The billionaire owners of Major League Baseball are again seeking to improve their net worth at the expense of their players. On Dec. 2, 2021, Robert Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, announced that the collective bargaining agreement between the MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) had expired. The MLBPA is a union that represents the players of major league baseball and their commercial interests.
image from NPR
At 12:01 AM on Dec. 2, 2021, Manfred issued a “Letter to Baseball Fans.” In this letter, he announced that “despite the league's best efforts to make a deal with the Players Association, we were unable to extend our twenty-six year-long history of labor peace and come to an agreement with the MLBPA before the current CBA expired. Therefore, we have been forced to commence a lockout of Major League players, effective at 12:01 AM ET on December 2.”
You might be wondering, “What is a lockout?” A lockout is a freeze on all transactions between clubs and players. This means that free agents, or players whose contracts expired at the end of the 2021 season, cannot sign with new teams until the lockout is lifted. Your next question might be: “Why does a lockout need to happen?” The short answer is simple: it doesn’t.
There is currently a lockout because, as Manfred explained on Dec. 1, the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the MLB and the MLBPA expired. According to Baseball Reference, a Collective Bargaining Agreement is “the agreement between the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League Baseball describing the rules of employment and the financial structure of the game.”
The previous CBA was established in 2016 and ran through Dec. 1, 2021. Both parties had the option to mutually extend the previous CBA but refused, culminating in a showdown that has been years in the making. The Players Association allowed the CBA to expire in order that they might create a new CBA that had their rights and interests in mind. The owners did not like that the players were asking for higher salaries and more rights, so they initiated the lockdown in order to put pressure on the players to agree to a new CBA quickly.
The main dispute behind the lockout is salary arbitration and free agency. The MLBPA is arguing that the owners are underpaying young players. According to the previous CBA, players with less than six years of MLB experience but more than three are eligible at the end of each season to arbitration if they do not have a signed contract for the next season. Arbitration is where clubs and eligible players negotiate a salary for the next contract. If they have not reached an agreement by the middle of January, they appear before an arbitration committee.
Before this committee, both sides submit a figure that they think the player should be paid and argue their case. At the end of this process, the committee must either choose the figure proposed by the club or the player. During this process, a player cannot talk to other clubs and seek a better offer from another club until they have reached the six years of experience as outlined in the CBA. After six seasons, the player is eligible to become a free agent and sign with any team.
In free agency, players can talk to all thirty teams and negotiate offers and pick the best offer available. The power of the player increases in this process, usually resulting in bigger paydays for star players and younger players. In order to pocket more revenue and decrease the power of the players, teams will rely on younger players who have not yet reached the point of free agency. The MLBPA is seeking to end this so that all players can receive fair wages from their organization.
The MLBPA is arguing that players should reach free agency sooner so that they can receive a fair market value for their performance from any team, rather than solely relying on the evaluation of the team that first drafted them. Although arbitration sounds fair, the players argue that all the power still belongs to the owners.The MLBPA is arguing that the owners manipulate this process and hold players in the minor leagues for too long in order to avoid starting the timer on this six-year process.
On Feb. 3, 2022, The Owners requested a Federal Mediator to get involved and help reach an agreement between the two parties. The next day, The MLBPA released a statement reading: “two months after implementing their lockout, and just two days after committing to players that a counterproposal would be made, the owners refused to make a counter and instead requested mediation. After consultation with our Executive Board, and taking into account a variety of factors, we have declined this request. The Clearest path to a fair and timely agreement is to get back to the table. Players stand ready to negotiate.”
After a standstill for several months, one might wonder, “why are the owners all of a sudden trying to ‘solve’ this lockout?” The answer is money. Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Spring Training in two weeks, and if the two parties do not reach an agreement, Spring Training, and likely the regular season will be delayed, maybe even shortened. The owners, after trying to squeeze the players' pockets for months, preventing them from signing contracts and being paid, are finally getting “a taste of their own medicine” and feeling the pressure of themselves not getting paid. Although there is some financial pressure, these owners are billionaires, and have safety nets and will not be ruined by a delayed season. On the other hand, the livelihood of these players depends upon being paid this season.
The owners want to put pressure on the players to agree to the terms of the owners, so they have initiated a lockout. If this lockout continues, none of the players will get paid this next year. This seems like a power move from owners that have been consistently greedy and self-serving, and it is finally time that the players, the people who generate money for the league, receive their fair compensation.