Negotiations on the MLB collective bargaining agreement continue, with league president Rob Manfred saying the two sides are not far from reaching an agreement and promising that the talks will not affect the regular season for the new season. But judging from the latest proposal from the coalition, it seems that the two sides will continue to pull for a while.
The league's latest proposal has discarded the penalties for draft picks when breaking the first luxury tax line in the current labor clause, while raising the luxury tax threshold for the next three years, raising the minimum wage, adding a prize pool for child labor contracts for rookie players and curbing the team's control of players' years of service.
However, the proposal made by the labor side does not include the arbitration system and the income-sharing plan, which are the crux of the negotiations between the two sides.
The first is the luxury tax line, the league's proposal is still starting with $214 million next season, but the penalty method is to eliminate everything except cash — including draft picks and international player signings, and players with salaries between $214 million and $234 million will only be fined, and more than 234 million will be fined for other things.
However, this is not what the labor side wants, and the labor side only wants to simply raise the luxury tax line.
Regarding the minimum wage, for players with three years of child labor, the proposals given by the management are $615,000, $650,000 and $700,000 respectively, this time they cut the meat again, which was raised to $725,000. Another proposal is that the minimum wage for players starts at $630,000, and teams can give them a modest salary increase in the second and third years according to their performance, but this is still not a small difference from the union's $775,000 proposal.
The union previously proposed to set up a $105 million arbitration prize pool to reward players who performed well before the arbitration period, and the counter-offer was $10 million. This time, the management raised the offer to $15 million, the labor side countered at 100 million, and the gap between the two sides was not substantively filled.
There is also a small problem is the physical problem of the players participating in the draft, last year's draft meeting, the Mets after the selection of Kumar Roque, because of his physical reasons, did not choose to sign with him, the new terms propose, the player can provide their own medical report, but the player must sign him at least 75% of the draft signing price.
On the issue of playoff seats, the league's proposal is still 14 teams, and the players are counter-offering 12 teams, which is a key issue that is currently the closest to reaching an agreement.
(Text/Geng Haoyang)