Cleveland Baseball Insider

Instead of Negotiating, MLB Owners Remain Intent on Turning Fans Against Players

Major League Baseball owners on Monday gave a new proposal to the players, a proposal that included a 76-game season, paying the players 75 percent of a prorated salary. While the fight goes on, fans continue to turn on the game that many love, and it's going to be hard to get those fans back.
Casey Drottar|
Instead of Negotiating, MLB Owners Remain Intent on Turning Fans Against Players
Instead of Negotiating, MLB Owners Remain Intent on Turning Fans Against Players

There was a time when baseball represented a potential light at the end of a tunnel. The country was knee-deep in adversity the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. Life was paused amid a brutal pandemic, unemployment skyrocketed.

Yet, baseball appeared to be on the horizon. America’s pastime was going to give people their first desperately needed sense of normalcy.

It feels like that dream occurred decades ago. In the time since, all those positive thoughts and hopes have been destroyed by an ongoing, disastrous money dispute between MLB and the players union.

And whose fault is it? Who’s to blame for the mess we’ve watched unfold over the past month?

The players, obviously.

At least, that’s what league owners are selling you. Every economic proposal they’ve made seems designed to create that response. Throughout this entire ordeal, MLB owners have been strategically throwing out unappealing offers to the MLBPA, offers which do nothing but create fan animosity towards players after they unsurprisingly reject them.

In fact, if we’ve learned anything from this “negotiation process,” it’s that the owners’ main goal appears to be getting fans to turn on their own players.

Take the latest offer the league proposed today, first reported by Karl Ravech of ESPN.

75% prorated salary for 76 games played? Sounds decent on the surface, right? A clear sign owners are willing to negotiate for the cause?

Not quite.

The offer actually only guarantees players 50% of their prorated pay. It could go up to 75%, provided a postseason takes place. However, when you do the math, you realize the owners did very little when it comes to meeting players in the middle.

Essentially, the owners provided what appeared to be another deal complete with notable cuts in player pay, and did so under the guise of “offering a new proposal.” The players, understandably, aren’t thrilled.

This has been the running theme throughout the continually heated talks between owners and the union. The former presents an offer which fans view as a willingness to negotiate, and the latter rejects it. Upon doing so, players are criticized by fans who think they’re just being greedy.

It’s exactly the response the owners want to see.

They want players taking the heat. They want fans pressuring them into accepting an unfavorable offer. They want to be painted as the people who are just trying to bring baseball back to America.

And they’ve made this blatantly obvious since the very beginning of the process.

Remember, owners approved a return-to-play proposal on May 11. They wanted to get the season kicked off around Fourth of July, with spring training restarting on June 10.

Then, they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Sure, MLB addressed safety protocols with the union (though recent updates now cast doubt on just how thoroughly the league planned to follow through on them). A revenue sharing plan was also teased, only to be wholeheartedly rejected by players before it was officially proposed.

Eventually, owners made their economic pitch.

On May 26th.

The league took over two weeks to finally propose its desired salary structure. A structure filled with such significant cuts that no owner truly could have believed the players would sign off on it. MLB waited until 15 days before the planned spring training start date to make the first pay proposal, and a ludicrous one at that.

Naturally, MLBPA rejection of this offer was met with fan vitriol. Again, players were chastised for hindering the return of sports. Again, they were called greedy, told it was selfish to be fighting over millions when a large percentage of the population was currently unemployed.

Again, it was exactly what owners wanted. They used the calendar to their advantage, slow-playing their delivery under the assumption players would feel pressured to accept it.

The fact is, MLB doesn’t see the crisis the country is enduring as a reason to start good faith negotiations with players. No, instead, the league has weaponized it.

The league sees fans’ desire to get sports back, to have a welcome distraction from the madness taking place outside their front doors, and is using it as leverage. If MLB is the one making the offers, it's the good guy. If the players keep rejecting, they’re the ones who are misreading the room, who are only thinking of themselves.

Why else would MLB keep offering the same thing repeatedly?

Why else would owners hear the players' demands and refuse to even budge towards them?

Why else would they waste valuable time doing all this, never once presenting something that could at least get the ball rolling?

From their perspective, they’re just out here trying to get a deal done. Said deal is always the same, more or less. The perception, though, is that they’re working hard to get you your baseball. It’s the players who keep stonewalling things.

Heck, even the potential 48-game schedule is looking less like a threat and more like what we’ll back into thanks to this never-ending mess.

The owners will claim they did everything they could, that they wanted to play as much baseball as possible, but the players were too unreasonable. Blame them for this bargain-brand season.

It would be yet another entry in the league’s unchanging playbook. Re-frame a bad offer to present the illusion of good faith negotiating, set the table for players receiving blame upon their rejecting it.

Are the players blameless here? No. They’ve been pushed around for years, sure, but they decided to finally take a stand at the absolute worst possible time.

Still, this doesn't change the narrative.

League owners have spent the past few months crying poor, claiming players need to help absorb the losses, selling the idea of a biblical financial blow without offering any proof. It’s a blatantly obvious tactic, one which they won’t feel compelled to ditch. Not if every rejection creates more animosity aimed at players.

The owners want you to think they feel your pain. They want you to believe they see the hellscape unfolding across the country, and view it as motivation to start baseball season.

In reality, they’re using said hellscape to their benefit, because it allows them to present the same offer in a different shade of gray and still point fingers at the players when it gets turned down again.

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Casey Drottar
CASEY DROTTAR

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