According to an article by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, the MLBPA has made a proposal to MLB owners. This is the second offer the union has made (the owners have only made one, if you’re keeping score), in an effort to have a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place before the expiration of the current agreement on December 1.
The players’ offer was made on October 29, during the World Series. Here is a breakdown of where the two sides stand on the key issues.
Arbitration
The union’s most recent offer moves the first year of arbitration eligibility to after two years of MLB service from the current three years. The owners have offered to eliminate arbitration entirely, instead creating a pool from the game’s revenues that would be allocated among players not yet eligible for free agency.
Free agency
The union’s proposal keeps eligibility at six years of service for most players. The owners, in their most recent proposal, offered to have free agency begin at 29 1/2 years of age, as opposed to having free agency be a function of service time. As noted here on MMO, this may get some players to free agency sooner, but also may keep young stars, like Carlos Correa and Juan Soto (to name a couple), who come up at a younger age, tethered to their teams for more than six years.
Competitive Balance Tax
Not surprisingly, the union’s proposals call for raising the threshold at which teams would be subject to the tax (and lowering the tax itself), while the owners’ position is to lower the threshold and raise the actual tax.
This may be the key issue in the negotiations. Baseball does not have a salary cap, we have seen teams make spending decisions based on the CBT, so it operates as a “soft” cap. This may restrain spending by teams in contention, and also water down the spending aggressiveness of the big market teams.
“Tanking”
Both sides are concerned about teams choosing to accept “second division” status, keeping payroll low, and accumulating draft picks. The owners have proposed a salary floor that teams must reach, or face consequences similar to the CBT. MLB has also offered to impose a rule that teams could not draft in the top five slots three years in a row. The MLBPA wants to change how the draft order works while altering the revenue-sharing model currently in place as a way to encourage more spending.
These are the key issues and where the sides stand on them, as reported by The Athletic. This saga will play out for at least the next three weeks, as possible longer once the expected lockout is imposed if there is no deal at midnight on December 1.
Both sides talk about making a deal, acknowledge that it will be tough, but express confidence that it’s possible. Time will tell if that is actually the case.
