Winners, losers of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement

Getty Images
35 Comments

As we reported last night, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association came to a meeting of the minds on a new five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement. As the days go on and the agreement is reduced to writing, there will be new quirks and details reported that have not yet come to light. And, of course, many of the impacts and implications of new rules and provisions in place will not be revealed until they’ve been put into practice. Nevertheless, let’s take a brief, initial cut at the the major terms that have been made public, assess what they mean for the game and try to determine who benefits most.

No Home Field Advantage in the World Series Attached to the All-Star Game

This time it no longer counts! Now home field in the World Series will go to the pennant winner with the better overall record. This is not perfect, of course, given unbalanced schedules and stuff, but it’s far less arbitrary than the winner of an exhibition no one takes seriously determining things. There are still some stakes for the All-Star Game, however: cash. As in a pool of money going to the winning team. The best incentives are often the crudest and most direct.

  • Winner: Everyone who hates capriciousness and random rules.
  • Loser: Bud Selig, I guess, as the whole home field advantage thing was his baby, imposed to make up for the embarrassing tie in the 2002 All-Star Game. I’d assume at this point even he realizes it was a dumb, though, and that his legacy does not depend upon such a silly thing.

 

Minimum Disabled List Stay Reduced From 15 to 10 Days

Gone is the old 15-day disabled list, in is the ten-day. As before, players can always be on the DL for much, much longer than 10 days, but now the minimum time for which they can be disabled is shorter.

  • Winner: Both players and teams. There is always a calculus involved in a DL stint, at least for minor or nagging injuries, with a team trying to figure out if it’s better to be without a guy for over two weeks on an injury that may not require a two-week convalescence or, alternatively, to play shorthanded for a time, gambling that the player will be better in shorter-than-expected time frame and, possibly, playing them before they’re truly healed. With a 10-day DL the calculus is 33% less critical. Players can be disabled more freely and can return more quickly, reducing the incentive for them to play through an injury.
  • Loser: People who write up transaction blurbs. Like someone who puts the wrong year on their checks in January, expect a lot of erroneous “15-day DL” reports in April and May as the dudes at Rotoworld get used to the new rule.

 

Luxury-tax Threshold Increasing From $189 million Last Season to $195 million Now and $210 Million Over the Course of the New Deal.

Formally known as the “Competitive Balance Tax,” the luxury tax (a) limits just how much of an advantage the richest teams in baseball have in the free agent market, thus encouraging greater competitive balance; while (b) serving as something of a soft salary cap, inasmuch as teams are heavily penalized for spending above its limit (only a small handful have ever exceeded the luxury tax level since its inception). Increasing it was key for the players, who have seen average individual salaries increase at a rate far in excess of the increase in luxury tax levels. Over time, of course, such a thing would depress salaries. From the owners’ perspective, a strong luxury-tax penalty is both a soft cost-containment mechanism and, as discussed above, something of a field-leveler between large and small revenue teams.

As is clear from its dual purposes and the repercussions any cost-containment mechanism may have, finding the sweet spot where the luxury tax does not harm either the owners or the players too greatly is not an easy trick. That’s also why it’s usually the last item negotiated in these bargaining sessions.

  • Winner:  As one can assume with such a complicated issue, both sides gave a little and got a little here. That the tax still exists is something most owners desired and that it is increasing is something the players obviously wanted. The specific numbers are, like any negotiations over money, a compromise, and only time will tell who got the better end of things.
  • Loser: I suppose hardline labor people who see any limit on spending on salaries as anathema to workers rights and cheap owners who think any rule which allows a team with higher revenue to spend a penny more than he does are opposed to the luxury tax in principle, but such is the stuff of compromise.

 

Qualifying Offer Tweaks

The qualifying offer, in which teams who extend a certain one-year contract to departing free agents receive a first round pick if the player rejects the offer and signs elsewhere, had a pretty noticeable impact on the market for the handful of players it affected each season. The qualifying offer still stands in the new deal, but (a) players can no longer be extended a qualifying offer more than one time; (b) the draft pick a team loses has been reduced in significance; and (c) the team losing the player will get pick only if player signs contract of $50 million or more.

  • Winner: This seems to be a pretty decent win for players who, one suspects, did not realize how bad a deal it was for them to agree to the dang thing five years ago. While the scheme still exists, the penalty for a team signing qualifying offer-attached players has been reduced (i.e. teams that exceed the luxury tax threshold — not many — will lose a second and a fifth-round draft pick if it signs a QO-attached free agent; teams under the threshold will lose a third-round pick) making them more appealing commodities. Another winner: trade deadline junkies, as one significant effect of this may be seeing an increase in mid-season trades for players in walk years. When, under the previous system, a club could expect to get a first round pick for holding on to a player an extra couple of months, it may have very well been worth doing so. Now it may be more attractive to try to get something in return from him in July. And, of course, once a player is traded midseason, he is no longer subject to a qualifying offer.
  • Loser: GMs who may have viewed the qualifying offer system as a great way to stock up on draft picks. Though, honestly, the number of players and picks involved here were never so great that this was a big incentive in the way the old system with automatic draft pick compensation turned out to be.

