The Major League Baseball Players Association withdrew its grievance against the Rays for not adequately spending revenue sharing money last December, according to a report from Ronald Blum of The Associated Press. The union filed the grievance against four low-payroll teams — the Rays, Marlins, Pirates and Athletics — way back in February 2018, as Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times covered at the time. (Jeff Todd also wrote a contemporaneous post for MLBTR eight years ago.) The status of the grievances against the other teams is unclear.
Revenue sharing recipients are required by the collective bargaining agreement to spend that money to improve their on-field product. The CBA intentionally leaves the means very open-ended, however, so there’s no requirement it needs to be directly spent on player payroll. Spending on the front office, coaching, scouting, analytics, and player development all contribute to the on-field product and are appropriate means of using revenue sharing money.
It’s not clear precisely why the union withdrew the grievance against the Rays, though they evidently did so quietly nearly a year ago. However, it’s potentially not a coincidence that the decision came a few months after former owner Stu Sternberg finalized a sale of the franchise to Patrick Zalupski. The Rays subsequently garnered approval from Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa for a new stadium to open in 2029.
Zalupski claimed that the new stadium will eventually allow the Rays to run a payroll in the upper half to potentially top third of MLB. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that’ll eventually come to fruition. MLBTR contributor Ethan Hullihen calculates the Rays’ end of season LRD and competitive balance tax payrolls at $98.41MM and $116.35MM, respectively. They’re 26th in actual payroll and 27th in terms of luxury tax spending.
The limitations didn’t prevent the front office from putting together the best team in the American League. The Rays won 98 regular season games and have gone 7-2 to knock off the Yankees and Guardians en route to the third pennant in franchise history. They’re opening the World Series in Milwaukee tonight.
That’s all incidental to the withdrawal of the grievance that happened last winter. A Rays-Brewers World Series matchup coming at the end of the CBA term has nevertheless led to plenty of discussion about the sport’s competitive balance questions. (MLBTR’s podcast this week addressed the topic of whether this field has any bearing on the league’s push for a salary cap.) This afternoon, Evan Drellich and Eno Sarris of The Athletic ran a column examining MLB’s parity/payroll discrepancy compared to the NBA and NFL, both of which have cap/floor systems. That’s worth a full read for those interested in the topic.
There’ll be plenty of back and forth between the league and union over the coming months. There’s essentially no chance of a new agreement before the current CBA expires at end of day on December 1, at which point MLB will immediately implement a lockout.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA executive director Bruce Meyer unsurprisingly suggested this evening there’s also no real possibility of a temporary extension of the current agreement to stave off the lockout (link via Evan Drellich of The Athletic). Manfred and Meyer each pointed to the other side wanting changes to the current system — though it’s true that neither the league nor union is advocating for the status quo. MLB is seeking the more radical overhaul of the system in its cap/floor push. The PA is pushing for a significant increase to the luxury tax thresholds and what’s essentially a soft floor in the form of penalties for teams that run CBT payrolls south of $150MM.
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