The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) hinted at a potential strike after rejecting the MLB’s salary cap proposal this week.
During negotiations this week, both the MLBPA and the MLB clashed over various proposals from the other side, but it was when the MLB proposed a salary cap that a past strike was referenced, per Sports Illustrated.
On Wednesday, the MLBPA made the first offer and included various things, like including a “competitive-integrity tax” for any team that does not spend at least $150 million, an increase in the minimum salary across the league, and a higher CBT threshold, among many other items. The league shut it down immediately and cited the Los Angeles Dodgers while claiming that the MLBPA’s proposal would actually lead to “even more payroll disparity.”
Well, the league followed with a proposal of its own on Thursday that included both a salary cap and a salary floor. A salary floor of $171.2 million actually isn’t bad. But they proposed a $245.3 million salary cap, which Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reported would be closer to $222 million because of roughly $23 million in player benefits. That’s absurdly low.
The MLBPA released a statement afterward and clearly didn’t love it, and even brought up the “longest work stoppage in MLB history” in their response, as transcribed by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.
The MLBPA referenced the 1994-1995 strike, which lasted seven months and three weeks – the eighth and longest work stoppage in MLB sports history.
According to ESPN, the MLBPA proposal centered “on increasing revenue sharing to lower-revenue teams within the current financial structure by escalating the sharing of local television revenue while lowering the sharing of stadium-related revenue to incentivize teams whose success leads to large attendance.”
“Teams would share the first $50 million in local television revenue and two-thirds of every dollar beyond that, then split it evenly under the union’s plan,” it added.