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 negotiations at an impasse and serious wonder whether the sport will return in 2020.

However, by the terms of a March agreement, commissioner Rob Manfred has the power to implement a shorter season in the absence of a deal 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 is 82, but MLB might not be willing to meet halfway after proffering that number of games in its initial proposal.

“We do not have any reason to believe that a negotiated solution for an 82-game season is possible,” Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem wrote Wednesday to chief union negotiator Bruce Meyer in a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

“You confirmed for us on Sunday that players are unified in their view that they will not accept less than 100% of their prorated salaries, and we have no choice but to accept that representation,” Halem wrote. “Nonetheless, the commissioner is committed to playing baseball in 2020. He has started discussions with ownership about staging a shorter season without fans.”

Halem ended his letter by telling Meyer “we stand ready to discuss any ideas you may have that might lead to an agreement on resuming play without regular fan access in our stadiums.”

Wednesday’s news arrived on the same day the NBA revealed a plan to resume its season, only exacerbating the public relations disaster baseball has created in the last month. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and surging unemployment numbers, billionaires and millionaires continue to bicker over salaries, airing their grievances either in media reports or Twitter posts.

After agreeing in March to pay players prorated salaries if the 2020 season began, owners last week requested a second pay cut to combat revenues lost from playing in empty stadiums. That proposal, containing a sliding pay scale 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, has said it will not accept another pay cut. 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.”

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts offered a rebuttal Tuesday, telling ESPN, “Most baseball owners don’t take money out of their team. 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 last valued the Cubs at $3.2 billion, claiming $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 might 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 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 counterproposal rejected Wednesday called for a 114-game regular season ending Oct. 31. Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick told an Arizona radio station Tuesday that owners will not approve any plan that calls for baseball in November.

Both sides have proposed an expanded 14-team playoff format for 2020, a rare agreement within the last month. 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.

In his letter, Halem cited MLB’s infectious disease consultant, Dr. Ali Khan, Dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska.

“It is not in the collective interest of clubs or players to begin a 2020 season and subsequently be forced to suspend or cancel it before the completion of the postseason,” Halem wrote. “Dr. Khan and his team have advised us that to minimize the risk of a subsequent delay or cancellation of the 2020 season we should endeavor to complete the season and postseason as early in the fall as possible. In addition, your proposal ignores the realities of the weather in many parts of the country during the second half of October. If we schedule a full slate of games in late October, we will be plagued by cancellations.”

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2020-06-04 02:13:56Z
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