Jeter: Baseball talks ‘embarrassing’

‘There is no trust’ between MLB, union, Marlins CEO says

The dust has settled after months of public negotiations between Major League Baseball and its Players Association. The league plans to have a 60-game season with a fulllength postseason, and the players will be paid their full pro-rated salaries amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In some ways both sides settled, and in others both came out worse. With 60-man rosters being announced and schedules released, there might be a temptation to push forward and let bygones be bygones.

Miami Marlins CEO Derek Jeter did not give in to such temptations Tuesday evening.

“It’s unfortunate because if you look at [the negotiations], it’s disappointing, it was embarrassing at times, the back and forth,” Jeter said in an interview on the team’s YouTube page. “There’s a lot of trust that needs to be — there is no trust, I should say, is the best way to put it.

“You have so many people filing for unemployment throughout the country, over 30 million people, 40 million people, with no jobs. They really don’t want to hear owners and players going back and forth about how much money they deserve and how much money they need. And I get it. I was a player. I feel as though the players should fight for everything that they feel as though they should have. I’ll always support them in that sense, but in this particular case, I think some things should’ve been done behind the scenes.”

Jeter, still fairly new to ownership, urged to eliminate the premise of “two sides” — the players and the owners. Doing so, he said, creates a framing that leaves everyone worse off.

But it’s hard not to see the way the negotiations that threatened the existence of the season as anything different. The owners swapped proposals with the Players Association on a near daily basis for weeks, with rejections and public statements piling up. The players wanted full pro-rated salaries for as many games as possible. The owners, perhaps passively, played their leverage to shorten the season to minimize costs. Some even speculated that some owners were pulling for a cancellation altogether.

Jeter maintains the organization was in lock step with its players the whole time: They wanted to play.

“We have a young group of guys that put a lot of work in, not just this offseason but the last few years, and they’re itching to get back on the field,” he said.

“And us as an ownership group, look, we’re excited about what we have.”

The ripple effects of these negotiations have not yet fully settled, as grievances loom and new CBA negotiations near. But for now, actual baseball is officially on the horizon, and players, owners, executive and league officials will move forward in lock step. For the Marlins, the shortened season even offers some rare opportunities to compete.

That doesn’t mean wounds have healed.

“It seems like sometimes people are trying to win a PR battle,” Jeter said, “and ultimately it’s the sport that’s gonna suffer.” all