wasn’t having to be patient while a complicated process plays out. I love a good labor dispute, and I side with labor.
thesedays – Insults don’t work if they are illogical.
A fan claiming to be “suffering” just because some games might be cancelled is the epitome of “fragile”.
With all the legit reasons for people to be legit “suffering” these days (deadly virus, sky high inflation, off the charts violence, cancer and other diseases everywhere), not being able to watch a kid’s game being played by wealthy adults is nothing more than a minor inconvenience for most.
If you are really so fragile as to be ‘suffering” because of the MLB labor dispute, perhaps you should drive to your local elementary school and watch other kid’s games being played like Hopscotch and Tetherball.
Look up all of the synonyms for the word suffer. I realize that might take EFFORT but before anyone else makes an uneducated response to what i said look into it.
Yep. Don’t care so much.
A lot could change to get players paid earlier which could benefit the game, but in the end I just don’t care care either way. Any MLB player with two years of service time is a millionaire. Owners are billionaires. Maybe the fans should unionize and negotiate a cap on food and ticket prices. They would all love that!
If fans were smart,they would not attend games. Sport isn’t a necessity.
So you only do things that are “a necessity?”
People do plenty of unnecessary things, but if these people aren’t going to concern themselves with their customers, why continue to support it?
Don’t watch then. No one cares if you do or don’t. I’m sure the players would take a bad deal so that Old York doesn’t stop watching Sunday Night Baseball three times a year.
The point is if fans reacted with their funds with the same vigor as they complained on public forums, changes would happen in short order.
Capitalism, at its core, is a simple system. If consumers speak to a great enough extent, suppliers will listen. End of story.
But when it comes to sports, consumers are either too hooked or simply wouldn’t care enough to put their money where their mouths would be. And I’m not even judging that result per se; regardless, the above statement is a fact.
Haven’t watched MLB in a decade. No strategy anymore and full of garbage players. Pitchers can’t go beyond 3 or 4 innings, which is lacking athleticism and skill.
Most soccer clubs outside North America have fan organizations that can help influence club policy from the boardroom to the playing field. North American franchise leagues such as MLB have never adopted that concept.
Soccer is lame.
If this winds up postponing the season, I would love to see a one week fan boycott. Empty stadiums nationwide for a week as a reality check to the millionaires and billionaires.
MiLB might see a bump in attendance this year.
So would MiLF in September and October, if football had minor leagues.
Tony Clark You ain’t no Marvin Miller. And the owners know this. Mic Drop
The OWNERS’ next response should be: “We are taking a break from negotiating with terrorists. We’ll see you back at the negotiation table in December of 2023. Enjoy a couple of years off.”
This strike will never end, will it.
It will, And fans will flock back to their seats. It’s the only way any of this would make sense for either side.
American capitalism for you; get consumers hooked enough on your product and you can string them along, treat them poorly, etc, for quite a long time before the damage would become permanent..
How can something end if it never began?
MLB = GREED! MLBPA = GREED! FANS = SCREWED!!!
Every time I read an intelligent, well thought out comment in this section, it’s immediately followed by someone calling that person a fool, or worse.
And you wonder why they can’t settle this?
Holy freaking cow!
I’d argue your 1:1 ratio is too low. It’s gotta be like 1:3 at best.
What? Are you kidding me? It’s definitely closer to 1:2 than 1:3. Come on.
Bring on replacement players. Beer is just as cold, hot dogs still taste great, and baseball is baseball.
So baseball is baseball even if it’s played by inept minor league washouts and talentless weekend ballplayers? Because that’s who we got for scab players in 1995, and it was embarrassing to the sport. Even the owners eventually got the message that nobody would pay to see badly played baseball when better comedy is available from so many other sources.
As Einstein said, repeating the same experiment and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. There’s a lot of it about and I have to wonder if people who make comments like this even like baseball.
Here is another suggestion for the players. Let’s move into pay for performance contracts and not long guaranteed salaries (like the NFL does) and also most of the employment world. Baseball players are so privileged that they sign a long free agent contract and they get paid even if injured day 1 of such contract. Yet, they want more. In 2020, during Covid, I learned to live without baseball and it was fine. I am ready to move on and most of all fans should to. If there is no arrangement in time, I am done with the sport and I have been a loyal fan for over 45 years, pay annually for several streaming services to watch games, attend multiple games a year and spend on gear. I am also passing my disdain for the game to my kids and they are losing other potential fans. Baseball was already on the ropes because the next generation thinks is boring and slow and prefer football and basketball and soccer is rapidly growing. This will be their end and there will be no recovery. Wake up!
Federal Mediators do only one thing: indicate what’s outrageous: the MLBPA doesn’t want to hear it.
