More Marathon CBA Negotiations Push Back “Real” Deadline to Play 162 Games
Remember back on March 1, when Rob Manfred canceled Major League Baseball’s March 31 Opening Day and the first week of games? And the week before that, when a league spokesperson threatened that canceled games would not be rescheduled, saying, “A deadline is a deadline. Missed games are missed games. Salary will not be paid for those games”? Apparently that wasn’t the real deadline to fit a full 162-game season into the calendar. No — and we’ll pause here so as to be heard over the sound of goalposts being dragged — that deadline was apparently Tuesday, and it’s been extended yet again. After lawyers for the league and the union huddled on Monday, MLB offered its latest formal proposal, and the two sides went back and forth for over 17 hours on Tuesday before pausing around 2:30 AM ET on Wednesday morning so that the union could speak to its board and respond with a counterproposal.
The two sides have converged on monetary issues, but significant gaps remain both there and on other matters, most notably the international draft. It’s possible that a deal could come Wednesday… or that the whole thing could fall apart, with more finger-pointing, and Manfred announcing the cancellation of more games.
Before digging into the details, it’s worth noting again that the length of the season and the ramifications that carries for salaries, incentives, and service time isn’t something that Major League Baseball can decide unilaterally. It’s subject to negotiation, which was why the passage of the March 1 deadline felt so significant, as any attempt to shorten the season would add another layer of complexity to the already contentious proceedings. Complicating matters — or calling the league’s bluff, depending upon how one looks at it — the union has indicated that anything less than pay and service time based on 162 games could mean that they won’t approve an expanded playoff format for 2022.
For at least one more day, a doomsday scenario would appear to be on hold, with the example of the 1990 lockout looming large. That year, the owners locked the players out of spring training for 32 days; the resulting settlement included an Opening Day pushed back by a week, a season end date extended by three days, and all but two of the 26 teams playing 162 games. Via doubleheaders — perhaps of the seven-inning game variety, though there’s no official word on that — and reshuffled off days, a similar resolution appears possible:
If an agreement is reached today, the tentative plan is for Opening Day to be April 6-7, with the regular season extended by three days. The other missed games from the week-long delay would be made up in doubleheaders during the season.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) March 9, 2022
Via The Score’s Travis Sawchik, MLB’s proposal was reportedly based on a 12-team playoff format, with no ghost wins. The players have indicated a willingness to consider 14 teams, but only if the format includes ghost wins so as to incentivize winning the division as opposed to qualifying as a Wild Card. A ghost win grants the division winner the equivalent of a 1-0 advantage in a best-of-three or best-of-five series. More from Sawchik:
A 12-team playoff creates 4 tiers of playoff teams:
*No. 1 seed – bye, home field (+ a re-seed advantage?)
*No. 2 seed – bye
*Top wild cards (home field in WC round)
*Lower WCs (nothing and like it!)
(A 14-team playoff only creates 3 tiers)https://t.co/M8VuFqfCAD— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) March 9, 2022
In their previous proposal, MLB had tied the size of their pre-arbitration bonus pool and minimum salary offers to that of the playoff field. Presumably that’s still the case, though again the numbers are converging. As with last week, before summarizing where things stand with the major issues under negotiation, it’s worth applying the caveat that the league leaked its side of things to the media in time for the next day’s news cycle, with the players, wary of being pressured into accepting an agreement in the wee hours, hitting the pause button before responding and likely to counter with a proposal illustrating that substantial hurdles remain, and that an agreement may not in fact be so imminent. Once more, with feeling…
Competitive Balance Tax
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich reported that on Monday the league proposed higher CBT thresholds than before. On Tuesday, they raised them slightly further, with a starting point of $230 million (up from $220 million in their March 1 offer, and $210 million last year, a one-year jump of 9.5%) and an ending point of $242 million (up from $230 million in their March 1 offer, a gain of 15.2% over the five-year term). While those start and endpoints are still lower than those of the union’s March 1 proposal — which were reiterated on March 6 — for the first time the twain have met, sort of: the players proposed a $238 million threshold for 2022, rising to $263 million in ’26, an increase of 25.2% over the life of the CBA.
