MLB, MLBPA met for first time since before the lockout

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On Monday, I wrote about how MLB was still working on an economic proposal for the union, well after a month of lockout is already behind us. They finished up and presented this proposal on Thursday, and from the sounds of it, it is, like basically everything else MLB has proposed during the economic portion of bargaining, generally a waste of everyone’s time.

That’s not to say nothing was accomplished or agreed to — for instance, Susan Slusser reported that MLB proposed a universal DH on Thursday, and that, so long as it’s not “tied to something else as a bargaining chip,” it should be accepted — but otherwise, MLB didn’t address many of the union’s concerns, and presented non-starter solutions for others.

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MLB’s ‘proposal’ proposal was even worse than we knew

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That MLB’s final pre-lockout bargaining session was something of a joke where they didn’t even attempt to talk with the Players Association was already known: the New York Times reported on it in the moment, and the union rep for the Cubs, Ian Happ, referenced as much in a radio interview last month as well. Now, though, we know the depths of the humor in said joke, thanks to the reporting of ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

You need a subscription to read the whole thing, so I’m just going to quote this relevant passage from the larger story on the state of the lockout:

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This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball

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“This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.” For years, this statement, or at least some form of it, followed stories published at MLB’s website. It is technically correct legalese, which as you know is the best kind of correct in that arena: sure, the stories published at MLB.com were not making their way to the desk of the commissioner’s office before their publication, but you can bet that the approval of that office mattered for whether the author would get to publish anymore stories in the future.

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Happy new year, MLB’s lockout is ongoing

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Just because it’s now 2022 on the calendar doesn’t mean that we’re going to see progress in collective bargaining anytime soon. Nothing has changed from mid-December, when I published a newsletter titled “Don’t expect a quick resolution to the MLB lockout.” It’s now January, so, as was reported at the time by Evan Drellich, the two sides are expected to discuss core economics eventually, but “discuss” and “agree on” are not the same thing. MLB and the Players Association might be closer on a few items than MLB’s staunch refusal to take bargaining seriously pre-lockout might have indicated, but there is seemingly enough distance on other issues that it’s going to take more than a discussion or two before things can be ironed out in a meaningful way.

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The year in creating sports coverage, featuring leftism

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The end of 2021 approaches, which means another year of this labor-focused newsletter has wrapped up. It was an eventful year, for both major- and minor-league players, and the goal of this particular column, as always, is to remind you of the year that was. Let’s get right to it — each paragraph represents a month, and I’ll highlight a few pieces from all 12 of them.

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Rob Manfred and the ‘mistake’ of 1994

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“We made the mistake of playing without a collective bargaining agreement in 1994, and it cost our fans and our clubs dearly,” [Rob] Manfred said. “We will not make that same mistake again.”

This line from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has been bothering me since I first read it in the New York Times, back when this offseason lockout kicked off. It’s just so disingenuous, on a number of levels. Yes, it was a strategic mistake, in a vacuum, for the league to play without a CBA, because it gave the players room to strike when they wanted to — closer to the end of the season, to put the postseason and World Series in doubt and the decision to go forward with those in the hands of the league and owners. To try to say the fans suffered for this mistake, though, and to lump the clubs in with said suffering, implying in the process that it was the players’ decision to strike that “cost” these two groups dearly, is where the bullshit lives. The decision was not made in a vacuum: it was made within the context of its time, and was a calculated choice by the commissioner and owners that they hoped would forever tip the balance of power back in their favor.

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Don’t expect a quick resolution to the MLB lockout

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“When will the lockout end?” is kind of an open question at this point. There was very little reason for it to end quickly after MLB’s owners enacted it, no matter how much optimism commissioner Rob Manfred might have publicly displayed in a lockout being a path to a quick resolution of the issues between the clubs and the players. Considering the MLBPA’s reaction to the lockout was basically “this is only going to make us angrier with you, you know” and a bunch of rolled eyes at Manfred’s letter, well, there is even less reason to believe that things are going to be smoothed out in a hurry.

Which is fine, of course, these things should take all the time they need to take in order to sort themselves out, but it is worth noting that we’re in for a long winter. The chances of this being resolved by springtime aren’t necessarily high, and I’m talking the seasonal date there, not the spring training one.

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MLBPA rep Ian Happ spoke on MLB’s inaction before the CBA expired

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The players haven’t said much with regards to specifics about the collective bargaining sessions with Major League Baseball, but we got a little bit of insight on the pre-lockout process from Cubs’ union representative, Ian Happ. The Chicago outfielder explained to 670 The Score how negotiations went in Dallas in the final days before the lockout began, and it all serves as further evidence that MLB had no intention of actually attempting to work things out before the previous CBA expired.

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On negotiating a potential expanded MLB postseason

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The MLB Players Association is correct to not give in to the owners’ idea of an economic proposal, but at some point, they’re going to need to concede some ground on the areas the league really cares about in order to bring about the kind of changes they want on their side of things. This isn’t meant to say, “hey, union, hurry it up!” or anything — take your time, guys, get that best version of a CBA no matter how long it takes — but more as a warning that some version of an expanded postseason is likely on the way.

The owners, obviously, want an expanded postseason. They want it for two reasons. The first is that more postseason rounds and games means larger (and maybe even more) national television contracts to broadcast postseason games. The second is that teams can make it to the postseason more often without actually trying to, which will help combat the idea that a significant chunk of the league regularly isn’t putting in anything close to their best effort, or any effort at all. After all, they just made the postseason!

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If forced to choose between arbitration and free agency proposals, MLBPA should pick arb

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I’ve been thinking and writing about the kinds of demands the MLB Players Association should be making of Major League Baseball in this round of collective bargaining for a few years now, so it should not be a surprise that I have some thoughts on the specific proposals we do have word of from the union’s side. There is a lockout because MLB seemingly wants no change unless it’s the kind that will further benefit the owners’ pockets, while the union is pushing to close off some of the loopholes exploited by those same owners over the duration of the previous CBA. Given this, there is the chance that, even if the PA holds strong and MLB lifts the lockout more because they blinked than because they crushed the union as they hope to, the union won’t get everything it wants — some proposals will need to be dropped, others prioritized.

Two that have received a bit of attention in these early days have been the desire to cut the time it takes to get to free agency from six years to five (with an age threshold component thrown in for players who debut much later and have already toiled within their initial contract for a long time) and cutting the amount of time it takes to reach arbitration eligibility. I don’t think it’s impossible that the PA gets both of these asks, in some form, but if you asked me to bet on it, I’d say MLB moves on one but not the other in order to try to limit the “damage.”. So let’s figure out which of them the union absolutely should not give up on, and why it’s the arbitration proposal.

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