In recent weeks, Gerrit Cole’s phone has buzzed with a unique set of push notifications. These contain negotiations updates and document summaries from the Major League Baseball Players Association, which is currently discussing a new collective bargaining agreement with Major League Baseball.
Yes, the players union has an app.
“It’s as accessible as you want,” said Cole, the Pirates’ union representative. “If you want all the updates, you can get all the updates.”
The current CBA expires Dec. 1. No one expects a work stoppage in an industry sporting $9.5 billion in revenue that hasn’t dealt with a strike since 1994-95, but there remain significant issues to resolve. Some, such as free-agent compensation, have existed since the advent of free agency. Others popped up since the most recent CBA took effect before the 2012 season.
The sides will need to agree on a schedule that eases travel and workload issues for the players while keeping owners happy by maintaining the current economic structure; agree on a free-agent compensation system; and address a draft slotting system that created side effects harmful to amateur players, among dozens of other bargaining topics.
The schedule
Players making millions of dollars who travel on private jets and stay in luxury hotels won’t earn much sympathy complaining about their travel. But there is merit in the notion that friendlier travel schedule — day games before road trips, provision for more rest when crossing multiple time zones, etc. — will keep them healthier and improve the product on the field.
“I know the length of the schedule is a topic,” Cole said. “The day games, including international play. There’s a lot of different pieces moving there.”
Options include shortening the 162-game schedule, which takes place across 183 days, but that step will create pushback from owners who lose home gates and the amount of product they can exhibit when negotiating new TV contracts.
“There are ways to produce more off days in the schedule,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said at a meeting with the Baseball Writers Association of America at the All-Star Game. “Some of those have very significant economic ramifications that if in fact we were going down those roads, those economic ramifications are going to have to be shared by all of the relevant parties. You want to work less? Usually you get paid less.”
“I don’t agree that there would need to be a discussion about the loss of salary or a rollback of salaries,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark told the BBWAA.
Free-agent compensation
The current CBA eliminated the Type A and Type B free-agent rankings and replaced it with the qualifying offer, whereby a team can offer a one-year contract worth the average of the top 125 highest salaries from the previous season ($15.8 million in 2015). If the player declines the offer and signs elsewhere, his new team loses its first-round draft pick, unless it picks among the top 10, in which case it loses its next-highest pick.
“There’s been significant conversation about that,” Cole said. “That’s a very hot topic.”
Players saddled with a qualifying offer have found less of a market for their services than their talent and experience might suggest, as teams don’t want to sign them and part with a draft pick.
“You put in seven years of service time, you put your body through that, you make that kind of sacrifice, to see that clubs are valuing a late first-round pick over a solid outfielder, it’s confusing to me,” Cole said.
Noting the 1981 strike that resulted from a dispute over free-agent compensation and the reduction in the number of eligible players in the most recent round of bargaining, Manfred took a hard stance: “It would be a major, major concession for us to make changes in that area.”
“Despite the fact we do have less guys now who carry compensation than in the past, a lot of what we have in place now, whether you’re a big club or a small club, has not proven beneficial,” Clark said.
Drug testing
Dee Gordon, Chris Colabello, Jenrry Mejia and Marlon Byrd were suspended for testing positive for banned substances this season, along with several minors leaguers. This has caused some players, such as Justin Verlander and Jeff Francoeur, to speak out in favor of tougher penalties.
“My opinion, I sympathize with the tougher penalties,” Cole said. “I definitely sympathize with guys who are getting cheated out of jobs. This is a hard sport, man. There’s a lot of sacrifice and it stings a little bit every time that comes up, but I gotta believe that because we’re catching more guys, because the system is working, guys aren’t able to get away with some of the sophisticated drugs.”
The league and the union strengthened the Joint Drug Agreement before the 2014 season, increasing penalties to an 80-game suspension for a first positive test, 162 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third. Mejia sparked the lifetime ban this season.
“I think it’s great that guys have weighed in, I really do,” Clark said. “I think it’s great that they’re as passionate as they are about the Joint Drug Agreement because we wouldn’t have the agreement we have now if they hadn’t been.”
Said Manfred, “We have the most advanced, best testing technology in the world.”
Draft
The union is in a tough spot with the draft. It represents players on 40-man rosters, not all minor leaguers or amateur players. But Cole said the union has some input when the draft is tied to major issues and said there was “room for improvement” in the current slotting system, which has in some cases tied the ability of a team to sign one player with whether or not they sign another because of the way they allocate their bonus pool.
Protective headwear for pitchers
The line drive that smacked Jameson Taillon in the back of the head brought about more discussion on this issue. Cole said the union has distributed information about some other prototypes, and that the league and union continue to work hard on the issue.
“What we would all like is to be able to wear something that would prevent those catastrophic injuries like [Aroldis] Chapman and [Brandon] McCarthy, some of those really ugly things,” Cole said.
Mark Melancon and Jared Hughes experimented with protective visors in spring training, but neither has worn one in a game. Cole said the ideal solution is something that fits seamlessly into the rest of the uniform.
“The prototype that Mark has, it’s like a half-helmet visor with an ear flap that you have to strap on and cinch over your hat every time you go out,” Cole said. “It’s quite a bit of a distraction.”
Bill Brink: bbrink@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrinkPG.
First Published: July 26, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