Drellich characterized the owners’ CBT offer as having “strings attached.” One of those is the creation of a fourth tier that kicks in when a team goes $60 million or more above the base level in a given year, as a means of deterring owners determined to outspend other teams. That’s in addition to the base rate and then surcharges on amounts at least $20 million and at least $40 million above the threshold. The tax rates for the new structure aren’t known, but in their March 1 proposals, both sides had been working with the previous CBA’s marginal tax rates: 20% on the first $20 million over the threshold, 32% on the next $20 million, and 62.5% on anything above $40 million. Expect a rate that’s even higher to apply to that top tier.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold termed the new tier the Cohen Balance Tax, after Mets owner Steve Cohen, whose roster already has 11 players whose total salary for CBT purposes surpasses $203 million, with RosterResource estimating its total payroll after signing its arbitration-eligible players at $271 million, and further additions (a fifth starter? another outfielder?) still possible once the transaction freeze ends. The new tier is clearly also aimed at the Dodgers, who finished 2021 with a $285.6 million payroll for tax purposes and were one of only two teams penalized (the Padres were the other). With $176 million worth of AAVs already committed to 13 players and an estimated tax payroll of $233 million, they’re almost certainly headed higher as well given their need for starting pitching, Clayton Kershaw or otherwise.
Pre-Arbitration Bonus Pool
An additional string, according to Drellich, is the counting of pre-arbitration bonus pool money against the CBT threshold. The owners boosted their proposed pool money to $40 million, up from $30 million in their March 1 proposal, but still well short of the $80 million proposed by the players on March 6 (down from a high of $115 million in late February). That $40 million amount would remain flat over the life of the CBA, meaning that its actual value would decrease over time.
The bonus pool money comes out to $1.33 million per team and would count as part of their payroll for tax purposes. As best I can tell, it had not previously been reported whether the bonus money would count against the CBT threshold; perhaps that’s been the case all along. Regardless, some teams might wind up getting more bang for their buck, as in more than $1.33 million in bonus money for their players, and given how few teams are likely to cross the threshold in a given year, most of that money would be inconsequential for tax purposes — but it could reduce the wiggle room of teams nearing the salary cap, er, tax threshold.
Minimum Salary
In its proposal, MLB once again inched towards the union in terms of the minimum salary, leaving relatively little ground between them. The owners offered a starting point of $700,000 for 2022, the same as in their March 1 proposal, and up 22.7% from last year’s $570,500. Instead of growing by $10,000 per year to $740,000 by the end of the CBA, the minimum under their plan would grow to $770,000, making for a 35% increase relative to the end of the last CBA. In the players’ March 1 proposal, they offered a starting point of $725,000 (a 27.1% increase from last year), increasing by $20,000 per year to $805,000, for an overall gain of 41.1%.
Draft Lottery
MLB’s latest proposal calls for the top six picks to be included in this anti-tanking effort, one more than their previous proposal. Via Drellich and Ken Rosenthal, in MLB’s version, small-market teams would be allowed to participate in the lottery for two straight years before sliding to the 10th pick, while large-market teams would only be able to do so for one year before sliding to 10th.
Service Time Manipulation
Via Drellich and Rosenthal, MLB is offering incentives to discourage service time manipulation that are tied to awards voting, though the full details aren’t known. The top two finishers in each league’s Rookie of the Year voting would be granted a full year of service time, and teams bringing up players for Opening Day would be able to “net 3 draft picks over time, one pick per year, if that player does well in voting.” While I can’t speak for other BBWAA voters, and in fact haven’t voted for any of the major seasonal awards yet (unlike colleagues Dan Szymborski and David Laurila), tying a player’s compensation to such a vote isn’t something I’d be particularly comfortable with. That said, such a system would have sent Kris Bryant into free agency after the 2020 season despite the Cubs keeping him down just long enough in ’15 to forestall his reaching six years of service time. It would also have rewarded the Mets for promoting Pete Alonso to be their Opening Day first baseman in 2019 (not that a September call-up the year before wasn’t merited).
