TORONTO – Now that we’re mired in the muck, waiting for commissioner Rob Manfred to impose some form of ignominious season, it’s time to really re-evaluate the motives at play between Major League Baseball’s owners and their players.
Because, come on.
A full-scale labour fight at this point in time, amid a global pandemic that has ravaged economies, triggered unprecedented job losses and disrupted nearly every aspect of daily life? Throwing away an opportunity to dominate the sports market by eviscerating any and all goodwill toward the game in the process? Bickering over dollars and power after George Floyd’s death under a white police officer’s knee sparked a racial justice movement?
Like, read the room fellas.
Clearly, I was wrong to have believed all along that rational thought would ultimately prevail, and that the sides were simply engaged in the usual rhetoric inherent to such matters. At each juncture, the sides methodically danced around a middle ground, and I was certain the sparring was nothing more than one testing the other, looking for soft spots to be used in looming talks for the next collective bargaining agreement.
Seems not, and, to be clear, there’s a reasonable middle ground here: somewhere around 70-80 games, expanded playoffs, added jewel events and a touch of salary relief in exchange for like value, be it deferrals or something more creative like a share of playoff revenue that would have pushed player compensation beyond expected levels, or arbitration after two years rather than three.
Hence, if this was really about surviving the impact of COVID-19 for the owners, they would have landed there, quietly working out details behind the scenes without engaging in weeks of damaging public self-flagellation.
Instead, MLB leaked plans to offer a revenue share proposal that was essentially a salary cap, scratched that for tiered salary reductions that would pit players against each other, and then pushed for run-of-the-mill pay cuts, using the loss of gate revenue as justification.
Given the circumstances, players association head Tony Clark, in a statement Saturday night, had little choice but to essentially dare Manfred to follow through on threats to unilaterally set the schedule for a 2020 season.
Clark rightly pointed to the pro-rated salaries players agreed to in March, a concession that pushes into the billions, and argued further "concessions are unwarranted, would be fundamentally unfair to players, and that our sport deserves the fullest 2020 season possible."
MLB responded a couple of hours later, saying, "we will evaluate the union’s refusal to adhere to the terms of the March agreement, and after consulting with ownership, determine the best course to bring baseball back to our fans."
Wow. How magnanimous of them.
Disagreement over the March agreement that was supposed to establish a road map through the pandemic is at the heart of the dispute, and the differing interpretations of it have progressively spiked the acrimony, as Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic document so well.
Still, without getting too deep into the weeds over the legalese in question — even with all the leaks, we’re still working with only a partial picture — it’s worth asking what’s really driving the owners side here?
Why are they willing to risk the health of an industry that generated a record $10.7 billion in revenue in 2019, up from $10.3 billion the year before, according to Forbes, to save a few hundred million now?
The obvious answer all along, in my estimation, was that this was all happening with an eye toward the next round of collective bargaining, with the current deal set to expire after the 2021 season. Another factor is anything agreed to now sets a precedent for next year, when restrictions on public gatherings may again lead to games before empty stadiums.
Neither, however, justifies this current end, in which the owners spend weeks trying to turn the public against the players — the sole engine of their business – by painting them as greedy malcontents refusing to give fans the game they so desperately want.
Hate them now, spend-to-watch-them later is a pretty weird flex.
Even in Saturday’s statement, MLB sought to foment resentment between club employees and players, saying "the MLBPA’s position that players are entitled to virtually all the revenue from a 2020 season played without fans is not fair to the thousands of other baseball employees that clubs and our office are supporting financially during this very difficult 2020 season."
Just gross, and there’s just no way to rationalize such premeditated behaviour as sensible unless a more nefarious dynamic is at work.
Manfred is being largely viewed as the villain in all this, but it’s worth remembering that he’s an employee of the owners, not their taskmaster. He takes their direction and executes their will, and that’s where the motive question really becomes pivotal.
Which owners are not only pushing for, but carrying the day in driving this confrontational agenda, and what do they really want?
In a radio appearance with Arizona Sports 98.7, Diamondbacks owner and managing general partner Ken Kendrick argued that a revenue-sharing model would have prevented all the current squabbling and the NHL, NFL and NBA — each capped — operate under the better model.
"Our system is built around players not having any high-water mark in what they can earn. What that generates is a very few players making even more money, frankly at expense of their brothers," Kendrick said. "Why they don’t see that as reality and why they are adamant about not building a system, you know, with proper controls on downside and upside and overall caps — there’s a lot of money to be shared."
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Is that a window into the real end? That owners are determined to try and break the union and get them to submit to a cap? Are they simply trying to further wear down Clark — weakened after getting soundly beaten in the last CBA — so they can have their way with him two Decembers from now?
Or is it worse?
There are legitimate cash-flow issues for teams, who continue to incur expenses without any revenue coming in. According to Forbes, MLB generated roughly $4.1 billion in gate and attendance-related revenue last year, which means they’ll take a hit of about 40 per cent if they play without fans all season.
It’s possible that the current financial pressures, in concert with issues in their other businesses, may be too much for some owners to carry. Some teams need the local revenue more than others — only the NFL can shut its doors and still make money thanks to its TV contracts — and if some are fighting for survival, player concessions are a sound way to prop up franchise values.
That’s so why it’s rich for owners to essentially tell players, "trust us, we can’t afford to pay you," but have refused to provide real proof of financial hardship.
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Remember that it was former Toronto Blue Jays president Paul Beeston who once said:
"Anyone who quotes profits of a baseball club is missing the point. Under generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me."
Remember, too, that it’s the owners who for years suppressed salaries, fought free agency, fought the formation of the union, twice illegally colluded against free agents and, in their zeal for a salary cap, blew up what was shaping up to be a special 1994 season.
That summer, they cost Tony Gwynn a shot at .400 (he was batting .394 when the players strike started Aug. 12), Matt Williams the chance to surpass Roger Maris’s record of 61 home runs four years before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did (he was at 43), and the Montreal Expos the opportunity at a post-season run that might have altered the franchise’s trajectory.
A quarter-century later, with the pandemic demanding more co-operation than ever, the owners are at it again. Until it’s clear exactly what they’re up to, the players are right to not trust them, and to galvanize for a fight to protect all that they’ve earned.
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