MLB to Impose 60-Game Season After Talks Stall
On Monday night, Major League Baseball released a statement that, despite the legalese and lengthy section recapitulating earlier letters, set the terms under which baseball will return:
88 days after the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association reached an agreement to pay players a pro-rata share of their salaries (with the commissioner retaining the right to set the length of the season unilaterally), the two sides weren’t able to come to a satisfactory agreement for the resumption of play; they’ll instead abide by the terms of the March deal. Sources told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that the league plans to announce a 60-game season, equal in length to the owners’ final proposal to the players.
Many of the details of the actual season remain unsettled. The union and the league must still agree on health and safety protocols, though representatives from both sides maintain that a deal there is imminent. The league’s statement mentions this specifically, but even without that particular ask of the players, the March 26 agreement is subject to the two parties agreeing on such regulations.
There has not yet been an official declaration that there will be a season. In addition to being contingent on a final health protocol agreement, there’s the matter of a second spring training. MLB has asked the players to report by July 1. The MLBPA seems very likely to comply with this request, however, which means that a followup announcement with an exact season schedule should follow soon.
From a practical standpoint, there are two major changes between this imposed season and the final offer from the owners. First, the playoffs will retain their current form. The league had initially asked for two years of expanded playoffs, before later adding a clause that would revert the 2021 playoffs to their original 10-team form if the 2020 season were truncated. This represents a setback for the owners, who command the lion’s share of playoff revenue and could immediately sell the rights, likely for a hefty sum. The playoff field will no doubt be a bargaining chip in the upcoming CBA negotiations, but for now, the old system will remain in place.
Second, there’s no mention of a universal DH. On the margins, a National League DH likely favors the players, though by far less than the expanded playoff field favors the owners. An extra spot in the lineup, particularly one that can be manned by older players, seems like a good bet to result in at least a little extra money in veteran contracts. I would not be surprised to see a temporary universal DH, for this year only, as part of the health and safety protocols still to be agreed to, especially since it was reportedly part of an earlier version of the protocols. Pitchers will already be preparing on a short schedule this year; asking them to hit seems like an unnecessary complication.
There are several other differences between the league’s final offer and this fallback agreement. First, the players retain the right to file a grievance against the league. As Eugene Freedman noted last Friday, the league takes the threat of a grievance seriously. Given that the agreement calls for “best efforts to play as many games as possible,” this 60-game proposal is less likely to result in a grievance than earlier talk of a 48-game season, but the risk of one clearly remains at the forefront of owners’ minds.
Second, the league had offered to forgive $33 million in loans (advances that became guaranteed should the season be canceled) to players. That works out to roughly a one game reduction in the length of the schedule; the players have an aggregate salary of $25 million per game. This won’t change the length of the season or any of its logistics, but it’s a small cost to players relative to a negotiated settlement. Finally, the league had offered to add $25 million to the playoff pool this year — another game’s worth of salary.
In essence, should the league announce a 60-game season, the players will be $58 million worse off, in cash terms, than the league’s final offer. In exchange for that, they’ll retain the right to file a grievance over the league’s good faith efforts to play as many games as possible. In addition, they’ll retain the bargaining chip of expanded playoffs; while that isn’t money in their pockets today, expanded playoffs in 2020 and 2021 would likely result in a permanent expansion in the next CBA. Instead, the owners will likely need to make concessions to secure a bigger playoff field down the road.
There are, of course, many ways this could all still go wrong. The players might push back on a seven-day reporting deadline; international travel and quarantine concerns could delay at least a few players. The league hasn’t finalized a 60-game slate yet; if the health and safety discussions are more contentious than has been reported, delays in that negotiation could shorten the season. And of course, this is all contingent on the league preventing a COVID-19 outbreak among players and personnel, not to mention their families — recent positive tests in Phillies camp and at other team complexes make that an uncertain proposition, and certainly put a damper on the proceedings.
But for the moment, there’s a clear headline: baseball is returning. After months of negotiations and several threats of a cancelation for non-COVID reasons, the original deal held. The commissioner just told the players when and where — now it’s (almost) time to play baseball.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Isn’t there is big difference between “baseball is returning”… and “Manfred announces imposition of mandate that baseball will be returning”?
Doesn’t it seem likely there will be several grievances that may require arbitration or even litigation?
Where will players live? Where will games be played? Which team employees will be allowed inside the “bubble”? Will there even be a “bubble”?
Et cetera
This was going to be my question (s?). If the players do file a grievance, are they still going to play? Much less how are they going to expect everyone to report in a week AND figure out all those logistics? Seems like a s-show to me.
