The sands of the hourglass are running out on a baseball season for MLB and the New York Yankees. While other sports seem ready to go without contentious negotiations, baseball has chosen to have a mostly public fight about who is going to lose the most money in a $10 billion industry. MLB has spoken out, players and owners have spoken out, and yet little if any progress has been made in the three weeks of negotiations.
MLB has presented several plans to address what the divisions might look like, where games will be played, with a multitude of season lengths. Health issues have been addressed with a 67-page health initiative. Where the sides can’t seem to come together is how MLB and MLBPA (players union) will share in the losses that baseball will suffer with no fans in the stands and no concession revenues.
The differences between other sports and baseball are clear. Baseball is a summer sport that plays 162 games in six month season. With the coronavirus shutting down baseball even before spring training could be completed and a regular-season that has now been delayed by two months, a normal season can’t happen.
Back in March, the players agreed to a 50% reduction in salary, with half as many games played. That agreement was for the players to accept a game by game basis for pay. MLB hoped to get in 82 games. The players rejected a revenue-sharing arrangement with the owners. The owners came back dropping that in favor of even greater pay cuts. The players came back with a longer season of as many as 114 games to increase their pay, which was flatly rejected by the owners.
The owners are now suggesting a season with as little as 40-50 games with a greatly expanded postseason that will generate TV revenues. This brings into consideration just how legitimate any postseason will be. This is probably more of a threat than reality as owners try to get the players union to compromise and get back to 82 games. But as this, all plays out and the stalemate that seems to dominate the negotiations, time is running out. Spring training 2.0 was supposed to restart next week.
The clock is ticking; with each week that passes, it means fewer games or a season that reaches into winter weather that may completely mess up a World Series or cause it to be moved. This is not minor; as an example, if the New York Yankees win the ALCS and go on to a World Series that was to take in part at Yankee Stadium, a snowy week could be an economic disaster for the Yankees and New York City. Of course, with a season ending that late, there would be no surety that the ALDS and ALCS would be pulled off either in home parks.
The bottom line is that this week or next week, a breakthrough has to occur, or the entire season may be in jeopardy, with some owners already saying they are okay with no season this year. In this writer’s opinion, a missed season will harm the game of baseball, that will not be recovered from quickly. Stay tuned.