 

Smokeless Tobacco Ban for all new Major Leaguers

There has been a ban on smokeless tobacco use for minor leaguers for a couple of years now, but big leaguers were allowed to do what they wanted, at least as long as they weren’t too conspicuous about it. On the big league level the rules were pretty much ignored, however, with Major League Baseball likely realizing that enforcing such a rule on grown men who have been using the stuff for years was more trouble than it was worth. Those guys are all allowed to keep using smokeless tobacco as they are grandfathered in. New major leaguers, however, are going to be prohibited from doing so.

  • Winners: People interested in reducing smokeless tobacco use, which should be pretty much everyone except companies which make smokeless tobacco. Players who may have used the stuff, whether they realize it now or not. The stuff is vile and dangerous.
  • Losers: Hardliners, I suppose, who would like to see an immediate and total ban. Such a thing was never going to happen, however, so they should put their loss in perspective. A grandfathered rule is a reasonable one.

 

No International Draft

This was long-rumored to be on the table but unexpected pushback from the union on the matter put the kibosh on it. That international amateurs can still negotiate with all 30 teams instead of being controlled by one is a good thing. That international signings will be capped at around $5-6 million per team per year, however, will limit what the top players are played and certainly is a good thing for owners looking to save money. Which, contrary to their assertions in the runup to negotiations, was really what the draft proposal was all about.

How much it limits spending will depend on the specific new rules in place. Before, there were bonus “pools,” allocated on a team-by-team basis, with certain penalties applied to teams who exceeded them. Those pools ranged, in this most recent signing period, from a little over $2 million to $5.6 million. Many teams spent dramatically more than that, however, and were willing to take the penalties. Now that this has been characterized as a “cap,” aggregate spending may go down and large bonuses given to the top amateurs — which have begun to push up against that $5-6 million level — will become a bit more rare, as teams may wish to spread their money out among more players.

  • Winners: Impossible to say until we see the details — all salary caps are complicated — and how it plays out in practice. At the moment the owners got the cost containment they sought and the cap level is significantly below what some who proposed increasing bonus pools suggested as reasonable, so they probably didn’t do too badly for themselves.
  • Losers: There will likely be some which, again, we’ll see over time. At first glance, I’d guess that the very top international players will lose money on this, as teams may bypass signing them given that it will likely mean signing no other players. And, of course, their bonuses will be capped.

 

No 26th-Man on the Roster in exchange for a reduction in expanded active roster limits for September

Another thing expected but which did not come to pass. The idea was to limit those big, unwieldily September rosters and, in exchange for the loss of service time to young players that would have occasioned, giving one more player a full season’s worth of extra service time. The problem, as many had pointed out when this idea was first discussed, was that it was highly likely that teams given a 26th roster spot would simply give it to yet another reliever, incentivizing more pitching changes and, thus, slower, more boring games, which no one wanted. To avoid that, MLB would likely have wanted to tie the 26th man to a rule limiting pitching changes or reliever usage, but that would be such a major change to the way baseball operates that tacking it on as a concession to deal pertaining to the relatively minor matter of expanded rosters in September would’ve seemed like the tail wagging the dog. Probably best that this whole notion was scrapped in order to be revisited at a later date.

  • Winners: All of us who hate excessive pitching changes; people who like to see major matters handled in a serious manner and not as an afterthought.
  • Losers: The people who get quoted every September complaining about teams using 7 relief pitchers in a nine-inning game because, hey, they can. Unless they simply like being quoted, in which case they’re still in business.

 

More Off Days In The Schedule

Beginning in 2018, the 162-game regular-season schedules will start four days earlier — in the middle of the week rather than on the weekend/Monday —  allowing teams more off-days.

  • Winners: Players, who have been agitating for more off-days. This isn’t amazingly significant — it’ll probably amount to a bit less than an extra off-day a month or so — but one extra day in the dog days of July and August will boost morale.
  • Losers: People who hate late March and early April games played in snow flurries, of which there will likely be more.

 

Increased Minimum Salary

The major league minimum salary rises from $507,500 to $535,000 next year, then to $545,000 in 2018 and $555,000 in 2019, with cost-of-living increases the following two years. The minor league minimum for a player appearing on the 40-man roster for at least the second time goes up from $82,700 to $86,500 next year, then to $88,000 in 2018 and $89,500 in 2019, followed by cost-of-living raises.

  • Winners: Guys making the minimum, obviously.
  • Losers: minor leaguers not on 40-man rosters who will still be paid less than minimum wage once all of their work requirements are factored in and who, for the millionth time in a row, got no help from the MLBPA and no more money thrown their way by MLB.

 

Changes to Drug and Domestic Violence Policies

There will be increased testing and players will not be credited with major league service time during suspensions, and biomarker testing for HGH will begin next year. There will also be some changes to the domestic violence policy, though details have yet to emerge.

  • Winners: Players who have been agitating for tougher drug rules.
  • Losers: Hard to say at the moment, as the details are not really known.

