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Collective Bargaining Agreement

MLB, MLBPA Allowing 14 Pitchers On Active Rosters Through May 29; 13-Pitcher Limit To Take Effect Thereafter

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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have agreed to a 14-pitcher limit on active rosters between May 2 and May 29, the league announced this morning. As previously announced, the active rosters will still shrink from 28 players to 26 on May 2.

The league and union agreed to expand active rosters by a pair of players for the season’s first couple weeks this year. That was in response to the shortened Spring Training period that followed the lockout, with concerns that players did not have enough time to prepare for a typical regular season workload right out of the gate. That was particularly true of pitchers, who require a few weeks to gradually build their pitch counts.

Alongside the temporary roster expansion came a relaxation of the league’s 13-pitcher limit, which is being put into effect for the first time this year. Initially enacted over the 2019-20 offseason, that provision was suspended in each of the past two seasons as part of the COVID-19 health and safety protocols. It’ll make its debut in 2022, although the full extent now won’t come into play until Memorial Day.

Today’s announcement marks a small change to afford clubs a bit more freedom in managing their pitching staffs, although they’ll still have to make some cuts next Monday. Teams will need to reduce their roster by two players six days from now, and even the higher 14-pitcher threshold will force a change from the early-season status quo. The pitcher limit was scrapped entirely through May 2, and many teams had carried 15 or even 16 arms in the early going as they stockpiled bullpen options.

Along with the expanded rosters, the league and union agreed in March to delay the implementation of the new option limits and the return of the 15-day injured list for pitchers. Teams can no longer option a player to the minor leagues more than five times in a given year, and pitchers who go on the IL for non-COVID reasons will have to miss at least 15 days instead of 10 this season. Neither change was in effect through the season’s first month as the league and union afforded teams more flexibility with their pitching staffs. Today’s announcement from the league made no mention of further delay to either of those features’ implementations, however, which seems to suggest they’re still set to take effect next Monday as originally scheduled.

Looking At The Early Results Of The Prospect Promotion Incentive

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In recent years, a major source of contention between MLB teams and players has been service time manipulation. In baseball, each day spent on the active roster is counted towards a player’s service time. The Major League Baseball season is typically 186 days long and a “full year” of service time is defined as 172 days. A player kept in the minors for a few weeks to start the season cannot accrue a full year of service time, thus delaying his free agency by an extra year. The most egregious and frequently cited example of this is Kris Bryant. Despite being considered one of the best, if not the very best, prospects in baseball, he wasn’t called up to start the 2015 season. That year, he spent 171 days on the roster, falling exactly one day short of a full year, which allowed the Cubs to control him through the 2021 season, instead of 2020.

Bryant was just one of many examples around the league, with service time manipulation becoming one of many issues that had eroded the trust between the league and the players, making the most recent lockout so prolonged and contentious. In an attempt to improve the situation going forward, the new Collective Bargaining Agreement features a provision that will potentially reward teams for promoting prospects for the full year. Under the Prospect Promotion Incentive, teams can earn an extra pick in the draft if a rookie-eligible player with 60 days or fewer of major league service who is included on a preseason top 100 prospect list by two or more of Baseball America, ESPN.com or MLB.com is promoted and finishes high in award voting in any year before he is eligible for arbitration. A Rookie of the Year win or a top three finish in MVP or Cy Young voting in his pre-arbitration seasons would net the team that extra draft pick. If the international draft is implemented, he could earn the club a selection if second or third in Rookie of the Year, or fourth or fifth in Cy Young. A team can gain at most one PPI pick in the amateur draft and three total PPI picks for any individual prospect, two international and one amateur, with a max of one such pick per year. (Further details about the incentive are laid out by Evan Drellich of The Athletic.)

