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Jeff PassanESPN
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Author of The Hand: Inside the Billion Dollar Secret of Sports’ Most Valuable Commodity.
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association plan to begin negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement Wednesday morning after late-night discussions led to enough progress on a potential deal for the league to delay canceling another regular season game. games.
Nearly 17 hours of negotiations beginning Tuesday morning and ending after 3 a.m. ET resulted in some breakthroughs on the 97th day of the MLB lockout, but the union asked to reconvene with player leaders on Wednesday, according to an MLB spokesperson, before respond to the league’s proposal.
MLB threatened to cancel the second week of the season, which could have serious repercussions at a particularly difficult time for negotiations. The ultimatum from the league that locked players on Dec. 2 was simple: with a new basic deal, players must report to spring training grounds this week, free agents reopen, and a 162-game season follows shortened spring training. which offered players full pay and service time.
Players spent hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning discussing the league’s request for an international draft, an issue that the union has rejected in past negotiations and has not received much support from the rank and file, nearly a third of whom are from Latin America. In addition, players have continued to object to the league’s latest proposal for a competitive balance sheet tax that will start at $230 million in 2022 and end at $242 million in 2026, the sources said.
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Other proposed clauses in the deal gave Tuesday’s game hope that the deal to save the 162-game season and prevent the parties from descending into more labor chaos would come to fruition. The league offered a six-team draft lottery, a 12-team postseason, and a 45-day window for MLB to change the rules on the field, all in line with the union’s previous proposal.
Linking the international draft to the repeal of direct draft pick compensation, in which teams are penalized for draft picks for signing the best free agent, has led the union to consider rethinking the international system of the game, sources said. The international marketplace, which provides an endless supply of talent, is rife with problems, chief among which is that children as young as 12 agree to contracts they cannot sign until they are 16 years old. The league believes the draft will help clean up a system that has historically seen team officials taking kickbacks for signing players and coaches giving teenagers performance-enhancing drugs.
The late night was reminiscent of eight days ago when a 17-hour negotiation session spilled over into the next day amid a deadline set by MLB to cancel regular season games. The parties resumed negotiations hours later, but saw them fall apart before commissioner Rob Manfred canceled the first week of the season.
The MLBPA has said that if the league waives full pay and hours, it will remove the extended playoffs — key to a new core deal for MLB — from its proposal. With the parties unable to reach an agreement on major economic issues for a long time, the potential deduction of a vital benefit for the league and an additional deal clause for the union – full-time work is paramount – will further complicate the discussion.
Length of service considerations are vital for players who achieve salary arbitrage after three full years of service in the big leagues and free agency after six. Players receive a full year of service if they spend 172 days in the major leagues. There are usually 186 days in a season and if more than two weeks of the season is cancelled, the damages service will be part of any further negotiations.
If the parties had agreed on a deal, the second-longest hiatus in baseball history would have ended, and after months of tense negotiations, some semblance of normality would have returned. Baseball is now at its toughest, with new hurdles to overcome as the game tries to find its footing among an increasingly disgruntled fanbase.
Talks intensified on Monday when the league tabled a proposal that eliminated a significant gap in the competitive balance sheet tax, a key issue as the situation peaked. All Tuesday, negotiations continued on a new basic agreement that governs almost every aspect of the game.
Baseball’s mainstream economics was at the center of labor negotiations before international draft discussions joined in. While MLB moved $20 million into the first CBT threshold from its 2021 number, the league has requested a level four to head off runaway spending, sources said. Previously, the three levels of CBT were from the first threshold to $20 million and above, the second from $20 million to $40 million, and the third level from $40 million. The new threshold will penalize teams that exceed the $230 million figure by $60 million or more.
According to sources, among the league’s other offerings:
• A $40 million bonus fund for players who have not yet reached salary arbitration; union seeks $75 million
• Minimum wage starts at $700,000 and increases to $770,000 by the fifth year.
• Shortened window for MLB to unilaterally make rule changes, including pitching hours, no changing defenses, and larger bases in the 2023 season.
• For the first time, player uniforms with patches on jerseys and stickers on helmets.
• National League Accepts Designated Hitter
• Encouraging draft picks to prevent manipulation of pitching times.
• Limit to five times a player can be selected to the minor leagues in one season.
Negotiations for a new base agreement began last year and have been slowly moving towards the expiration of its previous version on December 1st. Little progress had been made by the league and union in previous months, with Manfred locking out players just after midnight on December 2. A 43-day break in negotiations followed, and by the time the scheduled start of spring training in mid-February came around, the gap between the parties’ financial positions was wide enough to raise the chance of losing regular season games.
Manfred’s cancellation of Opening Day a week ago angered players who, after 2016 talks with major economic repercussions, were determined to make significant financial gains beyond 2022. Player salaries have declined over the past four seasons despite rising revenues, peaking at $10.7 billion in 2019. The significant increase in the value of the franchise, which has almost quadrupled over the last two base agreements, has become a rallying cry for players.
At the same time, the league, happy with the current economic system, has pushed back the huge profits players were hoping for. While potential guarantees for younger players are in the region of $100 million, the no-restriction system allows teams to spend less on older players to balance the additional costs.