After MLB Owners’ Low Ball Proposal, Is It Possible To Hate Both The Owners AND Players In Their Negotiation?

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4 years ago

PREVIOUSLY: Report: MLB Players ‘Very Disappointed’ With Owners’ New Proposal To Get The Season Off The Ground

Information came out about MLB owners’ first proposal to the MLBPA from their opening meeting yesterday and, as we discussed yesterday, it’s not great news. Unlike the NBA where the stars have been highly motivated to lead the rest of the league back to action (at mostly full salaries), MLB players have mostly dragged their feet about the idea of playing to the point that they look like money grubbers after already being perceived as mostly overpaid compared to other sports.

But if you look at the numbers Jeff Passan reported, it’s hard to not see why MLB’s stars would be at least a bit peeved. The owners have publicly stated that they’d offer a 50/50 revenue split with players but the numbers indicate pay cuts well beyond what players’ prorated salary would be for an 82-game season. Baseball teams have spent big over the years on players in a sport with no salary cap. But the cuts proposed seem designed to remedy that as much as adjust for the losses of revenue that would occur with the baseball season.

And while maybe you or I might not have the most sympathy for a $35 million-a-year player, it’s starting to look much more relatably bad for some of the less cash-rich players. The squeeze has already begun for the MLB’s lower class as minor league players will now lose salary from some teams:

The Oakland A's informed minor league players today that they would not continue paying them $400 a week after the end of the month, sources familiar with the situation told ESPN.

Other decisions from organizations should arrive in the coming days. A bad sign to start, though.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 27, 2020

I said it yesterday and I believe it today: if baseball’s inability to get there on money keeps them from playing at least a partial season, I think they lose a lot of the mental real estate they have in the United States in particular. UFC has drawn big ratings, NASCAR has seen gigantic upticks in new viewers in addition to huge ratings, and the PGA, NHL and NBA loom. While eSports may not reach the mainstream levels of baseball’s days of yore, they engage with massive numbers of people in the digital audience’s core demos. Baseball is coming off a gigantic cheating scandal, the owners look greedy, the players (even if justified) look unrelatable passing up millions in a time where many people would kill for work that paid a fraction of the lowest salaries offered in the weak owners’ proposal … it’s lose-lose-lose for baseball fans and the growth (or even maintenance) of the sport the more this drags out.

But hey, at least they’re not arguing about seeds and cryobaths:

Maybe the MLB players and owners’ compromise will be that we have an 82-game season but there’s no baseball played, just guys doing batting cages while they socially distance doing gross baseball player things in the dugout. People always say the “experience” of baseball is just as important as the on-field action. Maybe live cams of dudes dipping and aggressively slapping each other’s butts after hydrotherapy while the Astros still figure out some way to cheat the process (and avoid punishment for it) is enough to get ratings in COVID-19 times.

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