Baseball Should Be Back
I can't watch grainy footage of 18-year olds throwing 89mph and that sucks
The MLB and the MLBPA, that is the Major League Baseball Players Association are currently going through contract negotiations. These negotiations have not gone well and the players are currently locked out of their clubs, a decision made by the MLB/owners, delaying Spring Training and potentially the season from starting on time. So far, pitchers and catchers have been prevented from beginning their traditional start date by a week. There seems to be no sign that the two sides will reach an agreement in the near future. As with about 99.99% of contract negotiations the owners could end this nonsense if they would just come to the table and bargain in good faith. However, the owners, as they usually do, have decided to take the way of pain, to try to squeeze every single last drop from the MLBPA, creating both a worse game, and pissing off a new generation of fans. Hardly smart long-term thinking.
This current fight between the MLBPA and the MLB is not just about money. It is also about money, of course, but other things are at the forefront. One of the main bickering points, at least from an outsider’s view, these negotiations are not open to the public, is service time manipulation. Allow me to explain. Due to the rules of the current bargaining agreement teams have a financial interest to keep players out of the major leagues and in the minor leagues as long as they possibly can. That is, due to various loopholes, teams can essentially get an extra year of play out of player before they become either arbitration-eligible or a free agent. Players on their first contracts get paid poorly compared to those who have reached arbitration or free agency. Owners like this set up because it allows them to save money on player salaries, thereby increasing their own bottom line. The MLBPA, quite understandably, wants to do away with those loopholes. The owners want to cement them into the contract. There are other concerns at stake here as well: contract minimums, the minor league system, and various other debates that shape drafting and international players. To my mind the service time thing is the most important.
The consequences of service time manipulation are not just that players get paid less, though they certainly do. The big deal is that it encourages teams to put out a shittier product in the name of increasing short-term returns. Take two of the most high-profile examples of this. Valdimir Guerrero Jr, and Kris Bryant. These are two of the biggest stars and best players in the league. Last season, Vlad led the MLB in home runs, runs scored and total bases. Bryant was the NL MVP in 2016 and helped lead the Cubs to their first World Series victory, ending the longest Championship draught in MLB history. Their teams at the time, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Chicago Cubs, respectively, kept both of these people from playing in the Majors for a full season in order to gain an extra year of not paying them what they were due. How it works is simple. The team keeps the a major-league ready player(s) in the minor leagues for a few weeks at the beginning of the season. They often excuse it as the player needing “seasoning” or some other dumb metaphor. Then when there are only 171 days left in the season the team will call them up to the majors and have them play out the rest of the season. Why 171 days? Because in the current contract between the MLB and the MLBPA 172 days played at the major league level counts as a full season. The more full seasons a player has under their belt, the closer they are to free agency and making a boatload more money.
This 171 days trick means that for the other days in the MLB season a team like the Cubs or the Blue Jays is actively making it’s team worse by not starting a player they believe should have an everyday starting role. They bring in veterans or journeymen players to fill in the gaps until they can call up their new superstars without undue financial consequence. These guys, still far better baseball players than you or I will ever be, are, not to be rude, not good. Perhaps AAAA-level, too good for the minors but not good enough for everyday play in the majors. Needless to say, if these teams were worried about fielding the best team possible, they would not be starting. So teams across the MLB, this is not a problem limited to the Cubs and the Blue Jays, offer fans a product that is actively worse than one they could present, all the while still charging premium prices, and actively using these potential big leaguers in their PR materials.
The MLB has seen declining interest across the United States, their TV broadcasts regularly reporting lower numbers than football and basketball games. To me, these sort of short-sighted moves to increase profit at the cost of short-changing both the players and the fans are the reason for that. Fans know what is happening with these players, and how the MLB is treating them. This, in combination with the decimation of the minor leagues, often the first place people see baseball, has destroyed the interest of young people, something that is needed to keep the sport alive. In addition, the MLB doesn’t have a stranglehold on public communication anymore. Players have their own brands and media channels that they can and do use to criticize the owners and service-time rules. The owners can’t hide behind the “players are greedy” sloganeering they used during the 90s to weaken the position of the players.
I hope that the players and the owners are able to come up with a beneficial agreement, or at least one that closes some of those loopholes. I hope that the owners realize that short-term financial gains are not beneficial for the sport in the long-term. But I’m also not going to count on it.
Thanks much, Dylan, for that really clear explanation of what's at stake in the current MLB dispute, which has been a bit tough to figure for even serious fans.