Morning Briefing: MLB Kicks Off Ugly First Round Of Negotiations

Good Morning, Mets fans!

Yesterday, the MLBPA and MLB kicked off negotiations on how to start up the 2020 season. It was ugly.

Latest on MLB’s Negotiations with the MLBPA

Well, a lot happened yesterday. It almost broke Baseball Twitter.

The first item to figure out: player salaries.

Major League Baseball proposed a sliding scale of pay reductions. In layman’s terms, this means that players who are paid more would be subject to larger pay cuts. Jon Heyman of Fancred floated the idea that this proposal could cut the pay of the game’s top earners by 70-80%.

Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers of ESPN have the full breakdown of pay reductions:

Potential salary cuts in MLB plan, sources tell @JesseRogersESPN and me:

Full-year Proposal

$563.5K $262K
$1M $434K
$2M $736K
$5M $1.64M
$10M $2.95M
$15M $4.05M
$20M $5.15M
$25M $6.05M
$30M $6.95M
$35M $7.84M

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 26, 2020

Under the current proposal, David Wright will earn four million dollars more than Gerritt Cole, who signed a deal worth 324 million dollars this offseason.

Joel Sherman of New York Post reported that the MLBPA could walk away from the negotiation table entirely after MLB’s first-round offer.

The MLBPA is reportedly not thrilled with MLB’s proposal and will not accept the current version. Bob Nightengale of The USA Today noted that the league and the MLBPA are also far apart in health protocols. Negotiations are expected to last the week.

All this drama has stemmed from the owners walking back on their March agreement, which stated that players would earn a pro-rated salary on the condition that games are played. However, billionaire owners are now crying poor, claiming that a shortened season will cost them millions. Just an observation, this news certainly didn’t circulate during the negotiations that took place in March.

Latest Mets News

Kiley McDaniel unveiled a new mock draft on ESPN, predicting the Mets will select second baseman Justin Foscue out of Mississippi State.

Marcus Stroman expressed his displeasure on Twitter on how the negotiations between the MLBPA and the MLB have gone so far.

Latest MLB News

Blake Snell has changed agency representation, pivoting to the Boras Corporation.

The Athletics and the Angels will furlough the majority of their scouts after this year’s amateur player draft on June 10th, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.

The Athletics will also not continue to pay their minor-leaguers $400 a week, per Jeff Passan of ESPN.

Chad Wolf, The Acting Director of Homeland Security, has declared that professional athletes have been declared essential workers.

Dennis Lin of The Athletic profiled the late Tony Gwynn.