The Major League Baseball Players Association was underwhelmed by MLB’s latest proposal, Evan Drellich of The Athletic and others reported.
The two sides met once again in New York on Saturday for negotiations. MLBA lawyers Bruce Meyer, Ian Penny and Matt Nussbaum were in attendance to hear MLB’s proposal. The meeting reportedly lasted less than an hour, with the MLBPA left unimpressed by MLB’s offer. It was yet another meeting with little progress made.
Per Jesse Rogers of ESPN, MLB’s proposal consisted of 130 pages. It included eliminating a draft pick penalty for going over the first CBT threshold, as well as marginal increases to the first threshold in years three through five. Years one and two would remain $214M each as they were before, but year three would go from $214M to $216M, year four would go from $216M to $218M, and year five would go from $220M to $222M. The pre-arbitration bonus pool would also go from $5M to $15M.
MLB’s proposal also included raising the minimum salary to $630,000, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. The MLBPA’s most recent proposal reportedly consisted of a $775,000 minimum salary and a $245 million CBT. Thus, as expected, the two sides were still not able to come to a conclusion.
Nightengale added that MLB’s proposal includes an increase of $23M in signing bonuses and international draft slots.
“Players who are drafted after submitting to a pre-draft physical must be offered at least 75% of the slot value and that no club no can refuse to sign a player on a post-draft physical,” Nightengale wrote.
The only slightly positive sign came from Jon Heyman of MLB Network, who reported that an “anonymous reaction” from two members of the players’ side was that the proposal is “not as [terrible] as most expected.”
Still, it’s clear that negotiations appear stagnant. Regardless of if Saturday’s proposal was progress or not, spring training is increasingly likely to be delayed, as Nightengale all but confirmed in his report.
One note that Drellich added was that players will “fully review” the proposal. Whether that’s a step in the right direction remains to be seen, but it does mean negotiations remain ongoing, despite no clear end in sight.
