TORONTO – If the 2022 MLB season is going to start on time, the week ahead will have to be far more productive than the past 11 weeks have been.
Negotiators for players and owners met in New York on Thursday to discuss an updated economics proposal from the MLBPA, but people familiar with the talks say the sides remain apart by a significant margin on core economic issues even after this latest bargaining session.
Already, spring training has been delayed because the owners continue locking out the players. Barring an unexpectedly rapid turn of events, spring games will not begin as scheduled on Feb. 26. And without a new CBA sometime next week, there will not be enough time for players to assemble in camps and spend the requisite four weeks preparing for opening day on March 31. As such, a delay to the season becomes more likely each day.
Alongside the hope expressed by commissioner Rob Manfred a week ago, there’s the reality that there’s still real distance separating these sides on core issues such as revenue sharing, MLB minimum salaries and the competitive balance tax.
“I’m an optimist and I believe we’ll have an agreement in time to play our regular schedule,” Manfred told reporters last week. “I see missing games as a disastrous outcome for this industry. I’m committed to reaching an agreement.”
After the league shared a modified proposal on Saturday, the players followed up with one of their own Thursday. Within it, players backed off of their request that all players with two-plus years of service time be arbitration-eligible, lowering their demand to 80 per cent of players. While doing so, they asked for more money to be distributed as bonuses to pre-arbitration eligible players: $115 million up from their previous request of $100 million.
(Editor’s Note: One of the 30 MLB teams, the Toronto Blue Jays, is owned by Rogers Communications Inc., which also owns Sportsnet.)
Viewed in isolation, those requests are hardly shocking. The players have made it a priority to ensure they get paid earlier in their careers, when they are often at their most productive. Yet from the league’s perspective, this latest proposal is unlikely to create much momentum as MLB prefers to keep just 22 per cent of players with two-plus years of service time eligible for arbitration – the so-called “Super Two” contingent. As for the pre-arbitration bonus pool, MLB has offered $15 million, which means a gap of $100 million exists there.
Perhaps what’s more important is what wasn’t formally covered in the latest bargaining session. To this point, MLB has proposed only modest increases in the competitive balance tax, suggesting progressive thresholds of $214 million, $214 million, $216 million, $218 million and $222 million in its latest five-year proposal while also asking for tougher penalties. Since some teams treat the CBT as a de facto salary cap, the placement of that threshold and the penalties for surpassing it are central to these talks. And for now a significant gap exists on that front, as players seek a CBT starting at $245 million.
Complicating matters, if the 2022 season is shortened, it would then be harder for players to accrue the counting stats that have historically helped them get paid in arbitration and beyond. That was also a concern in 2020, when MLB imposed a 60-game season despite a desire from players to play more regular season games.
Still, arbitration is just one part of a bigger picture. Broadly speaking, the MLBPA remains determined to land a deal that resets the sport’s core economics after a 2016 agreement that favoured the owners heavily. To this point, the players have shown little inclination to cave to owners’ wishes. Yet owners have been unwilling to give much either, so scheduled spring games will soon have to be cancelled and opening day has never looked more vulnerable.
“We want to play baseball this year under a fair CBA that recognizes how the industry has changed, and addresses how those changes have impacted players at all levels,” one player said. “We continue to be willing to negotiate, and are committed to coming to a fair agreement.”
Yet another source on the player side described the group as “pissed off.”
Now the question is whether these incrementally different proposals are setting the stage for a larger breakthrough, or whether talks will continue this slowly, costing fans regular season games for the first time since 1995.