Grievances take years to complete. Any grievance will almost certainly not end before the next CBA comes up
No but it will provide a huge negotiating chip for the union in the next CBA.
The short answer to your question is (1) grievances happen all the time and work goes on as normal, (2) baseball returning is obviously dependent on their safety plan both working and not resulting in further delays/cancellations of games. So yeah, this is a little premature, but the grievance probably won’t screw it up.
When the season gets cancelled the players will have no grievance.
Exactly correct, Sadtrombone. Back in the 80s the players (rightfully) filed a grievance against the owners for collusion. It took a few years for that to work its way through the legal system, and the games went on as normal. Ultimately, the ruling went against the owners… who, in order to pay damages, raised money by getting expansion fees when Miami / Tampa / Colorado / Arizona joined the league.
In a related story, let’s get ready to welcome the new MLB teams in Montreal and Las Vegas.
Just do everything like normal, but no fans in attendance. If there are a few teams who can’t play in their own stadiums, move them to their AAA park.
What would you do when (inevitably) there are positive tests on a team?
If they use the “bubble” at least they limit exposure in hopes of avoiding infections.
Without a “bubble” do you see a chance that a team will get through 3 months with zero positive tests?
And if a player tests +, will they need to quarantine everybody they were is sustained contact with (maybe the entire team) for days or weeks?
I think there are more roadblocks ahead than they can deal with. And I don’t think they have enough time.
If there is someone who gets sick, get them treatment. When no longer contagious, they can rejoin the team. 15 day DL.
Grievance doesn’t stop the season. If players win, then they would get a big check at a later date.
Nightengale put in a performance during this whole thing between contradicting his own reports and shoving his head up every owners ass I wouldn’t expect him to get too many interviews from players in the near future.
honestly, the entire national baseball media just embarrassed themselves throughout this entire ordeal
Ooh man you’ve put me in quite the bind. Either I embarrassed myself (true, plenty of times, but not about this in particular!) or I’m not the national baseball media. Probably a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B to be honest :).
Nah in all seriousness it was not a great time to be leaking offers and counter-offers, let’s leave it at that.
Jon Heyman exposed himself as a clown for sure. Guy has strings attached to every limb. They tell him to jump he asks how high.
I know Eugene Freedman hates his guts but I actually found him to be relatively even-handed, at least near the end.
Heyman’s big problem is that he gets used by sources, and that happened to a certain extent this time, but not nearly as much as I would have feared.
I think Passan probably did the best job. He didn’t spread false info, he broke down the issues and proposals quite even-handedly. I think he did the most to inform his readers.
Nice write up especially on the trade offs. My instinct says the players won’t file a grievance. I wonder what a happens to team rosters. What happens if five or six key players just refuse to show up ? Seems like we are a long way yet from real baseball. It at least we get another eerily quiet spring training
Of course they’ll file a grievance, why wouldn’t they?
Exactly why the hell wouldn’t they. Owners dragged this out months just to end up with original agreement from March 26. Players could’ve played the whole season if it wasn’t for them dragging it out. They are owed a ton of money.
The players are literally not owed anything. Paragraph 11. State of emergency. Why do I have to keep saying this?
One reason, to speculate, would be that specific details of the original agreement would come out and show that Mlbpa had been gaslighting the country about what it did and did not say. There is some evidence to support that.
Personally I would file the grievance and slow walk it so it is a bargaining chip for the next cba. Even if it’s meritless making it go away is worth something.
Owners have been crying poor like they’re doing Jesus’ work….the arbitrator will want them to open their books to prove it if they plan on going forward with that case. All this will be prior to the cba and will be worth a ton to the players.
Players never leaked and lied to the public about anything regarding that March 26th agreement. It was the owners that did that saying that it was contingent on fans in the stands…..something we just found out was totally fabricated by owners in the media and in fact didn’t say anything about that in the agreement. They did that once they realized deal was a mistake and then they started backtracking and moving the goal posts. Totally bad faith and really a bunch of bs.
I have seen enough reporting and evidence to call into question the narrative that the March deal was intended to be complete, especially in the face of no fans. That doesn’t mean it’s true, but you are speaking with an awful degree of certainty that may not be warranted.
I hear ya, but It’s true. Eugene freeman wrote an article here on FG couple days ago about it. He read the agreement front to back. That’s where I got my info from. No where in there was it contingent on fans in the stands.
