Drayer: Painful truths have been exposed during MLB lockout saga

Another day, another meeting, another proposal. And still, no baseball. The MLB lockout continues.

MLB Lockout: No sign of breakthrough as both sides meet again

This is not the place 125 days ago, when a ball to short off the bat of Yuli Gurriel brought the World Series to a close, most thought we would be. Surely something would get worked out and a 162-game championship season would begin on time. Instead, some painful truths about this game have been further exposed. If we have learned anything in what we have seen in this CBA saga, it is the health of the sport is much worse than we thought.

Whether two series canceled by MLB turns into more or somehow in the next week or so an agreement is reached with the MLBPA, in the big picture it’s hard to see any agreement as little more than a bandage. Unless major issues are addressed, we will be headed for more of the same in future CBA negotiations.

The issues currently being negotiated are short-term fixes for larger problems and those problems aren’t going away.

A raise in major league minimums is certainly called for but the bigger issue is compensation structure itself. For the top talents, the big paydays are still there with 26 players under contract for $25 million or more in 2022 as opposed to just four players in 2015.

For the middle and bottom tiers? Uncertainty as we have seen in recent years for solid players who are still available in late-January and early-February. Still useful relievers who don’t find big-league deals. Teams filling in with more and more major-league minimum players because they have found they can piece together similar production, particularly on the pitching side. What is this going to look like if the evolution of the starter continues on the current trend of shorter outings?

Higher minimums and perhaps eventually a higher CBT should benefit the players in the short-term, but in five years the ask will be there once again. This time around the MLBPA dropped requests for five years to free agency and a larger percentage of Super Two players early on in the process as MLB made it clear they were nonstarters. At some point, they shouldn’t be. The game changes, the athletes change, the dollars change. At some point the compensation structure will need to change, too.

There are some who have in exasperation said that at this point the two sides should dig in until everything gets fixed. Sacrifice the season if need be. This would be a mistake for many reasons. Damage to the game comes to mind immediately but a bigger issue, if that is possible, would be that baseball is currently not in a place to effectively negotiate changes of this magnitude regardless of how needed they might be.

There is the state of the relationship between MLB and the MLBPA, which is without question poor, but perhaps there are some questions within the owners group as well with news that four teams, the Angels, Diamondbacks, Tigers and Reds, voted not to approve a $10 million increase in the CBT. There are reports that these four owners, in fact, felt the increase, which would hold steady for three years, was too much. With a payroll disparity of upwards of $260 million at the top and $40 million at the bottom, just how comfortable is the relationship between the spenders and non-spenders? And is there complete harmony with the current revenue sharing system? Do the spenders really want to be told they can’t spend? With approval from 23 of 30 owners required in order to ratify a CBA, these are potential concerns.

No, now is not the time for sweeping changes. But that’s not to say they couldn’t or shouldn’t get to work on them as soon as possible. First thing is first, however. For the sake of the future of the game, they need to come to agreement quickly.

Opportunity was lost in 2020 when baseball could not find its way to the field during the early days of the pandemic, a time when it was needed most. Coming off a tremendous 2021 postseason and an invigorating November spending spree, now with young, immensely likeable and marketable superstars languishing in agency training facilities rather than lighting it up in front of fans who booked spring training trips, baseball is not just once again squandering great opportunity, it is on the precipice of taking a major step backward as it continues to play the calendar game, holding out for the short-term win.

MLB should be playing for the long-term win, a win they cannot get to without the players or the fans. A revenue sharing partnership like those in the NFL and NBA that could perhaps that could get both sides pulling in the same direction does not appear to be likely, but what can be done to make the relationship between MLB and the MLBPA less adversarial? Are there better representatives on either side?

On his weekly segment on Wyman and Bob, Jon Morosi noted that the relationship between ownership and players is not as familial as it has been in the past. With many teams they don’t interact with the players or media as much as they did in the past. Would more of this lead to better understanding and perhaps just a modicum more trust? It might be a first step in the right direction once the current CBA is settled.

At some point, and hopefully before a December 2026 MLB lockout, the larger issues will have to be addressed. Raises are comparatively easy. Restructuring of systems are another story.  One way or another, this relationship must improve as baseball cannot afford to continue taking steps backwards.

MLB Lockout: The big questions team owners face as sides seek deal