Atlanta Braves Clippings Tuesday, June 16, 2020 Braves.com

Braves reportedly add 3 undrafted free agents

By Mark Bowman

ATLANTA -- After making four selections in last week’s shortened MLB Draft, the Braves are now evaluating some of the undrafted free agents who can immediately provide some organizational depth.

Because these players cannot receive a signing bonus that exceeds $20,000 this year, very few of the players being targeted are projected to become top prospects. The players willing to sign are primarily college seniors or juniors who are worried about how this year’s coronavirus shutdown could affect their future at their current school.

More coverage ¬--20 things to know about Day 1 of the DraftBest all-time Draft prospect from each stateBest 2020 Draft prospect from each stateAll-time No. 1 overall picksThese 2020 Draft picks have familiar names7 key storylines from Day 1 of DraftCubs get 'winner' in hometown pick Howard'Told you so': Prediction comes true in 7 years laterMLB development alum among top Draft picksQuizzes

According to Baseball America, here are three undrafted free agents who have agreed to terms with the Braves. The club has not confirmed these agreements:

1B Bryson Horne, Columbus State (Ga.) University

Horne hit .425 (34-for-80) with six homers over 21 games for Columbus State this year. The 6-foot-3, 210-pound junior had spent the two previous years playing at Georgia Highlands College. Horne told Panama City’s CBS affiliate he declined a similar offer from the Yankees because he grew up a Braves fan.

UTIL Landon Stephens, Miami (Ohio) University

Stephens was a four-year starter who earned all Mid-American Conference honors after he hit .310 with nine homers and 12 stolen bases over 56 games in 2019. The versatile senior can play each of the infield positions and spent some time as an outfielder during his freshman season. He participated in the 2010 Little League World Series with Hamilton, Ohio.

Carter Linton, Tusculum (Tenn.) University

Linton pitched at Colombia State (Tenn.) and East Tennessee State before playing the past two seasons for Tusculum. The right-handed reliever recorded 20 strikeouts and issued seven walks over 13 1/3 innings before the season abruptly ended in March. His is the son of Doug Linton, who pitched for the Blue Jays, Mets, Angels, Royals and Orioles over seven big league seasons.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For baseball, these are dark days without promise of a brighter future

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This year’s was an unconventional MLB draft. It was strange. It was not ideal. It was nothing like drafts of the past, from format to execution. It was exemplary of baseball’s new norm.

MLB trimmed its draft from 40 rounds to five. To put it lightly, that is an astronomical difference. It was a terrible look for a professional sports league that’s supposed to care about its players and fans. It essentially encouraged young athletes to pursue other sports instead (Kyler Murray, as it turns out, made a sound decision). The truncated draft did, however, save the owners some money.

Cutting the draft should’ve been a huge story. Yet, it didn’t seem to make headlines outside the baseball community. It isn’t an exact comparison, but what if the NFL shortened its draft from seven rounds to two because of financial reasons? What if the NBA did only lottery picks (14) and every other prospect entered free agency? Those would be the biggest sports stories of the year.

As a millennial who very much enjoys baseball, I can tell you we’re a lessening breed. The lack of concern on the national scale speaks to baseball’s fading relevancy. It should be alarming to the baseball world that making such a significant change didn’t cause a ripple outside its own bubble.

The MLB draft has always been drastically less popular than the NFL and NBA editions. Most of us watched Joe Burrow burn through the SEC, win the Heisman Trophy and crush Clemson in the title game. A season before that, we watched Zion Williamson’s dunks, his shoe explosion and Duke’s run to the Elite Eight.

Seeing Arizona State slugger Spencer Torkelson go No. 1 just isn’t as exciting TV. That’s no disrespect to Torkelson, who should be a phenomenal player. It’s just another example of a compelling subplot that baseball lacks.

Still, you’d think this draft would’ve had more buildup considering the lack of live sports. Then you have the disturbing element of cutting it by 35 rounds. At least viewership was up after dipping last year. Day 1 reportedly had an average of 615,000 viewers across MLB Network, ESPN and ESPN Deportes.

