Most desirable outcome of lockout? Making MLB better
HOUSTON — It always looks selfish and silly when a sport’s billionaires and multimillionaires publicly fight over billions of dollars.
Always.
It looked bad, then horrible in 1994 and ’95.
It was severely out of touch and misguided in 2020, when the real world was suffering through the start of the coronavirus pandemic and Major League Baseball couldn’t get its act together to play more than a measly 60-game season.
On Wednesday, as MLB inched closer toward a 10:59 p.m. deadline and its first work stoppage in 26 years, while the rest of the working real world dealt with inflation, supply-line problems, a still uneven economy and an already off-kilter holiday season?
Commentary
Selfish. Silly. Misguided. Out of touch. And that’s just the start.
Billionaire owners threatening to lock out incredibly wealthy players looks even more absurd when we already know both sides will eventually find some of form of middle ground, like they always do.
Game 6 of the 2021 World Series — Atlanta 7-0 over the Astros inside a deflated Minute
Maid Park, in case you forgot — won’t soon become the last MLB game ever played.
But there are two key things to remember as baseball — decades removed from actually being America’s pastime — approaches another self-indulgent labor battle while we wait for baseball to be played again.
1.) This is not a labor war. Yet. The offseason just started. Carlos Correa hasn’t signed with anyone and has about 350 million reasons to play baseball for a living again. Corey Seager, who isn’t as good as Correa, just signed a ridiculous 10-year, $325 million contract to play baseball in Arlington. And the annual renewal that spring training represents is still more than two months away.
2.) Baseball — troubled, overloaded with issues, still beautiful and addicting when played the right way — is screaming for a modern reset.
A hard reset?
A soft reset?
That depends on your personal perspective about the state of a sport that can still thrill us in October and November but can bore us to sleep April through September.
These are facts, though. And these are league-wide issues that affect both sides while they figure out how to better divide all the billions.
Tanking (and rebuilding) are out of whack. MLB partly has the rebuilt Astros’ 2015-21 success to thank for that. But the obvious truth is that the haves have too much, baseball’s worst teams have little incentive to be competitive on the major league diamond once May has disappeared from the calendar and MLB could learn a ton simply by studying the parity-driven NFL.
MLB teams intentionally holding back many of the sport’s brightest young stars just so billion-dollar franchises can save a little more cash is absurd.
And everything from free agency and arbitration to the amateur draft, small-market struggles, realignment, pace of play, robot umpires, a universal designated hitter and finding new ways to reach the heavily distracted youth of today and tomorrow must be addressed in the next few months (or however long the lockout potentially lasts).
This is a breaking point that has been building for years. During the recent World Series in downtown Houston, you could literally feel the on-field tension between MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and Tony Clark, MLB Players Association executive director.
But this is a breaking point that should lead to an improved sport after an offseason reset. It’s not to the point where we need to loudly proclaim how dumb and shortsighted MLB is — yet.
That will come in April if Manfred fails again and real games are missed because billionaires and the Seagers of the world can’t get together in a luxurious top-level room, lock the door and create an agreement.
In many ways, if properly used, this is an opportunity for MLB.
The sport can’t hold a candle to the almighty NFL. It pales when compared to the countrywide passion that colors college football. When the NBA is soaring, baseball looks slow and plodding in 2021.
One proposal being volleyed between both sides again is the idea of expanded playoffs. That will only further dilute the product and increase the laborious inning-by-inning battle of relievers that dominated the recent playoffs. But I’ll wait for new labor peace before I really dig into that weak proposal.
The grand ol’ game can be improved by simply simplifying it.
Speaking of Correa and the Astros … big- and small-market teams should have a financial advantage when trying to keep the stars they develop — just look at franchise quarterbacks in the NFL sticking with a single franchise — rather than almost automatically losing a big name once free agency calls for the first time.
One big benefit for MLB: For all of its problems, it still has the best system in pro sports and no sport is as player-friendly when it comes to money, money and more money for its athletes.
It’s on Manfred, owners, Clark and all the players to get the best out of this looming lockout and end the public divide in time for an opening day that starts on time.
Baseball’s latest labor battle won’t come down to dividing all the billions. That eventually gets figured out. Always.
The real question is whether MLB can use this opportunity to create a better sport and better overall product, April through November, and prevent baseball from falling further behind while alienating paying fans yet again.