MLB clubs to plan 2020 season without player approval after month-long battle
Major League Baseball announced on Monday night that the league will move forward with a 2020 season, despite lacking player approval after a month-long battle that decimated the sport’s reputation.
The MLB Players Association voted against the league’s final proposal. It was hardly different than early variations of the owners’ proposals, which started at 82 games at a fraction of the players’ overall salaries and will likely end with their own implementation of a 60-game schedule at prorated salaries, or 37% of their original values.
The owners pointed to the players in a public statement that listed several concessions they felt they gave the players, including a universal designated hitter for 2020 and 2021.
“Today, the Major League Baseball Players Association informed us that they have rejected the agreement framework developed by Commissioner (Rob) Manfred and Tony Clark,” the statement read. “Needless to say, we are disappointed by this development.”
Manfred is now expected to implement a 60-game schedule without a universal DH or expanded 16-team playoff format, which was a concession given by the players to the owners.
“In order to produce a schedule with a specific number of games, we are asking that the Players Association provide to us by 5:00 p.m. (ET on Tuesday) with two pieces of information,” the league said. “The first is whether players will be able to report to camp within seven days (by July 1st). The second is whether the Players Association will agree on the Operating Manual which contains the health and safety protocols necessary to give us the best opportunity to conduct and complete our regular season and Postseason.”
Some players are expected to sit out the season, while it remains uncertain if they’ll even accept the league’s health and safety regulations.
If they do play at a 63% pay cut, they’ll be taking a larger cut than most athletes across the world.
German league soccer players took a 20% pay cut. NBA players took a 25% pay cut. English Premier League soccer players did not take a cut, but committed to various donations to help those most in need. Baseball players in Korea did not take one, nor are NFL players expected to.
In March, when MLB postponed the regular season, the league and the players agreed (perhaps mistakenly for the players) that the players would only get a prorated salary in 2020, meaning they’ll only get paid for the games they play.
As the negotiations started in late May, the owners backed out of the agreement to pay players their full prorated pay, arguing that they only agreed to that if there were fans in the stands. They wanted to pay them just a portion of prorated pay, essentially a second layer of cuts.
Since then, the two sides have been fighting back and forth, giving very little, while the backdrop of the 2021 expiration of the collective bargaining agreement lingered behind it.
Here’s a recap of how we got here:
May 26: NHL releases return to play guidelines highlight a format in which 24 teams will return to play for the Stanley Cup at two hub cities beginning later this summer.
Also May 26 — Owners propose a deal: On the same day the NHL announced a return to play, Major League Baseball made its own headlines.
You want an 82-game season? We’ll give you an 82-game season, as long as Mike Trout is willing to play for 15% of his salary. No, that’s not a typo.
The owners’ first foray into negotiations was one that took the game’s best and highest-paid player and asked him to play for 15% of the contract he earned.
Now, before you jump to, “$5.7 million is still a lot of money to play baseball!” let’s remember that baseball’s salary structure is meant to suppress salaries during a player’s 20s and forces them to perform well for six years before they’re able to earn a nice contract in free agency.
This means that Trout won an MVP and finished second in MVP voting twice while making $1 million or less in three straight years from 2012-14.
During those three years, Trout was worth about 28.5 WAR. According to FanGraphs, which estimated 1 WAR to be worth about $7 million during those years, Trout generated $199.5 million of value in those three seasons while making about $2 million in salary.
Not bad for the Angels.
Now that Trout is making real money, owed $37.7 million in 2020, the owners wanted him to take a pay cut down to $5.7 million.
Why? So they could say they paid their lowest-paid players closer to their actual contract value in a tiered salary-cutting structure that was nice in theory, ridiculous in practice.
May 31 — Players counter: Predictably, the players saw right through the owners’ efforts to put the highest-paid against the lowest-paid and uniformly rejected the offer. The Athletic reported that players were “livid.”
It wasn’t a good start.
