MLB rejects players' 114-game season offer, plans no counter - Houston Chronicle

Major League Baseball rejected a return-to-play proposal from its Players Association and will not offer a counter, leaving the negotiations again at an impasse and serious wonder whether the sport will return in 2020.

By the terms of an agreement in March, commissioner Rob Manfred has the power to implement a shorter season in the absence of an agreement with the MLBPA. According to multiple reports, the league is discussing playing a season as short as 50 games. The players association proposed a 114-game season. The midpoint of both numbers is 82 — the amount proposed by the league in its initial proposal.

The news arrived on the same day basketball revealed a plan to resume its season, only exacerbating the public relations disaster baseball’s created in the last month.

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and surging unemployment numbers, billionaires and millionaires continue bickering over salary, airing their grievances either in media reports or Twitter posts.

After agreeing in March to pay players their prorated salaries if the 2020 season began, owners requested a second paycut this month to combat the loss of gate revenue while playing in empty stadiums. Their first proposal, containing a sliding payscale that most affected the sport’s highest-paid players, was quickly rejected.

The players union, frustrated with an apparent absence of proof of this financial plight, will not accept another reduction. MLBPA subcommittee member Max Scherzer wrote last week “there’s no justification” to take any further salary reduction “based on the current information the union has received.”

"Most baseball owners don't take money out of their team,” Cubs owner Tom Ricketts told ESPN on Monday. “They raise all the revenue they can from tickets and media rights, and they take out their expenses, and they give all the money left to their (general manager) to spend.

"The league itself does not make a lot of cash. I think there is a perception that we hoard cash and we take money out and it's all sitting in a pile we've collected over the years. Well, it isn't. Because no one anticipated a pandemic. No one expects to have to draw down on the reserves from the past. Every team has to figure out a way to plug the hole."

Ricketts, whose net worth reportedly exceeds $900 million, added the “scale of losses across the league is biblical.” Forbes valued the Cubs at $3.2 billion, claiming that $200 million of its $471 million in revenue derived from gate receipts.

According to the same calculations, the Astros are worth $1.85 billion and derive $180 million of their $420 million total revenue from the gate.

In mid-April, an Astros spokesperson declined The Chronicle’s request for an interview with Astros owner Jim Crane, adding Crane could speak again once the season was much closer to a return. Crane has not spoken publicly since a February news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., in which he apologized for the team’s sign-stealing scheme in 2017 but later claimed it had no impact on the games of that World Series-winning season.

"There are scenarios where not playing at all can be a better financial option, but we're not looking at that," Ricketts said. "We want to play. We want to get back on the field. ... I'm not aware of any owners that don't want to play. We just want to get back on the field in a way that doesn't make this season financially worse for us."

The MLBPA proposal that was rejected on Tuesday called for a 114-game regular season that concluded on Oct. 31. Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick told an Arizona radio station on Monday that owners will not approve any plan that calls for baseball in November or later.

Kendrick’s assertion affirms the desire for owners to get in a full postseason — one of the most lucrative parts of the calendar — before a possible second wave of COVID-19 cases this winter.  Both sides have proposed an expanded, 14-team playoff format for 2020, a rare agreement within the last month. Without a regular season, it is rendered moot.

Time continues to tick. Manfred and the league have envisioned a Fourth of July opening day, meaning players may need to report to a spring training-type ramp up almost immediately. Yet, the deadlock remains.

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/article/MLB-baseball-brejects-players-114-game-season-plan-15314866.php

2020-06-03 19:32:00Z
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