Tag: CBA

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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The WNBA refuses to admit that the grift is over

In two days, the deadline for the WNBA and the WNBPA to come to terms on a new CBA will be here, and no agreement seems to be in sight.

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It’s November 28. The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement expired at the end of October, but the deadline for it to actually end was pushed to November 30, a month later, to give the league and the players time to continue to bargain before the seemingly inevitable happens. We’re two days out from that date now, and things aren’t looking great as far as resolutions go.

The WNBA recently made a proposal that generated headlines, with a new maximum salary for players of $1.1 million. That might not sound like much, but remember that players in the W aren’t pulling in what their NBA counterparts are — a $1.1 million maximum salary is a massive jump from the current max of just under $250,000. The problem, as multiple outlets have brought up in the week-plus since this offer, is that the salary the WNBA is offering in this proposal isn’t actually for $1.1 million.

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Thoughts on MLB’s 2025-2026 offseason

Some thoughts on what to look out for this offseason, as MLB and the MLBPA enter the final year of the current collective bargaining agreement.

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A little bit of end-of-season collecting of loose ends here, to start the offseason. We’re entering the final season of the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the Players Association, so while there are always trends or happenings to watch out for, that’s even more the case in this scenario — what can be gleaned from the last full offseason before MLB decides to go lockout mode in 13 months?

First, there is going to be a lot of discussion about the Dodgers, and if they are ruining baseball because they spent a ton of money. There is actually some nuance to this discussion — I’ve already seen a whole lot of everything-is-a-nail style arguments about their spending both in terms of those who are against it and those who support it — that is being missed, but here’s where I stand.

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Notes: WPBL announcements, WNBA CBA battle, Stop Falling For It

A new league makes announcements, WNBA bargaining is getting heated, please stop assuming that the Dodgers will force a salary cap, and more from my recent writing.

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The WPBL announces its first four cities, sort of

The Women’s Pro Baseball League will play its inaugural season in 2026, and used this week where baseball fans are quietly waiting for the World Series to make some announcements. First, the first four cities were selected, and they make a whole lot of sense: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. All four are historic MLB cities with massive media markets and fan bases, which should give them a built-in edge when it comes to getting attention.

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90s kids remember Bud Selig, George F. Will, and Japanese baseball

Deeper looks at two freelance pieces I wrote this week,

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I had two reasons to dip into the past this week in my freelance writing. At Baseball Prospectus, I wrote about how the present-day Red Sox and Dodgers, at the least, seem open to the idea of Rob Manfred’s centralized broadcast revenue and TV rights plan, which would allow MLB’s revenue-sharing to look more like that of the NFL’s — albeit without a salary cap, since, as has been discussed before, that’s just not likely at least during this round of bargaining, not if the owners want 2028’s broadcast negotiations to pay off as they hope and need them to.

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2025’s playoff races a reminder the postseason is already too big

MLB might want to try for another round of postseason expansion in the next CBA talks, but 2025 has been a reminder of why going bigger than 12 just isn’t going to play well.

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When the current collective bargaining agreement ends after the 2026 season, we’re sure to see a few things happen. For one, MLB is likely to lock the players out while shaking their head back and forth so you know they don’t approve of the action. They will probably demand a salary cap even if they don’t actually expect to get one, as starting there could help land them an even more restrictive luxury tax-style system than is in place.

And they might broach the subject of expanding the postseason even further. Why? Because there would be additional money in it, in the forms of larger and more television deals. At present, 12 teams make the postseason: three division winners in each league, plus another three wild cards apiece. Expanding to 12 was a compromise: before the current CBA was put into place at the end of the 2021-2022 lockout, 10 teams made the postseason, and the owners had demanded 14 during bargaining. They’ll surely shoot for 14 again, especially when they are looking to find ways to increase the value of their next television deals. That subject will come up again after the 2028 campaign, in the middle of the next CBA, so having the expansion in place in advance would do wonders for those talks and their wallets.

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The Rays won’t have a new stadium in St. Petersburg after all

The Rays are likely to stay in the Tampa region, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be in St. Petersburg.

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Earlier this week, at Baseball Prospectus, a piece of mine published explaining why it was that commissioner Rob Manfred — along with some team owners — were pressuring Stu Sternberg to sell the Rays. This one is free to read with an email login, so you can check out the whole thing if you’d like, but the key idea to take from it for right this second is that Sternberg was very likely to blow up the stadium deal he had been working on with St. Petersburg practically forever, because he only realized it was a bad deal for the Rays after agreeing to it.

Over the weekend, The Athletic reported that Manfred and Co. would even go so far as to use collective bargaining to pull a reverse A’s on Sternberg, if he couldn’t be convinced to sell the team before then. Basically, rather than using bargained and temporary revenue-sharing funds to help the Rays along in their search, like happened with the A’s, the other owners would instead use the CBA to throttle the Rays’ share of the revenue. If Sternberg barely has the funds he needs to operate the team at a high level now, or to pay for the increased costs that the delay in coming to a final agreement supposedly created, then having his revenue-sharing checks cut down was not going to help matters.

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Ignore Rob Manfred: lockouts exist to preempt strikes

Lockouts are a necessity for one thing only, and you’re not going to hear Rob Manfred say what that is.

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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred can say whatever he wants about the need for a lockout as something of a routine part of collective bargaining. And he certainly has, as evidenced by a recent interview with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. A pertinent excerpt:

But one action looks virtually certain. Manfred said an offseason lockout, as there was in 2021-22, should be considered the new norm.

“In a bizarre way, it’s actually a positive,” he said. “There is leverage associated with an offseason lockout and the process of collective bargaining under the NLRA works based on leverage. The great thing about offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists gets applied between the bargaining parties.”

To which MLBPA executive director Tony Clark’s responded by saying that, “Players know from first-hand experience that a lockout is neither routine nor positive… It’s a weapon, plain and simple, implemented to pressure players and their families by taking away a player’s ability to work.”

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