This year, it has certainly felt like more top prospects were cracking Opening Day rosters, with Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodriguez and Spencer Torkelson being some of the high profile examples. Matt Eddy of Baseball America took a look at the data from this year and compared it to previous years to see if any meaningful conclusions could be drawn. Ten of BA’s top 100 prospects made Opening Day rosters this year, which is the second-largest such number in their data set, which goes back to 1990. (The piece points out that Riley Greene could have made it 11 if he hadn’t got injured, and the same could possibly be said of Adley Rutschman as well.) The only year with a larger crop was 1995, where 12 guys made the cut. As pointed out in the piece, the 1995 season followed the extended layoff of the strike that began in August of 1994. Presumably, that would have delayed the debut of any prospect that was on the cusp of debuting in August or September of ’94 until the start of the ’95 season, artificially inflating that number. Therefore, it can be argued that this year’s group of rookies is the largest in the past 33 years.

Of course, this is just a single year of data and it would be unwise to draw far-reaching conclusions from it. However, another reason for optimism in the piece is that the trend in recent years had been for fewer prospects to crack the Opening Day rosters. Eddy breaks the recent past into five year buckets and looks at how many top prospects played in the first week of a season. From 1995-99, there were 35, followed by 26 in 2000-2004, then 22 in 2005-2009, 16 in 2010-2014 and just 14 from 2015-2019. “The number of qualifying prospects has declined by 60% in the past 20 years,” Eddy says. Now there are ten in just this year alone, eleven if we add in Roansy Contreras, who was recalled today after Duane Underwood Jr. was injured in the team’s first game. (The Pirates, incidentally, were the one team who appeared to still be trying to play the service time manipulation game, with both Contreras and Oneil Cruz being left off the team’s Opening Day roster, despite both getting brief MLB experience last year.)

It’s worth reiterating that this is just a single year of data and it can’t be hastily assumed that the new CBA has improved the situation. It’s entirely possible that this was just an incredibly strong class of prospects that would have bucked the trend with or without the changes to the CBA. However, it’s at least encouraging for those fans that want the best baseball players to be playing in the majors as soon as they are deserving that the trend has indeed been bucked for this year.

MLB, MLBPA Reach Tentative Agreement To Reimplement Ghost Runner In 2022

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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have reached a tentative agreement to bring the extra-innings ghost runner back for the 2022 season, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post. Additionally, they have agreed to expand active rosters from 26 to 28 players this season until May 1. The league’s 30 owners need to vote next week to officially ratify the conditions, but Sherman writes that only a simple majority is needed and the provisions aren’t expected to have any issue passing.

Neither development is especially surprising, as reports emerged a couple weeks ago that both were under consideration. The lockout lingered into the second week of March, compressing the Spring Training schedule by two weeks even with the start of the regular season pushed back eight days. The concern is that the shortened ramp-up period might not afford enough time for players to get ready to shoulder a typical regular season workload. By adding a couple players in the early going and limiting the potential for marathon games, the league and union will give managers some extra flexibility in keeping playing time in check.

Sherman adds there won’t be any restrictions on the number of pitchers teams can carry in April. MLB is instituting its 13-pitcher limit this year. That rule change was originally slated to go into effect in 2020, but MLB scrapped it in each of the past two seasons due to concerns about overworking arms while teams were facing the possibility of COVID-19 outbreaks on their rosters. That’ll eventually be a challenge for clubs, but they’ll have some extra leeway on the mound for the first couple weeks of the season.

The return of the extra-innings runner figures to be the more notable development for fans. It was first implemented in 2020 as part of the pandemic protocols. There’s little doubt the rule has indeed served its purpose of preventing marathon games. There has only been one MLB game that exceeded thirteen innings in either of the past two seasons; there were 23 such games in 2019 alone. Nevertheless, the rule has predictably proven divisive among fans, many of whom perceive the placement of a free runner on second base to start extras as gimmicky.

Sherman writes that the ghost-runner rule has only been approved for 2022, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the league and union revisit it again down the line. The other big on-field pandemic rules change — the seven-inning doubleheader — will not return this year.

