The most important thing to know about the initial proposals for baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement is that they were designed to be rejected. It’s the end of May, meaning we still have a little more than six months to go before the current CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1. That’s when the owners are expected to lock out the players and initiate the game’s second work stoppage of the 2020s, but if the last CBA negotiation is any indication of how this one will play out, it’ll take at least another month and a half from then for bargaining to begin in earnest.
The purpose of the initial proposals released this week, by the MLB Players Association on Wednesday and MLB on Thursday, was to set the starting line from where each will slowly, but inevitably, concede ground. We likely won’t see much movement for a while, but once the owners and players start inching toward one another, they’ll point to their proposals from this week as evidence of their efforts to make a deal. Theoretically, in a labor negotiation, you want to set your starting point far from where you want to end up, so that you can abandon some of what you were asking for and still end up with a favorable agreement. So just because, in the words of Ben Clemens, “opposing sides aren’t speaking the same language” right now doesn’t mean we’re any more or less likely to miss games next season. That said, it also doesn’t mean that there’s nothing for us to learn from the proposals. Rather, as Ben explains, “these early offers are revealing of what each side cares about most. The specific numbers quoted are unlikely to survive multiple rounds of bargaining, but the concepts and structures that each side favors at this stage could tell us a lot about what an eventual compromise looks like.” In his piece from Friday, which you can find here, Ben does a great job of laying out everything you need to know about the start of bargaining. You should definitely check that out.
That’s the last we’ll talk about baseball labor in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on overlooked MVP candidates, how different baseball would be without Tommy John surgery, and which pitchers actually benefit from throwing first-pitch strikes. Before we do, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.