It's a start, but still a long way to go for MLB, union
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark speak before Game 1 of the World Series between Atlanta and the Astros on Oct. 26, 2021. Credit: AP/Ron Blum
Despite repeatedly being told not to draw any conclusions from the length of baseball’s labor meetings, we’ll choose to consider what transpired Monday in Jupiter, Florida, as incremental progress.
Because relatively speaking, after what we’ve witnessed during the past 11 weeks since the start of the lockout on Dec. 2, five hours spent in the same zip code is better than 15 minutes. And that’s what baseball got to kick off this critical week, the sport’s last-ditch effort to save the scheduled March 31 date for Opening Day.
Don’t take this wrong. An agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement has a long way to go, and both sides are going to need every minute of this week to have any chance to satisfy Rob Manfred’s Feb. 28 deadline for starting the season on time, if that’s even possible.
But having 10 players show up Monday to join the union’s lead negotiating team, along with two owners — the Rockies’ Dick Monfort and the Padres’ Ron Fowler — on the management side is nudging things ahead.
All told, the two sides spent roughly two hours in the same room at the Cardinals/Marlins spring training complex, sandwiched around a period of each huddling among themselves to discuss what’s on the table.
The somewhat good news? They will meet again Tuesday, with the clock ticking a bit louder, so there is that.
As far as substantial movement, however, we’re still too early in the week.
According to sources, MLB raised its figure on the pre-arbitration bonus pool to $20 million — up from the $15 million earlier this month — but far short of the $115 million the union already has requested for a larger group of players.
Also, MLB upped the total picks for a proposed draft lottery to the top four, an increase of one. The Players Association is seeking eight, which should be a greater deterrent to tanking.
These numbers are not close, obviously, which is why the union wasn’t all that thrilled by MLB’s latest pitch. And while both sides recognize the need to get younger players paid at a higher rate, there remains a big divide on how much and for how many.
MLB was irritated after last Thursday’s 15-minute interlude in Manhattan in which the Players Association bumped its bonus pool offer to $115 million from $100 million, a move that management believed actually pushed the negotiations backward.
Conspicuously absent from Monday’s summit, however, was any meaningful talk about the competitive balance tax, which is the most important (and flammable) of the core economic issues. The owners want the penalties for exceeding the payroll tiers to be as punitive as possible in order to curb, as Manfred described it, "runaway spending."
The term CBT suggests a higher purpose, such as keeping the Pirates or the Orioles in play for a championship, but it’s designed to keep the industry’s operating costs at a palatable level. Based on the sport’s pre-lockout shopping spree, they might as well call it the "Steve Cohen Clause" going forward.
For that reason, it’s not difficult to understand why the Players Association is going to war on that issue. The CBT has been pretty successful in reining in teams, with even big spenders such as the Yankees and Red Sox taking turns ducking under the payroll threshold for tax relief in future seasons. To the players, that acts as a soft cap, and the greater the penalties, the more effective the drag on salaries.
Figuring out another CBT that works for both sides is going to take some work. While MLB removed the draft pick penalty for the first of three payroll tiers in their latest proposal, the union was incensed by the inflated tax rates: a whopping 50% for the first tier, followed by 75% and 100%. The Players Association says MLB hasn’t come off those numbers since the summer, which has added to their annoyance level in these discussions.
Neither side sounds too worried about the non-economic stuff. The universal DH seems penciled in at this point. As for the expanded playoffs, MLB wants 14 teams, the union has come up to 12.
But it always comes down to the money, and it’s safe to say the players feel they got burned by the previous CBA. They not only are trying to plot a course for the next five years but feel compelled to correct the past mistakes, and that lends itself to a more hard-line stance this time around.
Still, MLB set the terms of this engagement by shutting down the sport, so on Monday, Roger Dean Stadium wound up hosting labor negotiations instead of major-leaguers preparing for their Grapefruit League openers originally scheduled for this weekend. Those games have been torched. None will take place before March 5, courtesy of the lockout.
But that already is unrealistic, and in the coming days, we’ll know whether to throw March 31 on that bonfire, too.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