One rule that will be in effect permanently is a modification to the designated hitter, albeit one that only seems likely to affect one player. If a team uses the same player as both that day’s starting pitcher and as their DH, he can remain in the game as a hitter even after being removed from the mound. That’s obviously a provision designed to allow the Angels to keep Shohei Ohtani in the lineup deep into games he starts.

Details On The Athletics’ Revenue-Sharing Status

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Reports surfaced in February that the new collective bargaining agreement would see the Athletics once again become a recipient of revenue-sharing funds, and indeed, that proved to be the case once the CBA was (at long last) finalized between the league and the MLB Players Association.  Susan Slusser and Matt Kawahara of The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the details of the Oakland revenue-sharing situation on Thursday, and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal had some more specifics in his recent notes column.

For one, it will take four years (of the five-year span of the collective bargaining agreement) for the A’s to receive a full share of revenue-sharing monies, as Rosenthal notes that the team will be phased in via 25 percent increments.  For instance, Oakland will get 25 percent of a full share in the first year, 50 percent in the second year, etc.

It is also possible that the A’s won’t even get to that full share unless they make significant progress on their long-desired new ballpark.  As per the terms of the CBA, if the Athletics don’t have “a binding deal” for a new ballpark in place by January 15, 2024, they will no longer receive any revenue-sharing funds.  If an agreement for a new stadium has been arranged by this date, the A’s will retain their revenue-sharing recipient status until they move into that ballpark.

Of particular note to Bay Area fans, the agreement specifies that the 1/15/24 deadline applies to a new deal for a ballpark in any city, not just Oakland.  The A’s have been exploring the possibility of a move to Las Vegas, and yet most recently, it seems there has been renewed momentum to a stadium in Oakland at the Howard Terminal site.  Back in May, the league publicly supported the Athletics’ plans to look outside of their home city for potential new stadium sites, so it makes sense that the CBA wouldn’t put any limit on where the A’s might direct their search over the next 22 months.  The club’s lease at the RingCentral Coliseum is up following the 2024 season.

CBA Notes: Arbitration, Waivers, Schedule, PED Testing, Minor League Salary

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MLB and the MLBPA finally reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday, ending a contentious lockout that spanned over three months. The major elements of the deal, such as the CBT levels and the bonus pool for arbitration-eligible players, were reported on as the negotiations transpired, but some of the minor details are still trickling out. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com revealed one such detail on Twitter, writing that, “Beginning after 2022, salary arbitration eligible players who settle with their teams on a salary for the subsequent season without going to a hearing will be eligible to receive full season termination pay, even if released prior to the start of the season.”

This is a small change that could potentially have significant ramifications. Under the previous CBA, arbitration contracts were not fully guaranteed until Opening Day, with players cut during Spring Training only earning a portion of the agreed-upon salary. If a team released a player more than 15 days prior to Opening Day, they only had to pay the player 30 days’ salary as termination pay. If the player was released less than 15 days before Opening Day, they would get 45 days’ pay.

This makes for an interesting tradeoff. On the one hand, this could be viewed as a gain for the players, as they now have access to greater security, knowing that the salary they accept will be locked in once they agree to it. But this also gives them incentive to accept terms without the hearing, perhaps leading to them accepting lower terms than they otherwise would have earned, thus benefiting the teams. It is well established that teams put a high priority on stifling salaries as much as possible. In 2019, it was revealed that MLB holds an annual symposium where the team that best succeeds at opposing the players in arbitration is awarded a wrestling-style championship belt, something that surely didn’t help with the animosity that’s lingered between the players and the league since the signing of the last CBA. This wrinkle in the new CBA could help the teams further those goals, but at least could give some borderline non-tender candidates the silver lining of greater financial security.