Rule Changes
The players have agreed to grant the commissioner the power to unilaterally implement three specific rule changes for 2023 with 45 days of notice instead of one year, namely a pitch clock, larger bases, and restrictions to the defensive shift. Note that the list does not include the automated strike zone, which will be tested at the Triple-A level this year. The 45 days of notice would apply to the offseason; the league could not change the rules in-season.
Qualifying Offer and International Draft
MLB proposed removing the qualifying offer system, something the players have long viewed as a major drag on free agency, but tied that provision to acceptance of an international draft, which the players have opposed in the past and which is hardly a minor issue, or even an equivalent one. Indeed, the whole framework for the emergent agreement could hinge upon such a draft.
Updating a few details reported by MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince on Saturday with more recent reporting from The Athletic’s Maria Torres, the draft would be 20 rounds, with over 600 picks including competitive balance selections. It would have slot values that would guarantee a signing bonus amount, starting at $5.5 million for the top pick, comparable to the 2021 slot value for the seventh pick in the domestic amateur draft, and totaling $181 million. Via Torres, “the bottom 100 slots in the international draft would be allocated about $3.3 million, for an average of [$33,000]. Per MLB calculations, an average of $1.78M was spent on the bottom 100 bonuses” in 2019-20 and ’20-21.
Additionally, teams would have the ability to trade picks, and the draft order wouldn’t be tied to team records; rather, each team would be randomly assigned to a group of six that would rotate through the draft order over the five years of the CBA. Updating figures that Castrovince cited with more current ones from the latest proposal, MLB estimates that this system would represent an increase of $23 million in international spending above the $166 million spent in 2020-21. There would be no limit on the number of undrafted players who could sign after the draft in the $50,000 to $100,000 range for as much as $20,000; the league estimates that would add an additional $9 million worth of spending.
The international draft is a very tricky area. The status quo — which includes handshake agreements regarding kids as young as 12 years old and is rife with corruption, coercion, exploitation, and PED use — isn’t good, but the union’s reservations about cost controls aren’t unfounded. The MLBPA has looked to its Latin American players for guidance. From ESPN’s Marly Rivera:
https://twitter.com/MarlyRiveraESPN/status/1501570678549590017
Fernando Tatis Jr. is among the players speaking out on the issue:
https://twitter.com/hgomez27/status/1501545530656186369
Newly-elected Hall of Famer David Ortiz, a native of the Dominican Republic, outlined his issues with such a draft to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The whole thread is worthwhile, but the take-home is the slugger’s belief that implementing such a system immediately would be difficult and ill-advised:
“The system in the Dominican is not ready to have a draft next year. The Dominican is not the U.S. You can’t snap a finger and everything lines up to operate the right way. We’ve got a new president who’s trying to improve things. We need to do this slowly.
“Taking time — that makes more sense. OK, guys, let’s keep up this pace to do it three, four years from now. We sit down with the big-time players. We listen to what they have to say. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right. Rushing it like this is not right.”
… “I understand MLB wants to have control over everything they do, but you’re not going to change the system overnight.”
Newsday’s Tim Healey reported that the league would look to implement the draft starting in 2024.
As Nightengale put it on Wednesday morning, the draft “appears to be the last big remaining obstacle to reach a labor deal today.” Again with the caveat that the union may still have very strong feelings about the gaps that need to be closed in other areas, and that this whole thing could still fall apart and result in more cancellations and more acrimony, there’s room for some optimism regarding a deal. Let us hope that it does not prove to be unfounded.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Excellent info, thanks Jay. If they kept the QO, and didn’t implement the draft this time, I wonder if a deal still gets done?
Seems like it should based on how everyone is framing the negotiations. I doubt that happens though, and would be shocked if we don’t see an international draft coming up. The PA has shown time and again that they are willing to sacrifice things that affect amateurs and minor leaguers to get other things that benefit players already in the union. (And, really, why shouldn’t they be willing to do that? Those guys aren’t in the union – it’s not really the PA’s responsibility to look out for them. Minor leaguers should probably be in the union, or at least *a* union, and potential draftees should probably belong to some sort of collective unit w/ leadership in place to negotiate on their behalf before they are drafted, but they aren’t and so any negotiation between MLB and the MLBPA will inevitably end up in situations like this.). I don’t think the draft has ever really been anything other than a bargaining chip in the minds of the union leaders.
