World Series in December? Breaking Down MLB Players' Latest Proposal to Owners

MLB players submitted a counterproposal to league owners about compensation for a shortened 2020 season.

Major league players want to push the World Series toward December in order to play 32 more regular season games than the 82 games proposed by owners. Thirty-two more games mean players collect an additional 20% of their salaries if they are paid on a per-game basis.

According to agent Scott Boras, there is a bigger reason why players want 114 games instead of 82: pitchers’ health. Boras fears pitchers will be at risk of injury in 2021 if they don’t pitch enough innings in 2020.

“I want to see them throwing 130 innings,” Boras said. “I don’t want them throwing 80 innings and then coming back the next year facing a full season. I don’t want the innings jump. We want them playing through October.”

Boras estimated that teams owe $14 billion in salaries to players signed to contracts beyond this year, including $2.8 billion to clients of his firm, Boras Corp.

“That’s a $14 billion investment in elite players,” Boras said. “You have to take care of your assets. You can’t risk those assets.”

Naming three of his clients, who account for three of the five biggest contracts ever signed by a pitcher, “[Max] Scherzer, [Stephen] Strasburg, [Gerrit] Cole … I want them throwing a good amount of innings. That’s where our biggest concern is.”

While other sports around the world announce plans to return to play from the pandemic, players and owners are locked in a labor dispute over compensation. Under a counterproposal the players association submitted Sunday to MLB, a 114-game season would be squeezed into 123 days: from June 30 through Oct. 31.

The players’ plan also includes holding the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby at some point after the regular season, though as reported here last week, owners and players already had included that provision in their March 26 agreement.

If games take place in 2020, players asked for the right to opt out of playing because of health concerns related to the pandemic. Those who opt out who are considered at risk because of underlying medical conditions or have family members at risk would be paid. Those who opt out who do not qualify as at risk would not be paid but would receive service time credit.

To play on June 30 players would need to be in training camps June 9. That would allow a three-week training period, which most teams regard as a minimum requirement, even if rosters are expanded to 30 with 15-man pitching staffs. Boras suggested that teams could choose to give their elite starting pitchers longer to prepare–in effect, skipping one or two regular season starts to allow a longer ramp-up period.

“That’s what my antennae are picking up,” he said.

Pool Photo-USA TODAY Sports

Major League Baseball has shown little appetite for extending the baseball calendar. First, playing games in empty or reduced-capacity ballparks reduces revenues. MLB claims it gets about 40% of its revenues from in-ballpark attendance.

Secondly, MLB is concerned that pushing the postseason by one month puts a huge revenue source at risk. About $787 million of the $1.3 billion national television package is tied to the postseason. That haul is expected to reach $1 billion this year with the playoff field expanding from 10 to 14. The deeper those high-value games are pushed into the fall the more vulnerable they become to being disrupted by another coronavirus wave that could be tied to the flu season.

The players and owners share almost no common ground in how they believe players should be paid to make a shortened season possible. Players want to be paid on a pro-rated basis based on the percentage of the 162-game season that is played. Owners proposed a sliding pay cut, with the top earners taking the biggest cut.

(The players actually used a similar “top-down” philosophy in offering to defer salary if no postseason is played this year. The union suggested that players earning $10 million or more would defer salary with interest. Those below the threshold would defer none.)

But there was at least one major area of agreement in the players’ counteroffer: the expanded postseason looks like it is here and here to stay. The players’ proposal included an endorsement of the expanded postseason for 2020 and 2021.

Under the owners’ original proposed plan, which pre-dated the pandemic, seven teams from each league qualify for the postseason and are seeded 1 through 7. The No. 1 seed earns a first-round bye into the Division Series. The Nos. 2, 3 and 4 seeds will host all necessary games in a best-of-three Wild Card round. In a televised event following the last games of the regular season, the No. 2 seed will choose its opponent from seeds 5, 6 and 7. The No. 3 seed will choose its opponent from the remaining two lower seeds. The No. 4 seed will play the one remaining seed.

The Division Series, the League Championship Series and the World Series then proceed as usual.

The expanded format increases the maximum number of postseason games from 43 to 59, including an increase in a maximum of potential clinching games–the highest-rated games–from 26 to 36.

The expanded format requires about 32-34 days to complete. There is virtually no way baseball is playing playoff games on Nov. 3, Election Day in a presidential year. The original 2020 schedule began a week earlier than usual specifically to have the World Series end before that date. Scheduling games for Thanksgiving could present another challenge given the NFL’s traditional viewing hold on the holiday.

Playing the regular season through Halloween would push the World Series into the first week of December, which because of weather could force games out of the home city of one or both pennant winners. Weather could force World Series games to be played at a neutral site or in one city (i.e., a Dodgers-Twins series could see all games played at Dodger Stadium).

According to Boras, who employs his own economist, a year with no revenues could push as many as eight owners to consider selling their franchise, and a bevy of distress sales that could depress franchise values of all clubs.

“They’re running out of time,” Boras said.