MLB players after more millions amid pandemic and high unemployment is a bad look | Opinion
Everybody is wrong. Nothing is right about baseball’s money-centered negotiations to restart its season. The owners are wrong and the players are wrong. There are two sides to every argument, sure ... but with if both sides are lame?
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 clubs are wrong because the added pay cuts they want players to accept as outlined in this week’s proposal are way beyond the originally discussed prorated salaries based the number of games played in the eventual season. For example, in the shortened 82-game schedule baseball proposes, players would have made 50 percent (plus one game) of their contracts based on a 162-game schedule.
That seemed reasonable. Mathematically logical. That’s why the MLB Players Association agreed to it.
But management now wants pay cuts well beyond the prorated total, on a scale that hits big-money superstars hardest. As an example, over 82 games, Mike Trout’s prorated 2020 salary would have been just over $19 million. In the new proposal it would be just under $6 million — a pay cut of more than 80 percent.
Seems excessive. Arbitrary more than logical. That’s why the MLBPA flatly objects and will counter-propose playing more games with no pay cuts beyond the full prorated sum.
Now here is why the players are wrong, too: The optics. The timing. Even if players have a legit beef about the added cuts MLB wants (and they do), players will come off as greedy at the worst possible time and be the big losers in all of this. If perception is reality, the perception is ready to crush them.
Consider: If Trout is forced to play for “only” $6 million this year, that still amounts to more than $70,000 per game — per game — over 82 games.
And yet Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer, a powerful leader of the MLBPA executive subcommittee who makes $36 million a year (non-prorated), insists players will not abide the additional pay cut.
But, do players really want to be playing the more-money card right now? During a pandemic that will prevent fans from attending games? During a COVID-19 plague that has now killed more than 100,000 American? In an economy-crushing scourge that has seen more than 40 million Americans file for unemployment?
Now is when you want to be the union seen complaining that $70,000 to play one baseball game is unfairly not enough?
Even if they are right, baseball players cannot win here as millions of fans starved for sports surely feel like standing up in a chorus and shouting, “Shut up and play!” as the two sides bicker.
Baseball’s tug-of-war over money threatens to delay at the very least the hoped for early July start of the regular season.
Baseball’s money fight looks that much worse not only in the context of the coronavirus, but in the context of sports in general.
It seems the NBA, NHL and MLS soccer are inching closer to reopening than MLB. And the last thing you want to be this summer-into-fall is the only one of the four leagues not playing, not helping your fans heal, on account of a stubborn back and forth over money.
There is a sub-topic worth discussing here as everything we are all going through invites a sizing up of priorities. And it is ironic: We miss sports and dearly want them back. Yet at the same time, it is fair to wonder how things got so out of whack in terms of the business of sports.
It is fair to wonder and lament how we got to the point where a star baseball player, even one taking a huge pay cut, is still making more money to play one game than the average yearly salary of registered nurses in 23 states, according to nurse. org.
It is fair to wonder and lament why the average secondary-market ticket price to a Miami Dolphins game is $268. Why a cup of stadium beer might cost 12 bucks. Why taxpayers are additionally asked to help build stadiums and arenas for team owners’ for-profit enterprises.
Hmm. Could it be to help pay the 824 NFL, MLB and NBA players who currently make at least $5 million per season. And the 450 among them making at least $10 million a year?
How did sports become such an embarrassment of riches?
Why do we place so much value in athletic skill relative to (not a random example) the skills of an ICU nurse?
I’m just asking.
It might be worth baseball players considering as they balk at returning to work because the millions they make are not quite enough.
This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 1:08 PM.
