I’m impressed with the discipline of the MLB and MLBPA negotiators. I have almost nothing leaked about possible proposals during this lockout. Both times the sides announced a meeting, I expected to see something in the press about the proposal before the actual presentation. That has not happened.

In the past, there always seemed to be some dollar amount separating the two sides. Usually, that allowed the sides to meet in the middle and avoid a work stoppage. This time, however, the negotiations seem more about process, about the rules of getting paid rather than the pay itself. While I’m sure accountants can assign monetary value to these proposals, those values come with a higher degree of uncertainty, since it is difficult to see the long-term result of those rules. The current system worked very well for the players for two decades. There were few complaints when the value of one free agent WAR went up 10% a year.

My gut is that the players didn’t go far enough in their opening bid. There is no chasm between the sides. I suspect the players will get something like a full year of service time for anyone called up before July 1 in exchange for the end of super two status and a competitive balance tax threshold of $220 million. Maybe they get free agency at age 29 with less than six years service. If they had asked for free agency after seasonal age 25, the midpoint of that stance would have made a big difference in the pay of players.

Maybe the MLBPA will do what MLB did during the 2020 season. Rather than negotiating toward the middle in that short season, MLB moved further away from the players position when they didn’t get a positive response to the offer of more games for at a lower pay rate. We saw how that turned out.