Major League Baseball made some proposals to the Major League Baseball Players Association today:

During the sides’ first meeting that discussed core economic issues in 43 days, the league proposed changes to the arbitration system for players with two-plus years of service, tweaked its proposed draft lottery and offered the ability for teams to earn draft picks if top prospects find early success in the major leagues, according to sources.

MLB hoped the proposal would spur discussion with the union after the sides’ failed negotiations leading up to the lockout led to six weeks of inaction. Topics not discussed Thursday that have been in the players’ suite of asks included changes to the competitive-balance tax and raising the minimum salary. While the league indicated before the lockout that it was not open to considering free agency before six years or changes to the current revenue-sharing plan, the union could include both in a counterproposal.

ESPN.com

While I applaud the creativity of the MLB proposals, they are too gimmicky. The more complicated a proposal, the easier it is to game for one side or the other. I suspect the players see through this. What to do about service time manipulation should be rather simple, something like anyone called up a date fairly late in the season first gets a full year of service time. Set it at August first, for example. That’s straight forward, and hard to manipulate. Sure, teams can still hold the long-term contract or stay in the minors sword, but I suspect most long-term contracts at that age work out decently for the player.

It would be nice to see the union come back with something clean and simple.