Note that’s with the draft broadcast on ESPN for the first time since 2008 (the Worldwide Leader has trimmed its baseball coverage in recent years, which is a shame because “Baseball Tonight” is missed as a more regular presence). That’s with it being a drink of water for the dry-mouthed inhabitants of a currently baseball-less desert. But it’s a ratings increase nonetheless. A minor win, I suppose, at a time the sport could use even the smallest bit of good news.

Speaking of good news, MLB and Turner Sports are reportedly near an extension worth roughly $470 million annually. With that deal set to kick in after 2021, Forbes estimated that MLB could bring in $2 billion annually from national TV contracts.

An obvious observation: MLB is profitable, despite some suggesting the contrary. A not-so-obvious observation: MLB still isn’t dying. The money is still pouring in. But the aging audience and dragged-out games, among other disenchantments, aren’t easy fixes. They’re just a couple of factors to consider when evaluating the sport’s long-term future, which isn’t looking bright despite the dollar signs.

The lack of excitement, intrigue and grand-scale coverage around baseball right now speaks to MLB’s growing irrelevancy to the national, and especially younger, audience. As we’ve seen throughout the league’s and union’s negotiations, baseball is sagging behind. I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers, but it’s fair to say the MLB brain trust doesn’t inspire any confidence that the sport will overcome the hole it’s in. For too long, it’s seemed the sport can’t identify its own problems.

Truth is, baseball is trending toward becoming more a niche following than a sport that will attract the all-important casuals.

I don’t say this to be negative – I say it out of love – but baseball has major issues. Problems that won’t be fixed by a pitch clock, signaling for an intentional walk or even Mike Trout doing more commercials. The past several weeks have served as a reminder of why this sport is struggling to entice new fans while simultaneously pushing away even its most passionate base.

The 1994 strike alienated fans, many of whom never came back – or if they did, didn’t carry the same enthusiasm. The pharmacological theater of ’98 injected life back into baseball. Whatever you think of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the like, they played integral roles in bringing MLB to its modern peak popularity (sidebar: Ken Griffey Jr. and Chipper Jones deserve a salute here, as always).

Fast forward two decades. Baseball misses the pizzazz of the steroids era. For as much as it was illegitimate – I would not vote any of them into the Hall of Fame as of now, though I don’t have a vote – it was exciting. It was box office. Must-see TV.

MLB still has the eye-popping talent, just as it did then. We see one of its greatest young ambassadors, Ronald Acuna, right in our own town. We had a 21-year-old on the doorsteps of a clean 40-40 season. Yet the individuals and game itself isn’t resonating the same with the masses.

Baseball is making alterations to the on-field product. Next time they play, we’ll see a three-batter minimum rule for pitchers. Soon, we’ll likely see the designated hitter in the National League on a permanent basis. Playoff expansion feels inevitable, though I don’t know when “inevitable” will be.

The only change officially implemented – the three-batter minimum – was set to begin March 12, in the thick of spring training. Naturally, that was the day MLB was forced to cease operations because of the pandemic. So we’ve yet to actually see how that will play out.

Proposed changes have garnered split reviews, but those conversations have been overshadowed by continued public-relations nightmares for the sport. Remember the central storyline when teams began camp in February? It feels like forever ago that baseball was shrouded in the Astros scandal; bad press that now looks like child’s play compared with the last month.

The ongoing negotiation leaks have only further angered spectators. It’s exhausting to follow. You see the phrase plenty on social media: “I don’t care anymore if there’s a season.” Many fans’ feelings have gone from mad to disappointed to the worst stage: apathetic. That is how you alienate consumers. Then there’s the optics of arguing money, whatever the amount, while the nation is overwhelmed with far more important factors – the pandemic, millions unemployed and social injustice. I understand why the MLB and MLBPA are struggling to find middle ground – fighting for every dollar is their right – but the situation surely isn’t winning the sport any good graces either. MLB already missed its chance at a PR win when it fumbled away a July 4 opening day during the unproductive proposal swapping.

