We have a deal
Brought to you by Jeff Passan's love of NFTs*
It is a good Friday morning as the team owners and the MLBPA have a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the cancelled games will be made up, so all 162 games will be played.
The deal passing provided a little intrigue on Thursday afternoon as the players’ acceptance passed just 26-4 among the teams and 0-8 among the MLBPA’s Executive Subcommittee, and it was the Cardinals who were among the four teams who voted against the offer. The team owners would follow up on Thursday evening with a 30-0 acceptance to provide the agreement that will lift the lockout. At this point basically the league will operate under what is called a Memorandum of Understanding while the details are finalized for the final text of the new CBA and it gets officially ratified.
With an agreement in hand and free agency getting ready to rev up, what are some of the changes coming up in baseball this next year?
New Dates for Spring Training, Opening Day, and more. Players will be expected to report for spring training as early as this weekend, on Sunday, March 13th, with games starting next week. Opening Day will be on April 7th with the end of the season pushed back three days. The games from each team’s first four series’ will be rescheduled to be played as part of doubleheaders or added during off days. Each team will have between 11 and 14 games rescheduled; the Cardinals had 11. Which seems like a small advantage.
Universal DH. The biggest change that fans will see is going to be the designated hitter coming to the National League. No longer will it be an American League specific rule. I am firmly in the anti-DH camp and will forever be.
Competitive Balance Tax. One of the big sticking points was that the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) thresholds have been increased. It will start at $230 million, up $20 million from 2021’s value, and rise to $244 million in 2026, the final year of the new agreement. I feel like this is one of the biggest failures of the whole process. The CBT acts as a soft salary cap, but there is still no incentive or requirement for teams to spend any amount money on player payroll.
Pre-arbitration Bonus Pool. Another big sticking point was a bonus pool for pre-arbitration players. After initially asking for an amount over $100 million, the team owners and the players agreed on a pool of $50 million, which will be divided among players who are in their first three years of MLB service time and making the league minimum. Some of this money will be dedicated as bonuses for players winning awards, like Blake Snell did in 2018, with the remainder being divided up among the players by performance, though the exact formulas will be determined later.
Minimum Salary. Another sticking point for the players had been the minimum salary, which will see an increase from $570,500 to $700,000 this season and rise to $780,000 in 2026. The salaries for players who are on the 40 man roster, but in the minors have been raised as well.
Service Time Manipulation. The players were also working to find ways to reduce service time manipulation and under the new CBA it looks like rookies who are finalists for awards will be rewarded with a full season of service time, regardless of when they made their debut. Additionally, teams who open the season with rookies on their roster who are then finalists for awards will be rewarded with an additional draft pick. Though the exact details about how players qualify for this is still to be determined.
Draft Lottery. The players were also trying to find ways to reduce the effectiveness of tanking as a team building strategy. The first six picks of the MLB Draft in June will now be determined by lottery instead of purely the previous season’s win-loss reecords.
Expanded Playoffs. A big win for the team owners was permanent playoff expansion to twelve teams from the current ten team format. It adds an additional wild card team to each league.
International Draft. Introduced as a late addition to the negotiations by the team owners, the team owners and MLBPA agreed to discuss the terms of an international draft with a deadline of July 25th to reach an agreement. If they do reach an agreement, the qualifying offer system will go away. Otherwise, it will remain in place. No word on whether this is an actual deadline or a fake one like the owners’ February 28th deadline for agreement to play all 162 games.
Future Rule Changes. And the final big news we know today from the new CBA is that the notice period for MLB to give the MLBPA for rule changes has been changed from one year to just 45 days going forward. No specific rule changes have been announced yet, but under consideration will be pitch clocks, banning defensive shifts, and larger bases.
So Major League Baseball is back in business. It took 56 days from the team owners’ first offer of the offseason on January 13th to reach an agreement. If they had made that offer on December 2nd, the first day that they locked out players, we would still have about two and a half weeks until Pitchers & Catchers would be reporting for spring training. The owners ran the players’ backs against the wall of the season in the hopes of getting them to cave rather than attempt to negotiate through December.
I don’t get a vote on the deal, nor does it apply to me, but I don’t think the players accomplished what should have been their primary goal: creating a mechanism that requires team owners to spend a certain amount of money on player payroll. Nor is the CBT attached to any set revenue number, but rather negotiated. The CBT threshold will rise 16% from 2021’s $210 million to 2026’s $244 million, but league revenues will likely handily outpace that rise. Meaning that five years from now we’ll be having this exact same conversation about CBT thresholds.
* This post was not actually brought to you by Jeff Passan’s love of NFT’s, but rather in remembrance of ESPN’s MLB Insider being hacked and briefly losing control of his Twitter account on Thursday afternoon, which promoted NFTs instead of inside baseball information.
