CBA Archives - Marc Normandin is creating baseball coverage, featuring leftism

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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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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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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.

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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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.

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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