I don’t know what will become of the 2020 season. The likeliest outcome is commissioner Rob Manfred imposing a 48-to-54 game season, and while the legitimacy would be questioned and that decision would further poison the well with players, MLB will hope the on-field events overshadow those realities in the immediate future.

That’s a short-term “solution” that likely will cause long-term damage, specifically when the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2021. Blame is placed at the owners’ feet on this one.

As a millennial who grew up loving this sport, it’s disappointing to see its decline. Fewer and fewer people in my age group care about baseball. More and more people in my age group can identify the Lakers’ Alex Caruso or the Heat’s Kendrick Nunn while not knowing who Matt Chapman, a top-three third baseman, even is.

This debacle, with a potential lockout looming, will only continue to shove MLB out of the positive spotlight. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe it will reverse that trend anytime soon. This time, there won’t be a steroids era to save it.

We have to ask: Does baseball even want to play?

By Mark Bradley, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

There’s still a chance there’ll be a 2020 baseball season. Even at this unbelievably late date, there’s also a chance there won’t. This tells us all we need to know.

The owners and the players union have spent the past month squabbling over an agreement signed in March. Proposals and counter-proposals regarding the number of games and the level of pro-rated pay were flung hither and yon, the upshot finally arriving Saturday. Tony Clark, the union head, said: “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.”

This wasn’t so much a surrender as a dare — as in “tell us when and where, and then we’ll tell you if we’ll show up.” The players requested that a reporting date be forthcoming by the close of business Monday. The owners held an already scheduled noon conference call, after which no such date was announced. The owners love the players as much as the players love the owners, which is to say not at all.

At some point over the next two weeks, commissioner Rob Manfred could proclaim a start date for a 72-game season that would pay the players 80 percent of their pro-rated salaries if there’s a postseason, 70 percent if there’s not. (MLB is working under the assumption that COVID-19 will return in force come autumn, assuming it hasn’t already.) That was the owners’ proposal as of Friday; since the players declined to counter, the owners aren’t about to negotiate against themselves.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the players will report. We’re still in a pandemic, and it’s unclear if any level of isolation/testing can manage that with so many humans, not to mention planes and buses and hotels, are involved. (Tucked into a story by ESPN’s Jeff Passan over the weekend was this: “Multiple players on 40-man rosters have tested positive for the virus recently, according to sources.”)

COVID-19 has done no one any favors. (There’s your understatement of the millennium.) Baseball being baseball, it’s fully capable of making the absolute worst of the absolute worst, for which the year 2020 qualifies. Players and owners aren’t just bickering over games and pay for this year — they’re warming the bile that will be loosed when the sport’s collective bargaining agreement lapses in 2021. Insiders have long believed there’d be a strike/lockout at some point before opening day in 2022. The virus brought the rancor sooner than anyone could have imagined.

Why do owners hate the players? They make roughly $5 billion in aggregate salary and keep wanting more. Why do players hate the owners? Because no MLB entity except your Braves — who as a subsidiary of publicly traded Liberty Media are required to do so — will open its books so the players can see how much revenue there really is.

Last week brought another of those juicy juxtapositions at which baseball excels. No sooner had Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr. proclaimed, “The industry isn’t very profitable, to be honest,” Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported that MLB and Turner Sports “had consummated a new billion-dollar deal.”

For all the haggling, it remains possible to ask: Does baseball really want to play? Nobody profits if there are no games, but this sport has proved it’s not above excising its nose to spite its face. It wasn’t so long ago that baseball was envisioning a semi-triumphant return on the Fourth of July. There’s no way that can happen now.

Indeed, the first realistic date a season might begin — Aug. 1, after a month-long non-spring training — is perilously close to the last possible date anybody would care to see baseball commence. If you’re only going to play two months of an irregular season and maybe a month of playoffs, what’s the point? To remind us that this is the only sport that despises itself so much it couldn’t set aside differences during a pandemic? We’re halfway through June. MLB hasn’t set a date. The players asked for one. They’re still waiting. We’re all still waiting. Conventional wisdom holds that it would be devastating for baseball to be the one sport that doesn’t at least try to play, but we’re drawing near that moment when the masses will stop caring. With an NFL fantasy draft just around the corner, who needs this clown show?