Interesting, thanks for pointing out the article because I hadn’t read it. I still wish I could read the actual wording because that’s what matters when the rubber hits the road. This:
“This section does not permit the 2020 season to commence without the consent of the Office of the Commissioner and until there are no federal, state, city, or local restrictions on mass gatherings that would materially limit play in front of spectators, although the commissioner has the option to consider neutral sites or playing games in the absence of spectators if economically feasible”
Just sets off all my alarm bells with words like “materially” and “option to consider”. But the real problem, as pointed out in the article, is the recurring use of the term economic feasibility. What I would argue, which the article does not, is that there mere inclusion of the term demonstrates that additional economic considerations may impact decision making about number of games and when the season starts. The contract pretty clearly stipulates that as a factor. So sides can bicker about if it was economically feasible to play more games or not, but that to me suggests that the original “we had a deal for pro rata and the owners are breaking it” is disingenuous. They had a deal persuant to several poorly defined conditions apparently left up to Manfred to consider. Again, if I am arguing from the owners’ perspective, I would say that going back to the bargaining table was actually not mandated by the original agreement and if anything players should be happy to have had the chance to bargain for something beyond what MLB deemed minimally feasible.
Anyway, all I’m saying is that I am hesitant to buy the characterization either side is selling in the original deal. Those characterizations, after all, are being made for the most part by lawyers, who trade in putting things in the best possible light for clients without hopefully having to lie outright.
I think they’ll file the unless they use the threat of filing as leverage in the new CBA, but it’s by no means certain they will win the grievance. COVID makes a flexible, and to some extent, reasonable excuse.
The point of filing a grievance isn’t to WIN the grievance, it’s to force MLB to prove their sketchy financial claims.
Currently, MLBPA is negotiating against a murky financial patchwork of information available to them. If MLB is forced to legally prove their claims, it will strengthen MLBPA’s negotiating position during CBA.
In fact, I think it will make a lockout far less likely, since both sides will be negotiating with the same facts, which will restore some trust. Instead, right now, the players don’t believe anything the owners are telling them. If we are charitable to the owners and assume everything they’ve said to date is true, then forcing them to open their books during the grievance process will prove their claims, and might make them far more amenable to a revenue sharing arrangement. Because right now without financial transparency, a revenue share is a non-starter.
Normally in litigation, it is possible to produce trade secrets (such as financial information) under seal. I wonder if that would not be the case here, or if it’s assumed that the lawyers would get to see it (often the case) and betray their ethical obligations by providing it to the players?
Betray ethical obligations and get slapped with contempt
According to the March agreement, and the CBA in force, the owners are under no obligation to prove anything about their finances to the players’ satisfaction.
Seriously. The idea that the owners had to prove that they were losing gobs of money in order to ask the players to negotiate was always a pure fiction.
But the surest test that owners’ were telling the truth is that they kept pushing for the fewest number of regular season games, and most number of postseason games. That is 100% in line with everything the owners said about the economics of baseball this season. It completely contradicts the players’ claims.
So to believe that the owners are lying about their finances you have to believe that they are acting against their own economic interest, for the sole purpose of antagonizing a union into filing a grievance against them, during which they may have to reveal their finances.
That’s… pretty dubious.
Ryan DC is correct. Grievances are not the frontal assault some have made it out to be. It’s not a lawsuit.
My guess is it probably won’t go too far with it being 60 games, but you never know.
There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that they will be able to play a 60-game season without multiple teams having to go into quarantine, after players or coaches test positive for COVID-19. If they proceed, this is going to be a farce, and a sad one at that.
This is my take as well. 60-games is pretty optimistic; finishing the playoffs even more so. To paraphrase Luke Skywalker, this is not going to go the way they think.
And to quote the most repeated line in Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Either games don’t get played at all or it’s such a disaster that it makes everyone wish that games weren’t played.
To be honest, despite all the efforts of leagues to get underway I am not expecting a single professional sports game to be played in 2020.
I guess you meant in the US, because soccer in Europe is progressing fairly smoothly.
Golf is already happening. In the US.
NASCAR be running
Yep. I have been saying this for a couple months now. They can proclaim whatever they want. Reality is that this pandemic is still going strong in the states (if not getting worse) and there is pretty much zero chance of it just bypassing sports because we want it too.if they get past August I will be shocked.
I’m a lot more optimistic about this. Lots of companies stayed open throughout the pandemic without serious problems. MLB will be going above and beyond with regards to testing and there will be intense social pressure between the players to be cautious. So, I think it’s closer to 50/50 that they play it out.
You have to keep in mind though, more testing = more chance of a positive.
One of the reasons that those other places had no serious problems is because virtually nobody is being tested unless they show symptoms.
