How long will the Baseball Blues last?
Everything you need to know about the looming MLB lockout.
Dear Readers,
Happy Sunday! Before we get into our Southpaw content this week, some brief self-promotion: Ian has a new piece out in POLITICO Magazine this morning about the fight to take Trump’s name off a public golf course in the Bronx, and it’s right in the Southpaw wheelhouse.
This week in Southpaw, we’re waxing a little less nostalgic but still writing about baseball—and the possibility of a lockout. It’s a fascinating story that features the confluence of labor rights, players’ growing power, and owners’ attempt to maintain their iron grip on the reigns of the sport, but if it’s not your thing, you really should read about country-club Trump voters asking Ian if they can please finish their lunch before speaking to him.
-Calder and Ian
In just about two weeks, MLB’s owners are likely to lock players out. What does this mean for baseball?
As the days get shorter and the weather colder, we here at Southpaw are starting to feel a little bit sad. Some of you might call this ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’ or some other fancy-shmancy medical term, but we just call it “the Baseball Blues”—that gnawing, empty feeling that hits somewhere between November and February, when last baseball season is a distant memory but next baseball season is still a significant ways off. (We weren’t kidding when we said last week that baseball is the rhythm of our lives.)
In most years, the best antidote to the Baseball Blues is the knowledge that it’s temporary—come March, we’ll have something real to look forward to. This year, however, we’re getting worried. As good lefties, we always support workers’ efforts to win new concessions and protections from their companies. But a looming labor fight threatens to postpone the start of the baseball season, thus prolonging the end of the Baseball Blues. And just be warned: if you thought the two of us were cranky in normal times, just wait until we’re deprived of Opening Day.
We hope this day never comes, but in case it does, we’ve written a primer with all the info you need to know about the possibility of a MLB lockout. We recommend reading it with a hefty dose of vitamin D, or while roasting yourself alive in front of your sun lamp.
Why is this happening?
In Major League Baseball, the professional relationship between players and teams is governed by a collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, which is a negotiated document that’s the product of the eternal tug-of-war between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association. Like any other labor agreement, MLB’s CBA has to be re-negotiated every few years, and the current one, which has been in effect since 2017, is set to expire on 11:59 p.m. on December 1. Most of the time, the league and the MLBPA are able to hammer out an agreement without too much trouble, but this year, things aren’t looking so good. (More on that later.) If the players and the league can’t come to an agreement before the December 1 deadline, that triggers a lockout.
What would a lockout look like?
Basically, the entire baseball machine sputters to a halt. Baseball’s typical offseason activity—free agency, trades, arbitration, and the Rule 5 draft (which are all different ways that players move from one team to another during the offseason)—would come to a standstill until the two parties can hammer out a deal. If the lockout extends into February, it could delay the beginning of Spring Training, and if things really get bad, it could affect the beginning of the 2022 season, which is set to kick off on March 31. We don’t really want to think about the mental state we would be in if it got to this point.
What’s the sticking point?
There are a bunch of points of disagreement that MLB and the MLBPA will have to hash out in order to reach a deal, but like most things in professional sports, most of it boils down to money. On the players’ side, the MLBPA wants a larger share of the league’s growing revenues to end up in the players’ pockets—and especially in the pockets of young players, who often get stiffed in contract negotiations. The MLBPA is particularly eager to change a thing called the “competitive balance tax” or the “luxury tax”—basically a tax on teams that spend over a certain amount of money on their payrolls—which the MLBPA claims artificially depress players’ wages. Also among MLBPA’s priorities is addressing a phenomenon called “tanking,” in which owners of uncompetitive teams basically gut their rosters in order to lose on purpose, giving them a better chance of getting desirable draft picks.
On the league's side, it’s also mostly about money. The league wants to institute a bunch of minor reforms that would theoretically increase revenue—like lengthening the post-season and trying to make games move faster—but mostly the owners are just gunning to keep things the same way they are now. You know the old saying: if it makes you gobsmacking amounts of money, don’t fix it.
How likely is an extended lockout?
That’s the million-dollar question, and frankly, nobody has any idea. Here’s what Chelsea Janes, the Washington Post’s national baseball correspondent, has gleaned from her crystal ball:
“Most people in the industry seem to think [there will be a lockout], but most people in the industry have not been in the rooms where MLB Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem and Major League Baseball Players Association senior legal officer Bruce Meyer have been engaged in some form of negotiations for months now . . . Consensus in the industry holds that the players want major systemic changes to the way they are compensated and the way teams are held accountable for not making concerted efforts to compete. Changes that big will undoubtedly be uncomfortable for the traditionalist, conservative MLB ownership. The question is how far the players are willing to go to get those changes and how willing MLB is to make them.”
Our take: noooooooooooo.
Is there any precedent for this?
In fact, yes! Work stoppages in baseball used to be pretty common, with eight separate stoppages taking place between 1972 and 1995. (We’re glad we weren’t alive then.) The last work stoppage took place in 1994 and, unlike the potential one next year, it was a strike that began in the middle of the season and lasted for seven-and-a-half months, wiping out the second half of the season and the entire postseason. The last time the CBA expired, in 2016, the league and the union cut things pretty close, inking a deal on the day before the December 1 deadline. (But hey, better late than never.)
What are the consequences of a lockout?
Aside from sending us into an emotional tailspin, a lockout could be very, very bad for baseball. From a negotiator’s point of view, a lockout—which is different from a strike in that it is called by the league rather than by the union—tends to give leverage to the owners, since they can more credibly blame the players’ intransigence for delaying the start of the season. Extended work stoppages can also put a damper on fans’ enthusiasm for the game, further contributing to baseball’s slow-motion demise. Expect to hear a lot of bullshit about “millionaires fighting with billionaires.”
That said, sometimes a work stoppage is necessary to put a squeeze on the owners and force them to pay the players their fair share. We hope they do this without delaying the start of baseball, but we’re not holding our breath.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
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. . . assault allegations against yet another NFL player? “Woman Accuses Vikings’ Dalvin Cook of Assault, False Imprisonment in Lawsuit,” by Emmanuel Morgan in The New York Times (November 10, 2021).
. . . superstar athletes going all-in on the metaverse? “LeBron, Osaka among stars backing extended reality platform StatusPro,” by Emily Caron in Sportico (November 11, 2021).