The Athletic

MLB does not want to implement schedule, fears grievance from players

By Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich

The owners threatened to implement a season. The players told them to go ahead, and effectively might have called the owners’ bluff.

The risk to the owners in determining the length of the season and inviting a potential billion-dollar grievance from the players appears too great for them to plow ahead without an actual agreement.

Sources told The Athletic that the commissioner’s office is loathe to impose a season on players against their will when the Players Association likely would counter such a move by filing a claim for financial damages. The league’s goal, according to one source, remains unchanged: To negotiate a resolution that is satisfactory to both parties.

That message, however, became muddied Monday when the game’s highest-ranking executive took a harsher stand.

Commissioner Rob Manfred made a sharp reversal on ESPN, retreating from a guarantee he made five days earlier that the 2020 season would take place and raising the possibility that the campaign would be canceled instead.

Just five days earlier, in a different interview with the same network, Manfred said, “I can tell you unequivocally we are going to play Major League Baseball this year.” He put the chances then at “100 percent.”

Tony Clark, executive director of the Players Association, responded with a statement sharply critical of Manfred and MLB.

“Players are disgusted that after Rob Manfred unequivocally told players and fans that there would 100 percent be a 2020 season, he has decided go to back on his word and is now threatening to cancel the entire season,” Clark said Monday. “This latest threat is just one more indication that Major League Baseball has been negotiating in bad faith since the beginning. This has always been about extracting additional pay cuts from players and this is just day and another bad-faith tactic in their ongoing campaign.”

In a seven-page letter to the union on Monday, MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem listed a host of issues the league seeks the union’s approval on for a 2020 season, including on-field rules, scheduling details, start dates and the postseason player pool — issues laid out in the now-infamous March agreement between the parties. The letter noted that some unnamed 40-man roster players and staff have tested positive for COVID-19.

Much of the letter seemed designed to guard against a grievance, which if filed would be independently arbitrated.

“I assume from the Association’s demand that we ‘unilaterally impose a season’ that it is waiving any rights and claims that it has under that provision to provide ‘feedback’ in the construction of that schedule,” Halem wrote, “including feedback on the topic of how many games should be played.”

Still unclear, however, is the owners’ actual end game. Are they stalling before eventually implementing a short season that is their only option, perhaps giving them a better chance to win a grievance? Too much time might remain on the calendar for MLB to justify a season of 50-odd games that likely would begin in mid-July.

The players remain adamant they only will agree to a deal that does not require them to take a cut in their per-game pay. Whether MLB intends to approach that issue differently than it has thus far is not known. But in the midst of the most contentious labor environment the sport has seen in a quarter-century, the players’ resolve on that issue might be rattling the owners. The league made three straight offers that included pay cuts and all were rejected, prompting Clark to walk away from the table with a statement that “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.”

Now the league says it is trying to re-engage.

MLB’s letter to the union Monday did not threaten immediate cancellation of the season if players do not waive their right to a grievance over the terms of the March agreement, but Halem wrote that “it is clear to us that our dispute over the meaning of the March Agreement remains an impediment to resumption of play.”

Manfred told ESPN the threat of a grievance was the “sort bad-faith tactic that would make it extremely difficult to move forward in these circumstances.” Halem ended the league’s letter by presenting three choices: The union can tell the league it will waive the right to a grievance over the terms of the March agreement; the two sides can head to an expedited arbitration hearing to sort out their positions; or they can keep talking through their issues.

A fast-moving arbitration case, however, might not be desirable to the union — or even possible, because of the amount of money at stake and the potential number of witnesses and experts involved.

And if arbitration is off the table, it would appear the players face an ultimatum: Agree to a new deal, or the league won’t start the season.

Under the March agreement, Manfred is empowered to determine the number of regular-season games as long as the league pays players their full prorated salaries and tries to play as many games as possible. But he is not required to start the season unless specific conditions are met, including the removal of restrictions on mass gatherings and travel throughout the United States and Canada. The parties also are required to engage in a good faith discussion about the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators or at neutral sites. The league, in its letter, says none of those conditions has been met.

