Chris Fuselier, the owner of the Blake Street Tavern, the longtime sports bar just east of Coors Field, is beginning to field baseball questions from his patrons.
“The Super Bowl is over and now there is kind of a lull before March Madness, so fans and my staff are starting to ask me about baseball and about the Rockies’ home opener on April 8,” Fuselier said. “I’d say 90% of them don’t know what’s going on with the baseball lockout, what the issues are, what the players want, what the owners want. They just want baseball back.”
The Blake Street Tavern, like so many of the other establishments near Coors Field, counts on Rockies games to generate business.
“After two years of COVID, we were thinking we would finally have a real opening day again at Coors,” he said. “If we don’t have it on April 8, against the Dodgers, that’s going to be a big punch in the gut.”
At this point, that gut punch might be unavoidable. On Friday, Major League Baseball announced that spring training games won’t begin until at least March 5, putting the start of the regular season in peril. Multiple issues must be resolved before MLB and the MLB Players Association reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement.
How to distribute revenues, as it usually is in professional sports, is at the root of the owner-imposed lockout. But power and public perception are also at stake. Fans and their concerns seem to be way down the list.
The MLB lockout is now entering its 81st day, making it the second-longest work stoppage in baseball history. Thursday’s meeting between MLB and the union lasted just 15 minutes. It was just the sixth meeting on core economic issues since the lockout began on Dec. 2.
Following is an examination of the labor battle that could result in regular-season games being canceled for the first time since 1995:
Timeline
* Spring training was scheduled to begin last Wednesday, but now there is no telling when players might report to camp. For the Rockies, seven Cactus League games have already been canceled.
* According to multiple reports, MLB has informed the players union that a new collective bargaining agreement must be reached by Feb. 28 to preserve the start of the regular season on March 31.
* There are concerns that the negotiations could now extend until at least mid-March. If that happens, regular-season games would almost certainly be lost.
“The (owners) have told us the ‘deadline’ to start the season on time is Feb 28, but that date could just be a way to try to get guys to panic if it comes and goes,” said one player who is involved with the negotiations. “We are meeting next week but it comes down to their willingness to get something done, and we really haven’t seen that yet.”
ESPN’s that MLB and the players’ union plan to hold multiple negotiation sessions starting Monday. A number of owners and players are expected to attend the meetings.
Money issues
* Salary arbitration — when players become eligible for it and the money involved — remains a major hurdle. In their latest proposal, the players conceded a little bit. Instead of seeking salary arbitration rights for all players with at least two years of major-league service time, they lowered their demand to the top 80% of the two-year class. As it stands now, most players need three years of service time before they are eligible for salary arbitration.
In exchange for its compromise, the MLBPA wants to increase the bonus pool for pre-arbitration eligible players from $100 million to $115 million, covering about 150 players. But a huge gulf remains. MLB has offered a $15 million bonus pool, covering about 30 players, while keeping the status quo of arbitration-eligible players at two years, plus the top 22% of the service class.
* The so-called luxury-tax ceiling and finding a way to reward the best young players remains a prickly issue. Currently, the owners are standing firm on their plan to have a $214 million salary ceiling per club, rising to $222 million by 2026, with teams not being penalized by losing a draft pick until they exceed a $234 million payroll.
The players want a $245 million ceiling, believing that only a few rich teams would go over that ceiling, thus enabling upper-middle-class teams the freedom to spend big during the years they are in contention and not pay a luxury tax.
* The owners recently proposed raising the minimum salary to $630,000 or going with a tiered system that would see third-year salaries rise to $725,000. The owners’ proposal, however, is still well short of the players’ request for a $775,000 minimum salary in 2022, rising to $875,000 by 2026.
to just under $4.17 million on opening day 2021 from the start of the previous full season in 2019, according to The Associated Press. The average has fallen 6.4% since the start of the 2017 season when it peaked at $4.45 million.
That $4.17 million figure can be misleading, however, because the median salary — the point at which an equal number of players are above and below — was $1.15 million in 2021, down 18% from $1.4 million in 2019 and a drop of 30% from the $1.65 million record-high at the start of 2015.
Of the 902 players on opening-day rosters last year, 417 (62%) had salaries under $1 million, including 316 (35%) under $600,000, according to AP. The 50 highest-paid players were getting 33.4% of all salaries, up from 28.6% in 2017, and the 100 highest-paid are receiving 52.4%, an increase from 42.5% in 2017.
What they’re saying
“We are committed to reaching an agreement that is fair to each side. On Monday, members of the owners’ bargaining committee (led by Rockies owner Dick Monfort) will join an in-person meeting with the players’ association and remain every day next week to negotiate and work hard towards starting the season on time.” — statement from Major League Baseball
* “The number of players who make it to free agency is less than 15 percent. And the number of players who spend three years in the major leagues, when you look at the all the players drafted, it’s less than 1%. Those who make $2 million, making the minimum salary for three years, is a small, small percentage of players.” — Super agent Scott Boras, when asked on The Athletic’s podcast if the labor war is simply about billionaire owners vs. millionaire players.
* “We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as (salary) caps, allows younger players to realize more of their market value, makes service time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminates tanking as a winning strategy.” — New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, via Twitter.
* “I’m pretty sure I’ve had at-bats longer than this meeting.” — New York Mets infielder Luis Guillorme, tweeting about Thursday’s negotiations that lasted only 15 minutes.
