MLB, Union Must Agree On Player Pay If Games Start Without Fans

Even if medical and political figures agree, playing the 2020 baseball season in empty ballparks won’t work without further modification of a late-March agreement between players and owners.

Part of that 17-page document, revealed just prior to the scheduled March 26 openers, was called “Player Compensation and Benefits.” It stipulated that Major League Baseball would pay clubs $170 million to be used for salaries – with the proviso that the union would not sue for additional money if the season were cancelled.

In a shortened season, however, players would be paid a pro-rated portion of their contracts. But it was unclear about how players would be paid if games were played in empty stadiums.

The union and the league, which already had cantankerous feelings following alleged free-agent contract freezes in 2017 and 2018, now can’t agree on what their latest agreement covers – even though the ink is hardly dry on the document.

Players will get full service time for 2020, even if the campaign is cancelled or shortened, but won’t get full salaries barring the unlikely event that a 162-game season is played. Figuring out exactly what they would get has become a major sticking point.

Without revenue from parking, tickets, food, souvenirs, suites, and stadium signage, teams that already lost money from a shortened spring training would lose even more. That makes some owners hesitant to start the season – even in spring training parks much smaller than those in major-league cities.

One of the scenarios widely discussed in baseball circles involves bringing all 30 clubs to Arizona, where 10 spring training parks plus Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, could be utilized for games and teams could play well into autumn without serious weather issues.

Even under that plan, however, parks would be devoid of patrons and players would be separated at stadiums and sequestered in hotels like jurors in a murder trial when not playing.

Several stars, including Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw, have already objected to such long-term separation from their families.

On the plus side, all parks in the Arizona plan are within a one-hour radius, plane travel would be eliminated and bus travel would be minimal – unless teams used mini-vans or allowed players to drive their own cars.

“There’s a way of doing that,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a Wednesday Snapchat interview.

“Nobody comes to the stadium. Put (the players) in big hotels, test them every week, and keep them very well surveilled. Make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their families and let them play the season out.”

Teams would have to pay the cost of feeding, housing, and transporting players, coaches, managers, and support staff – not to mention working out a way to avoid the usual confinement of the clubhouse during a coronavirus outbreak that requires social distancing.

Giving the green light to starting the game, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed on CNN that he and Jeff Wilpon, chief operating officer of the New York Mets, discussed the subject.

“Why can’t we talk about a baseball season with nobody in the stands?” he said he asked Wilpon. “I think it would be good for the country. It would be good for people to have something to watch and help them fight cabin fever. And it’s something I’m going to do.”

With New York the national epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, games at Yankee Stadium or CitiField will probably have to wait until 2021. But Arizona, where the problem has been less severe, could work as a venue for all 30 teams – especially in the wake of President Trump’s pronouncement Thursday that he plans to re-start the economy in phases on a state-by-state basis.

The key, beyond conforming to social distancing recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is getting players and owners to agree.

Major League Baseball insists the original March agreement did not protect clubs in the event games were played in empty ballparks. The union says salary issues were clearly covered.

High-powered player agent Scott Boras told Joel Sherman of The New York Post, “(The owners) got what they requested. Why are they saying now they need to reopen the deal? What kind of negotiation is that?

“They knew there was a probability of not having fans in the ballpark. They are trying to make the players the enemy after they negotiated in good faith.”

But spokesmen from the league said the original agreement did not anticipate empty ballparks and thus no revenue for teams. According to a report in The Athletic by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich, the document has several sections that reference the possibility of games played without fans.

In their article, they wrote, “A league spokesman said ‘both parties understood that the deal was premised on playing in stadiums with fans and the agreement makes that clear.’

“A union source disagreed with the league’s characterization, saying the language regarding players receiving prorated salaries in the event of a partial season does not distinguish between games with or without fans.”

The Athletic also said, “A section of the deal, listing the conditions for games to resume, says the commissioner’s office and the union ‘will discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators or at appropriate substitute neutral sites.’”

Teams make much of their income from broadcast rights but would still lose millions without game-day revenue from fans. On the other hand, owners last longer than players and would have more years to recover their losses. Expanding and extending post-season play, an idea under discussion, would help defray those losses for both sides.

With millions left jobless by the pandemic, neither side wants to look like the ogre. Eventually, teams will return to their regular cities and parks and hope baseball-hungry fans will return. Fans angered by the 232-day player strike that ended in 1995 showed their displeasure with boos and boycotts — a spectacle nobody wants to repeat.

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