“I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were gonna pay the players’ full prorated salary, that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26,” Manfred told ESPN. “Unfortunately, over the weekend, while Tony Clark was declaring his desire to get back to work, the union’s top lawyer was out telling reporters, players and eventually getting back to owners that as soon as we issued a schedule — as they requested — they intended to file a grievance claiming they were entitled to an additional billion dollars.”

The union likely would file that grievance if Manfred set the schedule without a new agreement, and a negative result for MLB indeed might cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, if not more. Owners might feel: Why play at all if there is a massive grievance looming and we believe we will lose money every game that we pay players their full prorated salaries?

Some on the players’ side have long believed some owners might prefer to cancel the season for financial purposes, regardless of any potential grievance. Manfred said Monday, however, that “the owners are 100 percent committed to getting baseball back on the field.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I’m 100 percent certain that’s gonna happen,” he added.

Manfred needs 75 percent of the owners, or 23, to move forward with a schedule of his choosing. Whether he has that support at present is unclear.

“There are definitely more than eight owners who don’t want to play,” one player agent said.

Baseball hasn’t had an official work stoppage since 1994, but it is effectively going through one now, at a particularly trying time for the country and the game’s fans.

“It’s just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it,” Manfred told ESPN. “It shouldn’t be happening, and it’s important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans.”

Schultz: MLB owners prove they don’t care about you, the game or the truth

By Jeff Schultz

I can’t say I know everything there is to know about being a baseball owner. But two things about the position seem undeniable: 1) They are billionaires, and as such, they can wake up any morning they want and declare, “I’m going to eat a Ding Dong today, and that will be the single most productive thing I do.” 2) They own a baseball team, which pretty much fulfills the fantasy of any former pudgy kid who hit .186 in Little League.

But there’s a third thing about baseball owners you might have figured out by now: They’re all miserable. And they’re untrustworthy. They’ve been miserable and untrustworthy for at least 45 years. They’ve been miserable and untrustworthy at least since the reserve clause, the rule that once shackled players to a team, was sledgehammered and crumbled like the Berlin Wall in 1975.

The end of the reserve clause allowed players to become free agents at the end of their contracts, which seemed only right in a nation built on capitalism and, well, freedom. The Braves were at the center of this new era. Pitcher Andy Messersmith, suddenly a free agent in the winter of 1975, left the Los Angeles Dodgers and planned to sign with San Diego until negotiations hit a wall and Padres owner Ray Kroc huffed and puffed, “He can go work in a car wash.”

So Messersmith signed with the Braves. Owner Ted Turner said, “We just felt Andy Messersmith was too good to work in a car wash.”

Anybody else miss Ted Turner?

I bring this up now because, as of this typing, there still are no plans for a baseball season. The reason: Baseball’s owners don’t care about you. They don’t care about the sport — not its present and certainly not its future.

They don’t care that at a time when we’re all just trying to make it through a day with our health intact, at a time when unemployment is either our new reality or a legitimate threat, at a time when we watch the news and wonder what happened to kindness and basic human decency, they’re complaining and moaning and mostly lying about their bottom line.

They are damaging a sport beyond repair, and they just … don’t … care.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said on ESPN that he is “not confident of a deal.” This comes five days after he was “100 percent sure” there would be a season. A 5-year-old on a sugar rush is more stable.

Outrageous things are often said in the midst of negotiations. But that would be giving Manfred a lot of credit. After seeing how he handled the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal, I’ll pass on giving him that benefit of the doubt.

Manfred and the owners are upset because, while the players are willing to accept the absurdity of a 50-ish game season for prorated pay, they intend to file a $1 billion grievance against MLB. Those in a strong legal position wouldn’t care about this threat. But true to their history, the owners have operated during this entire negotiation like the dealer in the corner Three Card Monte game. Their won-loss record in grievances would make even Kenshin Kawakami blush.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column saying that if there was no baseball season, for reasons other than the pandemic, the fault would be solely the owners’. Most players were ready to accept the health risk and prorated salaries. Then owners began to demand they take more cuts, citing reduced revenue. It’s becoming more evident that some owners would rather not play this season at all. Their bigger objective is to change baseball’s entire economic structure.