Elsewhere in the CBA, Jayson Stark of The Athletic provides an interesting nugget on Twitter. “If a team has already claimed a player once on waivers that season, it can’t claim him again until every other team has passed.” Stark aptly refers to this as the “Jacob Nottingham Rule,” in reference to the fact that Nottingham was the centerpiece of a game of hot potato between the Brewers and Mariners last year. Beginning the season with the Brewers, the catcher was put on waivers in April, claimed by the Mariners, who put him back on waivers on May. The Brewers brought him back on a waiver claim, only to send him back onto the waiver wire two weeks later. On May 2oth, Seattle claimed him again, before putting him back on the wire in early June, when he finally cleared. Waiver claim priority generally goes in reverse order of the current standings. (For the first 31 days of the season, the standings of the previous season are used.) In the case of Nottingham, there would have been some teams that never even had the ability to make a claim on him for most of that sequence last year, as he would have been scooped up before their turn. Going forward, they will have a greater chance to interrupt such a unique back-and-forth as occurred with Nottingham last year.

In a detailed column about the CBA, Stark adds some details about the schedule changes that will begin in 2023. While it had been previously reported that teams would play all 29 of the other squads in the league each year, with the number of divisional games being reduced, the details were not known at the time. Stark lays out the format that will begin next year, with each team playing its divisional rivals 14 times per season, down from 19, for a total of 56. Teams in the same league but not the same division will be played six times each, a total of 60. When it comes to interleague play, each team has a “rival” that they will play four times, with three games against the other 14 teams in the opposite league. That amounts to 46 total interleague games. All of those categories are evenly split between road and home, except for the final one. In the case of the 14 non-rival teams that are in the opposite league, the home team for the three-game series will alternate from year to year.

Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com has a couple of other details in his rundown of the CBA. In terms of PEDs, he says, “There will be an increase in the number of in-season urine tests for performance-enhancing substances and drugs of abuse, as well as adjustments to the scheduling of these tests to make them less predictable.” He then adds that, “the program will now utilize dried-blood spot-testing rather than venous blood draws for hGH testing, making Major League Baseball the first professional sport drug testing program to adopt this new technology.”

Finally, while the increase in the minimum salary for MLB players was reported throughout the negotiations, there is also a bump for some players in the minors. From Kubatko: “The minor league minimum salary for players signing a second major league contract or with prior big league service will increase from $93,000 in 2021 to $114,100 in 2022, $117,400 in 2023, $120,600 in 2024, $123,900 in 2025 and $127,100 in 2026.”

MLB Gains Flexibility To Set Trade Deadline Between July 28-August 3

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The traditional July 31 trade deadline may be no more under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, as outlined in the official release of the CBA today.  As per the new rules, “The Office of the Commissioner shall have the flexibility to set the Major League Trade Deadline on a date between July 28th and August 3rd.”

This may not be as a major a change as it initially appears, given that it hasn’t been uncommon for the trade deadline date to be altered.  Just this past July, in fact, the deadline was moved to July 30, whereas in 2016 the deadline was moved to August 1.

In both those situations, July 31 fell on a weekend day, when afternoon games were scheduled.  While playing games on any deadline day throughout the week can lead to some awkward situations (i.e. a team suddenly having a shorthanded roster after dealing multiple players a few hours earlier), having the deadline on a weekend creates the possibility of even more chaos, with trades being consummated while actual games are taking place.

The new wrinkle to the CBA may simply formalize a process for deciding the deadline’s date.  Notably, this coming July 31 is on a Sunday, so it seems likely that the deadline will be pushed ahead at least one day.  Given the later start to the season, it seems plausible that August 3 might be this year’s deadline, just to give teams as much time as possible to plan.  Looking ahead, this season is the only time during the 2022-26 campaigns (the length of the new CBA) that July 31 will fall on a Saturday or Sunday, so 2022 might well be the only time Commissioner Rob Manfred chooses to wield this particular bit of authority.

MLB, MLBPA Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement

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After 99 days, the MLB lockout is finally drawing to a close. The Major League Baseball Players Association has voted to approve the most recent counterproposal from ownership, setting the stage for a new collective bargaining agreement to be ratified, as first reported by Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extra Base. The new CBA covers the 2022-26 seasons, and the transaction freeze associated with the lockout has been lifted. The Score’s Travis Sawchik tweets that the proposal passed by a vote of 26 to 12 among the MLBPA’s 30 team union reps and eight executive subcommittee members.

