Category: Labor

MLB’s lacking luxury tax increase a reminder of the limitations of bargained thresholds

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Just a few weeks back, in reaction to one of the few economic proposals Major League Baseball actually bothered to submit while the now-expired collective bargaining agreement was still active, I wrote about how MLB’s pay-for-WAR, algorithmic plan to replace arbitration could not work without revenue scaling. Two days into the lockout, it’s time to give another example as to why any of these plans that rely on bargaining financial thresholds have the same inherent problem, and that’s because of how MLB has treated the raising of the luxury tax threshold during talks so far.

As was reported by Evan Drellich, MLB proposed raising the luxury tax threshold from the 2021 figure of $210 million to $214 million, with it eventually reaching $220 million by the final year of the new CBA. That’s clearly just a starter offer in terms of raising the luxury tax threshold — the numbers would almost surely be at least a little bit bigger if the two sides were finished negotiating by now — but what sticks out to me is that it’s presented as a concession at all. Not by Drellich, who is one of the few writers at a major outlet who is actually nailing the framing and depth of their coverage, but by MLB. Inflation exists. Revenues climb. The value of money changes over time. The luxury tax threshold increasing should just be a thing that is expected to happen, not something that is considered a concession, especially not with the minuscule bumps the league is proposing.

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You still can’t trust MLB, because they still don’t deserve trust

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It turns out that MLB used two different baseballs during the 2021 season, and didn’t tell, well, anyone about that decision. You can and should read the entire piece on the issue written by Bradford William Davis, but I don’t want to simply reiterate what was said within here. No, instead, this thing everyone is talking about is going to be used as a hook to discuss something else everyone is talking about. I hope you enjoyed this peek behind the curtain of the writing process.

The point we need to take from Davis’ piece, for our purposes here, anyway, is that MLB remains completely untrustworthy, and undeserving of trust, as well. That’s not a new concept, of course, but the timing of a reminder could not be better, considering we’re mere hours away from the start of a lockout of the players that doesn’t need to even happen once the current collective bargaining agreement expires, but will happen just the same. How are you supposed to believe MLB is competent, or acting in good faith, or any other positive you can ascribe to them in bargaining when they seemingly go out of their way to act in the worst possible ways? Or, if they aren’t purposefully lying and hiding the truth of things and so on, are so incompetent about how they go about their business that you can’t tell the difference in the results, anyway?

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A busy weekend for free agents suggests a lockout is likely

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We’re just a few days away from the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement: when the clock strikes midnight and December 2 arrives, that’s it. There was a sudden flurry of free agent activity this weekend, with likely more to come — Max Scherzer is rumored to be close to a deal with the Mets, but as of this writing nothing is official — and there is a pretty reasonable explanation for it all that MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand tweeted on Sunday night:

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MLB and the MLBPA are planning as if a lockout is a real possibility

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It certainly feels as if MLB’s owners are going to lock the players out when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on December 2. Feeling something doesn’t necessarily make it true, though, but all the same, the reason it feels like a lockout is imminent is because of what we’re seeing in the news relating to collective bargaining over the past couple of weeks.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred recently went out of his way to try to make a distinction between an offseason lockout and a work stoppage that interferes with games. There is no reason to lay down that kind of foundation unless you’re expecting to have to build on it. That MLB’s economic proposals are so far off the mark from what the players have reportedly been proposing, too — and submitted so close to the deadline, too — certainly makes it feel as if MLB’s goal here is to enact a lockout in the hopes they can weaken the unity and stance of the Players Association.

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Please don’t believe the things Rob Manfred says about labor disputes

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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke up on the state of labor negotiations with the MLB Players Association, and it was a doozy: Per Evan Drellich’s story on the subject at The Athletic, Manfred closed the owners meetings with a speech that included this line: “I can’t believe there’s a single fan in the world who doesn’t understand that an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games.”