There is no problem with baseball owners wanting to be smart in business. The problem is they’ve proven themselves to be untrustworthy. They were found to have colluded during free agency in three consecutive years (1985-87). The players’ union filed three consecutive grievances. They won all three. Owners paid escalating damages: first $10.5 million, then $38 million, finally $64.5 million. That did not include attorney fees or unicorn blood.

It gets worse.

In 2002 and 2003, owners were accused of colluding again. They never admitted guilt. But in the 2006 CBA talks, they suddenly felt compelled to give players a $12 million bump from revenue sharing.

Don’t leave. yet.

Three months ago, the owners and players agreed on a deal for players to receive prorated salaries in a shortened season. There reportedly is language in the agreement that the owners also would schedule as many games as possible. But last month, with the reality of empty stadiums hitting them, owners boomeranged on the union and mandated players take more cuts. When players said no, owners countered with three consecutive offers of a varying number of games but basically the same guaranteed pay. They were like a car salesman changing loan terms from 36 months to 48 to 60 but never changing the price. Bad car salesman.

The players know the owners aren’t really offering to schedule the most games possible. They’re trying to minimize their claimed “losses.” It’s a bad bluff, and the union has called them on it.

Owners plead poverty. Yet, they ignore the new $1 billion deal with Nike and other revenue streams. They ignore a new broadcasting rights deal with Turner valued at nearly $3.3 billion ($470 million annually, which represents a 40 percent increase over the previous deal).

Maybe this still gets done. Maybe some level of logic will prevail. But weeks have been wasted, and damage has been done to a sport that already has been damaged too much. It would be nice if the people who run the game acted as if they cared.

ESPN

MLB's Rob Manfred now less confident about 2020 season; players 'disgusted' by backtracking

By Jeff Passan

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN on Monday he is "not confident" that there will be a 2020 baseball season and that "as long as there's no dialogue" with the MLB Players Association, "that real risk is going to continue."

In a conversation with Mike Greenberg for ESPN's The Return of Sports special, Manfred walked back comments made to ESPN last week, when he said "unequivocally, we are going to play Major League Baseball this year" and pegged the likelihood at "100 percent." "I'm not confident. I think there's real risk, and as long as there's no dialogue, that real risk is going to continue," Manfred said when asked if he is certain there will be a season.

The chance that there will be no season increased substantially on Monday, when the commissioner's office told the players' association that it will not proceed with a schedule unless the union waives its right to claim that management violated a March agreement between the feuding sides, a source told ESPN, confirming a report by the Los Angeles Times.

Manfred was asked what the talks are doing for the optics of MLB while the country has been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic and is only recently starting to reopen.

"It's just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it. It shouldn't be happening, and it's important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans," he said.

Manfred said the MLBPA's "decision to end good faith negotiations" and the need for an agreement with the union on health and safety protocols "were really negative in terms of our efforts."

"The owners are 100 percent committed to getting baseball back on the field," Manfred said. "Unfortunately, I can't tell you that I'm 100 percent certain that's gonna happen."

MLBPA executive director Tony Clark issued a statement on Monday in response to Manfred's comments that read, "Players are disgusted that after Rob Manfred unequivocally told Players and fans that there would '100%' be a 2020 season, he has decided to go back on his word and is now threatening to cancel the entire season. Any implication that the Players Association has somehow delayed progress on health and safety protocols is completely false, as Rob has recently acknowledged the parties are 'very, very close.'

"This latest threat is just one more indication that Major League Baseball has been negotiating in bad faith since the beginning. This has always been about extracting additional pay cuts from Players and this is just another day and another bad faith tactic in their ongoing campaign."

On Saturday, the day after MLB delivered a return-to-play proposal that called for a 72-game season and guaranteed 70% of players' prorated salaries (with a maximum of 83%), MLBPA lead negotiator Bruce Meyer said in a letter to MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem: "Given your continued insistence on hundreds of millions of dollars of additional pay reductions, we assume these negotiations are at an end."