Increasing pay for younger players, advancing the competitive balance (luxury) tax thresholds in a meaningful way, implementing anti-tanking measures and eliminating draft-pick compensation took center stage among the players’ must-have goals. MLB, meanwhile, sought to further expand revenues by widening the postseason field and adding advertising patches to player uniforms. The league also pushed for, and was ultimately granted, the creation of a fourth tier of luxury-tax penalization. Additionally, ownership saw to it that a handful of grievances filed by the MLBPA over the past several years would be dropped.

Among the more notable gains for the players, they’ll now see the luxury-tax threshold jump from this past season’s $210MM up to $230MM in 2022. It will rise to $244MM over the life of the agreement. Given the manner in which the competitive balance tax has begun to function as a soft salary cap among the sport’s top-spending teams, notable advancement was vital. The 9.5% jump in the first year of the new CBA marked a notable gain for the players’ side, even if it fell shy of their initial ask.

Other notable gains for the union include a newly created league-funded pool that will provide pre-arbitration players with bonuses based on performance. After much back-and-forth, the two parties settled on a sum of $50MM (just under $2MM per team) that can be divided among the sport’s top pre-arbitration stars. The exact parameters of how that will be doled out remain unclear, but it’s a notable uptick in the earning power of the game’s young stars.

Pre-arbitration players will also see a sizable increase in their base levels of pay, as the minimum salary will jump from $570,500 to $700,000. That number will grow by a measure of $80K over the agreement’s five years, pushing the league-minimum salary to $780K by the time the 2026 season rolls around.

The players also sought to clamp down on the issue of service time manipulation, and an agreement is believed to be in place that would award a full year of service to players who finish well in end-of-season Awards voting. As with the pool, the finer details have not yet come to light. On the flip side of that equation, teams now also stand to be awarded draft picks if young players on their Opening Day roster finish well in Rookie of the Year voting.

The hope among players is that such measures will bring star players up sooner, as the issue of service manipulation was seen both as a means of tamping down players’ earning potential and also a data point in a long string of anti-competitive behaviors by clubs. Essentially, teams argued that the best players in an organization should be on its Major League roster. Along those same lines, the union pushed for a draft lottery as a means of curbing the increasingly popular multi-year rebuilds that see a team effectively tank for premier draft position. While the lottery that was eventually implemented wasn’t quite as robust as the MLBPA originally proposed, it’s expected that the first six selections of the draft will now be determined in lottery fashion.

Perhaps the key victory for the league was the expansion to a 12-team playoff field — which will reportedly secure them an additional $85MM in annual television revenue from ESPN alone. The additional profits associated with any live game (gate, parking, concessions, etc.) will only add to that total. The league also succeeded in its desire to add advertising patches to player uniforms, which will generate tens of millions in revenue itself. Rates will presumably only increase during the spotlight of the postseason, making the extra games added via the expanded field all the more lucrative.

Major League Baseball secured a provisional agreement to discuss the implementation of an international draft, setting a July 25 deadline for the two parties to come to terms on a format that would go into effect in 2024. If an agreement is reached, the qualifying offer system pertaining to free agency will be eliminated. Absent an agreement on the international draft, the two sides agreed that both the qualifying offer system and the current international free-agent system will remain in place.

It seems we could soon have some rule changes on the horizon, as the league sought the implementation of several measures it believes will improve in-game action and pace of play. While the specifics and timing remain to be seen, the stage is set for measures such as a pitch clock, the banning of aggressive defensive shifts and larger bases — if not in 2022 than in 2023. The universal designated hitter, as has long been expected, will formally go into effect under this new CBA.

