With labour negotiations dragging on, MLB's Opening Day is in jeopardy

Now it’s serious. What’s been said and done to date in Major League Baseball’s lockout should be on the cutting room floor. Opening Day is in jeopardy, and if you’re into panic buttons, put in the code, lift the cover and get your finger at the ready.

I’m there with you.

Major League owners and players will meet Saturday for a bargaining session just days before pitchers and catchers would normally be filing in for spring training, with owners – specifically commissioner Rob Manfred – making clear in a news conference on Thursday that Opening Day will be in jeopardy if a deal isn’t reached by the end of the month.

Which is pretty much what everybody has been saying all along, no?

I tried to get all worked up as I watched Manfred’s news conference, tried to summon up some of the anger and tut-tutting that is my right as a card-carrying member of the chattering class.

But it wasn’t happening.

I know there was a great deal of guffawing at Manfred’s suggestion that baseball owners would be better off throwing their money into the stock market (newsflash: labour negotiator says his side is aggrieved financially under current contract) and umbrage taken at his suggestion that he’s a guy whose history shows he knows how to make a deal (newsflash: trust me, not them,) not to mention that there is some disconnect between what the players say they want and what’s been presented (newsflash: we don’t know what the other side wants). At the end of the day, it means jack.

Even the positives – we’ve agreed to the universal designated hitter! – wasn’t all that. Everybody hates pitchers hitting. The draft lottery? That is a sign of philosophical progress. But even then, talks haven’t advanced to a point where there’s an agreement on the size of the lottery and that’s what needs to happen across the board to bring this to an end.

We’ve kind of seen the numbers thrown out by both sides regarding player compensation, revenue-sharing, expanded playoffs and the like – Manfred’s real wobble came when he used improper figures regarding the competitive balance tax, which was picked up by ESPN’s Jeff Passan and required clarification (https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/33260702/rob-manfred-says-optimistic-be-disastrous-mlb-wrong) – but it beggars belief that these are anything other than extremes.

Again, the usual caveats: players don’t get paid salaries until the regular season begins. They have a war-chest. Ticket sales still matter to owners – less with each passing year, which is another topic for another day – but rest assured that they, too, have taken financial precautions against missed games. Players are no longer beholden to club facilities to stay in shape. Yes, there are great numbers of unsigned free agents and trades to be made but as Manfred pointed out: it will take a day or two to ratify the agreement and then players can begin reporting. Arbitration, free agency and trades? You can walk and chew gum at the same time. When the ground-rules are laid, the taps will open.

There were only a couple of things I found interesting in Manfred’s news conference, delivered in a benign tone that made you wonder whether he had an olive branch or crowbar behind his back. First, he laid out a schedule: the owners think they need 28 days of spring training, based in part on injury data from the abbreviated training camp in 2020. He also mentioned – twice – that he wanted to talk to the MLBPA about “the calendar.” Not sure what that meant. An extension to the current agreement if enough advancement is made by a certain date without a deal being signed off?

Manfred used the word “tactical,” on two occasions, and I found that telling. Initiating the lockout and slow-playing negotiations were clearly tactical. I won’t watch the Super Bowl, but I will borrow a football analogy: the owners have the ball – always – they’re moving down the field, and what we don’t know is whether they’ll settle for a field goal, elect to punt and push the MLBPA back to the one-yard line, or try to drive into the endzone. As always, clock management will be a factor.

Here’s where this goes Saturday: the owners will make a proposal that may or may not actually represent a move towards the players. I’m always aware of over-selling and under-delivering. The players won’t be happy, but the real key is whether talks continue or are scheduled to resume after a day or two to regroup. It doesn’t matter whether the tone is angry or contentious. It never has. It’s billionaires and millionaires fighting over money, for god’s sake. It’s not going to be pretty. I texted Thursday night with a former player representative who is still in the industry, knows his way around negotiations and is in touch with current MLBPA labor activists – for want of a better description – and asked what it would take for him to believe we’ll have an on-time Opening Day. “Hard math,” was his response. “A financial figure on a core issue that makes me think: ‘Hey, that’s something.’ It doesn’t matter if it comes this weekend. Mid-week.”

So, we are at a real point in time here. I’ve been optimistic all along that Opening Day will be saved, mostly because baseball has never lost a regular-season game due to a lockout; only to strikes. But now? I just don’t know at this time of writing. I’ll admit I have a less jaundiced opinion of Manfred than many in the business, but I wonder if any of us have a handle on the internal politicking of ownership? It’s not like it used to be, with Jerry Reinsdorf and a few fellow travellers screaming “salary cap” until somebody shows them the door. I mean, who are these guys? That whole Tampa Bay thing, does the fact that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg voted against the last CBA matter? What does it mean that the Chicago Cubs are in talks on a direct-to-consumer streaming service without the blessing of the commissioner’s office? Anything? Nothing? I don’t know.

