New MLB Proposal To Players Association Calls For 76-Game Season
Major League Baseball has made a new proposal to the Major League Baseball Players Association that is offering players 75% of their prorated salaries over the course of a shortened 76-game season.
ESPN’s own, Karl Ravech, took to Twitter this past weekend to report on the proposal, in which he further explained that the season would aim to finish by September 27th with a postseason ending in October. The proposal also apparently makes “significant moves towards players demands” according to Ravech.
Later in the day ESPN’s Jeff Passan took to Twitter to further explain the proposal that Ravech touched on, claiming that it would in fact be a 76-game season with a 75% prorated salary per player; this would equate to a total of $1,431,716,000 in additional compensations. That would equate to $1,909,436 per player for the 76 games, according to Passan.
Additionally, the proposal calls for up to 8 playoff teams per league. Teams that lose any of their free agents will receive a draft pick for other players that sign a multiyear deal of $35 million or more, or players with one-year deals offering $17.8 million in salary. Spring training will last for 21 days and the season will begin around July 10th. If a postseason occurs, each player will receive an additional $393,000 to their salaries.
It’s predicted, however, that the Major League Baseball Players Association will be rejecting this proposal, according to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich; two established sports journalists who write for The Athletic. The two journalists do agree that Major League Baseball will make an appearance in 2020, just not under these specific circumstances.
The reasoning behind their lack of confidence in the players association approving this proposal is because it’s the third one to be presented to the group. The first proposal called for an 82-season game with a sliding-scale payment structure based on participation in the season, while the second proposed a 50-game season with a 33% prorated salary throughout.
“The MLBPA regards today’s offer from MLB to be worse than the league’s last because it shifts greater emphasis on risk sharing in the postseason. Players would receive 50 percent of pro rata if there is no postseason, 75 if there is. To put it another way, MLB’s offer can be said to represent a 50 percent per-game pay cut with a potential upside of a 25 percent cut,” tweeted Evan Drellich.
Bob Nightengale, a sports journalist for USA Today, agreed with Drellich’s above tweet, claiming that MLB views the latest offer as a major “step backwards.” The difficulty lies in the fact that the players made their own prorated agreement with the team owners back in March, however, as the pandemic continued to worsen, plans have obviously changed.
The other difficulty lies in the fact that MLB is trying to prepare for the enormous lack of money they’d be making this season with no fans able to attend the games, purchase memorabilia, food, etc. due to Covid-19 concerns. The players have responded to this concern by stating that owners should “keep any surplus revenue in good years so they could absorb the hit in one year,” according to Nightingale.
Players also are tired of the constant salary negotiations, as they already agreed to major pay cuts/ prorated salaries in March and don’t want to keep renegotiating for a season they don’t even know the full structure of yet. It’s predicted that the players association will come to some sort of conclusion in the coming week, as all members of MLB are still projecting to start the season in July, so for now, only time will tell when that’ll be.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
