Rosenthal: Starting spring training in three weeks makes little sense

VIERA, FL - MARCH 05:  Detroit Tigers players warm-up prior to the Spring Training game against the Washington Nationals at Space Coast Stadium on March 5, 2016 in Viera, Florida. The Nationals defeated the Tigers 8-4.  (Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
By Ken Rosenthal
Jan 25, 2021

Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to spring training in three weeks, but does anyone seriously think it’s a good idea for camps to open on time in Arizona and Florida?

While COVID-19 cases are declining in all regions of the country, the situations in the states that host the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues hardly can be described as encouraging.

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Arizona’s infection rate is the worst in the nation. Florida tied its state record for deaths from the disease on Friday. The current seven-day rolling averages of new cases in those states are significantly higher than the averages were during the 2020 regular season.

The NBA and NHL are playing in Florida and Arizona, albeit with limited or no fan presence, and high school sports are continuing in both states. The Super Bowl will be held in Tampa on Feb. 7, with Raymond James Stadium open to 22,000 fans, including 7,500 vaccinated health workers. The respective state governments likely would welcome Major League Baseball as well, but MLB operates differently from those other leagues and works off a different type of schedule. Its owners, after playing the entire 2020 regular season in empty parks, also want to attract as many paying customers as possible in ’21.

The league and Players Association are in position to increase their chances of both generating more revenue and keeping everyone involved in the games safer. They can buy time and avoid forcing thousands of players, umpires, front-office and support staff to descend upon Florida and Arizona for six weeks starting in mid-February. They can delay Opening Day by a month, hoping the virus will become less prevalent and the vaccine more available, and still squeeze in nearly a full season of games if the league and its network television partners are willing to extend the postseason into November.

The TV partners would oppose such a move, preferring the leagues to return to their normal schedules, but the first negotiation necessary would be between the league and union. In a development that will surprise no one, considering the recent tension and distrust between the parties, the two sides are not engaged in conversations on a possible delay, sources said.

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The commissioner’s office floated the idea to the union in early December. The union asked if the league would be willing to lengthen the season by the same number of days it lost at the start and if not, pay players for any games missed. When the league answered no, the union indicated it did not want to discuss the matter further, maintaining that it wanted to play 162 games at full pay.

The fruitless exchange did not become as contentious as the negotiations that preceded the March agreement laying out the framework for the 2020 season, and the talks that resulted in commissioner Rob Manfred imposing a 60-game regular season.

League officials, however, are frustrated by what they perceive to be the union’s refusal to negotiate, and point to a separate discussion involving the designated hitter, expanded postseason and other matters as the latest example, in their view, of the union’s intransigence.

The union is sticking to its economic principles. But the players should be proactively pursuing a delay that would work for them. Their health is at stake.


The free-agent market has been open for nearly three months. Yet National League teams still do not know whether they again will use the DH, as they did for the first time in 2020. The lack of resolution to a seemingly simple matter is harmful to both players and clubs.

Sluggers Nelson Cruz and Marcell Ozuna, in particular, are in limbo, but the uncertainty produces a chain reaction, extending to other free agents and impeding the plans of certain teams. An NL club that wants to add, say, an extra outfielder, might not want to act until it knows its lineup will include a DH. A team waiting on Cruz might miss out on a free-agent starting pitcher it covets.

Both the league and union seem to agree a universal DH is a good idea, in part because pitchers, if prevented from hitting, no longer could get injured swinging for a hit or running the bases. But the league, viewing the creation of 15 DH jobs as an economic gain for the players, wants a tradeoff. It initially suggested enacting the universal DH in exchange for the players agreeing to an expanded postseason for 2021, a concept the union rejected.

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On Dec. 18, the league made a broader proposal, sources said.

In addition to adopting the universal DH, the league offered to resolve two service-time grievances from last season in the union’s favor as well as increase the guarantee the players would get for an expanded postseason, from $50 million last season to more than $80 million, the amount they received the last time parks were fully open to fans, in 2019. The proposal also included a variety of other on-field components, including the introduction of a pitch clock, a change the league has long desired, plus an automated strike zone in spring training.