 

There will likely be many more changes and new rules that are revealed in the coming days and weeks. For now, it seems like this is a pretty straightforward CBA with nothing earth-shattering coming into play. Everyone gave some, everyone got some and the game will go on for five more years without a work stoppage.

Olson blasts two HRs, Acuña has 4 hits as Strider, Braves overpower Phillies 11-4

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
3 Comments

ATLANTA – Given a seven-run lead in the first inning, Atlanta right-hander Spencer Strider could relax and keep adding to his majors-leading strikeout total.

“That game felt like it was over pretty quick,” Strider said.

Ronald Acuña Jr. drove in three runs with four hits, including a two-run single in Atlanta’s seven-run first inning, and the Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 11-4 on Sunday night to split the four-game series.

“Getting a lead first is big, especially when you get that big of a lead,” Strider said. “… When we’re putting up runs, my job isn’t to be perfect. My job is to get outs.”

Following the game, Braves manager Brian Snitker announced right-hander Michael Soroka will be recalled to make his first start since the 2020 season on Monday night at Oakland.

Matt Olson hit a pair of two-run homers for Atlanta, and Strider became the fastest pitcher in modern history to reach 100 strikeouts in a season.

“It’s incredible,” said Acuña through a translator of Strider. “Every time he goes out to pitch it seems like he’s going to strike everybody out.”

Acuña hit a run-scoring triple in the fifth before Olson’s second homer to center. Acuña had two singles in the first when the Braves sent 11 batters to the plate, collected seven hits and opened a 7-0 lead. Led by Acuña and Olson, who had three hits, the Braves set a season high with 20 hits.

Strider (5-2) struck out nine while pitching six innings of two-run ball. The right-hander fired a called third strike past Nick Castellanos for the first out of the fourth, giving him 100 strikeouts in 61 innings and topping Jacob deGrom‘s 61 2/3 innings in 2021 as the fastest to 100 in the modern era.

“It’s cool,” Strider said, adding “hopefully it’ll keep going.”

Olson followed Acuña’s leadoff single with a 464-foot homer to right-center. Austin Riley added another homer before Ozzie Albies and Acuña had two-run singles in the long first inning.

Phillies shortstop Trea Turner and left fielder Kyle Schwarber each committed an error on a grounder by Orlando Arcia, setting up two unearned runs in the inning.

Strider walked Kody Clemens to open the third. Brandon Marsh followed with a two-run homer for the Phillies’ first hit. Schwarber hit a two-run homer off Collin McHugh in the seventh.

LEAPING CATCH

Michael Harris II celebrated the one-year anniversary of his major league debut by robbing Schwarber of a homer with a leaping catch at the center-field wall in the second. As Harris shook his head to say “No!” after coming down with the ball on the warning track, Strider pumped his fist in approval on the mound – after realizing Harris had the ball.

“He put me through an emotional roller coaster for a moment,” Strider said.

SOROKA RETURNING TO ROTATION

Soroka was scratched from his scheduled start at Triple-A Gwinnett on Sunday, setting the stage for his final step in his comeback from two torn Achilles tendons.

“To get back is really a feather in that kid’s cap,” Snitker said.

Soroka will be making his first start in the majors since Aug. 3, 2020, against the New York Mets when he suffered a torn right Achilles tendon. Following a setback which required a follow-up surgery, he suffered another tear of the same Achilles tendon midway through the 2021 season.

Soroka suffered another complication in his comeback when a hamstring injury slowed his progress this spring.

Acuña said he was “super happy, super excited for him, super proud of him” and added “I’m just hoping for continued good health.”

Soroka looked like an emerging ace when he finished 13-4 with a 2.68 ERA in 2019 and placed second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting and sixth in the NL Cy Young voting.

The Braves are 0-3 in bullpen committee games as they attempt to overcome losing two key starters, Max Fried (strained left forearm) and Kyle Wright (right shoulder inflammation) to the injured list in early May. Each is expected to miss at least two months.

RHP Dereck Rodriguez, who gave up one hit in two scoreless innings, was optioned to Gwinnett after the game to clear a roster spot for Soroka.

QUICK EXIT

Phillies right-hander Dylan Covey (0-1), claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 20, didn’t make it through the first inning. Covey allowed seven runs, five earned, and six hits, including the homers by Olson and Riley.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Phillies: 3B Alex Bohm was held out with hamstring tightness. … LHP José Alvarado (left elbow inflammation) threw the bullpen session originally scheduled for Saturday. Manager Rob Thomson said there was no report that Alvarado, who was placed on the injured list on May 10, had any difficulty.

UP NEXT

Phillies: Following an off day, LHP Ranger Suárez (0-1, 9.82 ERA) is scheduled to face Mets RHP Kodai Senga (4-3, 3.94 ERA) in Tuesday night’s opener of a three-game series in New York.

Braves: Soroka was 1-2 with a 4.33 ERA in eight games with Triple-A Gwinnett. He allowed a combined four hits and two runs over 10 2/3 innings in his last two starts. RHP Paul Blackburn (7-6, 4.28 ERA in 2022) is scheduled to make his 2023 debut for Oakland as he returns from a finger injury.