Category: Management Bullshit

It’s October; here’s where the CBA battle stands

Navigating the calm before the storm.

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The regular season is over, the focus is on MLB’s postseason, but there aren’t any playoff games on Friday — what better time than to take a breath and reflect on where things are going to go about a month from now?

Here’s the most basic view: there are quite a few people concerned that there won’t just be a lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, but that it’s going to persist into the 2027 season, maybe even erasing all of it. Reasonable people can agree that there will most certainly be a lockout — there was a time early on in negotiations this year where that belief was tested, but MLB’s refusal to engage seriously with the problems the Players Association has with a salary cap, and the league’s refusal to propose anything that isn’t tied to the acceptance of a cap, did away with any pretense otherwise.

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MLB not interested in realistic proposals, yet

An update on what MLB has been up to, and why some bad things are good, actually. But really.

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Since last time out, there have been more announcements of the proposals MLB is making to the Players Association, as the two attempt to collectively bargain a new agreement that will take hold in 2027. Some of those, I’ve already covered for Baseball Prospectus — this one is free to read with a basic subscription, i.e. the cost of an email address — and some have come since then, as well, and will get addressed there next week. Hey, it’s a holiday weekend and they’re going dark on Friday, I ran out of days alright?

There’s no reason to avoid giving a little preview there, though, but let’s start with what’s already written:

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The MLBPA (surprise) announced their opening proposals

Some thoughts on the MLBPA’s opening proposals and MLB’s expected response.

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On Wednesday, the MLB Players Association sent out a press release detailing the opening proposals they sent to the the league. It was a delightful little surprise, considering the PA tends to be quiet about this sort of thing, but — and this is just my opinion here, as someone who has been on this beat for multiple collective bargaining agreements — the idea is likely to keep pace with the league, which will absolutely release info every time proposals are exchanged and leading up to the next batch, as well. That’s how a narrative is controlled, and with the union not having the kind of explicit and obvious support from both media and fans that it enjoyed in 2021-2022, both in the lead-in and during the lockout itself, it’s understandable that the PA would use the 2026 negotiations to attempt to keep the story in check.

I covered the proposals — what we know of them at this time, anyway, the PA gave a broad view with few figures in it in its statement — over at Baseball Prospectus, which you’ll need a subscription to read. However, I can give you the broad strokes of the broad strokes: the PA is doing essentially what I suggested it should do back in April, with expansions to the league minimum salary, arbitration eligibility, and the bonus pool for pre-arb players, but on top of that is also trying to get ahead of MLB’s desire for a salary cap with a plan to reshape revenue-sharing, as well as reward low-revenue teams for spending and punish those who avoid it.

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UNITE HERE is keeping busy

Collective bargaining, ICE threats, the World Cup, and strike threats. Local UNITE HERE unions have their hands full in 2026.

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Concessions workers at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, have been rallying for improved pay and working conditions for some time now. At the Twins’ home opener this year, back on April 3, members of union UNITE HERE Local 17 gathered outside Target Field to speak to fans about the low pay they received, which, per UNITE’s own wording, “it takes more than an hour of work just to afford a hamburger at the stadium.”

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MLB and Polymarket, NCAA and DraftKings

There are differing ways to handle the presence of prediction markets and sportsbooks, and MLB and NCAA would not be less aligned on them.

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MLB and “prediction market exchange” Polymarket agreed to a deal last week, which is exactly the kind of thing you want to hear while two of the league’s pitchers are under federal investigation for alleged outcome manipulations for prop bets that resulted in “charges of wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting events by bribery.”

There are a couple of ways to look at this whole deal, one of which has been done in this space before and elsewhere, a raging against the fact that society has taken this turn and MLB has decided the check is worth directly involving itself in further propagating it. We have already seen where that has gotten us — again, federal charges — but it is worth pointing out that this likely would have happened without MLB’s direct involvement with sports betting.

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Rumored MLB salary floor figures are unserious

The good news is that all this talk of a salary cap makes it seem even less likely that a real fight over one is brewing.

