When is baseball coming back? MLBPA submitted a counter-proposal
Many of you have been asking if we are even going to have a baseball season I have also seen on social media questions like "When is baseball coming back"?
MLBPA submitted a counter-proposal to MLB owners, on June 1, 2020 that has plans for returning to play baseball. The proposal includes 114 game season & deferred salaries in the event of a canceled postseason and also has an option for all players to opt out of the 2020 season because of coroavirus concerns.
At least the MLB Players Association and the MLB are talking, they're so far apart in so many issues that they're discussing and the realities is that the calendar is upon them.
According to the player's plan, they would start the regular season on June 30th,that's only 29 days away, so they have to come up with an agreement. They have to put all the safety protocols in place.
Now, let's say they come up to with an agreement, they will have to get the players in place for a second spring training, and all along players have been saying that they believe a second spring training would require about three weeks, so they have to get moving as quickly as possible.
Is MLB 2020 Season Canceled?
I ponder, when they're this far apart and they need to come to a deal, let's say within the next seven to ten days. Does that seem possible? I think it is does because, let's face it, for both sides not to come up with an agreement this summer the consequences are almost unthinkable for baseball, which, if there's no baseball in 2020, would spin into this long cycle of labor strife.
The same questions would be still there next spring. They would have to come up with another agreement, then, with a looming end of the Collective Bargaining Agreement in December of 2021, you know the possibility of a player strike comes into it.
There have been reports from the players side and there might be owners, who've lost so much money, that say "you know what let's just wait out the players and we'll get the financial model we need and all the while they would be upsetting all of the baseball fans and who knows what the state of the business would be when it would come back.
Buster Olney, ESPN posted on Twitter
Sunday notes: It's not just the 2020 season at stake, but the future of MLB https://t.co/h9C3b39RwF
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) May 31, 2020
I tend to agree with him because the issues are so large and the impact from the two sides would be so extreme because of social media, every time either side would put something out there the fans would react. So many fans are angry about how this is developing with baseball.
Both sides of this debate have really good points. Sometimes I look at the owners and say you make a great point, then I look at the players argument and they're right as well, so when both sides feel like they have the moral high ground The issue right now is the lack of communications, if both sides stick to their guns, which is their right to stick to their sides then nobody plays baseball this year, everybody loses.
The Players Stance On This Issue
For the players let's look at what the future contracts are going to look like if baseball isn't played. Firstly salary arbitration is going to take a big hit and secondly free agency is going to completely dry up. Now you look at the owners side, their franchise values are going to plummet, so it behooves both sides of this debate to come together and actually play.
The players have historically stuck together so strongly, making them by far the most powerful sports union. The players I believe want to play ball, some of them are in the prime of their careers and they are not playing, so they are not getting their salaries. So, they want to play but at the same time they respect what happened in the past.
You have the older players talking about look at the guys in 94 & 95, that held out for the current players rights and their freedoms, they respect those past players, but they also have to look at the future of the game and try to put it in the best situation. They are weighing this very delicate balance by respecting what has occurred in the past labor negotiations, but also not wanting to completely torpedo the future of baseball.
I'm optimism that they will figure this thing out in the next week to ten days but if the players win the negotiation this year and the owners accept this deal, which I don't think they will, but if they accepted this deal, the economic catastrophe that would happen to the owners is real and so every dollar that the players make this year, they're not making next year and the year after. So, if the owners continued to hemorrhage cash and lose a bunch of money in 2020, because this pandemic, they're not going to be spending it next offseason and in future offseasons. So I worry that if the players actually do win this negotiation they might be really hurting themselves.
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