According to an article by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in The Athletic, MLB owners have made a new proposal to address a key issue in the expiring Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). This time, the owners are focusing on a key metric used in player evaluation.

There are several important issues in the current CBA negotiations. Among them are the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT), the overall level of competition in baseball (do all teams try to compete?), salary arbitration, and expanded playoffs.

On the issue of salary arbitration, on Wednesday, November 10, the owners proposed to discontinue the entire process and begin free agency at 29 1/2 years of age (both have been proposed already). This time, in lieu of salary arbitration, the owners volleyed that pre-free agency players are paid from a pool of money coming from a percentage of the game’s revenues. Players would draw from that pool based on their fWAR.

From the article:

There are multiple variants of WAR, but MLB proposed to rely on FanGraphs’ version, or fWAR. A player’s career WAR would be part of the calculation, weighted for recency. Whether a player has been in the majors for three-plus, four-plus, or five-plus years would affect the calculation.

This is a unique proposal, open to significant criticism. One flaw with this system would be the bias that fWAR has toward certain positions. For example, relief pitchers are generally undervalued when using fWAR as a sole metric.

Further from the article:

Some strong defenders would be helped by the defensive component of fWAR, but the potential will exist for teams to game those numbers, which currently do not account for defensive opportunities in extreme shifts. Pitching fWAR, meanwhile, is mostly based on strikeouts, walks and homers, potentially hurting pitchers who thrive on soft contact.

Looking at some of the pre-free agency Mets, here are their 2021 fWAR numbers:

Brandon Nimmo: 3.5

Pete Alonso: 3.0

Jeff McNeil: 0.5

Seth Lugo: 0.0

Here are a few pre-free agency non-Mets and their 2021 fWAR numbers:

Ozzie Albies: 4.2

Austin Riley: 4.2

Juan Soto: 6.6

Tyler O’Neill: 5.4

Harrison Bader: 3.4

If the owners’ proposal were to go forward (it likely will not), this gives an idea of how some players would proportionally be paid using their fWAR numbers (career fWAR would also be factored in, as noted above).

This proposal is likely dead on arrival. Drellich and Rosenthal aptly used this quote from an agent to describe its chances:

“Albert Pujols has a better chance of leading the majors in stolen bases,” a player agent said. “The central theme of professional sports from the labor side is the ability to negotiate your salary and make a case for what you’re worth.”