Experts figure that ~50% of people with covid dont even know they have it. The fact that MLB is planning on doing rigorous testing makes it probably much more likely that someone will test positive, probably multiple people, as opposed to the general public which is not being tested.
If 10% of public tests are coming back positive i have a hard time seeing how MLB is going to be at 0% when they are doing way more testing. Even with tighter quarantine measures (which honestly dont even seem that tight).
And just like that, Charlie Blackmon is confirmed to have it as are 4 members of the Phillies org.
Yeah. This is not going to happen. I hope I’m wrong
While I don’t think they should, is there any chance a sport just plays through it? I.e no quarantine?
I’d guess it’s relative, then. I wouldn’t call a 50% chance of things not playing out (phrasing inverted) not particularly optimistic — especially since I don’t think it will take 1 or 2 isolated positive tests to shut things down.
Well I am glad there is finally SOME path forward. If games are played this year great, and no matter what happens, I wish all the players, staff and front offices the best of health as they move forward in the current pandemic plateau.
A big thank you to Fangraphs for your posts about this bedraggled process over the last few months and the interesting conversations arising from those posts. I am really looking forward to the new articles on the season to come.
As for the 88 days that have just passed and for the looming CBA negotiation in 2022, to the MLB and MLBPA I say:
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry …
Players are going to strike.
Possibly in 2022, though they may well be locked out instead.
not allowed. but I would not be surprised if a lot of players with health risks/family members with health risks just didn’t show up.
Putting aside the whole pandemic thing, I’m actually pretty damn happy with how this turned out. Perhaps a few more games might have been possible, but at least they aren’t messing around with so much stuff, especially the playoff expansion, for now. On top of that, a bunch of old rich dudes were exposed as bumbling idiots. I feel like this is at least a 80th percentile outcome.
A few more games might have been possible? Like, the proposed season is about half as long as it could have been. They could have played sixty games by the time the season actually starts.
Why are people acting like so much time has been wasted. It’s questionable that baseball games are allowed in some states due to ongoing stay at home orders and economic restrictions even now.
So you think all these proposals by the players for a lot more games were just bargaining ploys? That they didn’t think they could play all those games? You think the owners, who made it very clear that they wanted as few games as possible, weren’t aware that they just could have pointed out that the season couldn’t start until about now?
For better or worse, governors around the country have been falling all over themselves inviting pro teams to play in their states. And if they weren’t, MLB could have played just in AZ and FL, which definitely have welcomed them for some time. This isn’t an endorsement of the wisdom of doing. this. I’m just pointing out that if it had been up to the wishes of the players, the season could have been much longer, at least unless/until positive tests made it impossible.
Honestly my opinion is that the argument over games played is a red herring from the MLBPA side. MBLPA statements continually represented the negotiations to the public almost exclusively in terms of haggling over how many games to play. This put other issues in the background from the public’s perspective and made it seem less like a money play and more like a “we just want to play baseball” thing. It was telling to hear Tony Clark talk like the most recent offer was ‘just’ about 10 more games, and glide past the doubling of their playoff share or increased forgiveness of the payroll advances they got, for example.
In short, I think MLBPA knew that some of these proposals for games were untenable, but also knew the benefit of characterizing the negotiations as primarily about games played, while the real fight was over divvying up the money. That would put pressure on the owners for seemingly being stuck on money while players were prioritizing baseball.
I agree. I am not a fan of playoff expansion (or the universal DH), so I’m happy to see it put off for a little while. Granted, this is going to be a mess and I am not sure we’re even getting to 60 games based on the current state of the pandemic, but I think I’m alright with this outcome.
Yeah, not diluting the playoffs is an absolute win! Once that box was open, there would be no closing it. I might be in the minority, but that struck me as a far bigger mistake than a universal DH. Universal DH is coming, one way or another, before long. There is no reason to render 162 games obsolete, so we can watch a 78 win team sneak into the playoffs…
I just think that another round of best-of-seven or best-of-five games is going to drag on far, far too long. And I don’t want to make the regular season less important either.
I could go with extending the existing divisional round to seven games, five is too much of a crapshoot.
Totally agreed, man. Gets the owners four-to-eight more Postseason games, makes the Division Series less of a crapshoot, and still preserves the integrity of Division Titles & the regular season.
Win-win… win.
Part of the problem is, in fact, the sport. No fan of hockey says the NHL playoffs go on too long–it’s a thrillfest from start to finish.
I’m not, but mostly because I think the players are even more unhappy now with the owners than they were before so I think the odds of a work stoppage in 2022 went up a lot as a result of the negotiations. The Owners showed a lot of what they want, the players didn’t. Most importantly, the owners showed how they plan to negotiate the next CBA – in the press by casting the players as villains and themselves as the noble but poor guardians of The National Pastime.
