MLB owners approve plan for 82-game season starting in July.
Owners OK plan to start an 82-game slate in July
Major League Baseball owners Monday approved a plan for resuming the season, setting up pivotal days of negotiations between MLB and its players union.
Two distinct points of contention will need to be solved before a potential return to play: player safety and salaries.
Though it is still characterized as cautiously fluid, the league’s plan presents an opening day in early July for an 82-game regular season. Postseason expansion from 10 to 14 teams is included, according to multiple reports, as is a universal designated hitter and rosters expanded to perhaps as many as 30 players. With no minor league season, each club would have another group of players available on the equivalent of an NFL practice squad.
“I’m a lot more optimistic,
but I’m hoping to be a lot more optimistic by the end of this week,” Astros manager Dusty Baker told the Chronicle on Monday. “People are beginning to have dialogue, and time is becoming an issue now. Certain places are opening up. I’m just hoping that the powers that be can come to an agreement.”
Baker said he intends to call most of his players within the next two days as plans to start the season become more concrete. Pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. is the Astros’ union representative, but input from non-reps is always solicited. Third baseman Alex Bregman said last month he was involved in numerous calls between MLB and the union.
Under the proposal the players are set to review, teams would play as many games as possible in home ballparks without fans. Regionalized scheduling, which would have teams playing opponents from only their division and the corresponding division in the other league, is aimed at decreasing travel. Concerns still persist over the availability of coronavirus tests, acquiring them ethically, protocols for prevention, and the plans for a scenario in which a player or staffer tests positive.
More questions arise when considering the sport’s essential personnel and players’ families. In March, when the league’s earlier plan to play games in a “bubble” in Arizona were made public, a player told the Chronicle that quarantining away from his family amid a pandemic was a nonstarter.
The tenor around baseball has not changed, even as sequestering scenarios were passed over.
“It feels like we’ve zoomed past the most important aspect of any MLB restart plan: health protections for players, families, staff, stadium workers and the workforce it would require to resume a season,” Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle tweeted Monday, beginning a lengthy, widely shared thread of questions that, thus far, have no answer.
Players are adamant they want to play but not at the expense of their health or the well being of those around them — some of whom have underlying conditions or are more susceptible to the virus.
Look no further than the Astros, who employ the game’s oldest manager (70-year-old Baker) and pitching coach (71-year-old Brent Strom). Baker survived prostate cancer in 2001 and was hospitalized in 2012 with heart problems.
Ensuring the safety of all involved is of foremost concern. If Major League Baseball can convey such a plan favorably, attention will turn to paying the players, who seem ready for a showdown to keep previously agreed-upon terms.
Since the league and union reached an initial salary and service time agreement March 26, players have operated under an assumption that, if a 2020 season occurs, they’ll make their prorated salaries once games resume. The terms of that March agreement gave players a $170 million lump sum for salaries through May 31 and the promise of prorated salaries if the sport resumed.
Two months later, league owners are attempting to somewhat amend the agreement, which gave commissioner Rob Manfred leeway to explore playing in empty stadiums. Because there are no fans — and a reported 40 percent of the league’s revenue comes from gate receipts — the league will ask players to take a further pay cut.
According to USA Today, the plan approved by owners Monday contained a revenue sharing system, splitting the money 50/50 between the league and its players. The NBA, NFL and NHL all participate in revenue sharing, something baseball has long resisted. Owners actually approved a revenue-sharing system in January1994 — the tipping point for a strike that started that June.
Players seem just as steadfast in their beliefs. Union chief Tony Clark told the Associated Press last month that negotiations over player salaries “are over,” pointing to the March agreement for prorated salaries. Astros pitcher Justin Verlander echoed Clark’s statement on a teleconference earlier this month.
“We’ve already taken a salary cut,” Verlander said.
Agreement on player safety and money will not immediately allow the sport to return. Approval is required from local governments and medical experts. Other questions loom, none as paramount as protecting the safety of all involved.
“I just hope we come to a conclusion that benefits everybody,” Baker said. “Because if not, we all lose.”