PHILADELPHIA — The bosses of Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association spoke Tuesday and expressed belief the game is doing well — which is about where their agreement ended.
A chief disagreement: Both suggest fans are on their side, and MLB’s effort to ensure support has not been appreciated by the union.
To win fan support, MLB launched a “Level the Playing Field” advertising campaign that has become inescapable, particularly on its TV network. The league says it is responding to fan concerns about competitive balance by attempting to overhaul the economic system and install a salary cap and floor — which players are fighting — in the next collective bargaining agreement.
“I have watched over the last few years the owners, the commissioner’s office, try to convince fans — the consumers of their product — that the product is broken,” Bruce Meyer, the interim executive director of the MLBPA, said at a gathering with reporters before the All-Star Game. “Trying to convince fans and the world that, you know what, you are going to these games in record numbers, including small-market teams that have actually been at the forefront of increases in attendance — and instead, the league, the supposed stewards of the game, has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince those same fans that they don’t have hope, or they shouldn’t have hope.
“… I think it’s perverse.”
The league argues it is reflecting a view heard overwhelmingly from fans.
“We’re listening to our fans,” commissioner Rob Manfred said in a separate Q&A with reporters. “What our fans in a number of our markets are telling us — better than half of them — is there’s a lack of competitive balance in the game and everything we propose is directed at addressing that fan concern.”
At the heart of the labor fight is ownership’s assertion that small-market teams lack a fair chance to succeed, and the players’ arguments that payroll does not guarantee victories, and if small-market owners want to spend more, they can.
“In order for this game to reach its full potential … we need to make sure that fans in markets, at the beginning of the season, have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win,” Manfred said. “I think that we need a system where fans, particularly in smaller markets, can have some hope that the players that are signed and developed by their organizations can actually stay there through free agency.”
Meyer’s response: Look at the records of the Brewers, Guardians, Rays and Cardinals over the past decade, and look at the young stars many small-market clubs have locked up long before free agency. Additionally, the owners of those clubs can simply spend more money on major league salary.
“The fans in those markets deserve to have them compete,” said Meyer, who took over after Tony Clark was forced out in February, “and the fact that [those owners] want this all-purpose excuse to not have to compete doesn’t change the fact that competitive balance in baseball is healthy.”
Do fans agree? Yes, Manfred said, citing a “sophisticated” process in which the league uses professional pollsters and focus groups, among other sources.
No, said Meyer, who pointed to a poll in The Athletic in which just 34 percent of respondents said their favorite team would have “a significantly better chance at making the postseason in a cap system.”
“If they were so concerned about fans,” Meyer said of the league’s owners, “they would be listening to the fans all across baseball who are literally chanting, ‘Sell the team.’ ”
No small-market team since the Royals in 2015 has won the World Series. On the other hand, Meyer pointed at the struggles of the Mets, who have “the richest owner,” and the Yankees, who “have won one World Series in the last 25 years.”
“That doesn’t sound like an existential crisis,” Meyer said.
Manfred countered that there are always exceptions, but that “over a very long period of time, there’s a very strong relationship between who gets into the playoffs and who proceeds, notwithstanding the exceptions.”
Both sides have exchanged initial proposals for a new CBA ahead of the current agreement expiring Dec. 1. The expectation is the league will lock out the players as negotiations then pick up.
Last month, President Donald Trump said MLB should have a salary cap. A sports fan known to interject himself into issues past presidents avoided, Trump could intervene if a lockout drags on.
Asked if he would welcome intervention, Manfred declined to speculate.
“He is a great sports fan, and he is really knowledgeable about the business of sports, so it doesn’t surprise me he’s interested,” Manfred said. “But beyond that, I’m going to pass [on the question].”
Both the league and union want players to participate in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but hang-ups include the league wanting mandatory participation, according to ESPN.
Unlike the World Baseball Classic, which occurs in spring as players are ramping up, the Olympics will be midseason, when pitchers will be stretched out and hitters in rhythm.
“We went down the road on LA 2028 because we saw it as a unique opportunity to market the sport with our very, very best players,” Manfred said. “It is a disruptive undertaking for us. Put money to one side — you’re disrupting the entire season. And if we’re going to undertake that effort, we want our very best out there so that people see how great our game really is.”
Meyer said the two sides are in a “very early stage” of discussion.
“In general, our players want to play in the Olympics,” Meyer said. “… We want to make sure that [players] have things like travel and accommodations and things that they deserve based on who they are.”
Meyer said the union has cooperated with a federal investigation into a youth baseball company owned and created by the MLBPA.
Reading from a statement, Meyer said, “It’s our understanding the MLBPA and its current staff are not and have never been targets of this ongoing investigation.”
