Major League Baseball canceled at least six of its first games for the 2022 season on Tuesday after the owners of the teams and the players’ union were unable to reach an agreement on a new employment contract.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said league and team owners made several concessions to the players’ union during negotiations in Florida on Tuesday, but that the parties were unable to reach an agreement on a joint deal. School.
“The clubs and our owners fully understand how important it is for our millions of fans to be able to play on the field as soon as possible,” Manfred told a news conference after the break-up. “That’s why we want to negotiate and we want an agreement with the players’ association as soon as possible.”
Manfred said the team owners submitted an offer to the players’ union that included a new minimum player salary of $ 700,000, an increase of $ 130,000 over last season. It also offered a salary increase of about 33% for nearly two-thirds of MLB players, as well as creating a $ 30 million annual bonus fund for young league stars. The proposal also offered to reformat the MLB playoffs to include 12 teams instead of the 14 teams the owners were pressuring, Manfred said.
MLBPA officials said in a statement on Tuesday that “baseball fans around the world who love it are upset, but sadly not surprised” by the cancellations.
“In the context of growing revenue and record profits, we are only looking for a fair deal,” the players’ union said.
League officials said during a press conference that the first two series of the season have been canceled. The Pittsburgh Pirates were scheduled to face the St. Paul Cardinals. Louis in a three-game series starting March 31, as do the New York Mets and Washington Nationals, according to the MLB schedule. Manfred said players who were scheduled to play during these matches will not receive payment.
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to have this press conference where to cancel some regular season games,” he said. “I want to assure our supporters that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to the lack of effort on the part of either party.”
MLB officials told the players’ union last week that the league would cancel some regular-season games if the teams did not reach a new deal by midnight on Monday. Hoping to avoid that fate, the league set a deadline on Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern to approve a deal.
MLB players signed a five-year contract with the league in 2017, but that collective agreement expired on December 2nd. Although the Major League Baseball Players Association has been in private negotiations with team owners since then, talks have stalled for months.
MLB generated a record $ 10.7 billion in revenue in 2019, according to Forbes. But that came to about $ 4 billion in 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The average salary of a baseball player is $ 4.1 million, almost 5% less than in 2019, according to the Associated Press.
The upper hand
A major hurdle to a deal has been that team owners don’t want to give in to key issues like sharing revenue from televised playoff games with players, said Johnny Ducking, a sports labor economist at North Carolina A&T State University. And landlords are willing to prolong negotiations much longer because they have no pay on the line, he said.
“If you survey 10 economists, all 10 will say homeowners have the edge,” Ducking told CBS MoneyWatch.
Contract talks have been lengthened in part because it took both parties a while to get back to the negotiating table. Ducking noted that the owners and the players’ union had a long round of negotiations on whether and when the teams would play during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-21. Those conversations were periodically controversial, which Ducking said could be painting the last conversations.
Without a contract, players enter the season without specifying the legal terms governing their pay and working conditions. The MLB announced earlier this month that spring training has been suspended until at least March 5 as both sides continue talks.
Manfred said on Tuesday that there were no days scheduled for either side to restart negotiations. MLBPA representatives are leaving Florida and flying back to New York, where the league is based, Manfred said.
Spring training ends March 29 and the regular season is scheduled to begin March 31.
According to the salaries of last year’s players, which amounted to just over $ 3.8 billion, MLB players will lose a total of $ 20.5 million for each day removed from the regular season calendar of 186 days, The Associated Press reported. Each player loses 1/186 of their salary for each game lost. Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole, two players involved in the negotiations, would lose $ 232,975 and $ 193,548 respectively each day.
What to do with tanking?
Players and team owners are discussing a number of issues, such as pay and the practice of tanking. In most major sports, tanking is when a team deliberately loses as many games as possible during the season to increase their chances of getting the best young talent in college.
In baseball, however, teams can tan for a higher percentage of league revenue at the end of the season. This is because MLB tries to equalize the competitive playing field between teams by making sure that all clubs get roughly the same revenue each season. Teams that lose a lot of games tend to generate less revenue from their stadiums and merchandise sales, so the league sends money to make up for that loss.
Tanking has caused the salaries of some players on certain teams to go down or stay the same. Players and team owners are discussing new ways to discourage tanks, but have yet to find a solution.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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