On Friday afternoon, the Major League Baseball Players Association announced they declined Major League Baseball request for a federal mediator a day after the request was made by MLB.
Mets pitcher Max Scherzer took to Twitter (his first tweets since joining the Mets) to voice why the players decided to decline the request, “We don’t need mediation because what we are offering to MLB is fair for both sides.”
Scherzer followed that by listing exactly what the players are looking for in their negotiations with the MLB owners, “We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as caps, allows younger players to realize more of their market value, makes service time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminate tanking as a winning strategy.”
Almost simultaneously, the owners put out a statement about the MLBPA’s decision to decline their request for federal mediation.
Andy Martino of SNY reports that Scherzer, Met star shortstop Francisco Lindor, and Yankees ace Gerrit Cole have active in CBA talks through the executive subcommittee.
While the players have made movement on their demands — such as lowering their ask for minimum salary, agreeing to potential WAR service time structure– the owners have been steadfast in theirs despite the scheduled start of Spring Training being right around the corner. The current lockout was initiated by the owners following the expiration of the previous collective bargaining agreement on Dec. 2.