Trevor Bauer is an idiot, you should go read his Twitter!! This is so far above his mental capacity it’s not even funny. Guy was wanting to sign the deal and is pissed because by not signing it they lost the paycheck advance and the measly playoff pool of money. Lol
It’s not that hard to figure out why this is first time in forever that the players didn’t get taken advantage of.
If the players win a grievance, a likely outcome is the arbitrator will say the owners should’ve put on an 80 game season. 20 extra games is worth about $500M in salaries. By not accepting the deal, the players gave up $58M, plus universal DH in 2021, protections for players on non-guaranteed arb deals (extra term pay), and possibly attendance-based bonuses from the extra round of the playoffs in 2021 (FYI, players get bonuses based on 50% of in-game revenues from WC games, so it would likely be somewhere around there). Not to mention the players gave up the goodwill that could potentially result in better FA deals and less cuts in arb,
Let’s say the total value of that is $75M. A 15% chance of winning the grievance is a break-even point. There are additional benefits like potential info discovery over the course of the grievance, but additional costs to file the lawsuit and added bad blood between the two sides.
A reasonable person on the players side could argue either way. As the downvotes indicate.
You’re really underselling the potential benefit of info discovery here. It is not an afterthought, it is a potential game changer in negotiating the next CBA.
I would be very interested to see an EV calculation like the one Max Power proposes that takes into account the various legal paths the grievance could take, as Syndergaardengnomes suggests. I have no legal training, but I suppose it is at least possible(?) that MLBPA could, for instance, lose the grievance on the basis of what is plausible under the particular realities of COVID-19, but discover along the way that MLB has been underreporting profits. So the weighted average would include (at least? at most?) six possibilities: MLBPA loses grievance, doesn’t see MLB books; loses, sees books are accurate; loses, sees books are cooked; wins, doesn’t see; etc. Of course the likelihood and dollar value of each outcome would be speculative, but it would be fun to play around with the weights to get some sense of what MLBPA believes about the expected value of a grievance.
Ah, just replied without fully reading this. You got most of it except #4: There’s a snowball’s chance in hell this case is settled before November 2021.
I imagine an EV calculation would be near impossible, I wouldn’t even attempt to try one, but good thought.
You are overestimating the chances that discovery even takes place. I’d argue there will be no new CBA without negotiating to eliminate the option to grieve. Both sides know this would cost 9 figures each and would takes years to come to a head with a low probability of success in the first place.
Yeeeeaaah that’s not not happening. Grievance procedure is a critical part of every collective bargaining agreement. There is zero chance that it is left out entirely and it goes to lawsuits instead, and there is zero chance that there is no mechanism for challenging interpretations of the agreement.
I have literally never heard of a collective bargaining agreement without it. MLB would certainly end first.
Take a look at Ken Rosenthal’s latest article. There is a reason that Grievances rarely ever work out.
The absolute best outcome of info discovery is a huge positive, no denying that. Which would be arbitrators ask for and get full access to owners’ books, and share fully with the players, before the 2021 CBA is negotiated.
Potential ways it could result in a sub-optimal outcome for players:
1) Arbitrators don’t ask for full access to owners’ books
2) Arbitrators don’t receive full access to owners’ books
3) Arbitrators get full access to owners’ books, but make their decision without any sharing or without full sharing with players. Keep in mind players already have partial access to owners’ books
4) Most likely way it could be sub-optimal: Arbitrators ask for, receive, and share full access to owners’ books, albeit some time after November 2021. The Kris Bryant grievance took over 4 years, and seemed to be a lot simpler case than this one. I’d wager the 2021 CBA is long written in stone before this grievance makes any headway
And I can’t see MLB signing off on the 21 CBA with any threat of a grievance remaining. All this talk that the possibility of a grievance is a big win for the players is patently false.
Concur, the potential for discovery is the big win here. This isn’t just about the 2020 season, it’s about the CBA and the seasons beyond. In that sense I think this outcome is a big win for the players, and this announcement more akin to a capitulation from the owners than anything.
It’s not a “game changer” until salaries are tied to revenues, which the *players* specifically reject.
Let’s say they win all of these cases and see the books, and let’s say the books show unbelievable profits even during the pandemic. I don’t think any of that is what will happen, but let’s just imagine it does.
So what?