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There has been more and more discussion of MLB’s owners pushing for a salary cap of late, which makes sense: as the regular season approaches, we also move closer to bargaining season. Despite all of this, I’m still not fully convinced that the owners actually plan to give up part or all of the 2027 campaign in order to implement a salary cap, and it’s actually because of the increased chatter.

I don’t mean that contradictorily for the sake of it, don’t worry. What I’m getting at is that the nature of the conversation is convincing me that this is more feeling out, more keeping a discussion topic alive rather than letting it die, than a true and honest attempt at implementing a salary cap. Or, as Joe Sheehan more accurately refers to it, a payroll band: a cap comes with a floor, which means a team’s payroll lives within a specific band. And the band that MLB is rumored to be proposing at some point, per Jon Heyman, is laughable.

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Notes: WNBA proposal, angry MLB owners, weird MLBPA licensing

The WNBA finally made a counterproposal, MLB owners are mad about Kyle Tucker, and the MLBPA made a curious licensing deal.

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It took over six weeks, but the WNBA finally countered the last proposal sent in by the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association. In case you haven’t been following along closely, the holdup was that the league didn’t feel that the last PA proposal was different enough to merit a counter, and was basically waiting for the union to blink and send in a different one that had more concessions in it. Which is cute since it’s not like the WNBA has exactly been willing to concede much, to the point that, in December, the players gave the bargaining team strike authorization with 93 percent of the members voting, and 98 percent of those voting to authorize one if the seven-player executive committee deemed it necessary.

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WNBA’s CBA deadline looms, USL’s already passed, and the PHPA struck

The WNBPA and USLPA might want to take a cue from the PHPA and their recently successful — and brief — ECHL strike.

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There has been and continues to be a whole lot of discussion about the labor battles that might occur when the MLB collective bargaining agreement expires in December, and for good reason. Comparatively, though, that story is on the backburner, as the players and owners haven’t actually started to bargain for real, other than laying out some preliminary goals before the true negotiations take place.

Meanwhile, the Women’s National Basketball Association and the WNB Players Association have already blown through an extension on their current CBA and are days away from another deadline without any resolution. United Soccer League Championship, or USL Championship, has been at odds with its players for 494 days now — the union and league have been bargaining for their new CBA since August of 2024, and it expired with the coming of this new year. And that’s for a league where the players are hoping to make a livable wage, not “millions,” mirroring the fight of MLB’s minor-league players from earlier this decade, where they simply wanted to be paid as if their job was a job, and not have to worry about their next meal or their living conditions.

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Notes: White Sox signing, WNBPA strike authorization, NWSL cap issue

The White Sox made a signing that is both sensible and very White Sox, the WNBPA authorized a strike if necessary, and the NWSL is dealing with salary cap and star player concerns.

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The White Sox signed Nippon Professional Baseball’s Munetaka Murakami over the weekend, after he was posted by the Yakult Swallows last month. The deal is for two years and $34 million, which might not sound like all that much when you think of all the headlines about his prodigious power and his being just 25 years old, but there are genuine concerns with his ability to succeed in MLB, concerns which are obviously shared widely given he ended up signing with the White Sox for this specific contract.

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Notes: Pirates trying, WNBA bargaining

What if the Pirates actually are trying? The WNBA certainly isn’t.

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The Pirates tried to sign Kyle Schwarber, and I’m tempted to believe this was a genuine effort. That this needs to be said at all should explain quite a bit about how the Pirates have operated under current owner Bob Nutting: a four-year, $125 million contract offer from them has more than a whiff of “we tried” to it, after all, and nothing in their past suggests they would actually attempt to bring him aboard.

That is, unless, the conditions for their continued profiteering have changed. And sure enough, that’s what seems to be going on. Here’s what I wrote at Baseball Prospectus at the end of November, regarding rumors about the Pirates and Marlins being willing to spend, and their relation to Rob Manfred’s desire for an NFL-style pooling of local broadcast revenues that would lead to a revamped, competition-balancing revenue-sharing system:

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