It is a start.
The first round of negotiating between Major League Baseball owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association is done and here is where the talks stand. The owners want a salary cap and a salary floor, the players want no salary cap. MLB owners want a hard salary cap of $245.3 million and a $171.2 million salary floor, along with a 50-50 revenue split, while the players rejected the caps and are seeking increased luxury tax thresholds. The owners did not propose a players’ salary ceiling and are not limiting nor are they proposing a time limit on players’ contracts unlike the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. The owners also claim that they will nationalize all TV revenue which theoretically means the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers would receive the same money from MLB as small market Cincinnati, Pittsburgh or soon-to-be Las Vegas would. It is about where the first round of any negotiations falls. The sides are far apart and may not be even speaking the same language. But that is to be expected. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement ends on December 1st.
There is plenty of time to negotiate and even if the owners lock out the players on December 1st, there are still two months to get a deal done before spring training starts. The last time the owners proposed a hard salary cap was during the 1994 CBA negotiations. The players went on strike and MLB lost the remainder of the 1994 season as well as the playoffs and the World Series. The 1995 spring training season opened with replacement players. The strike ended on April 2nd, 1995 after Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a preliminary injunction against the owners on March 31st, 1995. The sides are bickering again.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
