MLB News: MLBPA ‘Went Backwards’ During Sunday Meeting Says Official
The league and the MLBPA reconvened over the weekend to continue to negotiate on a new CBA. According to reports, the meetings, and specifically the Sunday session, were not very productive from MLB’s perspective. The MLBPA submitted a new proposal to the league that did not move the needle, at least in a positive way, for MLB.
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich had the scoop.
MLB’s Glen Caplin: “We were hoping to see some movement in our direction to give us additional flexibility & get a deal done quickly. The Players Association chose to come back to us w/a proposal that was worse than Monday night & was not designed to move the process forward”
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 6, 2022
Naturally, a MLBPA spokesperson refuted the league’s characterization of the Sunday bargaining session.
The back-and-forth echoes the under pinnings of the public relations battle the two sides are entrenched in. Much of the news and communication regarding the CBA over the last week have been all about posturing.
Some in the baseball industry believe that the league intentionally leaked that a CBA could be done before the deadline in the early morning hours this past Tuesday to setup MLB blaming the MLBPA when a potential deal inevitably fell through.
As far as dollars and cents, the players’ association and the league are still relatively far apart on the financials for the competitive balance tax and the pre-arbitration bonus pool.
Source indicates MLBPA proposal included a $5 million drop in their pre arbitration bonus pool offer today. From $85 mil to $80 mil.
CBT request is still the same. Asking to start at $238 mil, league's last was $220 mil.
— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) March 6, 2022
Another development has been the league’s renewed desire to alter the process in which on-field rules can be changed as told by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.
“The league wants the ability to make other changes for subsequent years within 45 days of the end of a season. Such changes would be implemented upon the recommendations of a competition committee composed of more league than union representatives, effectively giving commissioner Rob Manfred the power to act as he chooses. In previous CBAs, the commissioner had the unilateral right to implement changes only after a year’s notice.”
The rules that MLB is currently hot-to-trot on is implementing a pitch clock, eliminating the defensive shift, and changing the size of the bases. According to Rogers, those changes would start in 2023.
Have you subscribed to our YouTube Channel yet? Subscribe and hit that notification bell to stay up to date on all the latest Dodgers news, rumors, interviews, live streams, and more!
Dodgers: LA Fans React to Proposed 14-Team Playoff Format