That Manfred is even attempting to make a distinction should tell you where things are probably headed: this is some preemptive justification, in the hopes of controlling the story before the Players Association, which is often silent on what are supposed to be private negotiations, can. Manfred says there is a difference between an offseason lockout and an in-season “labor dispute,” but there is not. The owners want to lock the players out during the offseason before any games are missed, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but to attempt to break the players’ solidarity and force them to a resolution. All the players need to do is wait out the owners in a lockout by refusing to give in to whatever the demands are that caused a lockout, and then, all of a sudden, games are being missed, too.

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It’s time to pay MiLB players more, and more often

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While the clash between Major League Baseball and the Players Association is front-and-center at the moment thanks to the ongoing collective bargaining and the imminent expiration of the current CBA, we shouldn’t forget that minor-league baseball players have their own share of troubles and problems to solve. Advocates for Minor Leaguers pointed out on Tuesday evening an issue that those players are struggling through right now: the fact that players are not paid year-round, even though their contracts stipulate that they must work with their baseball careers in mind year-round.

Advocates’ tweet included two screenshots from the uniform player contract to make their point, the text of which read:

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MLB’s pay-for-WAR proposal can’t work without revenue-scaling

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There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of MLB’s most recent economic proposal to the Players Association, one that includes replacing arbitration with an algorithm based on some kind of wins above replacement-esque figure. The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal had the initial report on this story on Thursday, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan followed up with some additional details on Friday.

You should read both of those pieces, to get an understanding of just what it is that Major League Baseball is proposing — if you’ve been following along with me for, well, years now, I guess, you know that I’m generally opposed to replacing the arbitration system, as it’s basically the only remaining economic lever where MLB does not have full control. It needs some updating and modernizing, for sure, but the chances of it being outright replaced by a better system are slim, because MLB wants to get rid of arbitration primarily because it works. Do you think they’re going to replace a working system with one that will work against them even more? Certainly not intentionally, no: something would have to be snuck in the back door, a loophole they don’t see, like… [checks notes] arbitration was.

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What to glean from the MLBPA’s reported proposal

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With less than a month to go until the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement, we’re going to start seeing more and more updates on the nature of those talks. The latest report of note comes by way of Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic, as it discusses that the situation, as of right now, is the union awaiting an economic counter-proposal from the league’s owners, in response to the counter the Players Association sent out on October 29.

We still don’t have specifics to work with, in terms of just what is in the proposal — the league leaking details from their own economic proposal gave us some insight as to what they were looking for and why they were leaking details in the first place, but even there, concreteness was missing — but there is still plenty to glean from The Athletic’s reporting.

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A brief history of MLB’s lockouts

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The history of strikes in Major League Baseball gets a lot of play in historical look backs, but lockouts? Not nearly as much. Baseball Reference’s comprehensive encyclopedia Bullpen doesn’t even have a page just for lockouts: it just lumped them in with the “Strikes (labor)” page instead. Part of this lack of attention is because there has never been an MLB game canceled because of a lockout: even the one that dragged into the start of the season just pushed back when games were played. They tend to be a thing that occurs during spring training, with the owners balking at some demand the players are making, and then, the lockout ends shortly after.

So, with a lockout potentially on the horizon this winter or next spring, let’s take a look back at the previous times the owners locked all the doors to keep the players out.

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Steve Cohen really should have logged off

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Major League Baseball might be taking steps to improve the living and working conditions of present-day minor-league baseball players, but what about those that were already ground into a fine powder by those horrors? Consider, for a moment, that after essentially doubling minor leaguers salaries, making it so they were no longer responsible for paying the clubhouse attendant’s wages via tips, providing for at least some of the players’ food, and recently promising to pay for the housing of “certain” minor leaguers, Minor League Baseball is still nowhere near the situation they should be: housing covered for all players, a living wage, equipment paid for by the clubs instead of the players, and so on. Now, consider that the minor-league players who were around for years before all of MLB’s recent upgrades didn’t even have access to that much.

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