Without revenue-sharing the players aren’t entitled to any of that, now or in the future. The player agents would then know that the owners have more money, but they will not be obligated to spend any of it. The players will try to pressure the owners to spend more by turning the fans against them, but the fans already want the owners to spend more and seem to think that they have near-infinite capacity to do so. What will that change? Nothing.
If the players’ strategy really is to turn down real, tangible benefits in exchange for a grievance that will probably not get them the information that they want, which will probably not be all that useful for them anyway, then IMO that’s a really bad strategy.
But then I think the MLBPA screwed this whole thing up from the beginning. The fact that they achieved literally none of their goals — in fact they cost themselves a lot of money — makes it pretty clear how badly they played their hand.
Win win for the players.
Players only have about 3 pieces of leverage. 1 a strike. 2. File A grievance . 3. Ext playoffs. By not signing they still keep all 3 for the cba negotiations and still get the 60 games prorate deal that mlb last offered. Owners will be opening books at the grievance for the first time ever. The things the players gave up was worth nothing in comparison.
Incredible job by the mlbpa representation. It’s pretty clear based on the Owners dragging out the process and all their proposals they never intended on playing more than 60 games anyways. Good things players didn’t give up anything as this is what owners were set on doing from the get go.
Mlbpa was in a tough spot because they had such a stark contrast between future interest and present interest. Kudos to them for prioritizing the former. I personally am shocked that more, particularly fringe players, didn’t defect on this.
It’s a mixed bag for them. They make their money playing games. 60 games is not a lot. They should be playing at least 33% more games.
I wonder if the owners will offer to settle the grievance for a couple hundred million rather than open their books.
If they’re going to settle, I’ve got to think it’s going to be for a lot more than a couple hundred million… Opening those books is the dream for the players union.
They might offer that, but I bet the players could get a lot more in the next CBA in exchange for dropping a grievance.
No, I don’t think so. The owners think that by scheduling 60 games, they have headed off the success of the grievance. They think that any grievance, if filed, would not be interpreted by an arbitrator as them needing to provide the financial documents.
I think that there is a chance that MLBPA will try, anyway, but ownership is in a far stronger position now than they were if they tried to impose fewer than 60 games.
Don’t get your hopes up about the union winning a battle on this. They might succeed, but I would say the chances have gone from very much in their favor to very much not in their favor.
If who is favored can swing this much based on very few new developments then most likely the chances were never in the players’ favor.
No. It’s because they would be in violation of the “best efforts” provision if they scheduled less than their last offer. By scheduling the amount of their last offer, MLB is no longer obviously violating the clause that says they will put forth the best effort for scheduling the maximum number of games.
To break it down further: There is a rule, but it is ambiguous. But if you offer 60 games and only schedule for 50, it is obvious you are not scheduling the most possible because you have previously admitted that 60 games are viable. This is an obvious violation. Scheduling for 60 games moves it back into ambiguous territory–the MLBPA may still have a case, but the league is nowhere near as vulnerable.
That’s been an assumption, but it’s always been a highly questionable one, because the clause is not “best efforts” but “best efforts, in light of public health/safety considerations and economic feasibility” (I’m paraphrasing). The owners offered a range of season lengths, with an eye towards ending the season before November according to the public health advice they were receiving, and a range of payment structures to accomplish that goal. These options narrowed as the calendar kept ticking, and the calendar kept ticking away because the MLBPA was (it now appears) intentionally running out the clock to force MLB to impose a season so they could file a grievance.
To be clear: the MLBPA was within its rights to reject all of these. But MLB was never under any obligation to schedule a season according to terms dictated by the MLBPA. The March agreement is very clear about that. All of the preregotative is given to the league in that document, other than the players’ right to pro rata should games be played at all.
Even if none of that was the case, the owners were not obligated to schedule a season of any length under conditions of a state of emergency. The March agreement did not supercede the uniform player contract, in that respect.
Right, and 60 games was what the league proposed, so clearly that is possible given the health and economic feasibility. You can’t go backwards like that without explaining yourself.
Not only did an actual lawyer tell you why you were wrong (several times, actually) but the owners’ own behavior is extremely consistent with this behavior. Otherwise, they would have scheduled 48-52 games like they planned before.
You keep reading and commenting on articles, but you seem like you don’t understand what you’re reading, don’t want to understand it, and refuse to acknowledge that the owners’ actual behavior here is not consistent with your argument.
