Baseball’s New Deal Is Still Within Reach

There was a silver lining after the latest blowup in negotiations between the league and union: Talks resumed.

A deal remains in sight for Major League Baseball and its players. It makes no sense to shut the game down over an economic gap as small as $1.3 million per team per year, not when they are fighting over items as small as the qualifying offer compensation draft pick, which applied to only 14 players last year, and an international draft, which has never existed, mostly because of the difficulty in constructing one.

The players didn’t work this hard to win unprecedented economic gains to throw away $20.5 million a day in salary. The owners didn’t step out of their comfort zone on the Competitive Balance Tax to risk their Regional Sports Network commitments.

And that is why through the fog of distrust in which these negotiations have taken place, a golden beam of logic pierced the night Wednesday. And talks resumed.

About 15 minutes after commissioner Rob Manfred, from the corner in which he painted himself, took down another week of regular season games, the union came back with a counterproposal that quickly reignited the dialogue that should lead to a deal—perhaps even by midday Thursday.

MLB lead negotiator Dan Halem and Manfred

Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

Manfred had said weeks ago that most negotiations, however dire, usually pivot on that “one big breakthrough.” Intentionally or not, he may have provided it with his decision early in the night to take down games.

Manfred had kept moving his deadline to do so, not out of malice or trickery but out of an attempt to drain every last day out of the calendar before only ridiculous gerrymandering could save a 162-game season. He reached that point of no return at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Two hours earlier, the owners gave the players an odd multiple-choice option to save the season that linked the draft-pick-from-qualifying-offer compensation and an international draft.

The choices for the players: 1) status quo (the pick stays and no international draft), 2) the trade agreement the owners thought they had in Florida but that the players say never happened (taking the international draft in exchange for dropping the comp pick) or 3) a wacky opt-out mechanism that had no chance of flying (no qualifying offer but giving MLB the right in November to opt out and renegotiate any CBA issue after three years). Manfred said if he did not get a reply by 6 p.m. he was canceling another week of games, according to a source familiar with the proposal.

At 6 p.m., without a replay, Manfred set in motion the mechanics to cancel the games, including a call to update owners and the drafting of a news release. (Manfred did not use the word “cancel” in the release, choosing instead to say “another two series are being removed from the schedule, meaning that Opening Day is postponed until April 14.”)

That breaking point represented only the latest evidence that the owners and players have been engaged in so much gamesmanship—even pettiness at times—that not only do they not trust one another but they also don’t seem to be listening. Every proposal from the owners seems a Trojan horse to the players. Every proposal from the players seems an obfuscation to the owners from the last discussion.

MLB hit the send button on the release at 6:27 p.m. It seemed shockingly early in the night, especially to the union, given two late night sessions in the previous nine days—and given how far the two sides had narrowed the economic gaps. The difference in the two sides’ proposals on the CBT and the pre-arbitration pool was $197 million over the five years of the CBA. That’s $39.4 million per year in a $10.7 billion industry, or four-tenths of one percent of the revenues. That’s $1.3 million per team per year.

About 15 minutes later, the union came back with its counterproposal. It was a clever amalgam of the owners’ multiple-choice question: the two sides had until Nov. 15 to reach an agreement on an international draft (highly unlikely given its scope). Without such an agreement, the qualifying offer returns after the 2022-23 offseason and the international system remains status quo. Players were giving the owners the status quo option, only with the qualifying offer going away one year only in a five-year deal.

It was a brilliant play. At that moment—and with all the work done on economics—a deal never looked so near. And that’s why, upon a bit of scrambling and phone calls, the dialogue restarted Wednesday night between the lead negotiators, Dan Halem and Bruce Meyer. One club source said they could agree to set aside the qualifying offer and international draft to be settled later on a handshake deal.

The deal makes too much sense to abandon. Players have won unprecedented increases in minimum salary and CBT thresholds and a first-ever pre-arb pool to direct more money to the better young players. They get their six-team draft lottery that is designed to curb tanking. They get a DH in the NL. They get their 12-team postseason proposal. They won back much of the economic ground they abandoned in the past CBA.

The owners get a better on-field product to excite fans. They get a pitch timer, bigger bases and a ban on shifts in 2023 and a streamlined process to implement needed further changes to modernize the game. They get revenue from patches on uniforms. They get an expanded postseason, if not as big and as exciting as the one they had on the table.

They even can share the pride of finding the endgame: Manfred in honoring his deadline created urgency, and the union found the right compromise at the right time in its counterproposal.

Hold your applause, though. These two sides have proved the distrust runs so deep a final deal always is further than it appears. The next perceived slight could send the train off the rails again. The lack of trust is an impediment to the kind of partnership needed to truly move the game forward at a time when fans, even once loyal ones, are tuning it out because it is too slow, and the owners and players too often are trashing one another or the product they should be promoting.

But at least in the worst moment of the tempest, reason prevailed. The full season can still be saved. In 1990, for instance, when the two sides settled the lockout, they did not have an agreement on more than 158 games but agreed to find ways to get to 162, which they did. The same can happen again to save the 162-game season. After the commissioner canceled a second week of games, a full season suddenly re-emerged as possible. With the way these talks have gone, it makes perfect sense.