Tony ClarkThe executive director of the MLB Players Association expects the league to implement a lockdown after the 2026 season. “Unless I misunderstood, the league has come out and said it will stop working,” Clark said, according to Sportico’s Barry M. Bloom. “So, I don’t think I’m talking about that.” The current collective bargaining agreement is scheduled to expire on December 1, 2026.
This quote is a response to some previous comments by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred about a month ago. “In a strange way, it’s actually a positive way,” Manfred told Athletics’ Evan Drellich. “There is a leverage associated with offseason lockdown, and a process of collective bargaining,” Manfred said. [National Labor Relations Act] According to leverage. The best thing about the offseason lockdown is that there is leverage between bargaining parties. “He also praised a locker for being preferable to seasonal negotiations, saying “like using .22 (caliber guns) rather than shotguns or nuclear weapons. ”
Clark disagreed at the time. “It is known from first-hand experience that locking is neither routine nor positive,” Clark said. “It is a simple and straightforward weapon that puts pressure on players and their families by taking away their work abilities.”
The alliance and union relations have been combative in recent years, with the current collective bargaining agreement reaching agreement after lockdown lasted for several months. The former CBA expired on December 1, 2021, and the league locked in that night. Negotiations continued until the spring and a new agreement was reached on March 10, 2022. This led to a rapid upgrade for the 2022 season, although a full 162-game schedule is still completed with some scheduled two-player plans.
Given that the relationship between the two sides has not improved significantly, many in the baseball world hope to lock in after the current CBA expires. Manfred’s comments only add to this suspicion, and it seems that Clark and the union operate under this assumption.
From now until now, many issues need to be discussed. Player compensation and income sharing and more complex issues such as international drafts will have ongoing themes. Both sides can discuss these issues at any time, but Manfred’s comments make it impossible for any progress to do well ahead of time.
“I like to bargain early, but we still need two years, even if you think you want to bargain early,” Manfred said about a month ago. “We have time in that. And I think time is especially important now because we do have more and more things going on in the economics of the game (local media is the main one) – the longer we wait, the more it evolves and the better decisions we will make.”
From the player side, they seem to assume that Manfred is trying to create leverage through the press. “I know a lot of what Rob Manfred said in the media is in pose.” Matt Chapman Recently, he told John Shea of San Francisco Standard. “They are all negotiating strategies. He is trying to create his own narrative.”
One topic that usually appears in CBA discussions is salary cap, although MLBPA always believes that this is non-living. Evan Drellich of the athletic ability recently reported that the owners are considering pushing the hat as the next round of CBA talks are going on. David Rubenstein, the main owner of the Oriole, published the cap in January. However, Clark reiterated that the league does not want to agree to such measures.
“As we have kept our heads in the last 50 or 60 years,” Clark told Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Suns today. “It’s not necessary.” Whether from the perspective of “competitive balance” or from the industry’s ability to continue to develop and move forward, all of this happens without [a salary cap] As a result, our game thrives. ”
Many fans see the salary cap as the easiest way to combat certain inequality in baseball. Although the sport has not had the nearest dynasty runs like other leagues. Major League Baseball has never seen a repeat championship since the Yankees in 1998-2000. There is a huge gap in spending, while Dodgers is expected by Rosterresource to pay a salary of 390mm this year, while some other clubs, such as Marlins, have dropped 70mm. But despite the huge gap, the two clubs have had the same number of World Series trophys in the past 35 years.
Still, there are fans of small market clubs who feel overwhelming in terms of competitive balance. “There are multiple ways to solve systems that are not related to salary or caps, or the need to limit player salaries as a limit to the answer to each of these questions,” Clark said. Presumably, Clark refers to the fact that small market clubs gain additional draft picks in the draft through a competitive balance round, as well as larger bonus funds to spend on international participants, or perhaps always change the revenue sharing protocol. These measures help clubs such as rays, guardians and brewers remain competitive, although their spending capabilities are much lower than some clubs.
The bigger point is that MLB is generally in a pretty healthy state. Forbes’ Maury Brown recently reported that the league’s revenue reached a record $12.1 billion in 2024, without even taking alternative revenue streams, such as from commercial real estate projects related to Ballparks. Various metrics show that implementing the implementation of the stadium clock is more generally helpful in baseball’s popularity in terms of ticket sales and TV ratings. Clark seems to mention this in a comment today published by Weyrich today, suggesting that the proposed cap is less than the competitive balance and is more about increasing the profits of the owner.
“At this point in time, despite the fact that the industry itself has performed better than ever, and despite the fact that there are actually announcements that there are more ratings and more attendance than the last decade or so, you have a more interest in the rhetorical means surrounding the salary cap because that income is more interested in moving from that equation to another.”
