MLB and the Players Association held meetings earlier this week for another round of collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations, and though the sides remain far apart on several key issues, there was a little progress made.
The union reportedly backed off from their ask for an age-based free agency system, which was something team owners completely opposed. MLB wants the current system of players accumulating six years of service time before reaching free agency to remain in place.
The MLBPA also adjusted their proposal regarding revenue sharing, which is essentially a system that taxes bigger market teams and sends the money to smaller market teams.
Despite making these concessions, the Players Association believes they haven’t been taken seriously in negotiations with MLB, via Brittany Ghiroli of The Athletic:
The players don’t believe they’re being taken seriously in these negotiations, which — after weeks of no contact — will finally see the two parties meet back-to-back.
While the MLB and the Players Association haven’t seen eye-to-eye thus far, it’s encouraging they are beginning to communicate more frequently, as opposed to December when no core economics talks were held.
The sides met on consecutive days, which saw the league make a counter proposal. MLB reportedly withdrew their offer to change the arbitration structure, agreed to increase the minimum salary and accepted parameters of a pre-arbitration bonus pool for players in the top 30 WAR.
While on the surface MLB appeared to make some concessions as well, their proposed bonus pool for pre-arbitration players was $10 million. The union is said to covet a total of $100 million.
MLB needs CBA by early March to avoid cancellation of games
As negotiations drag into the final week of January, the general sense is that a new CBA will have to be in place by early March to avoid regular season games being cancelled.
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