All is well now that Major League Baseball has settled the Owner’s lockout and the players are back in Spring Training camps…right?
Right?
Not exactly.
Back in the day, there was a disruptive and divisive pattern of work stoppages that plagued the sport. It began in the late 70’s and culminated in 1995, after the ’94 World Series was cancelled and the owners threatened to start the 1995 season with replacement players. The stuff ended up getting settled in court.
Then Commissioner Bud Selig was so distraught over the loss of the World Series that he vowed there would not be another work stoppage under his watch. And there wasn’t. The two sides were able to get deals done without any sort of public spats.
But then Selig retired, and “transactional attorney” Rob Manfred took his place. Selig – the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers before he became the Commish – was a fan first, a businessman second. But Selig retired in January of 2015. Manfred – his polar opposite – became the robotic arm of the owners, the vast majority of whom were not a part of baseball back in 1995. This group is 100% money-driven. The quality of the game only matters in how much it impacts their revenue. As their chosen point man, Manfred has displayed a glaring and disturbing lack of caring for the game itself.
He’d rather be golfing.
Over the past decade or so, the owners were able to make significant gains against the once invincible Player’s Union, led back then by lawyers Don Fehr and Gene Orza. But Fehr retired in December of 2009 (then later took the same gig with the NHL Player’s Union) and Orza stepped aside. They were both gone by the end of 2011.
Fast forward.
The two negotiations that preceded the current one each contained significant gains for the owners, who have smartly used analytics to back up their stances against big money contracts for veterans who are on the back nine, so to speak.
This time, with all the additional revenues the owners are now getting (including sports betting revenue) the union has been seeking a way to get younger players paid more fairly and make sure that teams are all trying to actually win. As it stands, teams can make a gob of money without being any good on the field. Tanking pays.
Nothing about the current agreement changed any of that. The players did NOT make any sort of gains in terms of making it easier for young players to get paid nor were they successful in making it less profitable for some teams to simply to tank the season. We’ve already seen several teams selling off their best players before this delayed season even starts. Roughly half the teams in MLB aren’t going all in on getting to the post season, even with the new 12-team play-off format.
While the rank and file of the players union voted to approve the new CBA, the Union’s executive board voted unanimously against it. It was a lousy deal for the players. The Owners voted 30-0 in favor. That’s because it’s another deal that favors them very heavily.
All this means that when this freshly minted five-year CBA expires after the 2026 season, and the rank and file of the Players Union has figured out that the Owners are still getting richer and richer…while they aren’t, there’s very likely to be another work stoppage…either another lockout or a player’s strike.
This labor strife is simply on pause. It’s not close to being over.
If you’re Director Tony Clark and the Player’s Union, you’re hoping for two things to happen between now and December 1, 2026. First, you want Congress to finally grow a spine and revoke MLB’s anti-trust exemption. That’s what allows them to conduct their business like a monopoly. It’s bogus and outdated. Should have been revoked decades ago. But the filthy rich owners and their lobbyists…
There had been rumblings and threats by some congressional members to introduce legislation to do just that, but now that the issue is settled (for now) those efforts will go quietly into the night.
More directly, MLB needs a competitor. There needs to be a USFL or XFL-style professional baseball league.
We all know that if these two football leagues get up and running and are mildly successful, that as soon as there’s another work stoppage in the NFL, they’re going to be right there to offer contracts and playing time to NFL players who are out of work. Good, old school competition. That’s what MLB needs to be faced with before this group of owners will play ball.
In their never ending efforts to pad their collective bottom lines by cutting back on the number of minor league affiliates that MLB organizations are responsible for, the owners may have inadvertently given rise to independent minor leagues across the country. How long will it be before one or more of these Indy leagues decide they want some legit big leaguers to help them fill the stands, maybe get a TV deal and put them on the map?
A challenger league to MLB needs to happen within the next five years, or in March of 2027 we will be reading and hearing about MLB’s next owner/greed driven work stoppage. Fans will be pissed off, but they should see it coming.
