Coronavirus

In an appearance on CNN, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred expressed optimism regarding the prospects for a 2020 season. The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler is among those tweeting quotes from the interview; CNN’s Anderson Cooper has shared some video via Twitter.

Though he’s hopeful of baseball being played this summer, Manfred made clear the thinking involves spectator-free contests. Anything more would be unexpected at this point. The focus, clearly, is just on getting some reasonable product off of the ground.

Manfred also warned of the dire consequences to the economic health of the game if the campaign doesn’t work out. He said losses to the thirty teams could “approach” a remarkable $4B if 2020 is shelved entirely. Obviously, it’s not clear from a brief interview precisely what is and isn’t baked into that number.

Among many other hurdles, of course, is the matter of sorting things out with the players. Manfred expressed “great confidence” that the sides will ultimately see eye to eye, “both that it’s safe to come back to work and work out the economic issues that need to be resolved.”

MLB will not “force” any individual player to suit up, Manfred said. (How that decision would be free from disincentives is another question.) But he expects that won’t be a significant issue. “We hope that we will be able to convince the vast, vast majority of our players that it’s safe to return,” says Manfred.

Planning for the safety of players and others involved in putting on contests will obviously be critical. There’s certainly a strain of opinion that doesn’t see it as a truly achievable goal under the circumstances.

Manfred promoted the testing and tracing plan that was reported earlier today.  Critically, the league does not plan to suspend play if a player (or, presumably, other employee) tests positive. Instead, it would keep that player isolated and away from the playing field until he has received two negative tests — presuming he’s able to recover — while also testing all those that had been in close contact to the player.

That’s a far less restrictive approach than that maintained by the Korea Baseball Organization, which says it will shut down for three weeks if any player tests positive. Thankfully, Korea’s top league hasn’t had to do so just yet. And Taiwan’s CPBL has even progressed to the point where limited live fans are attending games. Of course, those leagues are operating against the backdrop of societies that have had much more success at gaining control over the spread of the coronavirus.

While most of his peers stay out of the spotlight, super-agent Scott Boras has as usual been less than shy about sharing his opinion during the coronavirus pandemic. Boras spoke again today with SI.com’s Stephanie Apstein, espousing a firm position for players in their negotiations with Major League Baseball.

To be sure, Boras largely echoed union chief Tony Clark in terms of takeaway. Both are holding the line that they won’t accept a salary cut pegged to 2020 revenues, as the owners are set to propose. And they each maintain that a late-March MLB-MLBPA agreement determined that players should receive pro rata pay for any games played, regardless whether fans are in attendance.

So, why highlight his latest comments?

As I recently explained in covering the still-developing dispute between league and labor regarding that late-March deal, the issue boils down to some strange ambiguity that appears in the contract. While a “player compensation” section provides for straightforward salary reduction based upon the number of games played, the sides also agreed in another clause to “discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators.”

In short, there’s a legal question of contract interpretation that bears heavily upon the strategic/practical question of how hard each side wants to push its position in negotiations and public posturing. Boras’s comments — always worthy of attention given his unmatched stable of clients — speak to both of those questions.

Here’s how the polarizing player rep stated things (emphasis mine):

“The players I represent are unified in that they reached an agreement and they sacrificed anywhere from 30 to 40% of their salaries so that the games could amicably continue. The owners represented during that negotiation that they could operate without fans in the ballpark. Based on that, we reached an agreement and there will not be a renegotiation of that agreement.”

Let’s discuss the matter of contract interpretation first. It remains a mystery as to why the MLB-MLBPA agreement did not speak clearly upon the question of how to handle a season without fans (or expressly reserve that matter in its entirety). Given the ambiguity, an arbitration panel or court considering that question might look not only to the agreement itself, but (among other things) to the statements made by the parties during negotiations — particularly to the extent they were reasonably relied upon by the other bargaining side.

Details remain elusive here, but this appears to be the first public allegation that the league side did or said something during the negotiations of that agreement that should impact how it’s interpreted. Boras says that the owners “represented” something about operating sans spectators, seemingly implying that the union side has something to buttress its stance on salary beyond the bare terms of the agreement itself. It’s impossible to assess given what we know and don’t know publicly, but it’s theoretically possible that a statement made during negotiations could substantially impact the outcome of a legal battle — if we ever see one.

If the union really feels it has a compelling legal case, then it could be emboldened to hold the line. Even if the late-March deal doesn’t establish an absolute right to pro rata salaries, evidence of the sort Boras suggests (assuming the player side can produce it) might well support a more favorable reading of the agreement. For example, it’s conceivable a court might read the notion of a “good faith” discussion of “economic feasibility” as requiring the league to turn over certain financial information to the players — particularly given that the league proposal is to tie salary to revenue — and perhaps also to make some sort of showing of infeasibility to open talks on lowered salaries.