The union, after agreeing to expanded playoffs last season, fears signing off on a second installment in the middle of a slow free-agent market would disincentivize teams from competing to the fullest. (Agent Scott Boras, who represents four of the eight players on the union’s executive sub-committee, took an opposite view in a recent interview with USA Today, saying the expanded postseason “creates competitiveness.”)

The union also opposed the pitch clock and the experiment with the automated strike zone, and did not view the increase in the players’ postseason guarantee to the 2019 level as significant, believing it might get a similar amount from its usual share of the gate receipts if fans are back in the stands by October.

A typical negotiation includes offers and counter-offers, but the league’s proposal did not lead to further discussion. Only last week did the league learn that the union had rejected its offer, and that the union would not counter it.

The union had told the league not to propose expanded playoffs, and saw no reason to discuss matters further once the league made it clear that expanded playoffs were necessary to any deal, sources familiar with the union’s position said.


Major-league players and staff members largely succeeded in adhering to the health and safety protocols the league and union agreed upon for the 2020 season. Monitoring testing from July 6 through the end of the World Series produced a total of 92 positive tests, from 58 players and 34 staff members. The NFL, playing later into the calendar as the pandemic worsened, had 722 positives between Aug. 1 and Jan. 16.

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So, the major leaguers ask: Why can’t we do it again?

For one thing, it’s not simply about them. Most players are at relatively low risk if they contract the virus, but certain umpires, coaches, managers and other staffers are more vulnerable, and the league bears responsibility for them, too.

If the season starts on time, the circumstances likely will be more challenging than they were in 2020, and not simply because President Joe Biden said on Friday that “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” Maintaining protocols over a 162-game national schedule likely would be more difficult for players and staff than it was during a 60-game regional campaign.

And while the NBA and NHL are plowing through the pandemic, neither of their seasons is proceeding smoothly. The NBA, which reduced its schedule from 82 games to 72, has had 20 postponements since opening on Dec. 22. The NHL, which reduced from 82 games to 56, has had seven postponements since opening on Jan. 13. MLB had 45 postponements last season, and two games were not played.

For baseball, pushing back Opening Day a month still might not produce the desired benefit. The virus might be just as much a force on May 1 as it will be on April 1, and vaccines still might not be available for players. But in a sport in which teams obsess over securing the best possible on-field matchups, why shouldn’t the league and union seek the best odds for playing the season in the safest possible environment, with the greatest number of fans?

The players are skeptical of the league’s motives, believing any effort by MLB to stage a shorter season and expanded postseason would be motivated by a goal of saving money. Certain hawkish owners probably want to proceed precisely along those lines. But the financial stakes in a delayed season would not be nearly as high as they were in the negotiations for the 2020 season, when the league was proposing pay cuts to salaries that already were prorated.

Players last season received a combined $25 million in salary per day league-wide, so eliminating 26 days in April would cost them $650 million. But the league probably can make up a chunk of those days with split doubleheaders, play into mid-October and possibly get to 154 games, at full pay. The players might want other benefits. The postseason would then extend into November, perhaps forcing the league to take a hit in its network television deals. But all of the elements would be negotiable.

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The league says the players won’t negotiate. The union says the league wants things it will not give, but offers few ideas of its own. Unless something changes over the next three weeks, the players will be off to Arizona and Florida, two hotbeds of the pandemic. They should embrace a delay while making sure they are fairly compensated. The most important issue right now is health.

 

(Top photo: Mark Cunningham / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

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Ken Rosenthal

Ken Rosenthal is the senior baseball writer for The Athletic who has spent nearly 35 years covering the major leagues. In addition, Ken is a broadcaster and regular contributor to Fox Sports' MLB telecasts. He's also won Emmy Awards in 2015 and 2016 for his TV reporting. Follow Ken on Twitter @Ken_Rosenthal