The MLBPA has shown they will sell away the rights of amateurs, however, there is a complicating factor this time. The MLBPA has a very heavy Latin American influence, and that base doesn’t want to see a draft implemented. MLB has been attempting to implement an international draft all this century with no luck. They’re going about it the wrong way, IMO. This quite a bit more complicated than the North American amateur draft. They should engage in one-on-one discussions with the MLBPA and its Latin American leaders to see if there’s an acceptable path. Trying to force it through at the last moment isn’t a good strategy.
MLB would have found another reason to cancel games. They don’t want to play because it means having to pay players.
Perhaps they’re trying to shoe-horn too much into this CBA. Maybe kick the can on the International Draft until the next CBA (five years from now), which would give MLB the necessary amount of time to get it set up properly.
Why is the sporting world acting surprised that the deadline gets moved? The issuance of a deadline is leverage, and the offer to change or revoke it is incentive. I am sure coming to the table with an offer to not cut games (and by extension payroll) after all helped things along this week, just as the threat to big things down with an argument over prorated pay would’ve as well. It irks me when people pretend they don’t know basic negotiating tactics in order to portray behavior as erratic or sinister.
Big
Bog oh my god iPhone learn that bog is a word
I had a professor who used to say: “If you lead a man to the gallows, if nothing else you focus his attention.”
I never for a second took MLB’s game cancellation announcement seriously. I don’t know why anyone would.
Feels like a deal gets done this week. The numbers are just too close at this point to piss away games and revenue.
I’d love to see it but they’re still 40 mil apart on pre arb guys and the owners want an extra punishments for “excessive spending” and the players have been holding off on the international draft since ‘02. I think we’re a month plus away at least from a deal sadly.
It’s worth noting that these leaks that “numbers are close” have consistently been refuted by various people on the MLBPA side. Having stuff count against the CBT in exchange for raising the CBT is…not really progress.
Raising their offer by 10M with 1.33M counting against that $10M feels like progress.
It’s looking pretty grim at this point. I don’t know how the two sides can be up all night negotiating, and the proposal that is submitted today is viewed as a non-starter. The only thing that makes sense is that the MLBPA, probably very naively, thought they could squeeze a bit more out of it if MLB was motivated to make a deal today. Either that or the negotiators went back to their board and got read the riot act. The closer we get to the actuality of cancelled games, the more likely this is going to turn into a legit cluster, because there’s zero chance MLB offers to pay for games not played, and zero chance players accept a paycut on top of a CBA they’re already unhappy with.
The international draft would be bad overall imo. For one, why can’t players negotiate an overslot bonus? And why do they deserve less money than the domestic players? True they don’t have as much leverage, but it feels like even more exploitation. The introduction of a hard cap was a major exploit. Top players in the class used to get 10M-15M or so, now the top player gets about 4M. Same with the domestic draft. The top player used to get 10M-15M, not anymore. This feels like one step too far. Can we do something for amateurs that doesn’t screw them over? It probably happens anyways, but tbh I’m tired of amateurs getting thrown under the bus. The domestic draft is so much more boring now. Before caps, that highly touted high schooler taken in the 11th round might’ve signed. These days, they almost always go to college.
I actually think the international pool money setup is working really well – it is an asset teams can trade, and it a way that smaller market teams can sometimes actually have more spending leverage than larger ones. Lots of examples recently of the smaller teams hoarding pool money and getting the big ticket L.A. players, as a legit way to fill out a farm. So I don’t think it’s anything to do with competitive balance. It’s mostly about sticking it to the international players by taking away most of their leverage by having them only bargain with one team.
