NEWSLETTER
Today, the players and the owners met up for the first time in a week to continue negotiating the expired Collective Bargaining Agreement. If you were hoping for a sense of urgency or chatter about substantial movements toward each others’ positions, you can forget it. Again.
Here’s the early info out there:
Today’s 90-minute meeting between MLB, MLBPA was heated. Some owners and players participated. The MLBPA made moves in two areas: service-time manipulation, and pre-arb bonus pool (dropped request from $105 million to $100 million). TBD when next core economics meeting will be.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) February 1, 2022
On service-time manipulation proposal as well: The MLBPA also newly incorporated (and modified) an element of MLB’s service-time manipulation: potentially rewarding a draft pick to a team
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) February 1, 2022
MLBPA offered changes to its pre-arb pool proposal (dropping demand from 105M to 100M) and reduced number of players who would accrue additional service time under plan to combat service time manipulation, per a league official. Sides met for 90 minutes described as “heated.”
— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) February 1, 2022
MLBPA proposal today covered two areas:
– moving pre arb bonus pool from $105 million to $100 million
– reducing the scope of their service time manipulation proposal to include fewer rookies by WAR who would qualify for a year of service.— Hannah Keyser (@HannahRKeyser) February 1, 2022
Still no luxury tax talk, and again, that feels like the single biggest issue, and one on which the sides are miles apart. So the fact that today’s focus may have been exclusively on two other proposed areas seems not great? The moves on these two issues appear to have been modest, and it’s not clear whether they were tied to a clear bargaining strategy (i.e., “We will move even further on this issue if you move further on that issue”). Maybe more is coming.
Which isn’t to say I blame the players for not moving further on these two issues, by the way. If these are going to be the two primary vehicles to getting younger players paid more money, then it would make sense that they would (1) stick to asking for these methods to be in place, and (2) only move slightly in the numbers when it appears the owners are on board with the ideas, in theory. Don’t forget: the owners are asking for at least two big economic gives in expanded playoffs and uniform patches. So it’s not even just about trying to make things right in a situation where player salaries have started going backward – it’s also about getting players a fair share of new revenues that are coming.
I’m sure there are going to be more details from today’s meeting trickling out, including the nature of how things got “heated,” and anything else the players may have presented. I don’t love that the next meeting was left TBD. It’s already February 1, folks.
The meeting between the Major League Baseball Players Association and MLB is over. Little progress was made. The on-time opening of spring training at this point is in grave danger and, frankly, would take a miraculous deal coming together to rescue. A delay feels inevitable.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 1, 2022
UPDATE: Just to confirm that there was no movement on minimum salaries or the luxury tax today:
There was slight movement in the union's proposals involving the bonus pool and service time, but the two sides remain are far apart. The differences in the minimum salary ($775,000 to $615,000) and luxury tax ($245 million to $214 million) remain unchanged.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) February 1, 2022
