Reason for Optimism: Labor Talks Progressed for Once
Every day I scroll through several Twitter posts saying how much someone misses baseball. While there isn’t a real threat of lost games today, that threat becomes real as we start drifting into February. With every email I receive from the Chicago Cubs about Spring Training tickets and Group Sales – the more I ponder a summer without (or limited) baseball.
Fans, and players alike, were fearing the worse when the owners didn’t want to meet for more than a month after they officially declared the lockout. When the two sides finally did meet, things didn’t go so well. That was until today.
The meeting between the Major League Baseball Players Association and MLB is over. There is not a deal, nor did anyone expect one. Union made a broad proposal that included removing pieces of its past offers.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 24, 2022
The good news: They’re meeting again tomorrow. Passes for progress.
Not only was there a “spirited” dialog between the two sides, but planning to meet two days in a row isn’t just perceived progress – it is progress.
Early reports have suggested that the MLBPA removed some items from their “ask” and the biggest one is rather revealing. Per Evan Drellich of The Athletic (paywall), the MLBPA dropped their ask to allow players to hit free agency before six years of service time. I recommended this previously in articles, but often times the first thing that is dropped in labor talks is the piece that affects the smallest and lowest paid part of the union. Unfortunately, players in their first six years of service time account for the smallest and lowest paid portion of the union.
The union had proposed that some players would earn free agency when they hit 30.5 years old, and eventually that age would lower to 29.5. This was a non-starter for the owners, which perhaps by the union’s gesture it helped conversations move along and for them to schedule a second meeting tomorrow.
Another concession the union made was to the planned altering of revenue sharing. The owners have kept what they actually earn a secret for years. While Forbes puts together a pretty fair estimate on revenues annually, they are really using MLB or team vendor reports and information, and pretty good guesstimates to put their figures together. It isn’t a perfect science, and there’s really no way of validating the figures published. Making any changes with revenue sharing would likely require the owners to open their books, something that likely never would have happened anyway.
The players did turn down the owner’s proposal from the last meeting, and MLB owners are expected to provide a counter when the sides meet tomorrow.
There are still 100 miles to go, however, this should be looked at as a good step in the right direction. In an alternate universe where COVID didn’t happen and COVID didn’t wipe out 100 games from every team’s calendar in 2020, this lockout would – no doubt – cancel games in 2022. The owners would have put their stake in the mountain and wouldn’t budge. The players would likely have given up far more than they thought they would, and we would very likely see another work stoppage as soon as this CBA was over.
Check out the BetRivers sports betting app today.
