MLB and Players Union Disagree on Salary Cap As League Creates Economic Reform Committee

As the MLBPA keeps an eye on the struggling cable networks, team owners are examining the league’s revenue issues.

The Padres have not suggested a desire to win this winter so much as they have screamed it.

They committed $280 million to a long-term deal with shortstop Xander Bogaerts. They spent $108 million to extend pitcher Yu Darvish. And on Sunday, if there had been any lingering doubt, they addressed the biggest outstanding question on their roster by extending star third baseman Manny Machado for 11 years and $350 million.

The Padres qualify as a small-market team: San Diego ranks among MLB’s five smallest teams for sports television market size. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from how they’re behaving.

Which is great, says Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark.

“When you see teams in smaller markets—San Diego, in this instance, is the best example—provide a level of engagement for their fans … it begs the question as to why they made that decision and why others aren’t,” Clark said. “It’s very clear from the public comments that the owner of San Diego made that they want to compete, that they’re able to compete, that they’re excited about the team that they built there in San Diego. It should be celebrated, not questioned.”

Clark spoke to reporters on a variety of subjects this weekend from the union’s new satellite office in Arizona. That included his perspective on the offseason activity of teams like the Padres.

“You don’t want to start the year where any particular fan base doesn’t believe their team has a chance to win,” Clark said. “But a lot of that is predicated on what the team does in order to compete and win. And I say that despite the fact that the league has said, on more than one occasion, that they deny the correlation between spending and winning.”

News broke last week that MLB has started an ownership “economic reform committee.” (Clark said the union had not been informed of the committee ahead of time.) This group of owners will reportedly be chaired by Mark Walter of the Dodgers and rounded out by others including Chris Illitch of the Tigers, John Henry of the Red Sox and Dick Monfort of the Rockies. The committee does not have a publicly stated objective. But the union’s perspective on past economic initiatives from the league is clear.

“It’s focused on how best to depress players’ salaries,” Clark said. “That’s the underlying theme.”

A part of that conversation, of course, might be a salary cap—a suggestion that has been made by the league before and remains a hard “no” for the union.

“We’re never going to agree to a cap,” Clark said.

A few other points from Clark’s comments Saturday:

• The union said it has been closely monitoring the situation with regional sports networks. In just the last two weeks, Bally Sports’ parent company has inched closer to bankruptcy, and Warner Brothers Discovery has said it plans to get out of the RSN business. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said recently that the league is prepared to produce and broadcast games if necessary. But any potential change to those revenue streams is, obviously, of great interest to the union: “Appreciating how the revenue from the RSNs has come into the system and how the system has been set up to accommodate those local revenues coming in—all of that is going to need to be taken into account depending on what the league is actually interested in doing and negotiating,” Clark said.

• The negotiations for Minor League Baseball’s first union contract are ongoing. (The minor leaguers signed union cards last August and were voluntarily recognized in September.) “Some progress has been made,” Clark said, “but there’s still tangible work that needs to be done.” A particular sticking point has been the league’s ability to eliminate minor league playing jobs: MLB originally proposed this idea last year, during major league bargaining, when they suggested lowering the Domestic Reserve List from its current figure of 180. (The Domestic Reserve List is the number of minor league players that an organization can roster.) Dropping the number of minor league jobs has now been proposed as a “quid pro quo” for improving playing conditions, which is a “nonstarter” for the union, Clark said. An MLB spokesman declined to comment. But Clark reiterated that he was optimistic a deal can be reached.

• The union has no plan to return to the international draft that was proposed during bargaining last year: “What’s very important is making sure that protections for those players are in place,” Clark said, “and the league was unwilling to engage on the protections we believe needed to be in place, let alone the dollars associated with the value that those players have.”