It turns out that neither side had the guts to really jeopardize the game in order to drastically change the way baseball works. Fans will have a 162-game season, about a week later than expected. They will receive reduced spring training, which is probably required every year anyway, but we’ll leave that for another time.
The details haven’t all emerged, but what we can muster is basically here:
So the bottom line is that the CBT threshold is raised, and for both teams that care about that sort of thing, that’s good. There’s still no impetus for teams to spend closer to that limit, let alone beyond it, other than competitive pressure from their co-owners. What we know is not a thing.
The victory here, as it stands, is the creation of a $50 million pool for pre-arbitration players. No, $50 million isn’t really enough to turn things around the way they should be, and the system that players will get a bump from the minimum for is still likely to be wonky as shit. But progress in such things is never rapid or violent, but slow. The players built that into this deal for the first time, and in five years, when we do all that again, they can look to expand it.
That’s how it goes. Take a small step now, take a bigger one over time.
The minimum wages, on which the majority of players are, are increased. Whether that’s enough of one, for an industry that’s just awash with money…well, I guess the diplomatic way of put is “get what you can.” Again, it’s establishing a beachhead, and next time maybe players can advance it even further.
Strikingly, the deal barely passed on the player side, as the final vote would have been 26-12 (30 team reps, then an eight-man executive council). The board voted against, meaning four teams with a majority of players doing the minimum and getting a raise didn’t think this deal was enough. When the details come out over the next few hours, we might have a real idea of what players didn’t like and who voted no.
The owners tried to throw a spanner in the works at the last minute, making the players’ lawsuit during the 2020 season a deal breaker if not dropped. It’s not yet clear whether the players have done so or not, but it feels like a major sticking point for the executive committee.
We can analyze this later. Spring training will open immediately, the free agent market will reopen in the next few hours, there will be 162 games, and we can all sit back and watch all but two teams do their best to win 87 games to enter a playoff system that makes that 162 games pretty much moot.
On the other hand, spring and summer without baseball is meaningless and meaningless, and we all need things we can enjoy wherever we can find them.
Jit was the second-longest work stoppage in MLB history, following the baseball strike of 1994–95.
This is a breaking story, check back for updates.
