MLB and Union are still far apart on the eve of the deadline

JUPITER, Fla. — Monday is judgment day. At least, from one point of view.

Major League Baseball’s regular season is scheduled to begin on March 31. But after making little progress towards a new labor agreement with the players’ union, the league doubled down with a threat last week, and that start date appears to be in jeopardy.

MLB, who locked out players on December 2, told the union on Wednesday that he was serious about the deadline he had imposed on himself on Monday to reach a new collective agreement to start the 162-game season as planned. If that deadline was missed, the league said, it would begin canceling games, not paying players for those missed games, and not rescheduling them.

So the baseball world, already frozen, waits. Will the 11th hour spur compromise or will the parties remain entrenched? Will MLB follow through on its ultimatum, or could the league’s stance soften in the final hours before the deadline?

Although it occurred entirely during the offseason, this lockout is considered the second-longest work stoppage in baseball history. The longest was the 1994-95 players’ strike, which lost more than 900 games and canceled the 1994 World Series.

Although the union opposed the deadline indicated by MLB, it made its biggest series of moves yet in those negotiations on Saturday, the day spring training games were supposed to start. The union dramatically scaled back its demands for expanded salary arbitration eligibility and changes to the revenue-sharing system, and made changes to the league’s direction on the luxury tax. The players considered this to be a bona fide offer.

But MLB, which has insisted that salary arbitration and revenue sharing are third-rail matters, and therefore any changes to these are not concessions, said the union was not did not go far enough in its proposal on Saturday. And when his negotiating team conveyed that sentiment, the players were furious.

A union official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the negotiations, said the players’ squad were considering breaking off talks. But on Saturday evening, the official said the parties would indeed meet again on Sunday afternoon.

And so the cycle continued. Even when both parties have expressed a bit of optimism Friday on one issue — establishing a draft lottery for the handful of picks in the annual amateur draft, for the first time in MLB history — the union ruled otherwise a day later.

In its counter proposal on Saturday, MLB tied the draw of the first six draft picks — a number closer to the players’ original request of eight — to a 14-team playoff field. The union had agreed to extend the playoffs, but to 12 teams, against 10 currently.

MLB also incorporated player concerns about service time manipulation, but put that issue in a package that included something players didn’t like: the ability to more easily change rules on the field with a 45 days’ notice by a group of nine people. committee majority controlled by the league. This previously required union consent, or it could be done unilaterally with one year’s notice. The proposed carrot for players in exchange for this stick: The league would round up to a full year of service time for any player who finished first or second in voting for the rookie of the year award, an attempt to prevent teams to delay players. appeal of the minor leagues and eventual free agency eligibility, as the Chicago Cubs allegedly did to Kris Bryant.

Despite some minor changes to the luxury tax system on Saturday — MLB slightly lowered some of its most onerous tax rates, while the union slightly lowered some of its higher thresholds — the parties remained distant.

They were also split on the league’s minimum wage ($640,000 vs. $775,000), a bonus pool for top players not yet eligible for salary arbitration ($20 million for 30 players vs. $115 million for 150 players), revenue sharing and the expansion of salary arbitration.

In other words: there’s a long way to go before MLB’s Monday deadline. Earlier this month, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said losing regular season games would be “catastrophicfor the industry. Will Manfred, who is employed by the owners but tasked with being the steward of the game, cancel the games after saying it would be bad for everyone?

While the best players have won record contracts in these last yearsincluding this off seasonbefore the lockout, players are frustrated that their average salary of around $4 million has stagnated and hasn’t kept pace with team revenue.

They also called for other changes, such as obtaining early compensation for younger players (cheaper and more reliable)improving competition between teams, limiting the manipulation of service times and injecting more expenses.

This process was not to be easy. The last two collective agreements are considered to have tipped the balance even further in favor of the owners. So when one party wants to make meaningful changes to the system – the actors – the negotiation can be laborious, tense and full of posturing. And the union has been bailing out its coffers for years for this same fight.

The league, however, believes players have a fair system with no strict salary caps and sees it as a matter of wealth distribution – which star players disproportionately command more than others. While the owners listened to the union and offered ways to pay younger players more, they also offered ways to generate more revenue to pay for it (like expanding the playoffs) and some methods to limit spending elsewhere. (like their stricter luxury tax model).

(To offset MLB’s threat of a delay, the players had previously issued their own threat during those labor negotiations: They told the league they were reluctant to grant club owners expanded playoffs — from worth an estimated $100 million a year – if games and money were taken from them.)

The reason MLB chose Monday as the deadline: It thought a minimum spring training length of four weeks — two weeks shorter than normal — made sense to avoid a spike in injuries like the one that preceded the pandemic-shortened 60-game 2020 regular season. In order to have players and staff in place in Arizona and Florida to begin spring training by Thursday, the league said, a new deal should be in place by Monday.

Among the reasons why the union bristled at this deadline: In 1990, the 32 day lockout cut spring training in half, but the full regular season game schedule was played, starting a week later than usual. And last year, because of the pandemic, MLB offered full pay for a shortened 154-game season that started a month late and included doubleheaders, which players rejected.

Sensing heightened urgency, MLB and union negotiating teams — plus three club owners and a dozen players — met in Jupiter, Fla., all week beginning last Monday. The talks have resulted in a lot of discussion, incremental progress and many questions about what’s next.

Based on base salaries, which totaled just over $3.8 billion last season, players would combine to lose $20.5 million for each day erased from the 186-day regular season schedule, according to calculations by The Associated Press.

How much the owners would lose, however, is murky since their books aren’t as public. But they are billionaires, so a loss of income is less of an issue. In a rare peek into the financial numbers of a successful team, the World Series-winning Atlanta Braves — the only MLB club owned by a publicly traded company — reported a profit of $104 million in 2021. Running a baseball team can be very lucrative, but how much more of that money will players see? And when?

Monday should provide some answers.