At that point, there was little incentive for the players to try to “meet in the middle” and a much clearer objective to swing for the fences, as the owners just had.
Their counteroffer was a 114-game season that played regular season games through October and began the postseason in November. The players requested full prorated pay.
There were a couple of concessions made, however. First, the players were willing to engage in “broadcast enhancements,” essentially providing fans more access via things like in-game interviews and microphones on players, which has been hugely successful in spring training but players have been resistant to allow in actual games that count.
With the sport’s demographics skewing way older while young fans are attracted more to the NBA and the NFL, getting the players closer to the fans is one way to keep the game growing instead of dying.
The other concession was an offseason All-Star Game or Home Run Derby for additional revenue.
June 4: NBA announces a competitive format to restart the 2019-20 season with 22 teams returning to play and a tentative start date of Friday, July 31.
June 8 — Owners counter: With the NHL and NBA already locked into plans, MLB owners might’ve felt pressure to get something done quickly.
But their second offer showed no signs of weakness.
While the owners eliminated the ridiculous tiered salary structure, they actually went down in games, from 82 to 76, and offered only 75% of prorated pay.
Overall, the total salaries offered also went down, according to ESPN.
The concessions? No more draft pick compensation that had been reducing the allure of big-ticket free agents in the past, and the permission of those considered high-risk for the coronavirus to opt out of the season and still receive pay and service time.
June 9 — Players counter: Perhaps no offer signaled a bigger olive branch than this one from the players, who came down from a 114-game schedule to ask for 89 games with prorated pay.
By asking for 89 after the owners asked for 76, it set up a clear middleground around 82 games with something close to full prorated pay.
The players were also willing to expand the playoff pool to 16 teams, giving the owners a much longer postseason, which is where they make most of their money in TV broadcast rights.
The ball was in the owners’ court, and it was clear where the two sides were headed. They just needed to keep driving in the same direction.
June 12 — Owners counter: Whoops.
This was surely the worst week of the pandemic for MLB.
Again, the owners drove the car in the opposite direction, dropping their offer to 72 games from 76, albeit at 80% prorated pay instead of 75%.
Basically, it was the same offer.
While they showed no signs of budging, a few of them used the media to cry poor.
Cardinals team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. told 590 The Fan that the baseball industry “isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest,” despite DeWitt’s original $150 million investment in 1996 growing exponentially as the team is now valued at $2.2 billion, according to Forbes.
At this point, the owners’ strategy was clear: keep delaying until it’s no longer feasible to have a season longer than 60 or so games.
Their argument: playing games into November would be too risky for the players’ health.
Or, in other words, too risky for the owners’ pockets. They stand to lose money on advertisements if they don’t complete the postseason before the presidential election.
The players rejected the offer and did not counter.
June 17 — Owners counter: After commissioner Rob Manfred flew to Arizona to meet with MLBPA head Tony Clark, there was some hope that the season would be saved.
Reports were generally positive from the meeting, but the owners’ proposal once again showed no signs of compromise.
They lowered the game total yet again, going from 82 to 76 to 72 to now 60 games, finally at full prorated pay.
June 18 — Players counter: Can you do 70 games?
That was the players’ ask, having come all the way down from 114 games to 70 while giving the following concessions, some of which would net the owners millions in additional revenue: broadcast enhancements, expanded postseason, sponsorships/logos on the uniforms and waiving the right to file a formal grievance.
The last part was important: If the owners don’t agree with the players, they lose all these concessions and must let Manfred implement a schedule of his choosing, albeit at full prorated pay, as agreed upon in March. But in doing so, the players would likely follow up with a formal grievance, letting a third party decide on an outcome.
The owners don’t want that, and as many as eight owners didn’t want a season at all, since they thought they’d end up losing more money than was worth to play, according to The Athletic.
Monday: The owners rejected the players’ proposal. The players voted against the final offer from the owners. And Manfred now has the power to move forward at his discretion.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2B027QY
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