MLB also pushed for revenue-sharing grievances against the A’s, Pirates, Rays and Marlins to be dropped and succeeded in having Oakland reinstated as a revenue-sharing recipient. The A’s had previously been ousted from that designation in the prior CBA. A late revelation regarding their proposal was the push for the MLBPA to drop its $500MM grievance that claimed the league did not act in good faith during return-to-play negotiations in the Covid-shortened 2020 season.

Over the days and weeks to come, we’ll break out some of the finer details of the collective bargaining agreement and drill deep into the specifics of every new wrinkle. For the time being, however, the focus shifts immediately to one of player movement and the long-awaited return of the lifeblood of MLBTR: transactions! Owners are reportedly expected to ratify the new agreement on a 6pm ET call, and free-agent and trade activity can begin immediately once that occurs.

Prior to a lockout they all saw coming, teams scrambled to scoop up the offseason’s top free agents before the previous CBA expired. Thirty of MLB’s top 50 free agents were signed in an unprecedented November spending spree, with nine-figure pacts going to Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Javier Baez, Max Scherzer, Robbie Ray, and Kevin Gausman. Now, three months’ worth of remaining offseason signing and trading is expected to take place in roughly a four-week period, creating a frenzy the likes of which we’ve never seen. The salary arbitration process will likely bleed into the regular season. You can review the best remaining free agents here, and our series of posts on the trade market here.

The bottom line in all of this: baseball is back, and it will be back in a big way. Spring Training games will commence late next week, and April 7 is now the target for Opening Day. Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Trevor Story, Clayton Kershaw, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber and dozens of other free agents remain unsigned, while the A’s and Reds are among the teams expected to be active in trading veteran players coming out of the lockout. Stars like Matt Olson and Luis Castillo are among the most notable names expected to be on the market, and activity is expected  to be nothing shy of frenetic.

As is the case with every trade deadline and Winter Meetings bonanza, we’re prepared to cover the deluge of Hot Stove activity to the fullest here at MLB Trade Rumors. After nearly 100 days with only minor league free agency, labor quarrels and countless “what if” scenarios dreaming of idyllic post-lockout days, we’re just as excited as the rest of our readers to have actual baseball transactions and actual baseball games now on the horizon. Thanks for sticking with us through it all, and let the chaos begin!

MLB, Players Association Could Expand Active Rosters Early In 2022 Season

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MLB and the Players Association agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement this afternoon, in time to preserve a 162-game regular season. The work stoppage dragged on long enough to deal a pretty significant blow to Spring Training, though, which will be shorter in 2022 than it is in a typical year.

With only four weeks until Opening Day, there’s some concern about the early-season workload players will have to assume. One possible solution would be to expand the active rosters a bit early in the season, and it seems that’s on the table. Joel Sherman of the New York Post noted this afternoon that while expanding rosters wasn’t part of the CBA, the parties could circle back to that possibility. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune tweets that some in the industry expect an enlarged active roster early in the regular season.

That move wouldn’t be without precedent. Rosters were bumped to 28 players for the entirety of the shortened 2020 season. That followed a three-week exhibition “Summer Camp” and also came with greater concerns about teams losing players to COVID-19. Still, it suggests the league and union aren’t opposed to adding a little more depth to teams’ rosters if they’re concerned about the shortened ramp-up.

Complicating matters further is the return on the limit of the number of pitchers teams may carry. Over the 2019-20 offseason, MLB passed a rule that capped teams to 13 pitchers at any given time. Under pandemic protocols, that rule was suspended in both 2020 and 2021. However, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported last May that MLB was planning to reinstitute the 13-pitcher limit this season. That seems to have come to fruition, as Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak acknowledged it was in place when speaking with reporters this evening (via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Were active rosters to expand for the season’s first few weeks, that limit on pitchers would probably be relaxed. Whenever teams are faced with a permanent cap of 13 hurlers, though, there figure to be greater challenges for managers in handling their staffs. The CBA also limits teams to optioning players to the minor leagues more than five times in a season, so management won’t be as simple as shuttling fresh arms on and off the roster daily. That could compel teams to lean more heavily on their starting pitchers than they have in recent years (particularly with the introduction of the universal DH removing the need to pinch-hit for pitchers depending on the game situation).

