Players reject bid for 76-game season

Major League Baseball remained deadlocked with its union at the start of a critical week in the sport’s efforts to launch its 2020 season, with the league making a new economic proposal Monday, and the union immediately rejecting it.

As the impasse drags on, the default solution of a shortened season of around 50 games becomes more likely.

In its latest proposal, MLB pitched a 76-game regular season, with players earning up to 75 per cent of their prorated salaries. League officials framed it as an attempt to find the middle ground between the significant pay cuts the owners asked for in their initial proposal of an 82-game season — with the cuts made on a sliding scale that hit players making the highest salaries the hardest — and the players’ consistent demands they be paid full, prorated shares of their 2020 salaries based on the number of games played.

The MLB proposal, first reported by ESPN, would guarantee players 50 per cent of their prorated salaries across the board — dropping the sliding scale — and that figure would climb to 75 per cent if the post-season is completed.

Under the proposal, the season would begin in mid-july and end with a World Series wrapping up by the end of October. MLB fears a second wave of coronavirus in the fall that could wipe out the lucrative post-season.

MLB’S proposal added an enticement that could improve players’ standing in free agency this winter, offering to eliminate the qualifying offer and draft-pick compensation for certain free agents, which theoretically would make teams less likely to avoid those players on the market. The union, however, shot down the offer, and it was unclear if its negotiating team would offer a counter-proposal.

In some regards, the union considers MLB’S latest offer a step backward, as it guaranteed slightly fewer overall dollars to players in 2020 and would shift some of the risk for a lost post-season from the owners to the players. The Washington Post