Fans will be able to crowd into ballparks to watch M.L.B. action next month when the season begins on April 7.Credit...Kyodo News via Getty ImagesBy James WagnerIt took 99 days of a contentious lockout, but baseball is back.
An agreement reached Thursday by Major League Baseball’s club owners and its players’ union after months of heated negotiations will allow for a full season, with opening day scheduled for April 7.
The five-year collective bargaining agreement will increase pay for young players and better incentivize teams to compete, among other provisions. Over the last two days, the deal was nearly derailed by a disagreement over creating a draft system for players overseas, but a compromise was struck that will be finalized later.
If the Lockout Makes Baseball Better, It Will Have Been Worth It
After tense negotiations, Major League Baseball and the players’ union both made gains in their desired areas. But more important, they avoided losses — of games and, potentially, their standing.
With the lockout over, Major League Baseball will begin its season on April 7.Credit...Gregory Bull/Associated PressBy Tyler Kepner
March 10, 2022
Now it is over, the second-longest work stoppage in major league history. Spring training will start this weekend in Florida and Arizona. Opening day will be April 7. The 30 teams will play the full 162 games, giving fans their six-month sporting companion, a daily habit no other sport can match.
The longest work stoppage was the 232-day strike from August 1994 to April 1995, which thankfully remains the sport’s most devastating self-inflicted wound. That labor dispute canceled a World Series, reversed a trend of booming attendance, led to the demise of baseball in Montreal and ultimately discouraged policing the rampant use of steroids, a scandal with its own grim consequences.
And it was all for nothing. The strike ended with a ruling by the future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a federal district court judge in Manhattan, who struck down the owners’ attempt to install a salary cap. The players then returned to work under the terms of the previous collective bargaining agreement. In the end, it was a fight to preserve the status quo.
The players’ stated goals, as articulated by Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, a top union leader, were to prevent the luxury-tax threshold from functioning as a salary cap; to help young players realize their market value; to discourage teams from manipulating players’ service time; and to eliminate the incentives for teams to tank as a winning strategy. They made gains in all those areas.
The owners’ goals were mainly to make more money, ostensibly to finance the gains the players wanted. They created new revenue streams by expanding the playoffs to 12 teams and — there’s no other way to say this — debasing players’ uniforms and helmets with advertising patches and decals.
Commissioner Rob Manfred said.Credit...Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
Most of the union members are not as rich as you may think; the median salary for M.L.B. players last season was $1.15 million, down from $1.65 million in Manfred’s first year in office.t is encouraging, then, that the minimum salary ($570,500 in 2021) will rise in this agreement, from $700,000 this year to $780,000 in 2026. The luxury-tax threshold, which was $210 million last season, will also rise, from $230 million this season to $244 million in 2026. The owners’ franchises are exploding in value, and media-rights deals continue to rise. It is only fair that players at both ends of the salary scale get to share in it
The decline in earning power for players in the middle — solid veterans whose production could perhaps be replaced by a rookie — might be accelerated in this deal. There are always unintended consequences. But there seem to be some aspects that are bound to make the game better.
Teams often hold top prospects in the minors in an effort to squeeze an extra year of service time from them before they reach free agency. Now, if a player places in the top two in voting for Rookie of the Year, he gets a full year of service time, no matter when he was promoted. That’s fair. So are the limits on the number of times a player can be optioned within a season, and the $50 million merit-based bonus pool to be distributed to players not yet eligible for arbitration.
Most encouraging, perhaps: the creation in 2023 of a joint committee, including four active players, an umpire, and six people selected by M.L.B., to consider rule changes like bigger bases [First and foremost, MLB believes making the bases bigger will lead to less injuries on the basepaths. It's a logical argument: the bigger the base, the more space runners will have to slide around defenders. Therefore, the league is hoping there will be less collisions between runners and defenders. MLB also hopes the bigger bases will lead to an increase in stolen bases]., a pitch clock, infield shifts and the automatic strike zone.
Major League Baseball is considering new technology to take those calls out of human hands. What some are calling "robot umpires" are now being tested in the minor leagues and could offer a glimpse into baseball's future.
When Major League Baseball wants to audition a new idea, they bring it to the Atlantic League. Look closely and you'll see the pitching mound has been moved back a foot farther from home plate to make it easier to hit. The bases are three inches wider than normal to avoid collisions.
But it's an iPhone and a cord stretching to the ear of the home plate umpire that might truly change the change-resistant sport. A sensor above home plate detects the pitch location and relays the data to a device, which then sends an audio file into the ear of the home plate umpire, telling him to call a "ball" or "strike."
There are other logical wrinkles, like the universal designated hitter (nobody wants their favorite pitcher to hurt himself swinging a bat or running the bases) and a lottery for the top six spots in the draft, so the same team cannot guarantee itself the top pick by staying lousy for several years.