MLB owners and MLBPA reach deal
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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association reached a tentative agreement Thursday on a new collective bargaining agreement, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The union voted to approve a new proposal by a 26-12 margin (a simple majority, or 20 votes, was all that was required for the new agreement to pass), and now the owner-imposed lockout will be lifted and the offseason will reopen. MLB teams are set to play a full, 162-game season in 2022 and Opening Day is April 7, per Bowden.
Players will have to report for spring training over the coming days, and free agency and trades are likely to resume Thursday night.
The lockout came to an end in its 99th day. The owners first enacted the lockout on Dec. 2, when the previous CBA expired, marking MLB’s first work stoppage since the 1994-95 players strike. Though the league characterized that act as a defensive mechanism it hoped would hasten negotiations, the owners then waited more than six weeks to make their first proposal. Talks finally heated up in the final week of February, when the two sides daily met in Florida. An agreement was reached Thursday after hours of negotiations this week in New York.
Here are some of the reported details from the accepted proposal, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:
- CBT threshold: $230 million in 2023 and peaks at $244 million in final year of CBA;
- Minimum salary: $700,000 and peaks at $780,000 in final year of CBA;
- Pre-arb bonus pool: $50 million
Haven’t seen yet whether the proposed 14-team playoff format with one team per league getting a first-round bye is part of this deal.
BTW 50 years ago this coming week Flood v. Kuhn was argued in front of the SCOTUS. Three months later the majority of the court concluded that baseball couldn’t survive economically without the benefit of the reserve clause, even though the clause was a classic antitrust violation.
The reserve clause was as a practical matter eliminated by an arbiter’s decision three years later.
Average major league salary in 1970: $29,300. Average franchise value: $10.1 million
Average major league salary in 2021: $4.17 million. Average franchise value: $1.91 billion
If there’s one thing judges don’t understand it’s economics. The two things judges don’t understand are economics and math. Amongst the things judges don’t understand . . .
. . . and an almost fanatical devotion to the Federalist Society.