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On the players side, I don’t know if it means anything that so many Scott Boras clients are on the player executive? I doubt it, but it’s a thing. Does it mean anything that Adam Wainwright suggested in an interview last weekend that: “If owners proposed the exact same deal we have right now, we’d probably go play baseball, to be honest with you?” Was it the accidental truth? A sentiment shared by his peers? A Joe Biden moment? Does it matter that the second half of the quote was: “That’s not just happening. Not even close, to be honest to you?” Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.

I’m unabashedly pro-player and have been through the various labour disputes I’ve seen since I started covering baseball in 1989. Much of that is a natural affinity with the folks I’d see in the clubhouse on a day-to-day basis; an appreciation for the grind of being a big leaguer and the swift, short career most of them experience after making bugger-all in the minor leagues.

But I’ve never been comfortable with this new leadership.

Following Manfred’s news conference, the always-excellent Fran Charles hosted a panel with Tom Verducci, Dan O’Dowd and Harold Reynolds to break down the commissioner’s thoughts, and Reynolds told a story that especially resonated.

During the 1985 negotiations as a young player, Reynolds was affected directly by the owners successfully negotiating getting salary arbitration raised from two years to three. As part of the horse-trading, owners dropped their demands that arbitration awards be limited to 100 per-cent of the previous year, but as part of the broader negotiations, that owners agreed to double annual contributions to the players’ pension plan, setting in motion an overhaul that the union can rightfully point to as a significant win. Eventually, arbitration was tweaked again to create a class of “two-plus” players.

“I think the players need to know the successes and the gains they’ve made in the past,” said Reynolds.

The truth is, we’ve all wondered whether the modern ballplayer has the stones to go to the wall like the old labor warriors of the 1970s and 1980s. Never mind their collective mindset after hearing for the past five years that they were taken to the woodshed by ownership in the last set of negotiations.

It’s a product of the conventional wisdom that viewed it as the end of a long, labor winning streak started by Marvin Miller and carried on by Donald Fehr and Michael Weiner; that players union executive director Tony Clark was over his skis and was happy to settle for “lifestyle” gains – doing away with clubhouse dues, etc. – at the expense of core economics.

Since then, minimum and average salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation, let alone the growth of revenue. If you’ve paid attention, you’ll know that in 10 per cent of the games, players account for 90 per-cent of baseball’s salary expenditure, and that the greater movement of players (particularly pitchers) up and down through the minors has turned into a cost-control measure, since those players are paid on a pro-rated basis. There’s a difference between a major league player and somebody who played in the majors; there are players who, after taxes, might have taken home $100,000. They aren’t all millionaires. Trust me.

In some ways I have sympathy for Clark and his lead negotiator Bruce Meyer because economics and analytics have conspired to put the union perpetually on the defensive, and in some ways, they’ve been victims of the success the MLBPA enjoyed right up to its last CBA. One of Manfred’s real coups since arriving on the scene first as commissioner Bud Selig’s right-hand man was getting ownership to forget forever the idea of a salary cap and focus instead on revenue-sharing and a competitive balance tax.

As a result, “at least we don’t have a salary cap like the NFL, NBA or NHL,” isn’t much of a rallying point. In fact, look where we are now: one of the bargaining chips the union can ‘play’ is to acquiesce to the owners demands for expanded playoffs. I think they are swell, but the industry’s revenue and franchise values are through the moon without it and as an owner, I don’t know if I’d trade much to get expanded playoffs, to be honest.

Earlier in the lockout, on Blair & Barker, we interviewed Hall-of-Famer Tom Glavine, one of the most-engaged members of the MLBPA in the 1990s and received grief from fans across the majors. I put forth the idea that because there wasn’t anybody left from the 1994 players strike, and because most of the current group have known nothing but labor peace during their careers, they might not be up for it.

Weight of history, and all that.

“I don’t know if you need a tremendous knowledge of history to know that sticking together is good,” Glavine said. “In the 1990 lockout, I didn’t understand what happened in 1982. I knew about Curt Flood … but that was about it. But I came to understand it and what it’s all about.”

There are going to be people reminding the players what they’ve lost – because we love keeping score – but I’m hoping somebody will remind them of their successes, at a time when so much really is conspiring against them. They’re on defence, and need to slow down the owners. Because much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think they can get the big stop any more, let alone the turnover. Not in one CBA, at least.

Jeff Blair hosts Blair & Barker on Sportsnet 590 The FAN.