Fed-up players might be willing to walk
Tanking, luxury tax and service-time suppression could lead to a labour stoppage
Labour peace has prevailed in baseball for 25 years, with major-league players and ownership getting rich in the years after an eight-month work stoppage cancelled the 1994 World Series and imperiled the 1995 season.
The players enjoyed an even longer streak, enjoying more than four decades of salary gains since Marvin Miller guided the MLB Players’ Association into its first collective bargaining agreement with owners.
But that streak has ended. And so, too, might a quarter-century without a work stoppage. After two winters of free agency in which veterans have been pushed to the margins and superstars have had to wait to receive what they feel is fair market value, the players are fixing for a fight.
The current collective bargaining agreement doesn’t expire until 2021. But the conditions players feel are suppressing their earning power — a luxury tax that serves as a de facto salary cap, a heavy reliance on analytics that leads to wage suppression, a segment of ownership disincentivized and perhaps ambivalent about winning — aren’t going away.
“Right now, there’s going to be a strike, 100 per cent, after ’21,” Philadelphia reliever Pat Neshek said.
“The players have been talking about, for the last couple of years, putting money aside and I think we’re going to be ready for a fight.
“We’re willing to go multiple years and I don’t know if (owners) are willing to sacrifice.”
Neshek, 39, who expects he’ll retire — or be forced into it — after the 2020 season, joins Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright in his explicit use of the s-word, a tack many players don’t necessarily agree with.
But virtually all agree that current conditions are untenable.
While industry revenues topped $10 billion (U.S.) in 2018, average salaries remained flat and the players’ percentage of revenue continued to fall, all while clubs have been shy handing out long-term deals. Dozens of valuable free agents remained unsigned as spring training camps opened, led by 26-year-old superstars Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, whose combination of skills and youth were supposed to invigorate a slumbering market. Machado finally found a partner in the Padres this week.
“The sum of all the parts has added up to the situation that we’re in,” said Houston ace Justin Verlander, a free agent after the 2019 season. “I think some mistakes have been made on both sides, to be completely honest. But under the umbrella of what I love about the game and how good it can be and is, I think we can all agree some things need to be fixed.”
Yet, before they can engage the owners, the players must internally determine several factors: What do they want? How best to get it? Which poison pills in the current CBA must they eradicate to regain what’s lost? And how willing are they to walk out, and stay out, if change proves elusive?
“What can we do to even the playing field on both sides? That’s the question,” Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen said.
FREE AGENCY
For decades, MLB and its players enjoyed a salary structure that was both merit-based and cost-friendly: Players with less than three years of service time had their salaries unilaterally determined by the club, followed by three seasons of salary arbitration and then the pot of gold — free agency.
The rise of both analytics and a reliance on younger players gouged the players’ pie. And service-time suppression — shipping worthy players such as Kris Bryant, Ronald Acuna Jr. and, coming this March, Blue Jays phenom Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to the minor leagues to secure their rights an additional year — has further moved the goalposts. For those elite talents, it essentially takes seven years to reach free agency, only to get greeted by a marketplace that scoffs at older players.
The players’ solutions: Grant them free agency after five years, arbitration after two, and raise the minimum salary.
“Make that young, cheap labour not as cheap so that teams aren’t disincentivized from signing a veteran free agent in favour of a guy making the league minimum,” Washington closer Sean Doolittle said. “That could raise the floor, so to speak, but also protect jobs on the back end.
“Guys used to be OK with getting underpaid and having their salaries somewhat suppressed in the first six years of their career because they’d make it up in free agency. Those deals are going away. So that could be a way to incentivize looking at those guys as viable options.”
Many players are determined to overturn the salary structure — “We have to find a way to get the young guys to arbitration, to free agency quicker,” Neshek said — and that may only come with a walkout.
Players and their union have been consistent with one talking point: Allow the system to function so the best players are showcased for fans.
In an era when baseball avidly seeks solutions to a perceived marketing deficit, grounding its emerging young stars for the first month of their rookie season is objectively counterintuitive. Imagine Zion Williamson spending a few weeks in the G League before his NBA debut.