The problem with the mediator is that he/she has no power to impose any solution. Usually precedent and mid points are important. Both favor the owners because players feel past deals have been so unfair.
Also if the MLBPA does not agree with the mediator it is TERRIBLE press.
It’s very hard for us everyday people to understand what these players are dealing with and trying to accomplish
Professional sports is the only industry where a player has no choice where he or she Plays at the start of a career.
Also the salary difference is much much more extreme between inexperienced and veteran players than almost anywhere else.
The revenues are always in question but regardless of percentages MLB player salaries vs revenues have not risen anywhere near NBA or NFL over the past several decades
What the players want is younger players paid closer to veterans and more say earlier in where they play.
The MLLBPA has been their own worst enemy agreeing to bad agreements in the past
The problem is players have a history of settling so the owners aren’t seriously negotiating. They expect the players to eventually cave
The players know this and this time they are determined
So it’s the fans who suffer
Buckle up and be ready this won’t end soon
More than half of MLB players don’t make it to Free Agency when they have a chance to score big (perhaps 20% — ? — of them ) or get a contract commensurate with their ability or have to scramble for a contract.
Arbitration covers those who make it past 3 years (plus the super 2’s) when the contract ranges from the minimum ($570K/year but that will rise) to something close to their value. The very good will have been extended with a very good contract.
So how many players are really affected by the CBA?
Not very many. Major League Players are treated like Gods. Would anyone reading this NOT want to be an MLB Player? Very few, because if you’re potentially MLB “good” at 18, you’re in the very underpaid minor leagues or you got a BIG bonus for signing.
This is a big song and dance about nothing.
Even by your own argument you’ve shown how this “big song and dance” actually about a great deal.
The argument that team owners need to constrain themselves from paying the salaries they’d pay for the best players in a free market sounds just about as bad as it really is, and it’s pretty awful.
Is it awful ? Aren’t the constraints about having a healthy competition ?
An ideal competition being one that sees every competitor starting opening day with a decent chance of winning. Fans of 30 teams all watching opening day with hope and anticipation.
The theory being the free market leads to a few teams hoarding the very best talent and dominating consistently which gets tedious for a lot of fans. They eventually throw their arms up in the air and switch off.
Trying to find a balance is not ideal for a dodger fan and player bank accounts, but constraints aimed at keeping small market teams in the game are maybe not so awful for the overall health of the competition.
Yeah, it’s awful, especially when espoused by supposed free-marketers. You find out pretty quickly that isn’t at all what they want because in a free market that included labor the players would be paid more, probably a lot more. The upshot of the rules the owners want is to discourage them from spending what they’d otherwise spend on talent.
If I was the King of Baseball (still awaiting this appointment) I would pool all of the game’s revenues and divide it equally 30 ways, then I would reward the teams that make the playoffs with higher draft picks. That’s how you make the system work, that’s how you encourage competition, and reward the fans of teams that are being treated by their owners as cash cows. Not by rewarding non-effort, as is done now.
How does that sound coming from a Dodger fan? Hey so you think maybe some people are still baseball fans before they are fans of any one team? Could be, could be…
Didn’t mean to offend. Nothing against Dodgers or their fans. It’s a good organisation. Just got heaps of cash that others don’t.
Not sure on the whole self imposed rules thing. I’d have it as small market owners not wanting free wheeling big market teams driving up prices to the point they can’t compete on individual contracts or overall talent level. To me, that’s fair enough. Got to give them half a chance.
That would be awesome, King of Baseball. But if revenues were the same, I’d lottery the draft picks. I’d say if it was a totally even field, the spirit of competition would win the day. Let the best and the lucky rise to the top naturally.
No offense taken. I often hear the cynical assumption that nobody can see past their own immediate self-interests, and not totally without justification. Still, not everybody thinks that way.
If revenues were divided equally the concept of small and large market teams disappear. Every team has more or less the same revenue to spend. If the game then rewarded only success there would be no need for draft lotteries and no need to create artificial caps on salaries either.
Yeah, King of Baseball. That’s what we need. A lot of fans believe the commissioner has that power but really he’s the CEO of baseball and speaks only for the owners.
If you took the 6 wealthiest teams and the top 20% of the major league players, they could iron out a contract in ten minutes. No limits on spending, Done. The six teams would bid ridiculous amounts against each other for the talent pool and there you would have it. The other 24 teams would just be window dressing to fill out the standings and the schedule.
The problem is basically that the other 24 teams and the other 80% of the major league players think that the system is terrible.
And you can change the numbers to 10 teams and 33% of the players if you want. Or 15 teams and 50% of the players. It doesn’t matter what the percentages are, really.
The system has to work for 30 teams and 100% of the players. Period.
Good luck with that, major league baseball.
