According to Andy Martino of SNY, four franchise owners voted against the last proposal Major League Baseball presented to the MLB Players Association on Tuesday. Evan Drellich of The Athletic identified four owners: Bob Castellini (Reds), Chris Ilitch (Tigers), Ken Kendrick (Diamondbacks) and Art Moreno ( Angels).
When the union unanimously rejected the league's proposal, commissioner Rob Manfred made up for the pre-existing threat by canceling the first two series of the season, ensuring that the owner-imposed lockout would leak into the first two games of the season. Three months.
According to Martino's sources, more owners would join the "no" side if the league's proposal offered a competitive balance tax threshold higher than $220 million. As Martino and Drellich noted, this could become an issue moving forward, as only eight “no” votes would be needed to derail approval of the new CBA.
Drellich also pointed out that MLB's attempt to include standard expenses, such as daily meal costs, into CBT salary calculations would artificially lower the bar because less money would be spent on player salaries. The MLBPA is not happy about this. From Drelic:
One move the league has irked players is its proposal to include meal costs and player-earned perks in the luxury tax calculation. In other words, MLB wants to calculate the amount of food players receive versus how much teams can spend before taxes are imposed.
The luxury tax already includes some player benefit costs—it's not just a strict accounting of player salaries. But sources said players are angry that the league will try to increase basic factors such as food costs as a reason to reduce payroll expenses. MLB is also trying to include stipends paid to players who participate in the All-Star Game, the Home Run Derby and other special events, sources said.
Earlier this week, Blue Jays pitcher Ross Sterling said Major League Baseball was trying to sneak things into the fine print of their latest proposal. "They did what we thought they were going to do. They pushed us to a deadline that they had and then they tried to sneak past us on that deadline and we were ready," Stripling said.
Of the four teams whose owners voted against MLB's latest proposal, only the Angels are close to the $210 million CBT threshold in 2021. They finished the season with a CBT payroll of $199 million. Anaheim regularly doled out big-money contracts, although Moreno's reluctance to go over the CBT threshold hindered the front office while building the rest of the roster. In Mike Trout's 10 full seasons, the Angels made the playoffs once.
Ilitch took over as controller of the Tigers in May 2017 from his late father, Mike. Since then, Detroit has begun to rebuild, with the team slashing payroll from $199.8 million in 2017 to $80.9 million in 2021. The Tigers signed Eduardo Rodriguez and Javier Báez to long-term contracts before the lockout, and while their projected payroll in 2022 is $133.4 million, it's still well below the team's payroll when Mike was the controller. (average CBT salary from 2013-17 was $190.6 million).
"Well, I'm supposed to be a good kid and not go over (the CBT threshold), but again, if I'm going to get certain players that can help us a lot, I'm going to go over it," said Mike, who died in February 2017 Ilic told ESPN in November 2015. "Oops, I shouldn't have said that."
Drellich cited "a briefing from an all-owners conference call held this week" to identify the four owners who voted against MLB's latest proposal, and the motivation behind the leak remains unclear.Are others at the ownership level trying to pressure these four to support a proposal with a higher CBT threshold? Is this an attempt to embarrass Commissioner Rob Manfred? His apparent failure to unify ownership to this point and not being universally loved even within MLB walls?
CBT has become a hot topic in negotiations for reasons CBS Sports explains elsewhere. In short, the CBT was originally introduced as a luxury tax, but owners later incorporated it into the salary cap. While there is no evidence that either improves equality, both have proven to be effective tools for suppressing wages. Few have shown a willingness to move beyond CBT, and even fewer have the teams that dare to cross the threshold consistently. By any honest analysis, hardliners view secession spending as an existential threat when it is not.
"We view the competitive balance tax as a breakout spending mechanism. That's how this thing was originally negotiated, we don't view this feature as breakout spending. We view it as a salary cap," MLBPA executive panel Council member Max Scherzer said earlier this week. “There’s no better way to demonstrate this than with the San Diego Padres having higher salaries than the New York Yankees — plain and simple.”
The league’s proposal would set the minimum tax threshold at $220 million, then spread over five years The CBA raised that to $230 million at the end of the year. Instead, the union proposed setting it at $238 million, which ended up at $263 million.
If, as Martino reports, the four owners oppose raising the CBT above $220 million, the league may struggle to get enough if they meet in the middle and agree to set next year's number around $230 Millions of votes came to pass the new CBA.
Of course, this is a problem that Manfred, the league and other owners need to address — not the players. The new CBA could include expanded playoffs and advertising on helmets and uniforms, a combination that could generate more than $200 million in additional revenue. The league can then create even bigger windfalls by making deals in the streaming and broadcast space. In other words, there's a lot of money to be made in the new CBA - assuming Manfred and the other owners can convince more than four parties that they've seen ghosts.
