Major League Baseball and the MLBPA held their first round of collective bargaining on Tuesday, ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan reports. The meeting took place via video conference and there were “dozens of people,” including members of the player management, Passan said. It marked the first time that MLB and the union had negotiated since the players rejected the league’s proposal for a delayed 154-game regular season on Feb. 1.
The current CBA will expire on Dec. 1, and if the two sides don’t reach a deal by then, the sport could experience its first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike. The relationship between the league and the players has taken a particularly controversial turn in recent years, which could make it difficult to achieve labor peace in early December. At the same time, both sides understand that failure to reach an agreement could cause serious damage to the $ 10 billion a year industry, Passan writes.
As the negotiations continue, the union will turn some of its focus on “spending and competitive integrity,” said Passan. In addition to pushing for teams to spend more, the players would like to make more money earlier in their careers – which could lead to changes in the current service time lineup. According to today’s rules, a player must have six years of service in the big league to achieve free agency. With that in mind, many clubs have held talented prospects in the minors seemingly longer than it takes to gain a seventh year of control.
On the property side, there remains a desire to increase the number of playoff teams per season. More than half of the league’s teams (16 out of 30) made it to the playoffs during the shortened 2020 campaign, but the field returned to 10 this year after the union rejected an extended post-season as part of the 154 game proposal from the competition.