Collective Bargaining Agreement

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have scheduled their next meeting for Saturday, reports Evan Drellich of the Athletic (Twitter links). Jon Heyman of the MLB Network tweets that the league is expected to make its next proposal involving core economics.

The parties have been in a holding pattern for over a week. The union put forth its latest proposal on February 1, offering small changes to the bonus pool framework for pre-arbitration players and draft pick incentives for teams to break camp with their top prospects. It was expected at the time that the league would make a counterproposal. Instead, MLB put forth a request for federal mediation, which the union predictably declined the next day.

Since the MLBPA refused mediation last Friday, there’s been no negotiations between the two sides. Various players expressed their desire to return to the table — indeed, a common reason cited by the union for refusing mediation is the amount of time it’d take for a third party to get up to speed on the issues at hand — but it has been MLB’s turn to make the next offer. The league’s owners and top brass have been in contact for quarterly owners’ meetings running this week, but no sit-down with the MLBPA was scheduled until tonight.

The owners’ meetings conclude tomorrow, and it’s widely expected Commissioner Rob Manfred will formally announce a delay to the start of Spring Training. That’d be little more than a formality at this point, since there’s no chance of a deal being agreed upon in time for pitchers and catchers to report next week, as had been originally scheduled.

The date of greater import is March 31, the scheduled start of the regular season. Both Heyman and Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal (on Twitter) hear that the parties continue to hold out hope for Opening Day to remain on schedule or to incur only a minor delay. That’d require rapid progress in talks over the coming weeks. It is generally believed a new collective bargaining agreement would need to be in place within the first few days of March for the regular season to remain on schedule.

As the lockout continues, Major League Baseball has ceased drug testing for players who are part of the MLB Players Association, reports Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. It’s an expected development, as Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote last November that the union did not believe the league could continue drug testing throughout a work stoppage.

The MLB – MLBPA Joint Drug Agreement covers players on 40-man rosters, major league free agents, and certain professional international free agents. The JDA contained an expiration provision for December 1, 2021 at 11:59 pm EST, overlapping with the expiration of the most recent collective bargaining agreement. However, as labor lawyer Eugene Freedman points out (on Twitter), the implementation of the lockout is the direct force behind the current testing stoppage. In the absence of a work stoppage, the previous CBA remains the governing document until a new agreement is reached. Had MLB not instituted a lockout, the offseason would have proceeded under the terms of the previous CBA and its ancillary agreements — the JDA among them — despite the expiration provisions contained therein.

The JDA encompasses testing both for drugs of abuse (including cocaine and opiates) and performance-enhancing substances. As the lockout continues, testing will not be in place for substances of either form. While the JDA was in effect, it was customary for drug testing to continue over the offseason. Blum relays statistics from program administrator Thomas Martin, noting that nearly 48,000 cumulative tests were conducted between 2017-21. Of those, more than 7,300 were administered during the offseason. (It is not clear what percentage of those were for drugs of abuse versus for performance-enhancing substances).

What effect, if any, the cessation of offseason drug testing will have remains to be seen. Given that MLB instituted the lockout in the early morning of December 2, it stands to reason testing has already been suspended for over two months. Whenever a new CBA is agreed upon, a drug testing provision — whether a new system or simply a reimplementation of the previous JDA — will no doubt be included. Potential modifications to the JDA are reportedly among the non-core economics issues the parties have discussed.

Whatever form the drug testing program eventually takes, it doesn’t seem a resolution is in the near future. There’s been little progress in negotiations thus far, and it remains to be seen when MLB will make its next move. A delayed start to Spring Training seems an inevitability, and there’ll need to be rapid progress over the next three weeks if the regular season is to start on March 31, as currently scheduled.

As the ongoing MLB lockout continues at a snail’s pace, the sport’s owners are convening at their quarterly meetings from Tuesday to Thursday. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets the expectation among players is that a counterproposal will be among the topics discussed, and that a new offer from the league should be forthcoming in the days ahead (perhaps not until the owners’ meetings conclude, however).

