Will There Ever Be Real Bargaining This Season?

Another day in the ongoing dispute between MLB and the Players. The Players Association has responded quickly to MLB's latest offer with a counteroffer. The new offer lowers the regular season from 114 games in their last proposal to 89 in this latest one. Pay would still be fully prorated for the number of games played. The Postseason would extend into November if this offer was implemented. Since the owners insist they can not afford to pay fully prorated salaries for more than around 50 games, and they are committed to finishing the season in October, this offer is basically dead on arrival.

Someone Needs to Get Creative

I've been thinking and writing a lot about the ongoing negotiations between MLB and the Players. I'm not a fan of the way that either side has been negotiating, but I've been a lot harder on the owners for several reasons. I've been really turned off by their overall strategy going back to early May when this whole kerfuffle got underway. I detailed my suspicion that MLB purposely maneuvered us into this current space in my post last Friday. The gist of it is that I believe they wanted to have the negotiations drag along endlessly until we reached a place where the only possible resolution was a short season at full prorated pay.

The Road to Nowhere

When I first read about MLB presenting a new proposal to the Players, I felt some guarded optimism. I thought that it was significant that MLB bothered at all to make a counterproposal after saying they weren't going to make one. Sadly, though, as the details continue to come out it became clear that this wasn't going to be a gamechanger for breaking the stalemate. It seemed like every new detail that leaked out over the course of the day made it clearer that this offer wasn't going to move the sticks at all.

The Almost Perfect Comeback

I've been a Mets fan for over 50 years. I've seen hundreds of players come and go, some great ones, most quite forgettable. Some spend their entire career with the Mets, some only last for a little while. Some break your heart a little when they go, some depart unlamented. Every once in a while, a player comes along that appeals to something deep within me, making me root for them just a little harder. One of those players was a 36-year-old infielder that the Mets signed in December 2005 for some badly needed infield depth

Kaz Matsui was entering his third season with the Mets in 2006. After failing miserably at shortstop in 2004, Matsui had been moved to second base in 2005, allowing young star Jose Reyes to go back to shortstop. Matsui failed to improve his defense at 2B, and also slumped offensively. This poor production at the plate and in the field, along with a propensity for getting hurt, allowed Miguel Cairo to get over 350 plate appearances despite a batting line of .251/.296/324 on the season. While Cairo solidified the defense, that was offensive production that just couldn't be justified in that era.

There Are No Good Guys Here

For baseball fans hoping to see live baseball by Independence Day, Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic has some unwelcome news for you. I think those of us who were paying attention saw the witting on the wall earlier in the week when MLB didn't even bother to make a counteroffer to the Unions' proposal of a 114 game season followed by expanded Playoffs.

As Rosenthal demonstrates, both sides seem dug in to their positions right now, with seemingly little hope for compromise. Rosenthal traces the current rancor between the two sides to the perception that union chief Tony Clark gave away too much in the 2016 negotiations. Among other things, the Luxury Tax and the stiff penalties for exceeding it has worked as a de facto Salary Cap. Other things that rankle union members is the way the service time of young players is allowed to be manipulated and the way young stars with 0-3 service years are forced to accept bargain basement wages.

Blink and You'll Miss It

Jeff Passan had an article on ESPN yesterday about the current status of negotiations between MLB and the Players' Union. Passan is reporting that MLB is targeting a regular season of around 48 games, presumably unless the Players are willing to compromise on salary beyond the prorated payments agreed to in March. It sounds as if they're really serious about that number, too. Apparently, there is no concern on the part of the owners as to the legitimacy of a season that is less than 30% of the length of a normal season. It's the equivalent of the NBA playing a 24-game season, or the NFL playing a 4-5 game schedule.

Bad Faith Bargaining

A couple of days ago it was being reported that MLB was going to propose to the Players a 30-60 game season at full prorated pay. I found some hope in this, as it seemed like the beginning of a bargain between the 114 games the Players had proposed and the short regular season the owners were pushing. Now it seems as if any optimism on my part was seriously misplaced. When will I learn?

The Owners flat-out rejected the Players proposal without offering anything in return. According to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich at The Athletic, MLB told the Players' Union that they wouldn't be making another offer. They would only consider an agreement that included a very limited number of games and then Playoffs. MLB is interpreting the original agreement in March as allowing the Commissioner full control to set a schedule and, unsurprisingly, the Commissioner is prepared to set a short schedule that is exactly what the owners desire. I believe Rob Manfred has a chance to go down in history as the worst Commissioner in the history of the game, the man who blindly led baseball to self-destruction.

The Greatest Fan

I've written previously about my unconventional upbringing. I grew up without a father at a time, the 1960s, when one-parent households were still uncommon, especially in a neighborhood full of working-class Catholics.

If you're a kid without a Dad, you don't have anyone to help you understand sports or guide you into rooting for a team. I pretty much had to figure it all out by myself. This was back in the days before cable TV, so you were limited in teams to follow. I started with New York Giants football because they were on in my area every week. Football was also an easy sport for a young kid to understand on his own.

A Sliver of Daylight

I'm not ready to throw a party yet by any stretch, but I actually found a little glimmer of hope in the latest news on the negotiations between MLB and the players. In multiple reports, including this piece by Joel Sherman in the New York Post, we read that MLB has come back to the Players' Union with an offer to play a season of 30-60 games and pay the players their full prorated salaries. The essence of this offer would be that the players aren't asked to make a further concession on pay, while MLB would satisfy their objective of getting to the playoffs faster.

Don't get me wrong here. I know this offer isn't going to fly. The players are quite unlikely to agree to play such a limited number of games, and I'm sure that MLB understood that before making the offer. What I find slightly hopeful here is that there has finally been an offer that has some room in it for actual bargaining to take place.

Out of Nowhere

Sometimes a pitcher explodes onto the scene, as Matt Harvey did in 2012 or Doc Gooden in 1984, immediately staking his claim to glory. Some, like former #1 overall pick Brian Taylor, never even come within sniffing distance of the majors despite major hype as a prospect. Still others take a more circuitous route to major league success. 2005 Mets pitcher Aaron Heilman is a member of that third group.

Drafted #1 by the Mets (18 overall) in the 2001 draft out of Notre Dame University, Heilman put up decent numbers as he advanced from A ball to AAA by June 2003. Heilman was elevated to the major leagues after GM Steve Phillips was handed his walking papers that June, and it did not go well. Heilman was pummeled over 13 major league starts to the tune of a 6.75 ERA and a WHIP of 1.83. Over 65.1 innings he gave up an incredible 13 HR. It was clear that Aaron Heilman was not a major league pitchers at that point, and rather questionable that he would ever be one.