It was exciting while it lasted, but the spending flurry is over.
Now, reality sets in.
The Major League Baseball owners, as of last night, have locked out players as the collective bargaining agreement expired.
There will be no more trade or contract negotiations. There is only bickering and bad-mouthing on the immediate horizon. The owners and Players Association working toward a deal, while technically true, is likely to be contentious and progress will be slow. It’s inevitable given how far apart the two sides are right now, and how unwillingly to budge each seems.
Baseball is an $11 billion business – give or take – when not dealing with a pandemic. And between the end of the World Series and 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, teams spent about $2.5 billion on free agents and contract extensions.
The game has money to burn. But that smoke is masking the game’s real and debilitating problems.
That cash isn’t burned evenly. Wealth distribution in MLB is top-heavy – partly a product of the players union getting dragged and rolled in negotiations for the CBA that just expired. The Max Scherzers and Corey Seagers are getting theirs, but the pie isn’t split evenly between the big-money veterans, young stars and owners.
The younger players, the middle class – those in pre-arbitration, in arbitration and in the minors having their service time screwed with – don’t see much of that wealth. MLB’s minimum salary ($570,500) is less than the NFL, NBA and NHL. Plus, teams who tank or refuse to raise payrolls to respectable levels also hurt the market value for many in the game’s labor force.
Front offices have also gotten wise to how nuts it is to pay older free agents blockbuster money for what they’ve done in the past, so by the time many of those have-nots reach free agency, the money for them isn’t as lucrative as it once was. That’s why the union sees it as critical to get those players paid earlier.
The owners, though, aren’t having it. They say, laughably, that paying those players more money earlier in their careers would “threaten the ability of most teams to be competitive.”
And this is the big impasse. This is the massive canyon separating the two sides. And while there are plenty of other issues, it’s these economics that are going to drag out this lockout through the winter and threaten to cost everyone regular season games next year.
Paying those younger players digs into the bottom lines for owners. The players don’t care. They feel they are owed for what they’ve missed out on during the previous CBAs, so for them this is sort of retroactive payback.
Meanwhile, the owners are already clapping at the players, saying in a statement, “it appears the Players Association came to the bargaining table with a strategy of confrontation over compromise.” And some fans and media will buy into that, siding with the owners for the simple fact that players collected more than $2 billion so far this offseason.
Again, though, that is masking the real problems. MLB’s player compensation model is broken, and both sides understand that. While one side is trying to right that problem, the other side wants no part of it because they are the biggest benefactors of the system that just expired.
It’s really that simple at its core. With both sides dug into their positions, this lockout will not end anytime soon. Things will get uglier before they pretty up.
The offseason excitement is over. Now, the fans who support both sides are left watching and hoping next season starts when it’s supposed to.
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