{"id":29227,"date":"2022-04-11T00:57:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T00:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=29227"},"modified":"2022-04-25T20:50:30","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T20:50:30","slug":"mlbs-new-collective-bargaining-agreement-fails-to-address-players-biggest-grievances-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/mlbs-new-collective-bargaining-agreement-fails-to-address-players-biggest-grievances-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB\u2019s new collective bargaining agreement fails to address players\u2019 biggest grievances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Matheson<\/a>, College of the Holy Cross<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople ask me what I do in winter when there\u2019s no baseball,\u201d second baseman Rogers Hornsby once said<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a while, it was looking like the start of spring would come and go without any baseball on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just when fan morale was at its nadir<\/a>, Major League Baseball announced a five-year agreement with its players<\/a>, ending the second-longest labor interruption in MLB history. Now, April 7, 2022, will serve as most teams\u2019 opening day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sports economists like me<\/a> have long studied labor disruptions in sports. In this dispute \u2013 the first major one in baseball since the mid-1990s<\/a> \u2013 player grievances largely centered on two issues: the length of time it takes them to reach free agency and the lack of a payroll floor. Both policies suppressed their salaries despite the fact that league revenues have grown in recent years<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new collective bargaining agreement takes some important steps toward correcting these problems. But it mostly just pushes the big issues another five years down the track. The deal also leaves baseball players with a fundamentally different \u2013 and very likely worse \u2013 arrangement than their counterparts in the other major American sports leagues have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The indentured servants of pro sports<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

MLB requires players to be on a big league roster for six years before they\u2019re allowed to hit free agency<\/a> and negotiate a salary with any team of their choosing. In the NBA<\/a> and NFL<\/a>, players need to play for only four years before they become free agents. And unlike football and basketball \u2013 sports in which players usually go straight from college to the pros \u2013 baseball players often spend several years in the minor leagues before getting called up to the Show. Those seasons don\u2019t count toward the required service time for free agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, many players don\u2019t get the right to freely negotiate for their services until they are in their late 20s or early 30s \u2013 ages at which many players are already past their prime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the period before free agency, players are bound to teams in ways that allow the teams to underpay them relative to their contributions to team success both on the field and for the team\u2019s bottom line. For example, because he was in only his second season in the league, the Cleveland Guardians\u2019 Shane Bieber<\/a> earned just US$231,000 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, despite winning the American League\u2019s Cy Young Award<\/a> as the league\u2019s best pitcher. In a market in which he could freely negotiate for his services, Bieber would have likely earned in excess of $20 million. But he won\u2019t actually get the right to earn market value for his talents until 2025, at which point he will be nearly 30 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Baseball
The Cleveland Guardians are able to pay star pitcher Shane Bieber at a bargain rate. Frank Jansky\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since most players\u2019 MLB careers<\/a> are shorter than six years, the majority of players never make it through \u201clean\u201d years to that big free-agency payoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These free-agency rules remain unchanged in the new agreement, although the league\u2019s minimum salary has been increased from $570,500 to $700,000<\/a> and will grow to $780,000 by the end of the deal. Another $50 million will be distributed each season to players who have yet to reach salary arbitration<\/a>, a system that grants pre-free-agency players at least some level of bargaining power with their existing team. In addition, the agreement includes incentives to encourage teams to bring up players from the minor leagues somewhat earlier, which should result in some players achieving free agency at a younger age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these are welcome additions that will increase wages for MLB\u2019s lowest-paid players by about 40%, the new amounts allocated to players still total less than 1% of MLB\u2019s annual revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A soft cap \u2013 and no floor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The MLB is also unique in that players are not entitled to specified percentages of league revenues, and teams are not required to spend a minimum amount on payroll. The new agreement does little to change this structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the NFL, for example, organizations must spend at least 48% of league revenue<\/a> on player compensation, and individual teams have a salary cap of $208.2 million in 2022<\/a>. They\u2019re also obligated to spend at least 89% of the cap on salaries over the course of several seasons, which effectively creates a salary floor of roughly $185 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MLB revenues<\/a> rose 15%, from $9.03 billion in 2016 to $10.37 billion in 2019, while the average salary<\/a> remained flat at $4.38 million, indicating that players were taking home a smaller piece of the economic pie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though revenue took a huge hit in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, some data suggests<\/a> that revenues in 2021 largely recovered to their pre-pandemic levels while average salaries fell nearly 5%. On top of that, the average figures are distorted by record-breaking contracts from just a handful of superstars. The median salary<\/a> of an MLB player fell from $1.65 million in 2015 to $1.15 million in 2021 \u2013 a decline of over 30%. Over half of all players earn at or near the league\u2019s minimum salary, since they are ineligible for either free agency or arbitration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While MLB doesn\u2019t have a salary cap that limits what teams can spend on players, it does have a luxury tax<\/a> that penalizes teams that spend more than a certain amount on payroll. The luxury tax, which effectively serves as a soft salary cap, is set to increase from $210 to $230 million<\/a> in the new agreement, and will rise to $244 million by 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, since only eight teams exceeded the threshold even once between 2003 and 2019 \u2013 and only the Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers have paid the luxury tax on a regular basis \u2013 this increase is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the wages paid to the typical player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, MLB teams \u2013 unlike their counterparts in other sports \u2013 have no salary floor. Such teams as the Orioles, Pirates and Marlins spend less on their entire active rosters<\/a> than some other teams spend on a single starting pitcher. These teams cycle through underpaid young players and then let them sign elsewhere when they\u2019re eligible for free agency. Although these teams tend to be wildly unsuccessful on the field and at the ticket office, generous revenue sharing arrangements with the league still allow them to make money<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing in the new agreement changes the incentives for these teams or provides relief for their long-suffering fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Owners had time on their side<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To me, the owners\u2019 strategy was transparent. They knew the players had legitimate grievances that might result in a strike later in the season, so they wanted to force concessions as soon as possible, knowing that the players\u2019 bargaining power would rise as the season progressed. A players strike right before playoffs in the fall would have inflicted the maximum pain on the owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time was always on the owners\u2019 side: Their careers as owners tend to be much longer than those of players, whose bodies are always aging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baseball junkies will notice several cosmetic changes<\/a> to the game right away: an expanded postseason, sponsor advertisements on jerseys and a designated hitter in the National League. The agreement also opens the door for rule changes in 2023<\/a> that include larger bases, limits on defensive shifts and a pitch clock. Other than some real improvements to the salaries for the league\u2019s lowest-paid players, however, the economics of baseball\u2019s underlying labor model remains as flawed as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, for this summer \u2013 and for the next five years, at least \u2013 fans will be able to grab their peanuts and Cracker Jack and head out to the old ballgame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation\u2019s informative newsletters.<\/em> Join the list today<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victor Matheson<\/a>, Professor of Economics and Accounting, College of the Holy Cross<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross \u201cPeople ask me what I do in winter when there\u2019s no baseball,\u201d second baseman Rogers Hornsby once said. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.\u201d For a while, it was looking like the start of spring would come and go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":29228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[179,11480,865,356,2993,5819,2592,305,6326,8539,1840,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29360,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29227\/revisions\/29360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}