Good Morning,
Unfortunately, we aren’t celebrating the return of baseball. Rob Manfred and the owners decided to ruin Spring’s rite of passage for everyone. But that won’t keep us from writing.
In today’s newsletter, we will let you know what to do if you have tickets for the home opener, introduce you some more to recently-hired Director of Major League Operations Elizabeth Benn, share a little hot stove talk, and break down how far apart the owners and players really are, based on their last two proposals.
🗓 CANCELLED GAMES: As you know by now, Rob Manfred decided to cancel the first two series of the season, claiming those games won’t be made up, even though the schedule is something that still needs to be negotiated as part of a new CBA.
Impact on Mets: By wiping the first two home series off the calendar, the earliest the Mets could start the season is on April 7 in Washington (don’t count on that date). The two “cancelled” series were three-game sets against the Braves and Nationals.
🎟 TICKETS: If you bought tickets for the Home Opener, you can still use them for whenever the Home Opener happens at Citi Field this season.
The Mets issued guidance that says: “Fans holding tickets for the opener can use them for the first ticketed 2022 home game at Citi Field. Tickets previously distributed for the date that becomes the Mets’ home opener will not be valid. They will be treated as an impacted game, meaning credit or a refund will be issued.”
🗣 HOT STOVE: Michael Conforto is reportedly “on the list” of possible free agents the Rockies could target when the lockout ends, according to Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post.
🍎 MEET ELIZABETH: Mets Director of Major League Operations Elizabeth Benn talked to SNY’s Gary Apple earlier this week. She explains what this position means to her and what it means to women who want to get into baseball.
HER ROLE: Benn’s main responsibilities will be roster construction, management and transactions (alongside Billy Eppler and Sandy Alderson), as well as anything related to major league players and staff, including helping to manage payroll, clubhouse, and travel.
Mind the gap
We left you on Tuesday with these final words about the lockout:
Will we have baseball on March 31? We are a lot closer today than we were yesterday at this time, so that is good news. Whether we are close enough for a deal to be completed by the end of the day, we will see. But don’t be surprised if the union makes one final push to prove their fortitude. Mid-April could be a more realistic starting date.
Three days later, mid-April feels optimistic for a start date to the season. While we are certain you are tired of hearing about the lockout, allow us one more excursion down the winding trail of collective bargaining to help you cut through all of the spin in handicapping where the two sides really stand relative to each other based on their latest proposals.
The fact remains that in the final 24 hours before the two sides went Kanye and Kim Kardashian on each other and parted ways, the difference between what the players are seeking and what the owners are willing to give got smaller. It turned out to be unfair to characterize this movement as the two sides were getting “closer to a deal” because a deal was not in fact close. But there’s a difference between reaching an agreement and shortening the gap to create the possibility of a deal in the future, even if on principle the two sides remain far apart.
Show me the money !
Skip to the 🔹 at the bottom of this section if you wish to avoid lots of adding and dividing.
If we compare the player’s most recent proposal with the owner’s last (and hopefully not “best and final”) offer, the difference between the two works out like this:
▪️ MINIMUM SALARIES: There is an aggregated $225,000 gap between what the players are seeking ($725,000 in 2022, $745K in 2023, $765K in 2024, $765K plus consumer price index increase in 2025, same increase in 2026) and what the owners last put on the table ($700,000 in 2022, increasing to $740,000 by 2026).
Apply that to all of the players who are eligible for the minimum salary (Ben Clemens at FanGraphs did the math), and it’s a $22.8 million difference per season, or $114 million over the life of the CBA.
▪️ PRE-ARBITRATION BONUS POOL: Here, the gap is wider. There’s a $55 million gap in 2022, $60 million in 2023, $65 MM (2024), $70 MM (2025) and $75 MM (2026) for a total of $325 million over five years.
▪️ COMPETITIVE BALANCE TAX: This one is a bit messier to fledge out the numbers, but we at least know where each side wants the first tax threshold to begin each season (the players want it to rise to $238 million in 2022; the owners offered $220 million), and based on the differences in the subsequent years of the CBA, the two sides are roughly $137 million apart.
The trick with this $137 million number is that it has to actually be spent for it to count as “new” money to the players, which we can presume it would be by the large-market teams already spending that much. In other words, since the Dodgers and Mets (it’s still weird putting the Mets in this category) already spend above the proposed thresholds, we can assume their spending would remain the same in the future — under the player’s proposal, they would just be taxed less.
The net gain for the players would come from teams who have proven willing to spend right up to the tax, but not often over it, especially not in consecutive seasons. In 2019, there were five clubs within $5 million of owing a luxury tax payment at the end of the season; if we assume the same number of teams would float their payroll to a higher threshold, the difference in the CBT proposals between the players and owners could be as much as $685 million over five years.
Obviously, the concern for the cheap or “small-market” clubs is that they will have an even tougher time competing when teams who already find themselves near the top of the standings have $685 million more to spend, especially with fewer draft pick penalties or repeat tax escalations.
SNY’s Andy Martino reported yesterday that some owners didn’t want to go up “one penny” on the CBT and four owners voted against the league’s last offer (who The Athletic’s Evan Drellich later revealed to be Bob Castellini of the Reds, Chris Ilitch of the Tigers, Ken Kendrick of the Diamondbacks and Arte Moreno of the Angels) — not exactly the list of team owners you might have expected.
