Collective Bargaining Agreement

The daily collective bargaining sessions between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association continued this afternoon. MLB made a core economics proposal Monday, which the union countered yesterday. Neither side was pleased with the other’s latest offer, and the league has doubled down on previous assertions that regular season games will be canceled if no new CBA is agreed upon by the end of the month.

Last week, MLB informed the union it viewed February 28 as the deadline for an agreement that wouldn’t impact the regular season. MLB unilaterally instituted the lockout and could lift it at any time, but there’s no chance it’ll do so and cede negotiating leverage to the union. After today’s negotiations, a league spokesperson told reporters (including Hannah Keyser of Yahoo! Sports) that regular season games would be canceled if no CBA is in place by Monday. The league said it has no plans to make possible missed games up at a later date and noted that players would not have the opportunity to recoup lost game checks in that event.

Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal tweets that MLB also doesn’t intend to rearrange the schedule in the event games are scrapped. If the regular season were delayed but an agreement was eventually reached, the league would simply pick up where the current schedule dictates whenever games begin.

It’s possible the league is simply trying to exert leverage in an area where it feels it has the upper hand, reasoning that missing early-season games would be more detrimental to players than it would be to owners. The MLBPA has maintained that if players lose any portion of their salaries due to game cancelations, they’d refuse to agree to expansion of the playoffs in 2022. Postseason expansion has been a key goal of the league’s throughout the process, as it’d stand to benefit substantially from the possible sale of additional rounds to television partners.

In the meantime, the parties continue to haggle over economics. MLB responded to the union’s latest offer with a marginal raise in the minimum salary today. Previously, MLB had been proposing a flat $630K minimum or a tiered minimum based on a player’s service time that ranged from $615K to $725K. The league has scrapped the idea of differing lowest salaries depending upon service time and today offered to bump the leaguewide minimum to $640K next season, as Evan Drellich of the Athletic first reported (on Twitter). That would jump by $10K per season for the rest of the CBA, as follows:

2022: $640K
2023: $650K
2024: $660K
2025: $670K
2026: $680K

It’s a very minor move in the players’ favor, but one that seems unlikely to thrill the union. The MLBPA actually increased their desired league minimum in yesterday’s proposal (to MLB’s chagrin), seeking a $775K figure next season that’d climb $30K annually to $895K by 2026. The union paired that with a slight dip in its efforts to expand arbitration, but the league has stringently refused to entertain the possibility of broader Super Two eligibility altogether.

Last season, the league minimum was set at $570.5K. As Travis Sawchik of the Score calculated last month, the minimum would need to be set at $650K in 2022 to keep pace with inflation, relative to the terms of the 2016-21 CBA. MLB’s offer today isn’t far off that mark (at least for this year), but getting players paid earlier in their careers has been an overarching goal for the union throughout this round of collective bargaining. Thus, it seems unlikely the MLBPA will respond favorably to the proposal.

There’s obviously plenty of ground that’ll need to be made in the coming days — on issues ranging from the minimum salary and competitive balance tax to the players’ push for broader arbitration and the league’s desired playoff expansion — if the regular season is to begin on time. It remains to be seen whether either side would budge off their stated positions if any sort of progress is made later this week, but given the glacial pace in talks thus far, the possibility of losing regular season games seems greater on a daily basis. They’ll meet again tomorrow and are expected to talk every day through the end of the month.

Major League Baseball announced Friday that Spring Training games will not begin until at least March 5. A delay to the start of Spring Training was a foregone conclusion amid the ongoing labor strife between the league and the players association, but today’s announcement now makes the delayed schedule official.

“We regret that, without a collective bargaining agreement in place, we must postpone the start of Spring Training games until no earlier than Saturday, March 5th,” MLB said in a statement. “All 30 clubs are unified in their strong desire to bring players back to the field and fans back to the stands. The Clubs have adopted a uniform policy that provides an option for full refunds for fans who have purchased tickets from the Clubs to any Spring Training games that are not taking place.”