It’s been nearly a week since the MLBPA made its latest proposal to the league — an offer that was met with the promise of a counter but instead resulted in MLB’s request for a federal mediator to intervene. The union outright rejected the notion of mediation, instead repeating a desire to head back to the negotiating table with MLB.

That was the widely expected route, as the mediation request always smacked as more of a public relations move than an earnest request. To that end, veteran left-hander Andrew Miller, one of the eight players on the MLBPA executive subcommittee, spoke with ESPN’s Jesse Rogers about the decision to reject mediation.

“…[W]e don’t think it speeds up the process at all,” Miller told Rogers when asked about the union’s rationale. “History tells us in our sport it hasn’t been favorable to reaching a deal and our staff and outside council guide us on things like this. That is what they are for. Our position is that it is quite the opposite from negotiating and being ready to negotiate. We are there and our proposals and desire to meet at the table show that. The league is refusing to counter, the league is the side that has stalled and not been willing or ready to meet.”

Miller’s point about history is likely a nod to federal mediator Bill Usery, who was brought in for just such a purpose in the 1994 labor stoppage. Usery provided very little utility in negotiations as he was not sufficiently up to speed on the intricacies and complexities of the issues at hand, and his presence ultimately did not result in an agreement being reached.

Further, as Giants lefty Alex Wood points out (Twitter link), it would likely take weeks to bring a federal mediator into the fold, and the basis for a new deal would be largely rooted in the existing CBA, from which the players are trying to create some distance. Wood’s usage of quotation marks when describing an “’impartial’ mediator” and his characterization of the current CBA as an “already broken system” underscore both the MLBPA’s distrust of any measures put forth by the league and of the union’s current dissatisfaction with the status quo.

That said, it’s still worth noting that United States labor secretary Marty Walsh has expressed a willingness to get involved in the lockout, as first reported by Politico’s Jonathan Lemire (Twitter link). Walsh later removed any doubt on the matter, issuing the following statement to Lemire:

“I have spoken to both the MLBPA and MLB about the ongoing contract negotiations and encourage both sides to continue engagement. Like any contract negotiation in any industry, I stand ready to help facilitate productive conversations that result in the best outcome for workers and employers.”

While the league may continue to hold out hope for outside mediation, it’s clear the players have no desire to traverse that path. A large number of Major Leaguers have taken to social media in recent days to express their frustration and their desire to negotiate a new deal. Twins catcher Mitch Garver, for instance, tweeted that key members of the union “want to meet every day until a deal is done,” contesting that “the other side does not.”

Former Tigers lefty Matthew Boyd, a union representative who’s currently a free agent, struck a similar chord to Miller in telling Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press that the union feels resorting to mediation would only further prolong matters. The clearest path to resolving matters, Boyd added, is to continue meaningful negotiations with the league.

Banding together to voice a unified set of goals has been a clear tactic for the MLBPA over the past week. Miller and fellow executive subcommittee member Max Scherzer have been vocal, as have the likes of Wood, Garver, Whit Merrifield, Jameson Taillon and many others. The talking points remain largely the same, as hammered home by Miller and Scherzer. Various players have reiterated that the MLBPA wants to eliminate the incentives for teams to tank (i.e. access to better draft picks, larger draft and international bonus pools), bring about better compensation for young/inexperienced players, put an end to service-time manipulation and, to use Scherzer’s exact terminology, create “a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as caps” (in reference to the current luxury/competitive balance tax).

It should be noted that not every player has spoken so strongly. Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright clearly shares the frustration of his union-mates, but he also at least rhetorically suggested that if the league were to propose “the exact same deal that we have right now, we would probably go play baseball” (link via Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat). Those comments were made off the cuff at a charity fundraiser, but they’re still a notable departure from other recent, public statements from the union.

That said, Wainwright agreed with his peers that a “good and fair deal” doesn’t appear likely as things presently stand. “That’s not even close to happening, honestly,” he added. “It’s pretty one-sided. And [MLB] are not really willing to talk right now. That makes it tough.” Wainwright further told Jones that MLB’s most recent offer “is far from a place we could even start negotiations.”