It’s incredibly easy for MLB to “explain yourself,” though! There are new Covid outbreaks in multiple team facilities, and outbreaks all over the country. Fauci said within the past week that he doesn’t think MLB should be playing in October, much less November. Trump just changed the visa situation (haven’t seen any discussion of whether this impacts MLB, but it might). Most importantly, the negotiation process itself took additional time off the clock (it’s now been 12 days since the 72 game offer, so if nothing else you get from 72 to 60 that way), which required shortening the season to keep within the health guidelines, etc. And the owners have been incredibly consistent about how much they are willing to pay, total, for a partial season with no fans and without expanded playoffs, as both this site and the players themselves have repeatedly noted, whether that means it’s paid over 72 games or fewer.
See? Explained. Not very hard.
I don’t even think Manfred ever said formally that 48-52 games was the “no deal” scenario. There was speculation about that being the minimum number of games to fulfill tv contracts before going to the playoffs, but if that number was ever spoken out loud by Manfred or written down in any proposal then I never saw it.
For example, here is Passan, on June 1, floating the possibility of an imposed season of “in the neighborhood of 50 games”: https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1267565933729583109. But that doesn’t constitute a formal proposal. It’s unclear who his source is, or what “neighborhood” means. 60 isn’t all that far away from 50, much less 52. Meanwhile, what you are now saying about 60 games is what people also said about 72 games, as if these are all bright shining lights signifying something important. They’re not. They’re moving targets. Especially as the calendar keeps ticking away.
In the end, the lowest number of games that the league has ever formally proposed at any point during this process is going to be the season that we’re getting. And that *is* consistent with everything the owners have been saying about economic feasibility of a long regular season without fans, and about Manfred’s preregotative in setting the schedule without MLBPA’s approval.
A labor lawyer wrote a piece that is transparently talking the players’ book. I don’t have a problem with that, but neither am I obligated to take that as the final word. It’s not even pretending to be impartial, so I won’t pretend it is either.
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The owners once again exposed themselves as both greedy and not very smart. I am skeptical that we’ll get much of a season in the end because I think COVID will wreck it. But I am glad that this makes it less likely that a 16-game playoff field will be implemented. You don’t play a 162-game season (someday they will again) just to give 53% of the teams a shot at the brass ring.
Important point: The league had been threatening a 50-game season, and this one clocks in at 60. Here is what likely happened: The league realized that because they offered a 60-game season, they were very vulnerable under the best efforts to play the maximum number of games provision. They impose a 50-game season, it is undercut by the fact that they thought they could go to 60.
I think this helps us understand the events previous to this a lot better. The owners leaking the 50-game plan was either a complete bluff or not a credible threat. They would have gotten hammered in the grievance process. The MLBPA knew it, and whether the owners knew it or not before, they figured it out pretty quickly.
Overall:
-I think the owners leaking the 50-game gambit was a disaster for them. They got exposed making idle threats, and it’s harder to take them seriously going forward.
-While this doesn’t completely protect them against a grievance, it’s going to make it a bit harder for the union to force the owners to open their books.
Even losing a grievance serves two purposes for the players – it might get the owners to open their books since they claim they couldn’t afford to play more games and dropping the grievance becomes a bargaining chip in the next CBA. The owners really negotiated themselves into a corner over this. They may have “won” in that they don;t have to pay 70 or 80 games of salary, but they lost on just about every other front. The universal DH costs them very little. Yeah, the average salary for a DH is pretty high since it includes guys like Cabrera, Stanton, and Martinez, but it is just one roster spot.
I said something like this before, but the grounds for them opening the books before was very, very high. They had just proposed 72 games, and if they had scheduled anything less than that an arbitrator would have almost certainly told them to open up. Now, it’s not clear it will get to that point. Maybe, maybe not.
My head hurts so much after all this. Baseball is back. but at what cost? I’ll be watching of course but I honestly can’t say that I’m “super excited”.
This is a clear win for the players (despite Manfred trying to paint them as having lost out on some great opportunity by not agreeing to the last deal the owners offered). They get more games than the owners originally threatened, and without giving up anything in return, as well as maintain their right to file a grievance. It’s incredibly frustrating that after 3 months of posturing, obfuscating, and outright lying by the league and its owners, we ended up basically where we were at the end of March. But at least there is now a glimmer of baseball on the horizon and hopefully no last-minute issues pop up to prevent the season from happening (that is perhaps a vain hope, but a hope nonetheless)!
If this scenario keeps the DH to only this season, then this is the best case scenario for anything that could have happened.
If the MLB statement is to be trusted, it looks like the players also passed up 104% of prorated pay, which is worth about an additional $60m. So, in total, MLBPA is valuing their right to file a grievance at $120m at the least, and teams were willing to pay that same amount to avoid a grievance. It’ll be very interesting to see how that process plays out. I hope to see some of that sweet, sweet financial data come out of this, as it would more accurately anchor all of these labor debates going forward.
