We made some progress on the owners and players actually coming to an agreement about having a 2020 baseball season. Sort of. The owners revised their 50-game ultimatum and came back with a 76-game proposal, which was summarily rejected by the players. If the owners simply stick to the agreement of full prorated salaries for however many games are actually played that the union already agreed to back in March, they'd have a deal. It really is that simple.
The players were never going to get the 110 games they proposed and they knew it. The owners were never going to get 50 games and they knew it. So it always seemed like the 76-82-game range that was originally proposed is where we're going to end up. And, if you think about it, that's exactly how long a season that starts in July should be. July is the fourth month of a six-month season, aka about halfway through.
That's pretty much the exact schedule the owners proposed. They wanted to play 82 games starting Fourth of July Weekend. Since it's taken so long to reach an agreement, the Fourth of July (while still symbolic) seems to be out. At best, they'll start the following week. Which is why they cut it from 82 to 76. Teams generally play six games in a week, so all they've done is chop a week off the schedule and keep all of the postseason dates (which are already set with FOX) the same.
As I said the other day, both sides look bad in this fight about money. And the solution is actually a pretty easy one. It's 30 games less than the players wanted, but 82 games is right smack in the middle of the two proposals. More importantly, it's half a season. So, if the owners simply agree to the full prorated salaries, the players get half their salary. That's what they were anticipating. The owners' two most recent proposals that have them making anywhere between 31 and 35 percent of their annual salary are obviously nowhere close to that number.
In fact, if they can't come to an agreement and there ends up being a season of whatever length Rob Manfred decides, I can see plenty of players deciding that it's simply not worth it. And not just because of coronavirus concerns. In a season that short, any injury would effectively be season-ending. And one slump would kill your free agent value going into an offseason that already figures to be lukewarm at best considering the economic state of the game.
So, frankly, it's the owners who are gonna have to be the ones to give here. After all, the players are the ones with all the leverage. They're the ones who have a lot more at stake. They're the ones who have something to lose. They're the ones who are needed for games to even be played in the first place. Yes, that same March agreement gave the Commissioner latitude to unilaterally decide how long the season will be and when it starts. But I think he's leery of pissing off the players anymore than they already are. Because this is just the precursor to what promises to be contentious CBA negotiations.
There's plenty about the current CBA that the players don't like, and you can bet they're going to push for some of those things to change when the current deal expires after the 2021 season. While every other sport has endured at least one work stoppage over the past 10 years, Major League Baseball has amazingly avoided one since the 1994-95 strike. But that doesn't mean there's a lack of animosity between the union and the owners. And what we're seeing now is the tip of the iceberg.
It's painfully obvious how owner-friendly the current CBA is. Take the luxury tax, for example. Baseball, of course, is the only sport without a salary cap. Instead they have a luxury tax, which is designed to improve competitive balance. Teams can go over it, but if they do, they're taxed a percentage of their payroll and those funds are distributed to the other teams.
This is obviously designed to prevent the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and Cubs from outspending everybody. But, in the players' eyes, it has also served as a soft salary cap, since, on more than one occasion, those large-market teams purposely kept their payroll lower so that they didn't go over the luxury tax threshold. As a result, there were lukewarm free agents markets where top players got fewer offers or offers for less money than they're worth or no offers at all. It happened in back-to-back winters, which is why Bryce Harper and Manny Machado had to wait until Spring Training started to sign their massive deals prior to last season.
Perhaps a bigger issue, though, is that there's no salary floor. The luxury tax is designed to promote "competitive balance." But too many small-market teams take that money and pocket it without investing in their team, which is the entire point.
Just think about how many teams in baseball are making absolutely no effort to be competitive! The tanking problem has gotten even worse over the past few seasons. It most famously worked for the 2017 Astros, but it also worked for the 2015 Royals and 2016 Cubs before them. If it worked for them, why can't it work for you? The theory is suck for a few years, get a bunch of high draft picks, then turn that into a good team in a few years. If you're upfront with the fans about it, they'll hopefully bear with you and still be there for that rise to the top.
Then there's the issue of service time, which has been a hot-button topic with the players for years. Kris Bryant is perhaps the most famous example. He wasn't promoted to the Majors until April 17, 2015. He hit .425 with nine home runs in Spring Training that year. He was clearly ready for the Majors. But the Cubs kept him in the Minors for two weeks until finally calling him up. Why? Because if he'd made his debut on Opening Day like he should've, Bryant's free agency clock would've started ticking. Those two weeks in the Minors, though, gave the Cubs an extra year of team control.
Bryant might be the most obvious, but he's not alone in being a victim of service time manipulation. In fact, I was shocked that Pete Alonso was actually ON the Mets' Opening Day roster last season. I just figured he'd be the latest Rookie of the Year who was suddenly "ready" for the Major Leagues two weeks after the season started.
While there are other issues that need to be addressed in the upcoming CBA negotiations, those are the big two. They're why the players didn't trust the owners before all of this. Now that they feel like they're both being lied to and strong-armed into doing what the owners want, whatever amount of trust remained is all but gone.
Of course, some of this is the union's own fault. They agreed to the previous deal, after all. Which is what makes this time even more perilous. Both sides want to get back on the field, but neither wants to give anything that can be seen as leverage heading into the CBA negotiations.
Thus, we're at a standstill. One that will hopefully be resolved soon. Because it's not just this season that depends on it. Major League Baseball's future beyond 2021 will be impacted, too.
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