The new collective bargaining agreement was finally agreed to last night by Major League Baseball and the MLB Player Association as first reported by Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports. The new pact is for five years and is great news with the beginning of the Winter Meetings coming on December 5.
One of the new changes is the All-Star Game will no longer decide who gets home field advantage in the World Series according to the Associated Press. Home field will now go to the pennant winning team with the best regular season record. Players on the winning ASG team will now receive a monetary bonus.
Another important piece in the agreement is MLB cutting back the disabled list minimum stay from 15 days to 10.
Here are more changes in the new CBA:
- The luxury tax will rise from $189 million to $195 million for the 2017 season and rise incrementally each year until it reaches $210 million in 2021. There will also be new penalties for going over the luxury tax. The first time comes with a 20% tax, which increases to 30% for a second year and 50% for a third.
- New MLB players will be banned from using smokeless tobacco (it’s already banned in the minor leagues) while current major leagues will be grandfathered.
- There will not be an international draft but instead there will be a hard cap of $5 million on each team for international signings. Cuban players who are at least 25 years old that also have six years of Serie Nacional experience will be exempt from these limitations.
- Starting in 2018 the season will begin mid-week, helping to create extra off-days.
- Also starting in 2018, it’s possible that MLB will have games in Mexico and London.
- The major league regular season will span 187 days starting in 2018, it currently lasts 183 calendar days.
- The compensation for signing a player that received a qualifying offer will change next offseason. The compensation will now be broken down into three categories. Revenue sharing recipients would lose their third highest draft choice. Revenue sharing contributors would lose their second and fifth highest selections and also sacrifice $1 million in international signing availability. Teams that don’t fall into either of the previous categories would lose their second highest pick and $500K of their international bonus pool.
- A player can only receive the qualifying offer once during his career and will now have 10 days to make his decision.
- The league minimum for the 2017 season will be $535 thousand, will be bumped up to $545K in 2018, $555K in 2019 and then will see cost of living increases for the final two years of the new CBA.
One notable area that wasn’t change was September roster expansion. There was talk of MLB limiting the September roster expansion to 28 players and the Player’s Association agreeing to that if the everyday rosters were increased to 26 players.
We will update as more details come…
