The clock continues to tick as MLB presented their latest proposal to the MLBPA. After the union made significant cutbacks, would the league meet them halfway?
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The MLBPA broke the ice on January 24th to get negotiations started by dropping many of their demands. On January 25th, MLB proposed their alterations in an effort to keep the ball rolling on getting the season started.
Bonus pool for pre-arbitration players seems likely
MLB agreed to the union’s proposal of implementing a bonus pool for players in their pre-arbitration years. The thought behind these bonuses would be to award the top 30 players who finished with the highest WAR.
The union’s plan was for $105 million be put aside. MLB countered with an abysmal $10 million. While $105 million was definitely too much, $5 million is definitely too low. Not the greatest sign for baseball fans that MLB and the MLBPA are so far apart on these terms.
What is the minimum salary for a professional MLB player?
MLB has proposed to raise the minimum salary for players with less than a year of service time. However, it is nowhere near the amount that the MLBPA was looking for. MLB proposed $615k while the union was looking for $775k.
The current minimum salary is set at $570k. And to make matters worse, MLB’s proposal did not offer raises for players with 1 – 2 years and 2 – 3 years of service time.
The one glimmer of hope from this meeting was that MLB decided to drop its proposed arbitration system. Although, both sides were certain that was never going to pass since it was a fairly odd concept. Their system would basically force teams to talk down their players performance in order to pay them less.
When will the MLB lockout end?
Overall, things looked a lot better after January 24th’s meeting when the MLBPA made drastic pullback on some areas. MLB did not follow suit. Both sides would need to make a deal fairly soon in order to not delay the reporting of pitchers and catchers to Spring Training.
