MLB Desires to Cap Contract Lengths

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wants to limit contract lengths, while MLBPA executive director Tony Clark says players would never accept it.

Just because Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Union have a collective bargaining agreement doesn’t mean there aren’t still issues to deal with.

One is the length of player contracts.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred still wants to limit the length of player contracts, per a report in The Athletic. Manfred made those comments at the Sports Business Journal's World Congress of Sports Conference.

This isn’t the first time Manfred has broached the topic, and based on what he said at the conference, it probably won’t be the last.

"Obviously players love it, it gives them financial security for a very long period of time,” Manfred said. “The difficulty — and I think players will come to appreciate this as time goes by — those contracts result in a transfer from the current stars to yesterday's stars.

"At some point, that has to be true. And I think it is an issue that is important for us to stay focused on, because it creates inflexibility that affects the quality of the teams that you put on the field."

Manfred didn’t state a cap on the length of a typical deal. But CBS Sports pointed out that MLB teams have written 23 contracts of 10 or more years in history, but five of them have been written in the past nine months.

One of those contracts belongs to Texas Rangers shortstop Corey Seager, who signed a 10-year, $350 million deal at the end of 2021.

MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark told the Athletic that players would never accept it.

"The public statements from Rob Manfred about the owners' desire to limit guaranteed contracts is just one more in a series of statements attacking fundamental aspects of baseball's free market system and the freedom of clubs and players to structure deals in the best interests of all parties.” Clark said.

MLB and MLBPA agreed to a new CBA before the 2022 season, one that ends after the 2026 season. Before the agreement, MLB locked players out of team facilities for 99 days during the offseason.

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