“and teams were willing to pay that same amount to avoid a grievance”
Not really. Most of that extra revenue would have come from expanded playoffs, which MLB does not have the authority to implement unilaterally. They were offering them a cut to try to induce them to say “yes”. That’s not a payment against a grievance threat.
To a best approximation the amount the owners are willing to pay to avoid a grievance is $0. The amount the players are willing to pay to have a grievance appears to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That tells you a lot about the perceptions and misperceptions in these negotiations. The players are putting a whole hell of a lot on a very uncertain grievance process that, in any case, isn’t going to be resolved for years.
I am still going to go ahead with my thinking that there will not be a season. Even if they fire things up, I think it gets canceled quickly. This thing is going to get worse before it gets better.
Unfortunately you are probably correct. For now, though, I will choose to remain hopeful we will get to see at least *some* high level baseball in 2020.
And also the Mets!
All it will take is 1 sick player during the season to completely muck everything up. When a team has a dozen sick players, will all their games be postponed? Forfeited? Canceled? What of their opponent(s)? I’d set the o/u on games played at 0.5.
“In addition, they’ll retain the bargaining chip of expanded playoffs”
IMO this kind of framing is a big part of the reason why things have degenerated to this point. The players should be *eager* to expand the playoffs, so long as they share in the revenue, which they would have. The players should have been *proposing* to expand the playoffs, as a way to increase baseball revenues to partially make up for the lost regular-season games that were inevitable from the moment they insisted on full pro rata. Instead, bizarrely, they view increased revenue streams as a bad thing, to be opposed unless they receive additional concessions (above and beyond their larger incomes from their share of the new revenues). This is a counter-productive bargaining position to take, at least if your goal in the negotiations is to get more money.
So here we are, without an agreement, resorting to a default outcome that overwhelmingly benefits the owners, and everyone is pissed off. The players could have gotten so much more. There were lots of imaginable scenarios under which both the players and owners benefited relative to the outcome we’re observing. The owners were willing to get creative on those: more playoffs, more special events (e.g., All Star Games, skills competitions), more in-game perks to enhance broadcasts (mic’ed up players, etc). The players weren’t interested in any of that, because they would have involved revenue sharing and for some unclear reason revenue sharing is the hill that MLBPA has chosen to die on.
The players viewed these things as zero sum bargaining chips instead of positive sum opportunities, and they’re significantly poorer as a result. That doesn’t explain why Ben views them that way, however. It’s really not that hard to look down the game tree on this one.
There should have been home run derbies, base-running competitions, throwing competitions, and other stuff (reality shows? documentaries? “behind the scenes” looks at players training and front offices front officing?) since June 1, at the latest. All of these could have been done at least as safely as the informal workouts teams are already having with their players. Hell, they could have moved MLB to Korea and played games against the KBO until things were safer in the US; you think the KBO wouldn’t be interested in that? Who cares if these things are gimmicky, when this season was never going to be “normal” in the first place?
The MLBPA should have been trying to *create* these entities for the players that they ostensibly represent, so that they could capture the revenues from them; instead the MLBPA stood in the way of that, and their members are losing hundreds of millions of dollars as a result. ESPN and the RSNs would have broadcast any of these things, gladly, and paid for it. Or they could have been broadcast on MLB Network but also streamed for free on YouTube, thus building up goodwill with fans. They could have captured a new global audience, which they’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to do for years. That would have laid the groundwork for the season, been incredibly inexpensive to produce, and generated additional revenues for everyone to share.
But none of that could happen until these negotiations were over, and once the players took the hardline position that they took, that any creative ideas were “bargaining chips” to be traded off for more regular season games at pro rata salaries, this outcome — the one in which nothing happens for 3 months before the owners impose a short season to everyone’s dissatisfaction and economic loss — was the only likely one.
As I’ve been saying, and getting down-voted for, for quite some time now. C’est la vie.
This matters for the coming years. The FA market will be deader this offseason than it’s ever been. The owners will be looking at another potential season without fans in the stadiums, and even if that doesn’t happen they have to be prepared for it. In the following offseason there’s the CBA negotiations and likely strike, plus the grievance. Owners don’t spend when they’re facing high levels of uncertainty, especially when they now know that the players will never accept anything under than full pro rata, no matter what. The solution for the owners is just to not give out big-money guaranteed contracts, and because the players refuse revenue sharing they can’t really do anything about that except strike. The players are maximizing the uncertainty, not reducing it, and ultimately that will hurt them every bit as much as the owners (if not more).