MLB proposed its latest offer to the MLBPA on Monday for a 2020 season
Negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA returned to the headlines on Monday, as the league made its latest counterproposal for a 2020 season. The proposed terms for a potential first season for the Phillies under manager Joe Girardi, first reported by ESPN’s Karl Ravech, are as follows:
- A 75 percent prorated salary
- 76 game season
- Playoff pool money
- No draft pick compensation for signing players for the first time in 45 years
- The regular season would begin around July 10 and conclude September 27; the postseason would conclude at the end of October.
As per a late March agreement, MLB can start any length of a season as long as the league offers full prorated salaries; a recent report suggested a season could be as few as 50 games under this scenario. Both sides would like that last-case scenario to not happen, but rather them to reach an agreement. With negotiations still ongoing, however, time is running out a more lengthy season.
To put numbers to the owners' new proposal: If a player was to make $10 million in 2020 pre-pandemic, he would get $2.96m under 48-game season concept (full pro-rata), and $3.52m under new 76-game proposal by owners. There is also money shared from postseason TV.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) June 8, 2020
As Ravech notes, Monday’s proposal from MLB is a “significant move” towards the players’ recent demands and desire to want to play more than the 50 games. Yet, it is still not necessarily MLB’s final offer, according to the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, who says the league is “holding firm” it wants the postseason “not to leak too far into November, or at all” due to uncertainty surrounding a possible stronger wave of COVID-19 in the fall and early water.
According to sources this equates to roughly 200 million more in player salaries. The 50 game season is not a threat rather a negotiated right. Hopefully this spurs further dialogue, if not we will play a short season
— Karl Ravech (@karlravechespn) June 8, 2020
With uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, the players are said to view Monday’s offer from MLB as “worse,” since “it shifts greater emphasis on risk sharing in the postseason,” according to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. If the postseason were to get canceled, Drellich says players would only receive 50 percent of pro rata, rather than 75. In other words, the offer represents a 50 percent per-game pay cut, “with a potential upside of a 25 percent cut.”
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