Well, this has to be the low point, right?
Unless you envision maybe an 8-minute meeting the next time the representatives for Major League Baseball’s players and owners get together?
Thursday provided a beautiful scene outside, much less so inside the MLB Players Association’s Manhattan headquarters, where the collective-bargaining session lasted roughly, merely 15 minutes. Brutal. As the Mets’ Luis Guillorme tweeted, “I’m pretty sure I’ve had at bats longer than this meeting…”
The scoreboard now reads six meetings, five in-person, since Rob Manfred locked out the players on Dec. 2 — the first one, notably, not occurring until Jan. 13 — and the two sides still stand so far apart that, with spring training already delayed, the idea of holding Opening Day on the scheduled March 31 seems more ludicrous with each counterproposal.
If the two sides won’t listen sufficiently to each other, though, this last month-plus has provided an opportunity for those of us on the outside yet on the inside to listen. And it’s pretty apparent to this listener what will break this stalemate:
The teams must improve their package on the competitive-balance tax. Such a concession can lay the groundwork for the rest of the basic agreement to fall in place
For the owners’ current vision of the CBT, as the uncool kids call it, undermines the rest of their case. It is the poisoned donut amid the box of 12, to steal a trick that Mr. Burns’ lawyers wouldn’t let him deploy on “The Simpsons.”
The luxury tax (an alternate term) didn’t play a significant role on Thursday, which the players’ group led off by introducing a pair of wrinkles: 1) Scaling back their arbitration proposal from granting the privilege to all players with two-plus years of service time to the top 80 percent of the 2-3-years class, a 20 percent decrease; and, in accordance with that, 2) increasing the bonus performance pool for pre-arbitration players from $110 million to $115 million and spreading the wealth from 30 players to 150.
Since the owners want to 1) maintain the status quo of granting arbitration to the top 22 percent of players with between 2-3 years, a matter they regard as third-rail; and 2) allocate $15 million to the pre-arbitration bonus pool, you can understand why the session lasted as short as it did. MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem hung around for another 20 minutes or so to hold a purportedly candid “side session” with his MLB Players Association equivalent Bruce Meyer. A Friday meeting is planned to discuss non-core economic issues.
The players want credit for dropping 20 percent off something they don’t have, which calls into question exactly how realistic they are in their pursuits. Fortunately for the owners, there’s one way to challenge that sense of reality, and that brings us back to the CBT.
The owners want to raise the luxury-tax threshold very modestly, from last year’s $210 million to $222 million by 2026. Worse, they desire to significantly increase both the tax rates (as high as 43 percent in some scenarios) and the additional penalties, with a club spending more than $40 million above the threshold losing its first-round draft pick.
Just revert to the penalties of the previous CBA, even with the repeat-offender surcharge that the clubs’ current offer lacks, and get the threshold to $245 million, the players’ offer to start the next five-year stretch, by this deal’s last year. That would erase a considerable amount of the bad will that currently exists.
Throw in $30 million for the pre-arbitration guys under the current arbitration system, a draft lottery for the top five spots to combat tanking and the bones of the players’ service-time manipulation idea — if you win Rookie of the Year, you’re ensured of a full year of service — along with the 14-team postseason, and you’re well on your way to an agreement.
With doomsday looming, the players offered to meet every day next week. The owners should oblige, and they should give in on the CBT, an issue they have not designated immovable and the players regard as critical. And if that doesn’t move the needle, well then gosh, we really haven’t so much as approached the low point yet.
