Cody Christie

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images The collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players Association does not expire until December of this year. Still, the conversations that will define the next deal are already well underway. For the league, the union, and fans caught in the middle, the upcoming season is shaping up to be one dominated by labor discussions and big-picture questions about how the sport is structured. From the league’s side, there is a growing sense that MLB wants to revisit how money is distributed and how teams are allowed, or required, to spend it. Commissioner Rob Manfred has been increasingly open about potential changes, including ideas designed to alter the rhythm of free agency itself. One concept he floated recently was a winter free-agent signing deadline, something that would compress negotiations into a narrower window and potentially create more urgency and attention around the process. The Players Association, however, appears to be coming to the table with a very different set of priorities. Based on comments made by MLBPA president Tony Clark to The Athletic, the union is focused less on cosmetic changes and more on whether the current system actually promotes competition and fairly compensates players. “Free agency thrives when competition thrives — on and off the field,” Clark said in a statement to The Athletic. “If the owners are genuinely interested in improving free agency, there are many ways to get there, and we look forward to having that discussion in the coming months." “But if their true interest is to blow up the very system on which our streak of uninterrupted seasons has been built — with the game reaching record heights and poised to go even higher, no less — that would be a self-defeating miscalculation of massive proportions.” At the core of this looming negotiation is an uncomfortable reality about how the sport currently operates. Over the last decade, teams in the bottom half of the league by revenue have essentially been shut out of the ultimate goal. No bottom-15 revenue club has won a World Series since the Royals in 2015. At the same time, players collectively receive less than half of league revenues, a smaller share than athletes in any other major American sport. For many players, the system is doubly restrictive. Half the league enters each season with little realistic chance of winning a championship, and many players are locked into team control for up to six years before they even have access to free agency. When they finally reach that point, the biggest rewards are concentrated among a small group of star players, while the majority remain underpaid relative to the revenue the game generates. That imbalance is why the MLBPA should be pushing aggressively for structural change. A system that overwhelmingly benefits big-market teams and a handful of superstars while leaving most players with limited earning power and competitive opportunity is difficult to defend. Competitive balance matters not just for fans, but for the health of the union’s membership. The league, for its part, has increasingly framed the issue as one of incentivizing lower spending clubs to invest more in their rosters. That framing quickly leads to the most polarizing concept in baseball labor talks: a salary cap. When asked recently whether a cap would be a nonstarter in the next negotiation, Manfred was quick to deflect responsibility to the union. “That’s a Tony Clark question, I mean, it really is,” Manfred said on the radio. “Until I got elected commissioner, all I did was labor relations. That’s how I made my living. I’ve never been in a negotiation where, before the first piece of paper went across the table, I, or anyone I represented, was out there saying, ‘This, we absolutely will not talk about.’ I just think it’s a hard way to begin a negotiation.” The Players Association has not softened its stance, even if it has not explicitly engaged with every hypothetical. In response to Manfred’s comments, the union emphasized both its priorities and its long memory. “Players and fans want a full season of competitive baseball,” the MLBPA said. “The league and owners say they want to avoid missing games, but at the same time they appear to be dead-set on trying to force players into a system that, the last time they proposed it, led to the most missed games ever and a cancelled World Series.” While Manfred has insisted he is not committed to a cap, many of the ideas he continues to reference resemble the economic structures used in cap leagues like the NFL, NBA, and NHL. That includes not just an upper spending limit, but also a salary floor that would require teams to spend a minimum amount on payroll. When asked directly how to encourage low-spending teams to invest more, Manfred pointed to that exact model. “The question of incentivization is a really important one. Three other sports have dealt with it by having a rule: you got to spend,” Manfred said. “Everybody talks about the cap piece. The cap piece comes with another piece where you have to spend. And I think mandating a certain level of commitment in terms of spending in the right kind of economic system can be a good thing.” From a competitive standpoint, the idea of a salary floor is difficult to argue against. Under the current system, there is little reason for some smaller market owners to push payrolls higher when the gap between them and the biggest spenders can reach hundreds of millions of dollars. This season alone, the Dodgers’ luxury tax bill exceeds the entire payroll of more than half the league. That is not a sustainable definition of competitive balance. Manfred has also tied these labor discussions to broader changes in baseball’s media landscape. With regional sports networks continuing to decline and streaming platforms gaining leverage, the commissioner has openly discussed a future where MLB packages both national and local broadcasting rights together in new ways. That kind of overhaul would almost certainly be linked to changes in revenue sharing and labor economics. “People often say that when you make a (labor) deal bigger, it’s harder to get it done,” Manfred said last summer. “This is one of those areas where a bigger deal, in terms of media, labor, revenue sharing, actually gives you trade-offs to accomplish things.” Despite the tension, Manfred has repeatedly emphasized the importance of maintaining momentum. The rule changes of the last few seasons, particularly the pitch clock, have revitalized fan interest, something he views as a significant asset heading into negotiations. “When