Friday, March 29, 2024

MLB, players union set to meet as spring training delayed, Opening Day nears


The house owners say the players are asking for drastic adjustments to the prevailing free company and compensation framework and haven’t backed off almost sufficient of these calls for to make negotiations productive.

The players cost the house owners have been beneath no authorized obligation to lock them out, say they did so to create a way of urgency across the negotiations, then waited 43 days to attain out once more. The union believes the workforce house owners have made the negotiations too slender, arbitrarily limiting the subjects on which they are going to even hear proposals, not to mention think about them.

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So right here the players sit, locked out of spring training camps that have been supposed to open already, amassing solely small checks from the Major League Baseball Players Association’s conflict chest till baseball begins once more.

The Post’s Chelsea Janes explains what tortoiselike negotiations between the MLB players’ union and team owners could mean for the 2022 season. (Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)

Privately and publicly, both sides have suggested for years that this was coming. Many in the industry worried that this would be the most hostile labor clash in a generation after a decade and a half of collective bargaining agreements the union felt tilted the financial balance of power firmly in the owners’ direction.

The union was so dissatisfied with the way those agreements went that they hired a new lead negotiator this time, a veteran of labor clashes named Bruce Meyer, who brought with him a reputation of relative fearlessness in talks like these.

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They started outlining their goals for this agreement in vague terms as early as the 2018 All-Star Game at Nationals Park, then again at high-profile gatherings since: The next CBA would need to enforce a commitment to winning on the part of all teams, to pay the younger players producing an increasing share of on-field value commensurate with that production, and of course, encourage more spending on players instead of discouraging it.

All the while, Manfred’s rhetoric and on-field changes implemented unilaterally by his office furthered a sense of mistrust between the league and its players that means many union members are suspicious of the motives behind MLB proposals that might otherwise be considered concessions.

But while they can’t often agree on what constitutes a concession, both sides will need to make several more of them in the next seven days to keep Opening Day scheduled for March 31. The players, for example, say they need the owners to back off owner proposals to double the taxes charged to teams that exceed the competitive balance tax threshold, assuming the sides can even agree on the threshold itself.

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The union has proposed a competitive balance tax threshold of around $240 million for the 2022 season, which would represent an unprecedented year-to-year jump from $210 million in 2021. Revenue has increased faster than that threshold in recent years, they argue big jump would make up for lost time.

The owners, meanwhile, have raised their proposed number to $214 in 2021 and $222 million by the fifth year of the deal, about 8 million dollars higher over five years than they had proposed previously.

The players also wanted to make every player with at least two years of service time eligible for arbitration, as was the case a few generations or so ago, before the union conceded a year in prior negotiations. League officials have all but laughed aloud at that proposal, insisting the owners would never approve such a jump in the number of players able to argue for their value rather than be assigned it by league minimums. So on Thursday, the players suggested that 80 percent of players with two years of service time qualify for arbitration instead.

The owners do seem to agree that as younger players are relied upon for a greater percentage of production, they should be paid a larger share of the revenue than the minimum salaries they earn now. So they agreed to a union-suggested framework of a pre-arbitration bonus pool that would reward top performers with less than three years of service time. But the players want that pool to consist of $115 million to be dispersed among the top 150 eligible players. The owners’ proposals have maxed out at $15 million for the top 30.

A common sentiment shared by those involved with the negotiations on both sides, and by those who have been involved in negotiations past, is that once talks become about mere numbers — as opposed to, say, the union’s initial request to change free agency and allow players to test the market after five years not six — a deal is within reach.

In other words, the fact that the league has agreed to implement a draft lottery to prevent annual losers from being guaranteed top picks would suggest the heaviest lifting on that issue may already be done, even though the league wants the first three picks determined by the lottery and the players hope for eight. Both sides have agreed to expand the number of teams in the playoffs if everything holds, but the union has reluctantly agreed to expand to 12 teams, while the league — whose owners make large portions of their revenue from the postseason — is arguing for 14.

But the sides have not whittled these talks down to mere numbers on every issue. The players hope to reduce the amount of revenue sharing between teams so that small-market teams that don’t spend to win cannot simply sit back and collect revenue from those that do. MLB has declared this a non-starter, arguing that any reduction in revenue sharing will only make it harder for those teams to compete, instead of pushing them to do so.

As of this moment, the sides have agreed to implement a universal designated hitter. At the moment, they seem to agree that owners will be allowed to sell ad space on jerseys in the form of patches and decals, though nothing is official until it is written in a ratified collective bargaining agreement.

And in a uncommon show of cooperation, the edges have been assembly commonly to hash out the much less contentious particulars of the prolonged CBA, hoping to have the little stuff prepared every time the large stuff is settled. For the primary time this offseason, a number of house owners plan to be current at in-person negotiations this coming week. For the primary time for the reason that lockout started in early December, the edges plan to meet for a number of consecutive days. For all they can’t agree on, the union and house owners lastly appear to agree that now — with the season on the brink, with spring training video games already misplaced for the primary time in a era — is the time to make a push.



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