Opening Day Set For April 7

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6:35pm: Tim Healey of Newsday reports (Twitter link) that the league and union also agreed to a series of games or tours in various destinations outside the United States and Canada. During the next CBA, they’ll stage events in Mexico, Asia, Puerto Rico, London, the Dominican Republic and Paris.

5:25pm: Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal reports (on Twitter) that beginning in 2023, the schedule will be adjusted such that every team plays all 29 opponents in each season. The exact format is to be determined, but those games will come attached to a decrease in the number of intra-divisional games teams will play. Previously, teams played 19 games per season against all four of their divisional opponents.

2:34pm: With the new collective bargaining agreement in place, Opening Day will be set for April 7, as first reported by Bob Nightengale of USA Today (Twitter links). It’ll be a 162-game season with full player pay, with the end of the season pushed back three days and doubleheaders in place to compensate for the one-week delayed start. Spring Training games will begin around March 18.

Players will be able to report to Spring Training tomorrow, tweets Jeff Passan of ESPN. The mandatory spring report date is Sunday, March 13, according to Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post.

MLB had announced yesterday it was canceling games through April 13. However, today’s progress in negotiations led the league to backtrack on that stance. Nothing has been made official on the league’s end — presumably, that’s pending this evening’s ownership ratification, which is expected to be a formality. At that point, the league figures to make a formal announcement on the schedule. Presumably, it’d reinstate the originally scheduled games it nominally wiped out yesterday, but there’s been no word on that yet.

MLBPA Drops 2020 Grievance Against MLB, Will Not Drop Grievances Against Pirates, A’s, Marlins, Rays

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MLB’s lockout is finally over, although details regarding the late stages of collective bargaining talks are still emerging. One revelation late in the process was that the league was not only requesting that the MLBPA drop previously filed grievances against the Rays, A’s, Pirates and Marlins (which pertained to their usage of revenue-sharing funds), but also to drop a $500MM grievance filed in wake of return-to-play negotiations in the Covid-shortened 2020 season. Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated reports that the MLBPA did indeed drop the 2020 grievance but did not drop the grievances against the Tampa Bay, Oakland, Pittsburgh and Miami franchises.

The now-dropped grievance pertaining to the 2020 season was filed in May 2021 and saw the union seek $500MM in total. The grievance alleged that MLB negotiated in bad faith during return-to-play negotiations and had not done everything in its power to play as many games as possible. The league originally indicated that it hoped to fast-track any subsequent proceedings so they did not impact the looming collective bargaining talks, but that clearly never came to be. The MLBPA was seeking what amounted to 20-plus games worth of retroactive pay, contending that those games could have been played had the league made its “best effort” to return to play, as had been previously agreed upon. That suit will now be put to bed, it seems.

As for the others, the initial grievances were filed in Feb. 2018, alleging that the teams had not sufficiently dedicated their revenue-sharing funds to improving the on-field product. Revenue sharing is collectively bargained, and the spirit of the issue is intended to be one of competitive balance; that is to say, those funds are technically intended to help small-market clubs keep pace with their larger-market peers. The grievances were expanded in subsequent years, as the union continued to contend that those teams were not properly utilizing those funds.

The Rays, notably, authored multiple winning seasons during that time and did put forth a fairly sizable two-year, $30MM offer to sign Charlie Morton. The other three clubs in question spent at more minimal levels and, in the cases of Pittsburgh and Miami in particular, did not enjoy the same level of on-field success. Those organizations figure to contend that said revenue-sharing funds were allocated to other important organizational measures that improve the team, even if not directly through adding to the current Major League payroll (e.g. investments in player development, analytics, international scouting and other less-tangible areas).

Precisely what the union is seeking in relief and just when the grievances might eventually be resolved — either by an arbitrator or, should commissioner Rob Manfred agree that sanctions are needed, by punishing the clubs in question — are not yet clear.

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