Major League Baseball is just three weeks away from being shut down, barring a completely unforeseen occurrence.
The collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players expires on Dec. 1, and Commissioner Rob Manfred has already said that MLB will lock out members of the Major League Baseball Players Association if a deal isn’t struck. And it certainly appears a deal isn’t close, as the owners are adamant they want to implement a salary cap, a concept the players vehemently oppose.
Work stoppage is looming
The specter of a work stoppage looms over the General Managers’ meetings, which conclude on Wednesday at the Aria Resort & Casino. Yet the GMs downplayed talk of a lockout and how it will affect how they conduct offseason business.
“I think we’re going about our business the way we normally do in the offseason,” Kansas City Royals GM J.J. Picollo told FanSided on Tuesday. “There is maybe a little more urgency to get some things done earlier, particularly with maybe signing free agents, but I don’t feel like anyone is up against the clock.”
Complicating matters is that MLB could seemingly have radically different financial parameters under the next CBA. With a salary cap system, some higher-spending teams would have to cut their payrolls, while lower-budget teams would need to spend more to reach a salary floor.
Yet the GMs are taking the approach that they will cross the cap/floor bridge when — or history suggests if — they come to it.
“For now, everything we do will be the same as it has been,” Pittsburgh Pirates GM Ben Cherington said. “I don’t think you can do things differently until there is actual change.”
Will there be a repeat of 2021?
Baseball was in the same situation five years ago, when the previous CBA expired on Dec. 1. That year, 27 free agents signed contracts worth over $1 billion the day before the lockout began.
“I’m approaching business as usual here until told otherwise,” New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman said. “I’ve been given a budget by (owner Hal Steinbrenner), and we’re trying to now connect with teams and agents as the winter has just started to see what is feasible and what isn’t feasible and try to game plan off of that information that we’re gathering now.”
Yet that doesn’t mean teams aren’t aware of what happened five years ago. The first significant free agent came off the board Tuesday when reliever Emilio Pagan agreed to a one-year contract worth $11 million with the Detroit Tigers after having a 25-save season for the Cincinnati Reds this year.
“In terms of our process of evaluating players, valuing players, talking to agents and individual players, we’ve been kind of doing what we do every offseason and put ourselves in position to make decisions,” San Diego Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “The possibility of having a different economic system, you take that into consideration, but it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen, what the exact system is going to be, so I think ultimately if we see something that we think makes sense for us both in the short and long term, then I think we’re going to be prepared to act on it.”
The GMs know they don’t control when a new accord may be reached or what it’s going to look like.
“You just take it day by day because that’s all you can really do,” Reds PBO Nick Krall said with a smile and a shrug.”
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