Strike One: Dick Monfort and Scott Oberg can’t bring baseball back to the field. The Owner of the Colorado Rockies, and the team’s representative to the Major League Baseball Player’s Association are just two voices among a large and fractured group trying to find an equitable way to deal with the large loss of revenue and get our national pastime back up and running.
Whatever gets worked out, neither the Monfort nor Oberg will be 100% happy. The game’s finances are taking a monster hit this year, and both sides are feeling the pinch. The players have already agreed to accept salary for only the games that actually get played, rather than trying to force the owners (and they would win in court) to pay the full amount of their guaranteed contracts. That would amount to roughly a 50% pay cut for this season.
A few weeks after that was agreed upon however, the owners saw exactly how massive their losses could be for this season and decided they wanted to go back to the negotiating table. They suggested the players should share further in the losses from the shortened 2020 season and take further pay reductions. The players said no thanks. Now we’re stuck.
If the players had accepted the owner’s latest proposal, Rockies star third baseman Nolan Arenado for example, wouldn’t have made his scheduled $35 million salary for this season, obviously. Not only that, he wouldn’t have gotten even half of it. He would’ve been playing the 2020 half season for less than $8 million, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
If you were Nolan Arenado, you’d be pissed.
And right now, the Rockies don’t need a pissed off Nolan Arenado, even if it’s not Monfort’s (or GM Jeff Bridich’s) fault.
With Arenado’s eight-year contract allowing for him to opt out after the 2021 season, this is the time the Rockies need to show their best player how much they value him and how important he is to the team’s winning future.
So, if you’re Monfort (and Bridich) what can you do?
You can’t solve things for this year, but you CAN do something about the future. What the Rockies front office should do is offer Arenado an additional year on his contract. Yes, Nolan will be 35 when he enters the final season of his current eight-year deal (he’s scheduled to be paid $27 mil in the final year) and yes, paying more than $25 mil to someone that age is not good baseball business. But trying times call for creativity.
Offering Nolan an additional season of financial security could make him a happier camper and give him ample reason to take a free pass on his potential free agency. And a happier Nolan will be a big benefit to the entire Rockies organization moving forward.
Strike Two: Of course all of this concern about who gets paid what this season is predicated on there actually being a 2020 season. Because there very well might not be.
There’s reportedly a group of MLB owners – people who were not in ownership positions the last time there was labor problems in the mid 1990’s – who don’t want to play at all this season. This group is said to be looking hard at the bottom line and feel like they would actually cut their losses if they didn’t play a shortened season in 2020.
The math is the math. If these projections are accurate, and the MLB owners would be better off not having half a season shackled by overly restrictive rules and guidelines, maybe there shouldn’t be a 2020 MLB season at all? We’ve already lost March Madness, we may or may not have NBA and NHL post seasons, no Wimbledon, no US or British Open golf tournaments. We are hoping for football in the fall, but there are certainly no guarantees.
Maybe we’re better off if MLB just shut it down for 2020 and focused on getting ready to come back in 2021? We could live through it, I promise.
Blasphemy? How badly do we need to watch baseball this year? Bad enough to have no fans in the stands (and that’s not that hard to accept, especially if you’ve sat in nearly empty ballparks at some random weeknight game with a lot of folks dressed as empty seats)?
Bad enough to have players not allowed to sit together in the dugout – and instead occupy those empty seats where fans normally sit? Having them not allowed to high five after a great play? Not allowed to celebrate after a big play or a big win? Not even allowed to spit? Not allowed to take a shower in the locker room after the game?
That’s not the baseball I know. I’m not sure I want to see that version, to be honest.
I haven’t stayed up late/gotten up early enough to watch the professional baseball that’s being broadcast from South Korea overnights. All I’ve seen on highlights is the lack of fans in the stands. As I said, that could be tolerated…for a while. But the other stuff? The players not being able to sit together in the dugout, or high five or celebrate or spit…or shower?
I admit, I have trouble imagining what “social distancing baseball” would look like. I don’t like what my mind’s eye sees.
I’ve already given up on the idea of seeing any professional baseball live this year. Can’t imagine very many media members, if any, being allowed in the ballparks. We would all be watching in a video feed of some sort. No thank you. I will hope that our local TV and radio crews are allowed do their normal stellar jobs and I can watch that way. Maybe.
But if the owners are going to lose money – which they will look to recoup from someone (fans and/or players) at some point – and the product is going to be (ahem) “not what we are accustom to seeing,” then maybe not having a 2020 season is the best choice after all.
Strike Three: And we already know there won’t be a 2020 Minor League season. Technically it could happen, but realistically, it won’t.
If there were to be a big league (half) season this year, it’s been reported that up to 20 players in each organization, who would normally have been in the minors this year, will make up each major league team’s “taxi squad” of potential call ups/fill ins for guys on the 30-man MLB roster who either get hurt or don’t measure up. So essentially, players who aren’t on a big league 40-man roster (or close to it) for 2020 aren’t going to play this year.
And now, it looks like many of them aren’t going to get paid, either.
The Oakland A’s are the first organization to announce they will stop stipend payments (every team’s minor league players have been receiving $400/week) as of the end of May. Other clubs (but not all) are sure to follow. Okay, we get it: They don’t play, they don’t get paid. That’s life, right?
But…and this is a big but…the teams will still claim ownership rights to these players for next year and sometimes beyond (depending on the player’s contract status.) Here’s what the A’s execs wrote to their minor leaguers:
“As a reminder, your (Uniform Player Contract) remains in place during this period it’s suspension, and you are not permitted to perform services for any other club.”
Really?
You’re not going to pay me AND you’re going to keep me from working elsewhere? How is that allowable or legal?
I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this from a legal standpoint.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred should do what’s right by these young men and declare that any and all minor league players who are NOT getting paid by their major league club can immediately become free agents, and sign with whomever they want to. That’s the ONLY fair thing to do.
It’s very doubtful he will, however, until some court forces him to.
All this comes in the middle of not just the pandemic, but the ongoing tussle between MLB and the minor leagues in general. Major League owners are trying to overhaul their working agreement with minor league baseball and reduce the number of affiliated minor league clubs by as many as 40 teams. That’s slightly more than one per MLB organization. This would be another significant change in the game.
You know all that talk about a “new normal” when we come out the other end of this pandemic? That new normal is going to seem like anything but normal to minor league baseball players.