Major League Baseball and the players association do not have a deal in place for the 2020 season, but for the first time in quite a while, there is a sense of optimism that it can get done.
Well, it certainly looks better than it did earlier this week, where the union more or less gave up negotiating and Rob Manfred said he did not feel confident that there would be a season.
There are still roadblocks that need to be cleared, but the two biggest issues are taken care of. Players will get full prorated pay, and in exchange, they will waive the right to file a billion-dollar grievance that the league negotiated in bad faith. All that's left is the number of games -- and at this point, is the league really going to risk that grievance over a couple more games -- and getting both sides to agree to the final terms and sign on the line.
After a month and a half of negotiating, the winning run as on third base. But what took so long for us to get to this point?
Did it really take Manfred embarrassing himself on TV Monday, contradicting his statement from a week earlier guaranteeing a season, to spark the change?
During that same interview with ESPN Monday, Manfred said the two sides had not negotiated in over a week. Offers were exchanged during that time, but they were quickly rejected. It wasn't until after that interview that Manfred reached out to union executive director Tony Clark and fly to Arizona for a private meeting. That could have happened a month ago.
The league made several offers to the union, but this is the first for full prorated salaries. While the March agreement had a clause to renegotiate if it became clear fans would not be able to attend, the players always had the leverage here. If Manfred needed to mandate a season, they would get pro rata.
The owners really only had three options. One: Can the season. Two: Defer money, which could potentially hurt them in 2022 if there is a player strike and no revenue coming in again. Players would have a huge advantage in negotiations.
And Three: Try to run out the clock and shorten the season, thus lowering costs. The real money is going to be postseason games, so the fewer regular season ones they can play, the better the bottom line looks. It was clear players weren't going to take another pay cut, so they inched their max offer a little closer to kill time. To hedge their bet, they didn't increase the guaranteed money beyond what players would receive under a 50-game Manfred season.
It may have ultimately saved some money, but that might not be worth the damage between the league's relationship with the players, and its fans.
• Even if a deal is a reached, that doesn't mean the upcoming collective bargaining agreement talks are going to be pleasant. This was the most heated exchange owners and players have had in years, and it really stemmed from just one issue: How much should each player receive of their prorated salary? It was a matter of a couple of hundred of millions of dollars. The union is going to address stagnant player pay, the luxury tax, teams tanking and many more issues come the end of the 2021 season. These matters will be worth billions and will impact baseball's economic structure for years to come.
Before the shutdown, there was a general feeling that there could be a strike after the CBA expired anyway. If that was the case, these negotiations did not help.
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