“We’re going to see it this year, right?” Phillies slugger Rhys Hoskins said. “With Vlad Jr. Saw it with Kris Bryant. They’re being punished for being too good.”
Mets lefty Jason Vargas echoes Doolittle’s theory that a higher minimum salary — which will be $555,000 this season — will force owners “to either trust a younger player for a lot of money, or a veteran player for just a little more money. Now, you have some choices to make.”
LUXURY TAX
It was hatched as a competitive balance tool, but now baseball’s luxury tax, which sets a threshold on spending above which teams will be penalized, appears to function as a salary cap.
Just two teams, Boston and Washington, exceeded the 2018 threshold of $197 million and paid penalties. The big-bucks Yankees and Dodgers worked diligently to duck under that threshold to reduce their penalty rate, ostensibly to chase Harper and Machado with gusto this winter. They have since sat out the bidding on both players, and again should duck under the now $206-million tax threshold.
And that’s a very low bar relative to the game’s revenues. In 2008, the luxury tax threshold was $155 million, in a year the industry was estimated to gen- erate $5.5 billion. Now, industry revenues top $10 billion annually, according to Forbes, and should only rise as lucrative local and national TV contracts come online.
So, in those 11 years, revenues rose 82 per cent — but the luxury tax ceiling rose just 33 per cent.
Players are kicking themselves for agreeing to such low ceilings — it will increase to just $210 million for 2021 — and are questioning the owners’ behaviour. “If you look at how much money (MLB) is bringing in, I don’t think the luxury tax should be treated as a cap,” Verlander said. “But if everybody gets together and says, ‘Hey, we’re not going to go over this,’ then it becomes one.
“You’ve just got a couple teams — really, only one (in the Red Sox) — that says we’re going to go get talent, we’re going to pay for it and, funny enough, they won the World Series.”
COMPETITIVE INTEGRITY
Atlanta reliever Darren O’Day does not mince words when it comes to extreme rebuilding, a practice that helped produce 10 teams that lost at least 89 games. “Tanking,” he said. “The T-word. It’s very clear it’s going on. Teams have set the prece- dent that that’s the way to turn a franchise around. “But when you have twothirds of the league tanking at the same time, it kind of makes it hard to watch.”
It certainly makes it hard to find jobs when clubs don’t wince at losing 100-plus games with a gaggle of minimum-wage performers. The Miami Marlins lost 98 games last season, and in 2019 could have 16 players with fewer than two years of service time.
Some players wonder if removing the guarantee of a high draft pick would reduce intentional underperformance. Mets infielder Todd Frazier suggests placing the 10 playoff teams at the back of the draft order, with the remaining 20 teams in a lottery.
“It seems like if you’re getting into the business of running a franchise, your ultimate goal should be to win,” Phillies starter Jake Arrieta said. “If you’re operating at a loss, I get it. But if you’re making a bunch of money … well, they’re billionaires. Billionaires, with a B. Spend it.”
THE ENDLESS WINTER
Baseball is a 12-month industry, with a rhythm virtually undisturbed for decades. But the offseason staring contest that now passes for free agency has disrupted the winter and now bleeds well into the spring.
Braves utilityman Ender Inciarte suggests an off-season trade deadline, to spur early action and provide front offices clarity to pursue remaining holes via free agency. “You’re going to tell me, with guys like Harper who haven’t signed, that fans don’t want to see guys like that wearing their uniform, knowing where they’re going to be?”
Arrieta, who didn’t join the Phillies until mid-March last year, wants deals done sooner for the good of everybody.
“Look, we understand that you don’t maybe want to pay these astronomical numbers the players are looking for. But if you’re going to sign them, get them into camp … It took me a minute to get going. That’s how it goes.”
Neshek suggests both sides start addressing the issues sooner rather than later. And there is little doubt the union has awoken.
“We have to work together,” McCutchen said. “These younger guys are thinking, ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Us older guys, we have to be able to show them — this is what we have to do. We have to work together as a team.”
Perhaps even if it means walking out as a team.