Major League Baseball players started arriving to spring training camps Friday morning, with three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer, who had been involved in the labor negotiations, driving up from his Jupiter, Fla., home to be among the first to report to New York Mets camp.
Team officials frantically spent the day sending out emails and making calls to gather their front office and coaching staffs for meetings, preparing for a truncated 3 ½-week spring training camp before Opening Day on April 7 and April 8.
Free agents need to be recruited. Contracts need to be signed. Salary arbitration cases need to be prepared. Trade talks need to start happening.
So much to do in so little time, with a lot of sleepless nights ahead.
No more lockout, which ended after 99 days on Thursday, with an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement.
While players scurred to make travel plans – and discovered that the housing rental market is out of sight in the Phoenix area, players union chief Tony Clark and chief negotiator Bruce Meyer were in New York for apress conference, grateful to have baseball back, and hoping the winter’s scars will heal.
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They talked about the historic minimum salary raises from $570,500 to $700,000, a 22.7% raise, the largest jump since 2003 with a 6.5% annual growth compared to 2.4% in the last CBA. The luxury tax thresholds, beginning at $230 million, will grow twice as quickly as it has over the past two CBA agreement. The young players who aren’t yet eligible for salary arbitration will receive an immediate increase of about $100 million in total salaries and bonuses, buoyed by a new annual $50 million bonus pool.
There will be a DH in the National League for the first time. There will be a six-team draft lottery for the first time, too. There will be an expanded postseason to 12 teams, but not 14, to assure that winning the division over 162 games is most meaningful.
The most surprising component of the CBA in the final hour was the divide between the union’s eight-man executive committee and the rank-and-file membership. The executive committee was primarily made up of veteran stars who have guaranteed contracts in excess of $100 million, with the likes of Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor and Marcus Semien.
Jason Castro was the only player who earned less than $12 million last year. Five of the players were represented by high-powered agent Scott Boras.
The executive committee voted unanimously not to accept. Yet, when the union reached out to the 30 team player representatives-who also make up the negotiating committee-and canvassed players on their own teams, the vote was was almost overwhelmingly opposite. The teams voted 26-4 to accept the deal, leaving the final tally at 26-12 in favor of the agreement.
Simply, with so many young players in the game, and 62% earning less than $1 million last year, they thought the deal took care of their biggest concerns, dramatically increasing their pay before being eligible for salary arbitration.
So why the divide Clark was asked at the union’s press conference?
“You call it division, I call it a healthy dialogue and conversation,” Clark said. “Rest assured the interests were the same in improving the system as a whole. …We had very candid, very spirited conversation from start to finish.
“For us, the system worked.”
While the union made dramatic strides after payrolls dropped to its lowest level since 2015, it will be a few years, Clark and Meyer cautioned, before they will know the full impact. Will clubs pay less for free agents to compensate for the pay increase for young players? Will they still find a way to manipulate service time to keep players from reaching free agency past six years? Will clubs stop tanking knowing that they’re not assured of one of the top six draft picks?
“We don’t expect that [tanking] problem to be completely eliminated,” Meyer said, “but significantly better than it is now.”
Said Clark: “We have confidence that the things we addressed should be helpful for the players.”
Certainly, the economic advancements were a victory for the players union, and one day it still hopes to shorten the path to free agency and salary arbitration, but those issues were non-starters in these labor talks.
“It’s difficult,” Meyer said, “but we’re never going to give up on some of those things. This is the labor process. We have determined adversaries on the other side, all of whom are billionaires and have enormous resources.”
There’s still plenty of work ahead to advance the game as Clark informed commissioner Rob Manfred, and although five years remain before expiration of the new CBA, they still must decide by July 25 whether there will be an international draft in 2024. If the draft is not approved, there will continue to be draft pick compensation attached to free agents, which is valued at $50 million to $100 million, officials say.
“I’m not a fan of drafts in general,” Clark said. “There’s no one rushing to put further restrictions on players, whether domestic or international. … Draft or not a draft, there will be some issues that need to be addressed.”
The players union and MLB have four months before a decision is needed on the international draft, but for now, the two sides pledge to move forward, and establish a better working relationship for the common goal of growing the game.
“I expect there to be disagreements particularly, when the interests and passions that the players have for protecting the game and the integrity of it as strong as it is,” Clark said, “But we anticipate those communications to continue. … There’s a lot of work to do, moving forward with respect to where our game is at, and where it needs to look forward to.”
It’s up to both sides to establish the working relationship, soothing the acidity of the labor talks, and making sure the healing process begins immediately.
“I think some trust needs to be restored among the two parties so that something like this doesn’t happen again,” San Francisco Giants player representative Austin Slater said at the union’s workout camp. “It’s not the players or the owners who really suffer in these situations, it’s really the fans.
“Even though as players we felt like we needed to make a stand and fight for what was fair, at the end of the day, it’s the fans who suffer.
“They’re the ones who make the sport what it is.”
