Report: MLB Owners, Players Association Discussing Proposed 'Sliding Scale Of Compensation'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The negotiations between Major League Baseball and the Players Association are ongoing, but the owners reportedly introduced a new proposal for salary changes during a potential shortened season.
According to USA Today Sports insider Bob Nightengale, the proposed plan has shifted from a potential 50-50 revenue split to one that would see a "sliding scale of compensation" for players in the shortened season. The plan would see players paid a prorated percentage of their salaries, with the highest-paid players taking the biggest potential cuts. ESPN's Jeff Passan laid out what the scale would look like.
Potential salary cuts in MLB plan, sources tell @JesseRogersESPN and me:
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 26, 2020
Full-year Proposal
$563.5K $262K
$1M $434K
$2M $736K
$5M $1.64M
$10M $2.95M
$15M $4.05M
$20M $5.15M
$25M $6.05M
$30M $6.95M
$35M $7.84M
The proposal would see the players on the lower end of the pay scale receive close to their full prorated salaries, while the top stars could see less than half of their prorated figure.
The previous proposal of revenue sharing was immediately panned by players and seen as a "non-starter," and this one doesn't appear to have gone over much better. According to The Athletic's Evan Drellich, the Players Association was "very disappointed" with the new proposal.
"The players, as you might expect too, are like, hey wait a minute, we're already taking a 50% pay cut this year, this could represent a 75% pay cut once you add that onto it for the remainder of the year, so it's the first stage here. We'll see where it goes once the union makes a counter-proposal," Newsday's baseball columnist David Lennon told CBS2's Otis Livingston.
So is MLB counting on players looking like they're too greedy?
"Nobody in any line of work, no matter what you make, would want to keep cutting and cutting and cutting what you're earning. Nobody would like that, and the players are included in that, but when you're talking about millions and millions of dollars, those pleas are kind of falling on deaf ears to a populous that's really struggling and going through some hard times right now," Lennon said.
The league was hoping to get back to training by early June, with the thought of starting up the season in early July. MLB Network's Jon Heyman said that the soft deadline for a deal is June 1, while June 5-10 is probably the latest that a deal could get done.
No surprise, the union didn't like MLB's first proposal, and it'll be a battle, with predictable hand wringing on both sides. There's not a lot of time (June 1 is soft deadline but June 5-10 is firmer) but remember this, both sides have too much to lose to blow this up over $!
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) May 27, 2020
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave the green light to the state's professional teams last week to begin training and working to play games as long as there are no fans in attendance. So, the resumption of baseball lies with the league and Players Association coming to a deal.