What a long, strange trip it was, and who knows how successful any of it will ultimately be. But here we are.
The lack of a deal between MLB and the MLB Players Association led to the league imposing a schedule, as was its right in a March 26 agreement that also guaranteed players a fully prorated portion of their salaries. MLB on Monday told the union it planned to impose a schedule as long as the players would report to training camp by July 1 and codify a health and safety manual that runs more than 100 pages. The players agreed to both on Tuesday.
“All remaining issues have been resolved and Players are reporting to training camps,” the union tweeted Tuesday night.
The season’s success probably depends on MLB’s ability to contain coronavirus spread, an issue the health and safety protocol covers in immense detail. Addressing everything from travel to social distancing to a ban on spitting, the manual is a strict guide for a potential 2020 season and illustrates the difficulty of pulling off such an endeavor.
If it can, MLB in 2020 will look radically different:
- Teams will play their four divisional opponents 10 times and each of the five interleague opponents in the same geographical area four games apiece.
- The National League will use a designated hitter.
- In extra innings, teams will begin with a runner on second base.
- The trade deadline will be Aug. 31, less than a month before the regular season is scheduled to end
- Rosters will start at 30 men for the first two weeks, then go to 28 for the next two weeks and stay at 26 for the remainder of the season.
- Teams will have a taxi squad that allows them to have as many as 60 players available to play in major league games.
- There will be a special COVID-19 injured list with no minimum or maximum length of time spent on it, while standard injured list stints will be for 10 days, and the typical 60-day stint will instead be for 45 days.
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Under the imposed season, players will receive their full pro rata, a sticking point in negotiations during which owners sought pay cuts in their first three proposals. The players never budged from their stance, and they will receive in total around $1.5 billion — about 37% of their full-season salaries. Players will not receive forgiveness on the $170 million salary advance they received as part of the March agreement, and they are owed no bonus money from the postseason — two items that the league had offered as part of a deal that included the players rubber-stamping expanding the playoffs from 10 to 16 teams.
The players sought a 70-game season in which they would receive $50 million in playoff revenue as well as a cut in 2021 of new money from TV rights in the expanded playoffs. The league also would have received the ability to wear advertising patches on uniforms and the support of players wearing in-game microphones, among other ancillary items.
All potential deals fell apart amid the animus between the parties. That they wound up where they did on Tuesday, agreeing to the implementation of a season after not agreeing on anything for months, served as a bright moment after darkness had shrouded the sport since it shut down in mid-March.
This was more or less where everyone expected things to wind up after what turned out to be MLB and the players’ final offers were rejected. Both sides will now be able to file a grievance claiming the other side did not negotiate in good faith. I’d put more money on the players winning that than the owners. How successful any of this will be given that positive tests have become a frequent occurrence among teams and players in various leagues. I’m ready to see MLB play again, but there’s a big part of me that’s still very dubious, both about whether this can happen and whether it should. For now, it is and it will. The Chron has more.
Remember when sign stealing was the big scandal? Those were more innocent times.
I hope that they can pull a shortened season off, and I’ll be following on the radio. But I have my doubts too.