The last strike the players did not want a salary cap. This lockout the players want basically an unlimited salary cap which is already too high since only 3 teams are above it. The last strike it took a federal judge to tell them the obvious path. Continue playing under the old agreement until you reach a new one even if it takes years. Probably need the same solution this time unless players like Trout and Cole and some other 30 million dollar players say I am making enough let’s play ball.
If they operate under without a CBA the Players are likely to strike on Labor Day. No Post Season. Great. The Owners aren’t going through the expensive part of the season to be shut out of the profit.
As for not answering the MLBPA 4.8% change in the pool (nonsensical $105M to $100M), the Owners could have done the same thing: raise their offer to $10.5M. That’s nonsense. The Owners said they were interested in the concept but the original MLBPA level was out-of-the-question. Let’s talk about it. Then you negotiate what’s fair and why. $1M per team for starters might work, Negotiate.
The Owners will decide what’s fair for themselves. It’s really take-it-or-leave it for the Players.
No season will be worse for the Players – especially the high-and-mighty Max Scherzer who won’t get his $43,300,000!
If the owners ended the lockout, the players would at least play until August and draw their salaries. Maybe they would strike, but that’s not a sure thing.
There would be no luxury tax because of the sunset provision which is very specific, but the rest of the CBA would remain in effect.
There would also be no expanded playoffs, no advertising patches on uniforms, and no international draft. These are all things that the owners would like, but have been unwilling to give the players much of anything in exchange. So they’d have to negotiate in earnest, which they have not been doing.
The players have signaled willingness to give a CBT with increased thresholds, advertising patches, and expanded playoffs. An international draft would require assurances that the drafted players would not be at the mercy of one team forever.
The players could get a bump in the minimum salary- the one thing that owners have put on the table that actually helps them.
Maybe a slight bump in the arb cut off- say 2.5 years which is 30 days sooner.
Universal DH, eliminate payment of free agent compensation, and a few other small perks.
Whether they get real solutions to force the cheapest owners to spend or some language to discourage manipulation- maybe not but the players’ own proposals don’t do much on that score anyway.
The wrong people are negotiating!
For the MLBPA it should be these players with their 2022 Salary:
Sherzer $43MM
Cole $36MM
Trout $35.54MM
Strausburg $35MM
Lindor $34.1MM
Bauer $34MM
Rendon $35MM
Seager $32.5M
Arenado $32.5MM
Cabrera $31MM
Price $31MM
Betts $30.42MM
Machado $30MM
For MLB it should be the Owners of these teams (2021 payroll)
Orioles $42.4MM
Guardians $50.2MM
Pirates $50.4
Marlins $58.2MM
Rays $70.8MM
Mariners $83.9MM
Tigers $86.3MM
Royals $86.6MM
A’s $90.9MM
D’backs $91.2MM
Rangers $95.6MM
Brewers $99.4MM
If the guys earning with the most money and the teams spending the least can agree, who will disagree.
Or just let Derek Jeter decide: His total MLB earnings ($265MM) are quite similar to his Marlins payroll the last 4 years ($257MM). He knows both sides.
This isn’t surprising at all. But, people will still be shocked that the players didn’t agree to mediation and blame them because they don’t know better.
Scherzer could care less about the younger players and fans. He’s getting $14,000 for every pitch he throws.
Meanwhile the billionaires who were born rich care about players or fans? Ticket prices are going up when team payrolls are going down. Stadium workers in SF had to go on strike for fair wages during a pandemic and their owner is the 2nd richest in baseball.
This is something that many people can’t hear enough, THE COST OF GOING TO A GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PLAYER SALARY AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH DEMAND, JUST LIKE ALMOST EVERY OTHER GOOD OR SERVICE IN THE US.
The deadlock IS Manfred and the owners. THEY are the ones that refused to come to the table. They refused to make a counter proposal. When you see them come out with a statement like that so full of lies, it shows clearly that they think fans are stupid. Manfred. Either come to the table, or admit you are just trying to screw the players and the fans.
@outinleftfield Can you blame the owners for thinking fans don’t know better?
I haven’t read close to all of them, but it seems like most of the comments are pro-owner/anti-player. Even after this obvious stall tactic, a refusal to keep wages in line even with inflation, a refusal to significantly address tampering with service time, the owners refusal to bargain in good faith in 2020, the player’s grievance in 2020, ticket prices continuing to rise even though team payrolls are on the decline, etc.
After everything, there are people who still think the billionaires are in the right. It seems the owners can do whatever they want and they won’t lose support from a certain segment of the population.
I’d be less surprised if they cancelled the whole season than if we saw any games before June. I would guess there is good chance of no games until 2nd half, knowing the egos involved on both sides.