There’s no clear timetable for when the two parties might reach a resolution. Headway of any kind has been nonexistent to this point, with yesterday’s meeting between MLB and the MLBPA reportedly lasting just 15 minutes. The league confirmed in today’s statement, however, that the parties will be back at the table on Monday and expect to negotiate daily throughout the week.

“We are committed to reaching an agreement that is fair to each side,” MLB’s statement reads. “On Monday, members of the owners’ bargaining committee will join an in-person meeting with the Players Association and remain every day next week to negotiate and work hard towards starting the season on time.”

Daily meetings between the two sides next week would be the closest thing to urgency displayed since the lockout was implemented on Dec. 2. Commissioner Rob Manfred described the lockout as a means of “jumpstarting” negotiations, but the league then waited more than six weeks to send a counteroffer to the union. In total, since the lockout was implemented more than 11 weeks ago, the two parties have had a reported six in-person meetings. Meeting on a daily basis next week nearly doubles that total.

Fans, of course, have rightly expressed considerable frustration with the lack of progress and, perhaps even more confounding, the lack of actual negotiating between the two parties. The delay to the beginning of the spring schedule is the clearest indicator yet of a legitimate possibility that regular-season games will be lost to the discord. Manfred last week called the potential for lost regular-season games a “disastrous outcome for the industry” before expressing optimism that Opening Day would take place on March 31, as scheduled.

Manfred added that the league would “ideally” like to get in a four-week Spring Training, though the chances of that appear slim. An agreement would likely need to be reached at some point next week, which would then give teams and players a week (or a bit more) to report to camp and gear up for games beginning on or around the March 5 date cited in today’s announcement. Even that would leave clubs with a bit shy of four weeks of exhibition games, but a March 5 kickoff for Cactus League and Grapefruit League play would ultimately “only” result in about a week’s worth of lost spring contests. Spring Training games had been scheduled to commence on Feb. 26. Pitchers and catchers were scheduled to begin reporting to camp this week.

The MLBPA issued the following statement in response to the league’s announcement:

“MLB announced today that it ’must’ postpone the start of spring training games. This is false. Nothing requires the league to delay the start of spring training, much like nothing required the league’s decision to implement the lockout in the first place. Despite these decisions by the league, Players remain committed to the negotiating process.”

Last weekend, Major League Baseball made its most recent collective bargaining proposal to the MLB Players Association. Evan Drellich of the Athletic tweeted at the time that MLB had informed the union of what it viewed as the latest possible date to work out an agreement for the regular season to begin on March 31 as scheduled. This afternoon, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that date as February 28. In the league’s view, if no collective bargaining agreement is in place by the end of February, the regular season start date will have to be pushed back.

It’s not clear whether the MLBPA agrees with that assertion. Perhaps the union thinks a deal could be worked out a few days into March without interruption to the beginning of the season. Yet simple math dictates that a new CBA would need be in place within around two weeks to avoid a delay. Opening Day is scheduled for exactly six weeks from now. Teams will need time to conduct the remainder of their offseasons while players will need some exhibition play to work back into game shape. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week he viewed four weeks as an appropriate amount of time for Spring Training. Players had a three-week training period during 2020 Summer Camp, and Manfred suggested repeating that process would be insufficient.

MLB could also lift the lockout and allow the games to proceed in the absence of a new CBA. The league certainly isn’t going to take that course of action, though, leaving little time for an agreement if they’re to avoid delays. Manfred expressed optimism about that possibility last week, but the latest developments on the CBA front seem to leave little reason to believe there won’t be some form of delay.

In the week since Manfred met with the media, both MLB and the MLBPA have made one core economics proposal. Each party came away generally dissatisfied with the other’s offer, and the chances of them bridging the still-significant gaps within the next two weeks seem very slim.

With time dwindling, Jeff Passan of ESPN reports (on Twitter) that MLB and the MLBPA are planning to conduct multiple bargaining sessions next week, perhaps meeting every day beginning Monday. Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet hears (Twitter link) that MLB has expressed some willingness to move towards the union’s demands on the competitive balance tax and efforts to get players paid earlier in their careers.

