This week, the MLB Player’s Association and the league submitted their preliminary proposals to formally kick off the much-anticipated (much-dreaded?) collective bargaining agreement negotiations. Not surprisingly, this has sparked a lot of discussion, as fans dissect not only the proposals themselves, but the statements issued by both sides in response to the other’s proposal.
Already, a lot of digital ink has been spilled about the two proposals, highlighting the vast distance between the two sides.
What I want to do instead, though, is not to talk about these pitches themselves, but rather how they compare to the original proposals that kickstarted the negotiations five years ago.
In both years, the Player’s Association began the negotiations. Five years ago, in May 2021, the MLBPA submitted their initial proposal to the league. While the exact proposal was never published, Evan Drellich reported the following later that year:
But the union has proposed that players become eligible for arbitration after two years, instead of three. It also has again proposed a change to draft order, increases in the minimum salary, raises in the CBT, changes to revenue sharing, changes to the way service time is calculated, and bonuses for players who have yet to reach arbitration. Under certain circumstances, some players would be able to reach free agency sooner than six years, as well.
This time around, we have a bit more specifics (this list has been compiled from The Athletic’s and MLB Trade Rumors’ posts on the subject):
- changing revenue sharing that guarantees small market teams receive $240 million in revenue, but simultaneously incentivizes winning by offering financial bonuses for on-the-field success
- increasing the first level of the luxury tax, which in essence serves as a soft cap, to $300 million, and eliminating non-monetary penalties for going over
- creating a competitive integrity tax, set at $150 million, that in essence serves as a soft floor
- doubling the minimum salary to $1.5 million
- setting a minimum salary for arbitration-eligible players at $3 million
- increasing the pre-arbitration pool from $50 million to $180 million
- allowing players to hit free agency at the age of 30 if they have five years of service time; teams would be able to get a sixth year at the current qualifying offer, in a manner similar to the NFL’s franchise tag
- doubling the number of players who receive Super-Two status
- eliminating the qualifying offer
Conceptually, nothing has changed from the last go-round — which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, considering the fact that the last round of CBA negotiations ended up primarily making minor tweaks to the system.
On the other hand, the league has, for the second round of negotiations in a row, proposed to completely overhaul the league’s financial system. In the same article from September 2021 posted quoted above, Drellich outlined the league’s initial proposal, which was never formally published, but whose details were leaked to the press:
The league proposed to effectively send the luxury-tax threshold in the other direction, to $180 million; to increase the penalties for exceeding it as well; but to also implement a soft floor, a penalty for teams who do not spend at least $100 million. The league also proposed to eliminate salary arbitration in favor of a predetermined pool of money to be distributed to players. Under MLB’s proposal, players would become free agents once they hit age 29 1/2, which might help some players who would otherwise have become free agents later, but hurt the best players who presumably would, under the current system, become free agents younger. (Players would also be walking out into a market where teams might be less inclined to spend than they are now, because the CBT threshold would be lower and the penalties for exceeding it would be higher.) The league this year also proposed that a team could not pick in the top five of the draft three years in a row, and has again has proposed an international draft.
Unlike the players’ union, the league did not publish their initial proposal, but according to The Athletic and MLB Trade Rumors, it looks something like this:
- a 50/50 split of the revenue between the league and the players (player salaries would be increased/shrunk proportionally depending on end-of-year revenues)
- a salary cap set at $245 million, with a floor set at $171 million
- the centralization of local broadcast revenue, distributed equally among teams
- no apparent changes to free agency, service time, or other related issues
The details may differ, but in the end, the league is fighting for the exact same thing they were five years ago: the elimination of the free market and the lowering of salaries, using competitive balance as a cover. There are two big differences, though. First of all, the league is dropping the charade and asking for a hard cap, instead of proposing prohibitively intense luxury tax penalties designed to let it serve as a de facto hard cap while technically being a soft cap. Second, and arguably more interesting, is the fact that the owners made a proposal at all.
Five years ago, the players submitted their initial proposal in May, while the league waited until August. The MLBA then followed up after the World Series, and while the two sides did meet a few times over the month of November, the league not only never budged from its initial proposal, but inserted last-minute demands designed to guarantee that the CBA would expire without a deal. Ultimately, the details didn’t really matter: the league wanted a lockout, and so they engaged in delaying tactics, because they thought they could break the power of the union. This time around, though, the league has taken more of the initiative, which tells me that they would like to avoid a lockout.
Over the next six months, we’re certainly going to have more detailed analyses of the CBA negotiations as they go on. For now, though, we’re pretty much back to where we started in May 2021 — just with a tiny bit more urgency from the owners. Where will we end up? Only time will tell.
