There seems to be a financial fight brewing between Major League Baseball’s owners and its players, which perhaps more than anything has the potential to derail a 2020 season played during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
When the owners approved the league’s proposal for a shortened campaign earlier this week, details emerged of their pitch to alleviate costs in a season that could feature no paying customers in the stands: revenue sharing in 2020. Revenues are expected to dive this year with the potential of games played without fans in the stands. That’s left the owners searching for cost-cutting measures, and they have their sights on those pricey player contracts.
The players were anything but receptive to that pitch — to the point where NBC Sports Chicago’s Adam Hoge was told the proposal was “doomed to fail” — and here’s why: They believe the matter is already over and done with.
Back in March, when the league first put the season on hold as the coronavirus spread across the country, the two sides agreed to a deal that set up how things would proceed on the path to a 2020 season. The players agreed to prorated salaries, their paychecks scaled down based on how many games ended up being played.
The new proposal includes plans for an 82-game regular season, so players are prepared to receive roughly half their salaries.
“The players made this major concession of probably 40 to 50 percent of their salaries,” super agent Scott Boras told David Kaplan in an interview for Thursday's edition of SportsTalk Live. “They said, ‘We will forego that. The virus is a problem that we all share. It’s not anyone’s fault. And we will accommodate and reach a compromise and be good partners to put this agreement together.’ And really, that’s what’s been reached.”
A 50-percent pay cut certainly seems hefty. But the owners are fearful that without fans paying for tickets and all the other in-stadium stuff that comes along with going to a baseball game that paying even half the salaries owed to the players could be financially problematic. So they’ve offered to pay them based on how much money comes in, and they believe the March agreement allows them to ask for further concessions based on how much money they could earn without fans in the stands.
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The players see things differently.
“An agreement was struck, struck in good faith,” Boras said. “And within that agreement, there is conversation and discussion and good-faith efforts to determine the economic feasibility of going forward. But as far as player compensation, that was clearly defined when the two parties reached the agreement.”
Not only do the players believe the financial discussion for the 2020 season is behind them. The players see the owners’ revenue-sharing proposal as an opportunity to do what’s already been done in the NFL and NBA: institute a salary cap that would last beyond the unique circumstances of a season played during a pandemic. Tony Clark, the head of the players’ union, accused the league of exactly that Monday.
“That the league is trying to take advantage of a global health crisis to get what they’ve failed to achieve in the past — and to anonymously negotiate through the media for the last several days — suggests they know exactly how this will be received,” Clark told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. “None of this is beneficial to the process of finding a way for us to safely get back on the field and resume the 2020 season — which continues to be our sole focus.”
Boras acknowledges that there is language in the agreement that allows the two sides to determine whether there will be enough money to stage a season. But due to the lucrative media-rights deals at the local and national level — the biggest being for the nationally broadcast postseason, which could feature more games this year under a proposal to expand the playoffs from 10 to 14 teams — Boras believes that issue is an easy one to figure out, too.
“The question is: How many games is it economically feasible for them to play and why?” he explained. “I will tell you that it’s very clear because of the media contracts. On a full season, they’re getting $4 (billion) to $5 billion in those, and on a partial season, they may get $3 billion. And so all of these things make it feasible to have games. And to make an argument that it’s not feasible to play games, knowing that you have those guarantees even without fans (in the stands), more than the players making major concessions in their salaries?”
The league reportedly has yet to formally propose revenue sharing to the players, their first meeting on the plans for the 2020 season focusing mostly on health-and-safety issues — pitches that have raised their own questions and red flags. But the economic discussions are expected to heat up in the coming days. And those discussions could turn into a fight.
Watch David Kaplan's interview with Scott Boras on Thursday's edition of SportsTalk Live, airing at 6:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Chicago.
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