MLB’s season hinges on compromise
Seems like players, owners aren’t worried about deadlines with glacial pace of their talks
The old saying that nothing spurs movement like a deadline is about to be put to the test as there finally appears to be a sense of urgency in Major League Baseball’s contentious negotiations for a new collective agreement.
At stake is a full 162-game season. Almost three months into these talks, MLB owners and players have made little progress. The league announced Friday afternoon that it was postponing all spring training games until at least March 5, and it won’t be much longer before the start of the regular season is affected as well.
The owners’ self-imposed deadline to save opening day is Feb. 28. If the parties can’t strike an agreement by then, or at least the loose framework of one, commissioner Rob Manfred will reportedly delay the late-March start date until a deal is finalized.
The glacial pace of these negotiations can change in a hurry. Sometimes all it takes is a compelling offer that elicits enough concessions from the other side to unearth common ground. When both parties show a willingness to compromise, momentum builds and eventually the details get worked out.
Logic suggests there’s enough time for that to happen here, too. And with word that the owners and players are prepared to meet every day next week in New York, it’s clear those around the negotiating table haven’t given up hope quite yet. But so far, the in-person sit-downs have been brief, proposals infrequent and neither side has shown much of a willingness to budge.
The latest cause for pessimism came Thursday afternoon when representatives sat down for all of 15 minutes as the union submitted its latest proposal. If the brief interaction wasn’t telling enough, the complaints that followed surely were.
In January, negotiations were described by various sources as “heated” and “contentious.” Earlier this month, the players’ side was said to be “underwhelmed” and “unimpressed.”
On Thursday, the word of the day from the owners, courtesy of the Athletic’s Evan Drellich, was “unproductive.”
So here we are, 79 days into this mess, and the major sticking points remain almost identical to the ones from Dec. 2, when the previous contract expired and the owners implemented a lockout. During that time, there have been just six rounds of negotiations with neither side appearing to be in much of a rush.
The players want major changes to the competitive balance tax, which they believe acts as a salary cap. They want to be paid more earlier in their careers, an end to the manipulation of service time and fewer incentives for teams that tank.
The owners want to not only maintain the current tax system, but expand it. According to Andy Martino of SNY, the league’s last proposal called for first-time offenders to pay a 50 per cent tax at the first threshold, 75 at the second and 100 at the third. Under the old system, the Los Angeles Dodgers were the lone team prepared to pay the previous rates of 20 per cent, 32 per cent and 62.5 per cent. The other taxpaying team, the San Diego Padres, barely surpassed the first marker of $220 million (U.S.), an amount MLB previously attempted to lower.
There are some issues they agree on, just not enough to end this charade.
Both sides are in favour of a universal designated hitter and an expanded post-season format, although a report from Sportsnet suggests the players would back away from the latter unless they are paid for a full season.
There also appears to be a willingness to limit the number of times players can be optioned to the minors, an idea that should prove useful to the union’s younger members.
That’s great, but what this process needs more than anything is for one side to make a substantial move toward its best-possible offer on the core economic issues, instead of dilly-dallying around like Rafael Dolis in the eighth inning of a one-run game.
That move should be made by Manfred. He’s the one who boasted this month about being “the only person who has made a labour agreement without a dispute.”
He’s the one with 30 bosses, all of whom oversee franchises with ballooning evaluations that exceed $1 billion. And he’s the one whose side has yet to move off any of its major asks.
A week ago, Manfred vowed the players were about to be hit with a “good-faith offer.” When details were leaked, they looked very similar to the ones that came before, with only slight improvements on minimum salaries and the tax structure. It was another non-starter in a negotiation littered with too many of them already.
If that happens again next week, all hope for an opening day in March might be lost and the product that Manfred was hired to oversee will suffer.
It’s going to be difficult enough for baseball to re-engage fan bases and restore ticket sales and television ratings as our society emerges from the pandemic; it would be even harder after another disrupted season.
Manfred and his negotiating team are on the clock. They’d better make some progress soon, otherwise a fraction of the fan base will stop caring about whether the lights get turned back on at all.