MLB will make offer to players on Saturday; keeps call for training

The Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner’s office maintains the call to start spring training in Arizona and Florida next week and plans to make a financial offer to the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) on Saturday to try to end the current labor dispute that jeopardizes the upcoming baseball season.

Speaking to the media Thursday in Orlando, Fla., at the end of the quarterly team owners’ meetings, Commissioner Rob Manfred said there is no reason to alter spring training reporting dates at this time and that he is optimistic that the season will start on March 31, as scheduled.

“Right now, February 10, nothing changes and the training call is still up,” Manfred said. “I am optimistic that we will have an agreement in time to play our regular schedule. Losing games would be a disastrous outcome for the industry and we are committed to reaching an agreement to avoid that,” he added.

Since the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) concluded and team owners declared a lockout 71 days ago, American baseball has been virtually paralyzed. Transactions and/or conversations between clubs and their players on the 40-man roster were halted, and doping and domestic violence programs, among other industry mechanisms, ceased to function.

Practices are scheduled to start next week and the first exhibition games on February 26.

Trying to resolve the main economic disputes that separate them, the parties have met in person four times since January 13, but instead of making a counter offer to the last proposal of the players (of January 24), the MLB requested on Thursday, February 3, the intervention of a federal mediator, which was rejected by the MLBPA.

“We thought a federal mediator would help, a third party would help. Unfortunately, they turned it down,” Manfred said.

“We don’t need mediation because what we are offering MLB is fair to both parties,” the star pitcher said on social media. Max Scherzerone of the players’ union leaders.

“We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t work as caps, allows younger players to get more of their market value, makes service time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminates tanking as a strategy. winner,” added Scherzer.

In his meeting with the press on Thursday, Manfred said that owners and players have already agreed on several minor topics, including the universal designated hitter, but the central issues of the dispute, which are economics, remain in force.

“The teams fully understand how important it is to our fans that we get started as soon as possible. We want to reach a fair settlement. We have reached out to the players to try to meet their needs. We have submitted a settlement that covers their claims.” Manfred said.

Players feel that fewer and fewer second- and third-tier players are getting paid properly when they finally become free agents after six years of major league service, something that mostly happens in their mid-30s.

What are the main reasons for the conflict?

A: As colleague Jesse Rogers explained in a previous story on ESPN, the roadblock is cheap.

Players feel that fewer and fewer second- and third-tier players are getting paid properly when they finally become free agents after six years of major league service, something that mostly happens in their mid-30s.

Basically, the players want to update the system so that free agency makes sense again for a larger number of players. On the other hand, the players want some measures to prevent so many teams from being content not to compete, which limits the total investment. A minimum in annual payrolls would also help reduce the gap between the clubs that spend the most and those that spend the least on players.

How many times has a season been cut short due to labor disputes?

A: In the eight previous fights, only three forced the cancellation of official matches.

In 1972, the first MLB players’ strike lasted 13 days and canceled 86 games. No team played more than 156 games, out of a schedule of 162.

The strike of 1981 (right in the middle of the tournament) eliminated 713 games, forced to divide the season in two and create a round of division series to decide the rivals that would face each other in the Championship Series. The strike began on June 12 and ended on July 31.

The last, and largest players’ strike of all time, began on August 12, 1994 and was not resolved until April of the following year. In total, 948 regular series games and the 1994 postseason were canceled. There was no World Series for the first time since 1904 and no club was declared champion for the first time in history.

Due to the strike, in 1994 no team played more than 113 games and in 1995 a schedule of 144 games was drawn up for each novena.

What have been the most extreme movements of the owners and the players in previous labor processes?

A: Both occurred in the great battle of 1994-95.

Team owners called spring training in 1995 with replacement or strikebreaker players and even announced a regular-season schedule with replacement players.

The idea was a complete disaster. Adding to the public relations damage, MLB couldn’t even get unanimity on the idea. The Baltimore Orioles said they would not use strikebreakers, Canadian law bars the Toronto Blue Jays from such a move and Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson said he wouldn’t hurt his record by managing fake major leaguers and stepped down.

But while it is well on record that team owners called in substitute players to put pressure on the MLBPA, what not many remember is that the players’ union led by Don Fehr was part of a project for a new league that sought to challenge the immunity exception. antitrust that enjoys baseball.

On November 1, 1994, a group of shareholders, led by several members of Congress and a player agent, announced the United Baseball League (UBL), a circuit of 10 teams (eight in the United States and one in each country, Canada and Mexico). ).

The project was so ambitious that it included plans for future expansion to South Korea and Japan. The idea was magnificent and would give players a new platform, even when the dispute with Major League Baseball was resolved. After all, there is a law in the United States that prevents one company from having a monopoly in an industry.

The Sherman Antitrust Act of July 2, 1890 was the basis for the federal government’s actions to limit monopolies, considering them restrictive of international trade and unfair to consumers.

However, strange as it may seem, MLB does have the antitrust immunity exception.

In 1915, the Federal League (created as “Minor League” in 1913 and elevated to “Major League” in 1914-15) took the National League (founded in 1876) to court, alleging that the old circuit had conspired to monopolize the “Major League” category, which in practice was a violation of the Sherman Act.

The process was long and caused the Federal League to disappear due to financial incapacity, but the final ruling laid the foundations for exclusivity. In 1922, the Supreme Court of Justice issued a ruling (authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) declaring that neither the games of baseball nor the “personal effort” of the players fell within the definition of commerce and, therefore, the baseball business was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act.

In the case of the United Baseball League, the plan died before birth, after the 1994-95 strike was resolved, and MLB did not have the need to claim its rights in court.

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MLB will make offer to players on Saturday; keeps call for training