Will the players actually hold the line on this point and demand that they receive full pro rata salary for whatever games are staged, whether or not fans are in the seats? Boras speaks to that as well. When he suggests unity among his clients, that means that he purports to speak for many of the game’s most-visible and best-compensated players. And he indicates that they’ll speak with one voice in declining to (as he presents it) renegotiate the agreement on the matter of compensation.

Even before you get to the question of which side you think is morally justified, if any, there’s still much we don’t know about what the parties of interest are really aiming to accomplish with the present jockeying. Is the league putting the squeeze on the union to get some added concessions? Perhaps Boras is being tasked with pit bull duties while Clark holds the line and the players put a more sympathetic face on the labor position. Could it really be that the sides are squaring up for a brutal and very public battle, all against a backdrop of a pandemic and long-building grievances? It’s not yet clear. But Boras’s comments do tell us that, at minimum, the player side (or at least his segment of it) wants MLB to believe that it will stand on an aggressive position on the matter of salary, come what may.

As the league and union engage in some pre-bargaining media battles regarding player pay in a coronavirus-altered 2020 season, it’s worth remembering that health and safety remain the top priorities. Many of the players themselves have emphasized as much in recent public comments.

Athletics southpaw Jake Diekman is among those focused on health precautions, as Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle writes. He’s potentially at risk due to his ulcerative colitis condition and is also concerned with the well-being of his young family.

Testing could offer a means of dealing with the matter. Diekman conveyed optimism over starting up a campaign. But he also noted the need to consider broader public health considerations, posing the question: “if they’re going to test us all the time, are we taking tests from people who really need it?”

Fellow lefty Sean Doolittle of the Nationals also weighed in with a long and thoughtful Twitter thread. He focused on both the many potential ways that COVID-19 could impact players — even those that don’t know of preexisting conditions — in addition to the need to protect all the other workers associated with the game.

In a longer look at multiple perspectives, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic gathered the thoughts of many players that have known risk factors in a subscription piece. The consensus seems to be that they’re ready to play with adequate precautions. But as Rosenthal also notes, for all those whose underlying conditions are known, there are many players who are dealing with health concerns of which the public is not aware. And many are also surely worrying about loved ones at home.

Still doubt the seriousness of the matter from the players’ perspective? Cardinals hurler and union leader Andrew Miller — ironically, the third lefty reliever cited in this post — tells Rosenthal it is truly the chief concern: “We’re wasting our breath with everything else if we don’t have that under wraps.”

That’s not to say there isn’t a clear financial element to the MLB-MLBPA grappling. Rosenthal notes that the players are particularly determined to hold the line on salary because of the extra health risks of playing during a pandemic.

While he’s not a current player, recently retired hurler Phil Hughes weighed in on Twitter. He says that “players won’t be strong-armed into unsafe work conditions and unfair compensation” — a characterization that drew some rebukes on everyone’s favorite forum for social interaction.

We’ve been through this millionaires vs. billionaires discussion innumerable times before and surely will keep doing so as long as Major League Baseball exists. As ever, it’s only fair to note that, while many of the athletes are extremely well-compensated, earnings are condensed to generally short playing careers and most professional ballplayers will never see big money. And even the richest players are still far less wealthy than the owners on the other side of the table.

It’s never pleasant to see relatively advantaged parties squabbling over riches, but surely players shouldn’t be blamed for generally seeking the best possible conditions and compensation they can bargain for from ownership within a given set of circumstances. Indeed, that’s just what the collective bargaining process entails. In this case, both sides of the game’s economic system have quite a lot to gain from structuring a smart resumption of play — and quite a lot to lose from a breakdown in talks or a bungled re-launch.

Major League Baseball’s thirty teams have approved a proposal for handling labor relations in a truncated 2020 season. But initial efforts to sell the concept to the Major League Baseball Players’ Association are off to a rocky start.

Union chief Tony Clark expressed general opposition to the MLB plan in comments to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic (subscription link). He argues that tying pay to revenue — as the team side intends to propose — effectively constitutes the imposition of a “salary cap.”

The MLBPA has long fought against efforts to impose a salary cap. Clark accuses the league of “trying to take advantage of a global health crisis to get what they’ve failed to achieve in the past.” From Clark’s perspective, the focus shouldn’t be on salaries to much as “finding a way for us to get safely back on the field.”

The union continues to insist that the sides’ late-March agreement fully resolves the question of 2020 player salaries. There’s an ongoing dispute over the interpretation of that recent pact.

It remains to be seen whether the league and players will be able to negotiate out their differences. Public opinion is sure to play a role in how things shake out, which explains the recent run of reporting and public statements.