(670 The Score) As MLB free agency moves at a slow pace once again and some teams claim large financial losses due to the fallout of the pandemic, Cubs outfielder Ian Happ believes a misleading “narrative” has been created on the league’s side.
Without teams fully opening up their accounting books, Happ believes the conversation is being framed – if not completely incorrectly – then in the owners’ favor.
“You don’t really see the players coming out and saying that we took a 63% loss this year,” Happ said on the Dan Bernstein Show on Tuesday morning. “That’s not the narrative from the players, because we didn’t lose any real money. Guys still got paid. Guys still made more than zero. We didn’t have to give anything back. So it’s really tough to claim loss when it’s just money that wasn’t realized. But that’s the case on both sides, right? The case is there was a projection for earnings, and nobody met their projection for earnings. And that was the case in 2020. That was the case for many businesses across the world in 2020. And you don’t see players coming out and using that narrative because it would go terribly, right? You would have no fans sympathetic to a professional baseball player for not making 100% of their salary and only making 36, 37%. But that’s the narrative that’s being spun on the other side. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Players received around 37% of their salaries in 2020, which was commensurate with the regular season being shortened to 37% of its usual slate with the drop from 162 to 60 games. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred imposed the 60-game season after owners and players couldn’t agree to a return-to-play framework to create a longer season.
The Cubs were set to claim a $140-million loss in 2020, the Athletic Chicago reported in October. The Phillies lost $145 million in 2020, the Associated Press has previously reported.