When the calendar turns and it comes time to hear “Play Ball” at a Major League stadium near you, the games will go on as scheduled.
You can bet on it.
The current Major League Baseball Owners’ lockout is the first work stoppage in baseball since the infamous 1994-’95 players strike resulted in the cancellation of the ’94 World Series and a delayed start to the ’95 campaign. A quarter century later, things are VERY different. Hard lessons were learned. Cooperation and forward thinking have led to growth in salaries and record revenues for ALL the owners (not just the big market clubs.) This time around, there really is waaaaaaaay too much at stake for this thing to linger and interrupt the upcoming regular season.
On the flip side, there is no actual incentive to get a new deal done much before the scheduled start of spring training, because that’s when paying customers would start to miss out on things. In these kinds of negotiations, those kinds of deadlines matter – a lot. Without a deadline looming, neither side will be giving an inch.
Not until they have to.
And they will have to.
The players want some very reasonable concessions from the owners. They want to take “tanking” out of play for clubs that don’t think they’ll be contenders in a particular season (or seasons…Baltimore.) Right now, because of the explosion in available revenue streams, clubs can make a profit before they put a single fanny in a single seat (assuming games are going to be played, that is.) There’s reduced incentive for some owners to invest in a winning product. If a team can put a less expensive and less than stellar product out on the field and still make money, why wouldn’t they?
You can see why this would upset the players. For that matter, it should really bother the paying customers of those teams.
The union also wants younger players to get paid the bigger money earlier in their careers, now that the owners can point to data that proves these same players have a drop off in productivity after age 30. The days of Albert Pujols getting a long-term mega contract at age 31 are gone. Older players are still getting paid, but for far shorter terms now, which makes perfect sense. Players who want the security of a long term deal have to sign it much earlier in their careers now, the way Bryce Harper did. But Harper was an exception because the clock began ticking on his service time while he was still very young. Most players don’t reach their free agent year until they are in their late 20’s now. The union wants to change that, while the owners see no rea$on to.
See the dilemma?
These are all valid points of course. Toss in the fact that the NHL has a higher minimum salary (playing half as many games) as MLB players, and you can see why the union didn’t just rubber stamp a continuation of the expired CBA.
The owners are going to have to give some ground on much of this.
Back in the mid 1980’s and early 90’s many small market owners were legitimately not turning a profit. That made labor peace almost impossible, and there were several work stoppages as the two side haggled. Things are different now for the owners. One big reason is the recent partnerships between pro sports and the sports betting industry, which is now pumping huge money into MLB.
For every team.
How do you think that industry as a whole would react if MLB games weren’t being played? Probably like the folks who ran Las Vegas back in the day reacted to any sort of disruption? Not well.
In the old days when organized crime figures pretty much ran…and many say protected…Las Vegas, there were no disruptions – not even in the spring of 1992, when many cities across the country saw uprisings and even riots in the wake of the not guilty verdicts from the highly publicized Rodney King trial. While several large cities suffered major damage during that time, the downtown area and the Vegas Strip went undisturbed.
Modern day sports betting is an industry with clout. After Super Bowl 56 on February 13th, expect them to start using it.
Meanwhile, someone close to the labor talks told me that “85% of the deal is already done.” It’s only these remaining core issues that need to be worked out. And with everything the owners have to lose if a deal isn’t made that allows a full spring training and real games starting at the end of March, the owners will have big problems, like those mega sponsorship deals to worry about…
Some of the players have millions to lose. ALL of the owners have much more than that at stake.
So go ahead and place that wager on the MLB season starting on time.
Catch Mark and MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa on “The Park Adjusted Rockies Podcast” available on all major podcast platforms.
More from The Woody Paige Sports Network:
- Woody Paige: That time I played blackjack with Michael Jordan in Monte Carlo
- John Elway’s 7 best moments as General Manager of the Denver Broncos
- Super Bowl odds 2022: Tom Brady and Buccaneers among Super Bowl 56 favorites
- Nix the “Power Six” – Time for real a G5 “Alliance” between the AAC and the Mountain West
- Is Teddy Bridgewater the long-term answer at QB for the Denver Broncos?
- Who should end up where in College Football’s “Super Conference” – and who should be left out?
- Woody Paige: Pat Bowlen’s legacy doesn’t deserve longtime, clownish Kaiser claim
- Could Peyton Manning and John Elway co-exist in the same Broncos new ownership backfield?