Notably, Nicholson-Smith adds in a second tweet that the union has informed the league they’d be unlikely to agree to playoff expansion in 2022 if the regular season were shortened. Expanding the postseason is a key objective for MLB, which would stand to benefit greatly from the ability to market extra games to television partners. The league has sought a 14-team playoff, while the union has expressed a willingness to go to 12 teams. However, Nicholson-Smith’s report indicates there’s some chance the MLBPA will refuse to go beyond 10 postseason teams this year if any regular season games are lost, thereby costing players game checks.

4:47 pm: MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes observes (on Twitter) that the union’s proposed Super Two expansion — had it been in effect this winter — would have gotten around 79 more players to their first year of arbitration. However, Dierkes notes that MLB seemingly remains unwilling to alter the existing Super Two setup in any form.

1:18 pm: Today’s collective bargaining meeting between representatives from the league and the MLB Players Association lasted only 15 minutes, though deputy commissioner Dan Halem and MLBPA chief negotiator Bruce Meyer continued speaking in a side meeting for about 20 minutes afterward (according to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich).

The session appeared to center around two new proposals put forward by the union, as per several reporters (including ESPN’s Jeff Passan and The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes).  The MLBPA had been looking to move the qualifying threshold for arbitration eligibility to two-plus years of service time rather than the current threshold of three-plus years plus all Super Two-eligible players.  Now, the union has now dropped that demand and replaced it with a large increase in the number of players who would be eligible for Super Two status.  In the previous CBA, the top 22 percent of players who had between two and three years of service time became Super Two-eligible, and thus eligible for a fourth year of salary arbitration — today’s proposal saw the MLBPA ask that 80 percent of players now qualify as Super Twos.

In addition, the union also actually increased the amount of the bonus pool it wants devoted to pre-arbitration players.  Whereas the MLBPA began with a $105MM figure and lowered it to $100MM in subsequent talks with the owners, the union has now bumped that asking price up to $115MM.  This number reflects the larger number of players that the MLBPA wants to be eligible for extra money in this bonus pool, with the union wanting the top 150 players as averaged by fWAR and bWAR.  In the owners’ previous offer, the top 30 pre-arb players would be eligible for a $15MM bonus pool.

Whether these changes by the MLBPA constitute a significant move in MLB’s direction will, of course, lie in the eye of the beholder.  Simply moving from all two+ players being arbitration eligible to 80% of them could move a large amount of money toward MLB, and likely is viewed by the players as a significant concession.

Given how the league has been adamantly against any changes to arbitration eligibility, the MLBPA’s request for such a big increase in Super Two eligibility is likely to be flatly denied.  Where this might lead, however, is some increase in the Super Two threshold whatsoever.  Even if the 80% number is viewed by MLB as an extreme ask, if the owners counter with a smaller increase, the two sides might eventually find some level of acceptable common ground between 22% and 80%.

Getting the league to budge even slightly off their position of not altering the arbitration eligibility would count as some level of a win for the union, as it would help achieve their goal of getting more money to players at an earlier point in their careers.  It would also set impacted players up for more money through the arbitration process as a whole, given the larger number of players getting a fourth arb year and then subsequent raises in their other three arb years.

The increase in the bonus pool figure is tied to both the Super Two ask and that broader “get more money to more younger players” goal.  Because that $115MM would now be spread over 150 players instead of $100MM over 30 players, more pre-arbitration players would get some extra cash.  However, as observed by Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat, this overall proposal from the union actually counts as a concession to the owners, since it would somewhat lower the bar for future arbitration cases in general.

The MLBPA did not alter their previous demands for increases to the luxury tax (to $245MM for the initial threshold) and to the minimum salary (to $775K), according to The Score’s Travis Sawchik.  Beyond the 80% Super Two demand and the $115MM bonus pool, it doesn’t appear as if the union made any other changes from its previous offers — and as for today’s new proposal, the league “was not excited,” Janes tweets.  It isn’t known when the two sides will next meet in regards to the bigger-picture economic issues or when MLB might counter the players’ current offer, though Janes reports that the league and MLBPA are slated to meet tomorrow to talk about non-economic issues.