PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- We finally have a proposal in place that will be officially presented to the MLBPA later today for a 2020 season.
But that certainly doesn't mean this is how we'll see baseball games played again.
The league's owners approved an 82-game regular season, 14 playoff-team proposal with games starting in early July with...and this is the kicker and a major hangup...a 50/50 split of the revenue with the players. As it stands, the proposal is expected to be rejected as many players view this is a salary cap of sorts.
"While a 50/50 split is not something the players want in the long term, it also, I should note, is not something MLB has proposed in the past. Nor do I believe that it is going to be a cornerstone of MLB's long term negotiating strategy. There's a reason why MLB is the only professional sport of a large scale in our country that does not have a salary cap. That's because MLB has not really pushed for one.
I have never attended a press conference, in all my years of covering baseball, where an MLB official got up in front of the room and began making the case for why the league needs a salary cap. It simply hasn't happened. So, I think as long as the text and the understanding of this agreement speaks to the fact that this is not part of MLB's long term strategy but rather a one-time, one-year allocation in the midst of a global pandemic, I would have to think the union would see the virtue in that plan.
Morosi also said they should be motivated by being the only sport playing in America because there is a lot of power in capturing the attention of the sports watching population in terms of staying afloat during and even after the shutdown.
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Beyond just the financials, Morosi explained that a proposed plan has to have many contingencies and plans of response to the ever-changing dynamics of the country and COVID-19.
"That has to be a comprehensive look at where baseball stands with respect to risk tolerance, trying to mitigate that risk and what the overall framework of public health looks like and how baseball can safely operate without compromising the testing bandwidth of communities around the country. That to me is a major question that I hope will be answered in the course of the conversations regardless the plan that was approved yesterday."