Major League Baseball announced yet another proposal regarding a new collective bargaining agreement Thursday, their third in the past three weeks. As with the last two — which have pushed for a salary cap/floor structure and sweeping cuts to the amateur draft — the Players Association will surely declare today’s a non-starter. MLB’s statement accompanying its latest proposal reads as follows:
“The biggest issue baseball fans want solved to strengthen the game is fixing the payroll disparity that leaves too many fans without hope of their team competing for a World Series title. Every other major U.S. sport has tackled this problem, and every year more small market teams in those leagues have a chance to win. The salary cap and floor proposal levels the playing field, allowing us greater flexibility to address longstanding player priorities while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50/50.”
The league has maintained its push for a salary cap/floor, and all proposals today are subject to the MLBPA agreeing to that system. Among the new additions in the proposal are:
- An increase in minimum salary — up to $1MM from the current $780K but only for pre-arb players who earn a full year of service or who have already reached two full years of service. (Twenty-two percent of players who have two-plus years of service are already arbitration-eligible as Super Two players.) The actual base salary for pre-arbitration players who don’t accrue a full year of service would be $900K.
- Free agency after five years (rather than six) for players who are 30 or older when they reach that point as well as elimination of the qualifying offer system. In exchange for this, the league seeks to have free agent contracts capped at five years for players who change teams. A player re-signing with his prior team could sign for a maximum of six years. The size of those contracts would vary based on revenue under the cap/floor model. Based on last year’s numbers, the “max deal” for a player re-signing with his own team would be six years, $265MM.
- Elimination of deferred money in contracts.
- Creation of a “Cornerstone Player” provision that draws from the NBA’s Bird Rights provision.
The Players Association has repeatedly and emphatically indicated that any attempts to place a hard cap on player earnings will not get the ball rolling. Since today’s proposal does so both in the form of the salary cap/floor but also in the form of maximum contract lengths the Union has predictably fired back with a dismissive statement:
“After making a series of proposals to reduce player compensation by billions of dollars, eliminate fundamental rights with a salary ap, and destroy the amateur entry process, Major League Baseball and team owners are now attempting to distract from the true impact their plan would have on baseball. These misleading offers are designed to look like “improvements” but are of little or no value, given they are expressly conditioned on agreement to the league’s cap system which eliminates the free market, and ensures gains for one player only come at the expense of another.
The league also introduced a litany of additional restrictions on player rights — limiting salaries, contract length, performance, award and signing bonuses. While MLB claims to be acting in the interest of fans, their proposals thus far are entirely consistent with owners’ long-held goals: suppressing player salaries and maximizing club profits.
Owners’ attempts to pit players against players are nothing new, but they’ve failed in the past and will fail again now, because PA members remain unified. We are committed to achieving a fair deal that protects the rights of all players, promotes competition, and leaves our game better for future generations.”
The elimination of deferred money will be a popular talking point, as was the case when MLB’s original proposal tied ending television blackouts to the implementation of a cap/floor system. Eliminating contract deferrals could indeed legitimately be one of several much-needed steps toward closing the gap in payroll disparity throughout the league, but framing it as a win for players ignores the fact that many owners and front offices want this tactic in place and benefit from its utilization.
That’s one of several carefully framed points within today’s proposal. The new minimum salary is broadly pitched as $1MM, but the finer print indicates it’s a $900K minimum for all pre-arb players — still a $120K increase — plus a $100K bonus for those who accrue a full year of major league service.
That $100K bonus would be paid out from the pre-arbitration bonus pool, which MLB proposes increasing from $50MM to $65MM (and up to $75MM in the final year of a new agreement). MLB also spelled out that 99 players would’ve received this $100K bonus based purely on service time last year. That’d account for $9.9MM of the $15MM increase in year one, leaving a bump of about $5MM for the pool’s initial purpose, which was to pay out top pre-arb performers based on Awards voting and WAR totals. Tying the extra $100K to service time at least somewhat reopens the door for the early-season service time shenanigans we’ve encountered in the past that have been tamped down in the 2021-26 agreement.
It’s frankly not worth drilling down too deeply in any proposal put forth by either the league or the Union at this juncture, as both sides are putting forth hardline proposals the other won’t even consider. Even within the infographic released by MLB today, the use of the term “accepted the MLBPA’s proposal” for quicker paths to free agency and elimination of the qualifying offer system isn’t really accurate, as those acceptances are contingent on the union accepting a cap, which the MLBPA already once again swiftly denounced. FanGraphs’ Jon Becker points out that commissioner Rob Manfred went so far as to publicly state that the two sides had agreed to eliminate the QO system during the last round of bargaining, when in actuality that agreement was only in place if several other contingencies were met. Obviously, the QO system remained in place.
It seems there’s a concerted push for more public-facing proposals this time around, but at this juncture there doesn’t appear to be much, if any real negotiation. The cap/floor system remains a non-starter for the Union and remains the crux of any proposals from the league. Neither side appears likely to deviate from that hardline stance at any point in the near future, rendering weekly proposals more performative than substantive.