you have momentum like we have that you’ve worked as hard as we have to get, you know that is a force that puts people in a frame of mind that they should understand they need to make an agreement, OK?” Manfred said. “Despite that momentum, we have a couple of issues that we hear about from our fans all the time: blackouts and the perception that some teams are not competitive.” Those two issues are deeply intertwined with labor, revenue, and spending rules. How MLB and the MLBPA choose to address them will define the next era of the sport. History suggests that talk of helping small market teams often precedes calls for a cap, but it does not guarantee one. There are paths to reform that stop short of that outcome. Whether ownership pursues those alternatives or pushes for a more dramatic overhaul remains to be seen. For now, one thing is clear. With the CBA clock ticking and both sides openly staking out philosophical ground, baseball’s next labor fight is no longer a distant concern. It is already here. What changes do you envision from the next CBA? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Major League Baseball has not exactly stood still under commissioner Rob Manfred. The pitch clock reshaped the pace of play. The shift ban changed how hitters and defenses interact. The ghost runner became a permanent late-inning companion. Next season, the automatic ball strike challenge system arrives. On Thursday, the commissioner floated something that could dwarf all of that. Appearing on WFAN’s The Carton Show, Manfred spoke openly about expanding the league to 32 teams, ending a run of nearly 30 years with 30 franchises. It was not framed as a distant hypothetical either. He made it sound like a natural next step for a sport that still sees demand in multiple markets. “When people want your product, you ought to try to find a way to sell it to them,” Manfred said. “It’s kind of basic.” Expansion itself is not a surprise. Manfred has been comfortable talking about it for years and reiterated recently that he hopes to choose two new cities before his planned retirement in 2029. The new wrinkle is what comes next. Once those teams are added, the commissioner made it clear that the current league structure would be on the table and likely needs to be adjusted. That likely means moving away from the American League-National League framework that has defined the sport for more than a century. Instead, MLB could follow the NBA and NHL's model, with conferences or leagues organized primarily by geography. The driving force behind that idea is travel. Manfred emphasized that reducing the physical grind on players is a major motivation. It is also a way to get the MLBPA on board, as it benefits their clients and creates more jobs. “It does a ton for us from a format perspective. You would realign, you would do it along geographic lines, which could alleviate a ton of the travel burden that’s on players.” “Remember, we ask our players [to play] 162 times in 186 days. So most of the [time] between 162 and 186 [is] travel right? So you can eliminate a lot of that travel, make it less burdensome, which would be a great thing in terms of player health and safety.” While the American League and National League have existed for 125 years, they have not truly operated as separate entities for a long time. Different rulebooks and umpire crews disappeared decades ago, and interleague play has been standard since the late 1990s. From that perspective, the historical barrier is already more symbolic than functional. Manfred also pointed to the postseason and the way games fit into fans’ schedules. Geographic alignment could clean up some of the awkward start times that come with cross-country playoff series. “You know we have those four window days that I love, right? You get four baseball games in a day. It’s awesome. But when you think about the fans in the individual markets, you always end up with, because of the way we’re set up, you know, you get Boston versus Anaheim in one of the early rounds. So you’re either going to be too late for the fans in Boston or too early.” “So if you realign geographically, you would look more like other sports where you play up East into the World Series and West into the World Series. And that 10 o’clock game on the West Coast that sometimes is a problem for us becomes a prime-time game on the West Coast for the two teams that are playing. So there’s a lot of advantages to it.” Manfred described a possible structure of eight divisions, each with four teams, and an effort to keep clubs from the same city out of the same division. If we assume one expansion team lands in the East and one in the West, a rough, very unofficial sketch could look like this. NL East: Phillies, Mets, Nationals, Pirates NL North: Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, Brewers NL South: Braves, Marlins, Rays, East expansion team NL West: Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks AL East: Red Sox, Yankees, Orioles, Blue Jays AL North: Tigers, Guardians, White Sox, Twins AL South: Royals, Astros, Rangers, Rockies AL West: Angels, Mariners, Athletics, West expansion team To be clear, MLB has not said how the division would realign. There are some obvious issues to iron out with any realignment plan. This version is simply a way to illustrate how dramatically the landscape could change if this plan moves forward. Expansion and realignment might not be the only structural ideas on the commissioner’s whiteboard. Manfred was also asked about the NBA Cup and the idea of an in-season baseball tournament. He acknowledged that the league has discussed similar concepts, but sounded far less enthusiastic about the idea. “We’ve talked about split seasons we’ve talked about in season tournaments. We do understand that 162 [games] is a long pull. I think the difficulty to accomplish those sort of in season events you almost inevitably start talking about fewer regular-season games.” “It is a much more complicated thing in our sport than it is in other sports because of all of our season-long records. You’re playing around with something that people care a lot about.” Manfred again confirmed that he expects to step down when his contract ends in January 2029. Whether he completes all of these changes himself or hands some of them to a successor remains to be seen. Either way, the next commissioner may not just oversee baseball’s future but be tasked with guiding a sport that has already begun to redraw its own boundaries. How will expansion impact MLB? How would you realign the divisions? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article