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For the first time since 1994-95, there’s a work stoppage in Major League Baseball.
The collective bargaining agreement between the owners and MLB Players’ Association expired at midnight on Wednesday, and the former voted for the lockout to start.
It’s a really big deal, one that’s sure to cause some short-term damage to the game. The longview, from baseball’s point of view, is that whatever’s hammered out through this work stoppage will help the game in the future.
So what’s going on here? Why is this happening? What does it mean right now? We’ll try to answer all of this and more:
So this is like a strike, right?
No. Players striking — which happened in the middle of the 1994 season and ultimately cost the postseason of that year — is a work stoppage initiated by the union side.
This is the owners locking out the players.
Has a lockout like this happened before?
There have been a total of nine work stoppages in MLB history, with this marking the fourth lockout.
It’s worth noting that none of those three previous lockouts — the last of which came in 1990 — cost any games ultimately.
What does it mean for the game while there's a lockout?
All business involving the players is at a stop. All the offseason stuff that’s been happening — free-agent signings (of which there were many), trades, and the like — is frozen. Players aren’t allowed in facilities, teams and players aren’t allowed to have contact and so on.
So why is this happening?
That could take a while to explain, but here’s a tl;dr: In the past few years, players have seen the owners find ways to curb the amount of money they earn. We’ve seen teams take advantage of when they start the clock on service time for young prospects, keeping them in the minors long enough to squeeze out an extra year before they are forced to pay those players a lot more.
We’ve seen things like a luxury tax keep teams from spending in excess. Even though there’s no salary cap, it’s felt like there is in some cases.
Some older players — the middle tier, let’s call them — who reach free agency aren’t in high demand, as front offices have realized that replacing them with a younger, cheaper option might be the way to go.
And then there are teams who tank or who don’t spend a lot.
All of that means there’s a change needed to the economic side to the game.
So why are the owners locking the players out if it's the latter who has the problem?
There aren’t any games to strike from right now, for what it’s worth.
But if you’re asking what problem the owners have? Well, they’ll try to prevent the expansion of those very things the players might want … which is more money ending up in player pockets.
Have the owners put forth any solutions here?
USA TODAY Sports has some details about an initial idea:
One of their initial proposals to players, per multiple news media reports, could most charitably be described as unserious – reducing the luxury tax ceiling from $210 million to $180 million while pairing it with a “salary floor” of $100 million. They would also seek to make free agency age-based instead of service-time based – delaying it until a player turns 29.5 years old.
A salary floor seems like a good solution to force smaller-market teams and those who are tanking for future top picks to spend, right? Not quite:
Well, that would come with a significant drop in the luxury tax ceiling – and ostensibly discourage the game’s biggest spenders from throwing gobs of money around. According to Spotrac, just five franchises – the Rays, Marlins, Orioles, Pirates and Indians – will fall short of a $100 million luxury tax payroll in 2021. Meanwhile, nine franchises would need to trim payroll to reach a $180 million luxury tax threshold. Three more – the White Sox, Nationals and Giants – are less than $10 million under that threshold.
So, if a handful of payroll-averse teams are prompted to cough up a few million more dollars in payroll, but a dozen, more aggressive franchises are compelled to significantly trim salary, guess who wins?
Is this really necessary?
Sadly, it was inevitable with the CBA expiring. This tends to happen when there’s an imbalance felt between players and owners in any pro sport.
But there’s also the long-term health of baseball to consider. MLB needs younger fans to thrive, and those fans are flocking to other sports or entertainment. So it’s not just economical changes to consider. There’s the length of games and rule changes that might need to be put in place that could help either side in these negotiations and help down the road.
Also, hey maybe more playoff teams will increase revenue and viewership!
Is this going to mean games are canceled this year?
TBD. We’ve got at least a couple of months until Spring Training start dates will creep up, and deadlines spur action etc etc.
But if that does happen? It’s going to be horrible for a game that’s already taken a hit in recent years. The 1994-95 strike that canceled chunks of games in those seasons was costly to the sport that came back in the late 90s.
Both sides are going to be aware of that, but even that may not help.
This stinks.
It sure does. All that fun and joy fans got out of the Hot Stove just this past week has been replaced by the awfulness that is a labor dispute. The hope is that this is resolved sometime in January or February, the players take the field in Arizona and Florida, and the 2021 season goes off without a hitch.
Otherwise? Lots of gloom and doom.
