Yesterday Major League Baseball and its owners made their latest offer to the players.
Given that the number of games and percentage of pay the players would receive in each offer changes, the value of each proposal can be complicated to get one’s head around. As a shorthand, though, it can be looked at this way:
- Major League Baseball’s previous proposal guaranteed that players would earn 23.4% of their 2020 salaries to play a season with 46% of the usually-scheduled games, while providing them a chance to get 35.2% of their 2020 salaries if everything broke right and the playoffs were played in their entirety;
- The players counterproposal had them receiving 55% of their 2020 pay for 55% of a season in terms of games scheduled and would give the owners expanded playoffs for two years;
- MLB’s latest proposal would give players 31.1% of salaries for a season that is 44% of the usual 162-game scheduled with a chance to earn 35.5% if playoffs were played
The latest offer, once again, barely moves in the players’ direction. It’s at best a 7.7% move while demanding that the players move 20% in the owners’ direction. It likewise does not acknowledge that the players’ earned the right to receive prorated pay in the March Agreement between the union and the league, and asks them to play more games than that for which they will be paid in percentage terms. It is thus being characterized by many as yet another bad faith offer from the league.
More worrisome than the terms of the offer, however, is the tone the negotiations. A tone we now know of due to an article written yesterday afternoon by Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of the The Athletic, who obtained a copy of the letter from the league to the union which accompanied the offer.
The letter, from MLB’s chief negotiator Dan Halem, takes on a particularly nasty tone. In it Halem accuses the union of negotiating in bad faith, claims that the players’ assertion that that they are entitled to prorated salaries is untrue, and even implies that the players are lucky to be in the position to receive any pay at all (e.g. the $170 million in salaried MLB advanced to the players in March) given that because Commissioner Manfred had the authority to suspend all contracts once President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. Indeed, Halem seems to imply that, it it were solely up to the league, perhaps it’d be better to not play at all:
Halem, however, writes the discussions leading to the March agreement between the parties that the league made it “crystal clear” to the union that the clubs would not be forced to resume play without fans because it would not be economically feasible. He adds the agreement awarded the players “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of benefits” in service time and salary advances even though the league could have chosen not to negotiate, citing the national emergency.
Does that sound to you like MLB using a deadly pandemic as a negotiating tool? Because to me that sounds an awful lot like MLB using a deadly pandemic as a negotiating tool.
Halem likewise mischaracterizes the position the union’s chief negotiator, Bruce Meyer, took in earlier communications. Halem is angry that Meyer, according to Halem anyway, said that the league “owes” it to players to play as many games as possible this season. The Athletic has a copy of the letter Halem is referring to, however, and Meyer never said that. Rather, he said “the league’s cynical tactic of depriving America of baseball games in furtherance of their demand for unwarranted salary concessions is short-sighted and troubling.”
In response to Halem’s letter, the union provided The Athletic with a statement. The response itself strongly suggests that Halem is simply mischaracterizing past agreements and communications in his letter:
Mr. Halem’s self-serving letter is filled with inaccuracies and incomplete facts. We will respond to that and the league’s latest proposal in short order. It should not be forgotten however that even MLB admits that our March Agreement does not require players to agree to further pay cuts. Indeed, as Mr. Halem agreed in a May 18 letter to Tony Clark: “The Association is free to take the position that players are unwilling to accept further reductions.” Pat Houlihan, MLB legal counsel, similarly acknowledged in his May 22 letter to the Players Association. “We agree with the Association that, under the Agreement, players are not required to accept less than their full prorated salary.’”
One could — and many will — call this “both sides getting nasty” here, but if the union’s statement is true, and (a) there are two letters in which MLB admits that the players are entitled to prorated pay; but (b) Halem and the league continue to insist otherwise in their offers, it’s the very definition of bad faith on the part of Major League Baseball.
Here’s the question: if Halem admitted on May 18 and Pat Houlihan admitted on March 22 that the the players are entitled to prorated pay, why is Halem insisting otherwise now and why are the league’s offers still for less than prorated pay?
Based on my legal background and my experience in exchanging nasty letters back and forth with attorneys in the course of contentious negotiations, I can think of two reasons. Neither of them are good.
The first possibility: Halem is covering is butt and is trying to keep the 30 MLB owners from getting mad at him and his boss, Rob Manfred.
When news of the March 26 agreement first came out, there was a lot of discussion about what it required. There were conflicting media reports and assertions from people who knew or people who knew people who knew about what still needed to be negotiated and what did not. It strikes me as quite possible that, while Manfred, Halem, and union officials all saw the agreement because they negotiated it, the 30 owners did not or did not pay as close attention to it. It’s possible that the owners believed that prorated pay was not guaranteed and that the union would be forced to back down from that.
Now, however, with that not happening, it’s possible that some of the owners — particularly the ones who would be hit hardest financially if they had to pay prorated salaries — are upset. Maybe they’re asking why their employees, Manfred and Halem, aren’t able to make that happen. Maybe they don’t even know that Halem and Houlihan admitted in previous letters that they know the players do not have to negotiate down from prorated salaries. Halem’s letter yesterday would not be the first instance in which an attorney engaged in over-the-top bluster in order to make his client think he was acting tough, to make the other side look like bad faith actors, and to keep his client from realizing he’s not holding as many cards as he thinks. If that’s the case, Halem might not even have the permission to make a fair deal, and he’s now trying to cover up for all of that with angry words. It happens in negotiations all the time. I’ve seen it happen. It looks exactly like this.
The second possibility: The owners and MLB brass have simply decided that they either want as short of a season as they can get or, possibly, would prefer to play no season at all, and they’re trying to lay the groundwork to make the players into the bad guys for it in the mind of the public. They’ll trash the players as bad faith actors and ingrates and hope that the press and the public runs with that narrative so that when they either (a) say the season will only be 48 games long; or (b) say that, actually, we can’t have a season, they don’t seem like the bad guys who preferred less or no baseball to something approaching a season of reasonable length.
Neither of those are good, but either way, this is ugly, folks. It’s important to understand, however, that it’s ugliness coming almost completely from Major League Baseball. The league seems, quite clearly, to be taking an aggressive and even disingenuous stance while the players are simply asserting their position in negotiations.
Jon Heyman of MLB Network and Karl Ravech of ESPN are both reporting that Major League Baseball is expected to make a counter offer to the players today that, once again, offers less than prorated pay. Heyman says it’ll be a 72-game season at around 80% of prorated pay. Ravech says it’ll be around 70 games and 80-85% of prorated pay.
MLB’s last offer was for 76 games at 75 percent pro rata — and that was actually a tad worse than their first offer — so this is not much of a bump. It’s unlikely to impress the players in any event given that they’ve insisted on their previously negotiated right to receive 100% of prorated pay.
The owners’ “nuclear option,” as it were, is to simply impose a very short season at 100% prorated pay. Heyman expects the owners to do just that if an agreement is not reached within the next five days or so.
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Update (3:56 PM ET, Bill Baer): MLB has officially sent its proposal to the MLBPA, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports. 72-game season, 70 percent prorated play during the regular season which gets bumped up to 80 percent if the postseason is completed.
Other details: option to suspend draft pick compensation attached to free agents during the 2020-21 offseason. Expanded postseason, potentially eight teams per league. Season would start somewhere in mid-July and end on September 27.
This new proposal presents a modest bump in pay, an additional $71 million, per The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. The owners have set a deadline for Sunday. The MLBPA has remained firm on full prorated salaries, so expect MLB’s latest proposal to also be rejected.
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