Whether a third party is ultimately brought on board or not, the ball is in MLB’s court as the union continues to wait for a counter to last Tuesday’s latest offer. It remains to be seen exactly when the league will make its next move.

FEBRUARY 2: While the parties are meeting on non-core economics issues today, both Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet and Michael Silverman of The Boston Globe write that core economics discussion could pick back up by the end of this week. Whenever those discussions resume, the owners are likely to put forth their response to the MLBPA’s Tuesday proposal.

FEBRUARY 1: There was another round of collective bargaining negotiations this afternoon, at which the Major League Baseball Players Association made its latest proposal. According to various reports, the union put forth only small changes relative to its past offers.

The most meaningful alterations are twofold, hears Evan Drellich of the Athletic (Twitter thread). First, the union tweaked the bonus pool system that would award exceptional pre-arbitration performers. While the MLBPA had pushed for a $105MM pool in previous offers, they reduced that number to $100MM in today’s proposal. That’s still far above the $10MM that MLB has envisioned for those bonus allotments, leaving a massive gap yet to be bridged. As Drellich and Ken Rosenthal explained yesterday, that’s even before accounting for the fact that the MLBPA is hoping to spread that money to a smaller group of players than MLB would like, given the union’s push for players reaching arbitration earlier in their careers.

The other known modification to the union’s offer, per Drellich, involves efforts to disincentivize service time gaming. The MLBPA is seeking to allow players to “earn” a full year of service based upon their finishes in various awards voting and placements on Wins Above Replacement leaderboards. The union’s most recent offer would grant a full year of service to catchers and infielders who finish among the top seven in each league in their position’s WAR rankings; outfielders, starting pitchers and relief pitchers who land among the top 20 in their league by WAR at each position would also pick up a bonus year. That’s less comprehensive than previous union proposals, which would’ve granted a full year of service to catchers and infielders among the top 10 at their position and outfielders and pitchers among their league’s top 30. (Presumably, the union’s previous efforts to reward service time based on awards voting remains in place).

Basing service time off positional WAR rankings has its challenges. Teams have become increasingly flexible in deploying players all around the diamond, perhaps making it difficult to identify certain players’ “true” positions. That’s also the case in drawing a distinction between starters and relievers, particularly as teams have expanded their use of openers and true bullpen games to manage pitcher workloads and mitigate the times-through-the-order effect (where hitters tend to perform better after seeing the same pitcher multiple times in an outing). The league and union would also need to agree upon some form of WAR metric — whether by pulling directly from one website like FanGraphs or Baseball Reference, blending multiple public WAR figures together to create a composite number, or by fashioning one from scratch.

Finally, the union acquiesced (at least in concept) to a league initiative on service time manipulation. MLB’s most recent proposal included the possibility of teams receiving draft pick compensation as a reward for keeping top prospects on their roster for an entire season, if those players go on to hit certain thresholds in awards voting. Drellich tweets that the union is on board with the possibility of awarding extra draft selections to incentivize teams to put talented young players on their active roster, although the union’s proposal contained unspecified modifications to MLB’s vision.

Much about the MLBPA’s proposal this afternoon remains unchanged relative to past discussions. Bob Nightengale of USA Today writes that the parties remain significantly divided on issues like the lowest league minimum salary — the union is seeking $775K; MLB has offered $615K — and the next base luxury tax threshold, which the MLBPA is hoping to set at $245MM while MLB has proposed $214MM.

Given the relativity minor changes in the union proposal, it’s little surprise that general sentiment about the state of negotiations remains overwhelmingly negative. Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweets that today’s talks were “heated.” Jeff Passan of ESPN suggests the prospect of starting Spring Training on time is now “in grave danger,” while Jon Heyman of the MLB Network calls it remote. Nightengale tweets that the parties are expected to meet again tomorrow but will limit those talks to issues outside of core economics.