Major League Baseball made its latest CBA proposal to the Players Association on Thursday afternoon. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported specifics of the league proposal, which would be contingent on the implementation of MLB’s desired cap/floor system.
The most notable development is that the league wants to implement two offseason “quiet periods” for free agency. The first would cover all of November and prohibit free agents from signing with any team other than their incumbent club until the opening Monday of the Winter Meetings. All teams could still negotiate with players and agents during that window, but the only signings that could be made official are re-signings. Teams would be allowed to finalize trades.
Free agency would officially open at the Winter Meetings and last for two weeks. Beginning shortly before Christmas, there’d be a moratorium on all MLB transactions until the start of February. MLB framed this as an entertainment measure that’d create a kind of mid-December transaction bonanza.
That’s indeed common in other leagues that feature a cap/floor system. Teams have a narrow spending range that they need to hit, incentivizing them to get their offseason work completed as quickly as possible. The back halves of those sports’ offseasons tend to be dead, but there’s a reasonable argument that centralizing all the activity early in the winter would be more entertaining for fans.
Left unsaid by MLB is that this should also squeeze players into a tight signing window that could skew leverage toward the clubs in negotiations. Even in an uncapped offseason, free agent prices tend to drop deeper into the winter. Unsigned players typically feel more pressure than teams do as the regular season approaches. Banning all free agent activity in January could increase pressure on mid-tier free agents to sign by December 21 and avoid entering the dead period without a job.
Needless to say, MLBPA executive director Bruce Meyer rejected the idea out of hand. The Players Association maintains they’re adamantly opposed to a salary cap, so they’re not going to give serious consideration to any league proposals that are conditional on the cap this early in negotiations.
“MLB expressly conditioned these proposals on the players’ agreement to a salary cap system, which would drastically reduce overall player compensation, eliminate fully guaranteed contracts through escrow, and turn back the clock on fundamental player rights,” Meyer said as part of a statement (relayed by ESPN’s Jeff Passan). “Their latest proposals regarding free agency would eliminate player rights by establishing an artificial free agency window, subject to a salary cap, which would reduce player leverage and create a game of musical chairs pitting player vs. player.”
MLB spokesman Glen Caplin reiterated the league’s support for a cap: “A cap-and-floor system would unlock additional opportunities to improve the game for players and fans, creating more stability in rosters, getting the best players to the Major Leagues more quickly, and accelerating the pace of the offseason,” Caplin said.
The league’s proposal also seeks to minimize in-season roster maneuvering. MLB proposed requiring teams to name their 26-man active rosters for the entire week each Monday. They could still make midweek changes in response to injuries, bereavement/paternity leaves, waiver claims, etc. However, there’d be far fewer optional assignments and recalls.
Active rosters would still be capped at 26 players, but the league proposed moving back to allowing teams to carry 14 pitchers under this setup since teams wouldn’t have the same flexibility to call up fresh arms from Triple-A. The injured list minimums — currently set at 10 days for position players and 15 days for pitchers — would change to one-week and two-week stints, respectively.
This would partially address one concern of the MLBPA: teams optioning a pitcher the day after they log a heavy workload that renders them unavailable. The union proposed that pitchers who are optioned after meeting certain workload criteria receive service time and a big league salary for their first four days in the minors.
MLB also proposed a fundamental change to the Rule 5 draft. The league would accelerate players’ eligibility for the Rule 5 but allow selected players to be optioned to the minor leagues during their first season. Teams currently need to carry Rule 5 selections on their MLB roster or injured list for the entire first year to earn their long-term contractual rights.
This would make it far easier for teams to keep their Rule 5 selections, as they’d only need to carry them on the 40-man roster rather than in the majors. On the one hand, that’d cut against the main point of the Rule 5 to give blocked prospects major league opportunities. Yet there’s also an argument that it’d help a greater numbers of players by increasing the number drafted and forcing teams to be more aggressive in adding prospects to their own 40-man rosters rather than leaving them exposed in the Rule 5.
Readers can see find more details from the league proposal at Feinsand’s column and in this recap from Evan Drellich of The Athletic. Like all the early proposals from both sides, it’s essentially public relations. The parties aren’t earnestly engaged in negotiations at this point — they’re not even operating within the same core economic framework — so these only really serve to illuminate each side’s respective talking points. The current CBA expires on December 1 in advance of the inevitable offseason lockout.
