MLB CBA — The current Collective Bargaining Agreement (i.e. the MLB CBA) doesn’t expire until December 2026, but the fight for momentum and public support has already begun. And I don’t like where this is going.
I’m loath to dive in too deeply, as we’re still two years away from the almost-certain lockout and ten months away from negotiations formally beginning, but the public jabbing has already begun. So I guess we have to start paying attention.
At The Athletic, Evan Drellich shares some initial CBA commentary and posturing from Commissioner Rob Manfred (representing the owners) and Union Chief Tony Clark (representing the players).
The MLB CBA Fight Begins
Here’s what’s going on at the outset:
Manfred and the owners are using the legitimate and justifiable beef fans have with the recent spending sprees in Los Angeles to argue that fans want a salary cap in the next MLB CBA.
“It’s clear that we have fans in some markets that are concerned about the ability of the team in their market to compete with the financial resources of the Dodgers,” Manfred said last week. “If we’ve been consistent on one point, it is: we try to listen to our fans on topics like this. I have heard people on this, believe me. I get a lot of emails about it.”
And while there is a kernel of truth to the connection he’s drawing, Manfred doesn’t concede an INCH on how the cap benefits owners, and that’s going to be a problem. After all, there’s a reason the owners have LONG been pushing for a cap (and another why the players have always been against it).
But where Manfred goes to one team spending too much, Clark points to the many other teams not spending enough – also citing fan emails, in a clearly pointed response:
“I get emails too, and can appreciate that there is a concern in any number of cities, particularly this offseason, where teams are sitting out rather than improving themselves, as to why they’re doing so,” Clark said at the Dodgers’ complex. “What holds water are questions that fans are asking, and rightly so, about their clubs, and why their clubs aren’t out there trying to improve themselves, when they know or believe that those clubs have the ability to do so and are choosing not to.”
Now, there are some arguments for how a cap in the next MLB CBA can benefit the majority of players*, especially with the right salary floor in place, but Clark and the players are still a “firm ‘no'” on a cap in principle, so I’m just not sure this is going anywhere. And I don’t like that the owners are using a legitimate fan issue (the Dodgers’ unique financial capabilities) as propaganda for something they wanted all along.
*There’s a case to be made that the highest-earning players should be against a cap (as their exploding annual salaries would eat up a massive chunk of any hard-capped payroll), whereas mid and lower-tier players will probably earn more, as teams fight to meet the attendant salary floor. It’s a complicated issue.
But there’s also another concern: Even in the event of a mutually agreed upon cap, which would be based on some percentage of overall league revenues, the union has long questioned the … let’s call it earnestness of some teams’ financial reporting.
We’ve had similar questions, ourselves, with respect to the Cubs, who have always claimed that all TEAM revenue that comes in the door goes right back out to payroll/baseball operations. And while we don’t doubt the veracity of that statement, it’s perfectly fair to question what counts as TEAM revenue. For example, do the concerts at Wrigley Field the surrounding (but Ricketts-owned) businesses, Gallagher Way, etc count? I’m betting not.
So the process of agreeing on a cap is not just about whether or not to do it, or even at what level it should appear, but also how teams are accounting for revenue in the first place. And that can open up a huge can of worms that the owners aren’t prepared to deal with.
“I’m cautioning that fixing some of these issues with a cap and a floor makes it like the players are subsidizing the issues of the owners,” said Yankees right-hander (and vocal/involved member of the union), Gerrit Cole.
But it’s not like the union/players are Boy Scouts here. On the one hand, I understand Clark’s insistence that league revenues are at an all-time high, but the way he uses that fact to dismiss the pretty clear revenue hit teams have taken because of expiring, canceled, and/or diminishing TV deals is not without its bias.
“Doom and gloom has been a part of the conversation going all the way back to when free agency (arrived in 1976),” Clark said. “So we’ve heard this story before. We’ve seen it before and here we are, still with record numbers of revenue in the industry, doing remarkably well.”
Fortunately, for now, Evan Drellich writes that Manfred stopped short of saying the owners will DEFINITELY pursue a hard salary cap, even though that’s probably where negotiations will begin.
The unfortunate news is that even the most optimistic reading of the quotes in this article reveal clearly animosity between the two sides, long before negotiations even begin. And a lockout, it seems, is inevitable.
“Our goal is always to sit down and negotiate in good faith and find ground on a fair deal,” Clark said. “We’re not the ones professing that a lockout is a good thing, or that it’s definitively going to happen. That would be the commissioner’s office….We’re not talking about shutting the industry down, or suggesting at the end of the day that doing so is actually beneficial when everyone knows that it’s not.”
There’s a lot more to this fight than just a cap — replacing certain parts of international free agency with a draft and sorting out the broadcasting rights/issue both get a lengthy discussion — but the cap fight seems to be the first big hurdle to clear. And as of now, I’m not optimistic that the owners will back down quickly enough to avoid yet another lockout.
And that’s a shame, because baseball fans don’t deserve that. Not after the last fight and after the COVID-shortened season. I don’t know when a lockout became the expectation for ANY negotiation, but that seems to be where we are now. And it sucks.
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