If it was Tuesday, it must have been "Meet The Deadline."
For a second Tuesday in a row, Major League Baseball gave the locked-out players a take-it-or-leave-it deadline in collective bargaining talks. Either take the league’s latest proposal or leave a week’s worth of regular-season games on the chopping block.
Last Tuesday, after nine consecutive days of in-person talks in Jupiter, Fla., the Players Association rejected an offer that it said the league described as “best and final,” and watched Commissioner Rob Manfred announce the cancellation of the first week of the season. This Tuesday, after MLB shifted its position on the luxury tax and delivered a new proposal in writing, union leaders huddled with lawyers and economists deep into the night.
And as the baseball world stayed up late again to see if white smoke would billow, this time from MLBPA headquarters in midtown Manhattan, a source familiar with the talks cautioned against assuming from the late hour and intensity of the negotiations that a deal was close.
This Tuesday’s deadline, which came on the 97th day of the owners’ lockout, carried an additional caveat: MLB was expected to propose that the previously erased first two regular-season series — five games for the Phillies — would be rescheduled and the players’ full-season pay and service time reinstated. But if the union turned down another offer, more games — likely two more series — would be canceled.
If that sounded more like a negotiating tactic or even an ultimatum, well, that’s how the players viewed last week’s deadline, which MLB maintained was necessary to preserve a 162-game season after a four-week spring training. Regardless, the players weren’t pressured into taking a deal then and likely were resolved to get the best possible deal now, too.
Details of MLB’s most recent offer were difficult to come by, with the sides keeping a tighter lid on leaks. Multiple reports suggested MLB moved toward the players on the luxury-tax threshold, the central economic issue in the negotiation, but a second source suggested there were “big issues” that remained, including the league’s proposal of an international draft, a no-go over the years for players.
According to The Athletic, MLB nudged its initial luxury-tax threshold to $230 million, up from $220 million in its previous offer and $210 million last season and only $8 million shy of the players’ last offer. It was unknown whether MLB sought harsher penalties (a loss of draft picks, for instance) for teams that surpass the threshold. Any such offsets almost certainly would be a nonstarter for the players.
The annual rate of increase in those thresholds also remained an issue. The Athletic reported that MLB’s new offer bumped the threshold to $242 million by 2026, the end point of the five-year agreement. The players were seeking a $263 million threshold in 2026.
But any significant upward movement by the owners on the luxury-tax threshold figures to push the players closer to a deal. Given how many teams, including the Phillies, have recently spent to the threshold but stopped short of clearing it, the players have come to view it as a de facto salary cap. Manfred admitted last week that it effectively serves as a check on runaway spending by big-market owners, notably the New York Mets’ Steve Cohen.
“The competitive-balance tax is the only mechanism in our agreement that protects some semblance of a level playing field among the clubs,” Manfred said.
MLB needs 23 of the 30 owners to ratify an agreement. Four owners reportedly rejected the league’s proposed $220 million threshold for 2022 last week.
It was also unclear what the owners requested as a trade-off for the movement on the luxury tax.
In a proposal Sunday, the players stuck to their preferred luxury-tax thresholds in exchange for offering to let MLB hasten the implementation of three on-field rule changes (a pitch clock, larger bases, limits to defensive shifts). That stipulation is likely in MLB’s latest proposal.
But it’s also possible the owners pushed for 14-team expanded postseason. The sides agreed last week to a 12-team field based on the players’ concerns that a 14-team format wouldn’t properly reward division winners. But Mets ace Max Scherzer, a leader in the union, indicated that a change to the structure may prompt the players to revisit the 14-team format.
If a deal were to be reached, players likely would report to spring training by the end of the week. A four-week camp would push opening day from March 31 to the second full week of April. It’s unclear when the previously canceled games would be played.
When Tuesday dawned, gaps still existed between the sides on many core economic issues, including a $50 million difference in the bonus pool for pre-arbitration (entry-level) players. But the tenor of the talks, which had turned decidedly negative Sunday evening, seemed to be changing.
After the players made their proposal Sunday, league spokesman Glen Caplin blasted the union for moving the process “backwards” with “a proposal that was worse” than last week’s and described the talks as “deadlocked.” The union disputed that characterization.
But the sides agreed to tamp down the rhetoric this week. They met more surreptitiously Monday, opting to neither alert the media nor leak blow-by-blow details as soon as they adjourned. They seemed to make progress, too, with MLB making its move on the luxury tax.
By Tuesday night, with another deadline looming, the union was trying to decide whether MLB’s new proposal was good enough.
