Talks for the hope of a 2020 baseball season seem to have taken a major step backward as the tension between the MLBPA and MLB escalates even further.
What’s happening?
The Players Association feels as if it is fighting an uphill battle against MLB and team owners who may be trying to sway the public to support them over revenue and salary talks. The leaking of an email between the two sides over wage discussions for the season was leaked to the New York Post.
Players union in internal memo says it is “livid” over so-called smoking gun MLB email becoming public in NY Post and is an attempt by MLB at “railroading” players. Union memo also noted it requested paperwork from MLB it has yet to receive March 13. So tension persists.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) May 21, 2020
The players union memo, which was obtained here, begins thusly (and ominously) … “As MLB misinformation continues to be pushed out through the media and various club personnel, we wanted to provide some straightforward facts for player reference …” (cont for their facts)
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) May 21, 2020
The union believes that an agreement was reached earlier this year that would pay players pro-rated salaries for the season. In other words players would get paid for the number of games they played in the season, so with the season being shrunk to 82 games players would receive half of what they were supposed to be paid for the year.
However, MLB and owners recently came to the table seeking new terms to that deal approving of a plan to split revenue from the season equally between themselves and the players. Of course this didn’t sit well with the Players Association who rejected such a plan. MLB claims that the union knew before an agreement was made that salaries would have to be reconsidered if fans were not allowed to be in attendance.
Senior director of collective bargaining for the Players Association, Bruce Meyer came out against MLB saying that the contract clearly states that players would receive paid pro-rated salaries with or without fans.
“That the Commissioner’s office has claimed it needs additional salary concessions should not be surprising to anybody. But there’s a difference between what they are entitled to and what they want. The fact is that the league has conceded that they will be better off economically playing a season than not playing a season.”
What does this mean for the future?
This doesn’t bode well for either side moving forward with the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) scheduled to end after the 2021 season. Crossing the players and making them seem like public enemy number 1 to the public won’t end well for MLB once they have to work on a new CBA.
While MLB claims it would lose around $4 billion if the season was played without fans and most of its revenue would go to the players if a new agreement isn’t made, the way they are handling things now could lead to an even bigger loss later down the line. The players won’t forget this struggle and could eventually go on strike in 2022 and beyond.
Overall, this doesn’t look good for the future of baseball, especially Dodger baseball.