Asset is used loosely here tbh. It’s often traded for a reliever or a throw in on a trade or something. 500k in international money just doesn’t have much value and neither with draft picks (if allowed to trade). You’re right about them sticking it to international players though. Same way they stuck it to domestic players in the Rule 4 draft. I’ll never forgive the MLBPA for making the draft boring. The draft is now take 2-3 overslot guys, hope to sign one, maybe two. I’m a big fan of the minor leagues so it really took the air out of the draft and a large part of my enjoyment. The good thing is that teams have gotten so good at player development they’re hitting on more mid round guys than ever before.
Giving people special privileges based on where they live is discrimination that’s only a couple steps away from giving privileges based on race. Either everybody is draft eligible, or nobody.
Also, Maria Torres tweeted that the undrafted players could sign for up to 20k. 50k-100k would be way too much for the owners to agree to.
I cannot believe the owners are holding this up when they’ve already won. Apparently, winning isn’t enough.
Agreed 100%. Draft pick compensation means basically nothing to the owners. The international draft means a lot. Very few teams spend a lot in the DR and now they want to centralize the entire thing so teams can basically have maybe one scout in the DR and have draft capital to trade from. It’s so obvious what’s going on. Teams just really want to cut costs. They’re going to spend the same amount of money on bonuses but will save money overall by having draft capital to use and they won’t have to build out a scouting program. Literally everything is a cost cutting measure.
I actually disagree with that. Dan Szymborski made some good points about this on Effectively Wild this week – getting the bonus pool in place is a big deal, as is setting the precedent of an escalating CBT threshold. The players can’t reasonably expect to get everything they’ve lost in prior CBAs back at once, but there are at least a couple significant things they’re fighting for at this point, while what the owners are proposing is more or less status quo, save for expanded playoffs which has basically been inevitable for the last few years.
The problem with the bonus pool is now they have to negotiate for an increase in the bonus pool every single CBA. Compare that with moving arbitration a year earlier. That completely changes the situation because the salaries will go up naturally over time. So now, in addition to negotiating to increase minimum salaries and the CBT, they also have to negotiate increasing this too.
OTOH the expanded playoffs is a pretty big deal since it’s become clear that’s something the owners care disproportionately compared to other things.
The more I think about the pre-arbitration pool, the more I think it’s a decent win for the players because it’s going to suppress the practice of signing players to team-friendly extensions. If the best young players get more money earlier, potentially getting them closer to that “set for life” number, whatever that is for the particular player, the less likely they’ll be to sign away free agent years. And more players reaching free agency means a bigger share of $ for the players.
I guess it really depends on how much money the players get on a yearly basis, but I agree I could easily see the bonus money allowing players to be more comfortable with playing it out to free agency. The same could be said for a CBT that rises significantly across a CBA.
If a player gets a bonus 3 years in a row, say he gets 500k per year extra, when he is Arb eligible will he get a raise based on his base salary ~$700k or his salary + bonus $1.2 mil?
That is a good question.
After that update by Rosenthal I bet talks break off again and another week of games are canceled.
If the owners cancel games based off tiny differences in CBT and international draft, they deserve to lose fans and money. They could’ve given the players everything they wanted in the first proposal and come out way ahead. That’s how much damage the owners have done against the players in the past few CBAs.
The players negotiated and signed each of those agreements. It’s called the Collective Bargaining Agreement. If you and I negotiate a deal and later on, you’re unhappy with it, is that my fault? If you want to allege that damage was done, then you’d be more accurate in saying the players did the damage to themselves when they agreed to the deals.
This isn’t about anything for the owners other than breaking the union.
Every time the players reduce their demands, MLB come up with a new demand. It reinforces my view that MLB wants to miss some games and have a shorter season.
Fewer games=less pay and less service time.
And now games are canceled through April 14. Maybe they come back at the end of April when the owners start worrying about giving money back to their TV partners. And it hasn’t ended up in the legal system yet, at which point the timelines would be totally off. But I’m telling you, when anonymous sources say they’re close to a deal, you’d be wise to take that with a grain of salt. You can’t measure the gap between the two parties in money anymore, because the owners are hellbent on proving that they are the boss and the players are hellbent on proving that they can’t be pushed around.