PLAY NICE!
MLB, union can’t afford to bicker over bucks
THEY can’t do it. Right? There is no way — regardless of both the historic and current bad blood — that MLB and the Players Association are going to shut down the game this year over player compensation.
That would be so shoot-yourselfin-the-brain, assure-the-negativefirst-line-in-your-obituary stupid that not even these two hostile sides can navigate there. Right?
Imagine if the hard to believe actually happens and over the next month local, state and federal officials give their blessing for MLB to start spring training in mid-June in enough municipalities and the sport finds a way to secure the testing, medical personnel and protocols to do this safely and that the rules for how to play a 78- or 82-game season are sanctified — and then the season doesn’t transpire because the sides couldn’t agree on pay.
That isn’t going to happen. It can’t. So, if the sides know the end game is an agreement, do they really want to be seen bickering about pay with 14.7 percent unemployment in the country and people still dying in large numbers from COVID-19?
Commissioner Rob Manfred and Players Association executive director Tony Clark and their key advisors must lock themselves in a virtual meeting space and not come out until they have found the face-saving mechanisms out of their locked-in rhetoric.
Players are saying they will get prorated salaries for games played as is their interpretation of a March 26 agreement with MLB and everything else is a non-stater. Owners are saying that if players do not take a pay cut due to lack of revenue from no attendance, they will not open the gates.
The control person from each team is scheduled to be briefed in a noon conference call Monday with Manfred. The expectation is they will finalize all the details to return to play and offer it to players as early as Tuesday.
The gist of the plan emerged over the weekend and I can add a wrinkle — I heard that a DH will be used in both leagues, in part to protect pitchers who will have to ramp up to pitch in a shortened second spring.
The best hope is that training will open in June in a combination of home parks and spring training sites, last three weeks and a regular season will open about July 1. The current plan calls for either 78 or 82 games, regional play by which teams play exclusively in their division and their crossover division (thus, AL East vs. NL East) to limit travel and both the rosters and the playoffs are expanded — I heard a strong possibility of 30 players available daily with a 20-player taxi squad staying ready if needed and a postseason of 14 teams rather than 10.
It feels like the sides can negotiate all of that — the players, for example, want to try to maximize games played up toward 100 since they are paid based on games in normal times.
These are not normal times, however. And the likely MLB plan was to offer players perhaps half of this year’s revenues to share among players.
Clark has said there are no needs for a new pay negotiation because the sides’ March 26 deal called for players to be paid their 2020 salary prorated for games played. MLB interprets this sentence in the agreement “the Office of the Commissioner and Players Association will discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators” to mean a new arrangement would have to be negotiated if there is revenue derived from attendance (at least to begin there will be no fans at games).
Let’s say both sides are operating with integrity here. The players feel that, unlike owners, they do not have long runways to make money and to ask them to lose more salary in a finite career in a season in which they will have to take health risks to them and perhaps family is wrong. The owners feel it wrong to ignore that 40 percent of revenue comes from attendance and all that comes with it (concessions, parking, luxury suites, etc.) and that they are facing real financial hardships.
Got it. They are still going to have to find a way back to each other or face wrecking reputations of those in charge forever and perhaps inflicting permanent damage to the sport — are fans hungry for distraction and optimism now going to forgive en masse if there are no games because the sides couldn’t figure out how to distribute money?
So here is a thought in case the revenue-sharing proposal does not prove fruitful:
As part of the March 26 accord, draft picks this year will get up to $100,000 of their bonus immediately then a 50 percent installment on July 1, 2021, then the other 50 percent on July 1, 2022. This helps franchise’s with cash flow problems today defer the payments to the future.
Why not do the same with players? The players would get 50 percent of their prorated pay this year, half of what remains a year from now and the other half two years from now. If another wave of the coronavirus forces cancellation of the postseason from which MLB makes the brunt of its national TV money, then the players get only that initial 50 percent.
These percentages and future dates can be negotiated by sides with good will. This concept allows the current crop of players to be made whole over time. The owners could ease cash flow problems now, protect themselves if there is no postseason and can better judge how they want to allot money moving forward on, say, free agents by having a clearer view or what they owe and when.
It doesn’t have to be that idea. But an idea has to come and be negotiated with comprehension and compassion by both sides (not just for each other but the country). They must eliminate further squabbles over finances at this time and absolutely avoid the nuclear option of not playing because of money. Fans will understand if a vicious virus beyond the control of owners and players takes down the 2020 major league season. They will not tolerate self-inflicted stupidity.