Drellich also adds in his report:
“In bargaining, owners have used the Mets, and their relatively new owner Steve Cohen, and the Dodgers as examples of teams they’re worried about outspending the competition, sources said.”
Max Scherzer made a key point during the union’s press conference on Tuesday: the competitive balance tax was originally designed to prevent what he called “breakaway spending.” Instead, it has acted as a salary cap. That said, it’s clear Steve Cohen’s recent spending spree, which included Scherzer, has spooked some owners by confirming to them that the Mets will now join the Dodgers as a team that isn’t afraid to pay taxes on inflated payrolls (aka breakaway spending). It explains why more than just the low-budget clubs want harsher tax penalties.
Since 23 of 30 owners are needed to vote in favor of a new agreement, counting the four above, that leaves room for only three more votes of dissent as the players continue to seek higher CBT thresholds. Considering two of the four owners who voted against the last CBT proposal are from clubs who have carried large payrolls in the past (Tigers and Angels), the path to the player’s $230 million minimum ask will be a difficult one.
🔹 SHOW ME THE MONEY: Add all of the big-ticket items together, and the difference between the proposals last presented comes to $1.124 billion over the life of a new CBA, or $224.8 million per year, which equates to a measly $7.5 million per season, per team.
And this is before we even discuss the added revenue the owners would receive if the players agree to an expanded playoff format, which is worth a reported $85 million per October for 12 teams (which the players strongly prefer over 14 teams). That’s $425 million of new revenue, at least half of which would belong to the owners, reducing the annual per team gap from $7.5 million to $6.1 million, or two million less than the Mets are paying for one season of James McCann.
Put bluntly, baseball is being robbed from us because the owners won’t give up less than 2% of their expected revenues over the next five years (on conservative revenue projections).
How long until someone cracks?
The players will start to receive $15,000 stipends from the player’s union in April. The union is estimated to have enough money to continue making those payments for the next nine months. While it’s a pittance to what the stars are used to making, it’s still a six-figure annualized salary that should especially help the players just entering the league or barely on the 40-man roster.
Meanwhile, there’s a reason the owners decided to lock the players out at the beginning of the season: it’s when they have the least to lose. Both ESPN and The Athletic have reported this week that the owners won’t owe rebates on local TV contracts until 22-25 games are missed. Combine that with the fact attendance is historically lower in the first few weeks of the season when it’s still cold in many major markets, and you have a situation where the owners could sit out the month of April and potentially save a month of paying the players (which becomes another third-rail issue in these labor talks as the players will seek back pay) without losing much revenue.
Together, it creates a strong possibility that both sides would be willing to skip April baseball before deciding to blink. For the players, it is probably the only way they can put a scare into the owners.
So when will we see the Mets again?
Well, at least we’ve been able to see Max Scherzer during these negotiations (BTW: he finally updated his Twitter profile to Mets gear).
But in all seriousness, at this point, May 1st is probably the best bet for when the season will finally begin.
As we keep saying, negotiations are about deadlines and consequence. Since the owners seem pretty immune to any real consequence until at least May (as we’ve learned based on the local TV rebates), it’s hard to see them budging much over the next few weeks. In normal times, the two sides would be close enough on the numbers to get a deal done. But these aren’t normal times, as more than just baseball likes to constantly remind us.
As much as the owners are to blame for where we are today, the players know they put themselves at such a huge disadvantage because of poor negotiating in previous CBAs. They can’t win everything back this time around, but they can’t afford to take another loss, either. This lockout is as much about principle and setting things up for (cover your eyes) *the next CBA negotiation* as it is about grabbing a few extra bucks in minimum salaries.
However it goes, we will try to keep you company along the ride!
◾️ MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem and league vice president Morgan Sword met for 90 minutes in New York with union attorney Bruce Meyer and MLBPA attorney Ian Penny. It was the first meeting since the commissioner cancelled games on Tuesday.
◾️ Adding to the acrimony between the owners and players, the league reportedly proposed to incorporate meal money and the stipends players receive into the luxury-tax calculations, according to Evan Drellich.
🔗 '21 Draft pick Calvin Ziegler turning heads at Mets camp, by Anthony DiComo, MLB.com: “He’s impressive,” farm director Kevin Howard said. “Whenever you get a guy with that movement profile and that type of stuff, it’s exciting. And I think for being such a young guy, he’s got a lot of pitchability to go with that.”
📺 Could Jacob deGrom's Hall of Fame chances be impacted by another abbreviated season? On SNY’s Baseball Night in New York, Jerry Blevins discusses the challenges that could face Jacob deGrom to be ready for this season while Anthony Recker and John Jastremski determine how not getting another full season could impact deGrom's Hall Of Fame chances.
And we leave you with actual baseball !!!
Thanks for reading! Follow us on Twitter for regular updates until our next newsletter.
And please check out our newsletters about the Knicks and Isles, too.
Mind the gap
My friend made a great point the other day about the complexity these negotiations: It's not just owners vs. players, it is also owners vs. owners (small vs. big market), and that's what entirely corrupts the enterprise and makes it all feel so hopeless.
In a perverse way, could the Mets—with an aging ace and an often injured, second ace—be better off with a shortened season?