Clark followed with a statement asking the league to use its right from the sides' March 26 agreement to set a schedule, saying: "It unfortunately appears that further dialogue with the league would be futile. It's time to get back to work. Tell us when and where."

Numerous players echoed Clark on Monday in response to Manfred, tweeting, "Tell us when and where."

In a seven-page letter to Meyer on Monday, Halem, while discussing health concerns, noted that MLB already knows of several 40-man roster players and staff who have tested positive for the coronavirus. The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, did not elaborate on when the testing was done or how many tested positive.

Manfred said in Monday's interview that he believes the union intended to file a grievance that the league had not fulfilled its obligation under the March 26 agreement to play the most games possible, which he deemed a "bad faith tactic."

Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer responded to Manfred's comments, calling them a "bluff" in a series of tweets.

"I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were gonna pay the players' full prorated salary that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26," Manfred told ESPN. "Unfortunately, over the weekend, while Tony Clark was declaring his desire to get back to work, the union's top lawyer was out telling reporters, players and eventually getting back to owners that as soon as we issued a schedule -- as they requested -- they intended to file a grievance claiming they were entitled to an additional billion dollars.

"Obviously, that sort of bad faith tactic makes it extremely difficult to move forward in these circumstances."

MLB players said tell us 'when and where' to return. So tell them, Commissioner

By Jeff Passan

"The owners are 100 percent committed to getting baseball back on the field." -- Rob Manfred, June 15, 2020

Then do it.

It's time. It's far past time, actually. It's time to do it for the fans, to do it for the game -- to do what's right. No more of what happened Monday -- of posturing and equivocating and suggesting the baseball season is in peril when Manfred, as one of the negotiating parties, by definition helps control that fate. The commissioner had gone on a SportsCenter special called The Return of Sports and suggested Major League Baseball might not return at all in 2020.

"I'm not confident," he told Mike Greenberg.

It felt like a dark moment until the swift and damning fallout made clear that the public clamoring for the sport despite its monthslong fight over money would not accept what Manfred was postulating. Little had substantively changed from five days earlier, when Manfred said "unequivocally we are going to play Major League Baseball this year," guaranteeing it "100 percent." His about-face came on the heels of MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark suggesting "further dialogue with the league would be futile" and asking Manfred to implement a schedule for the season, as the parties' March 26 agreement allows him.

"It's time to get back to work," Clark said in a statement. "Tell us when and where."

It was a powerful narrative -- a challenge from the players, who had coalesced around being paid their full prorated salaries, which the agreement gives them if the league does implement a schedule. When and where was an idea so powerful and relatable that for the first time in this whole mess, it didn't even seem like it was about money.

The league's retort was to accuse the union of negotiating in bad faith and planning a grievance if MLB did impose a shorter-than-necessary season, somewhere in the 48- to 54-game range. It did not carry anywhere near the emotional heft of players across the league saying, simply, we want to play. Actually, it ran in stark contrast to the notion that the owners did too.

And in the end, it might wind up being the thing that helped bring baseball back.

"The only thing I can tell you is that the owners are committed to trying to find a way through this and get the game back on the field." -- Rob Manfred, June 15, 2020

Then do it.

Manfred himself admitted in his interview with Greenberg that the interminable back-and-forth between the league and union during return-to- play exchanges over the past month has been "just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it. It shouldn't be happening, and it's important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans."

Manfred is the sport's public shepherd. Yes, as commissioner, he works for the 30 owners and represents their positions. And yet his admission of the "disaster" unfolding was a brutal self-own, an indictment on the negotiating positions taken by the league and how they fomented solidarity inside the union.

Rather than accept the rigidity of players' insistence on full pro rata, the league in its three proposals offered a series of similar pay cuts. While the maximum amount of dollars going to players grew in each, the union saw the proposals like fraternal triplets: They might look a little different, but they're pretty much the same.

In his interview with Greenberg, Manfred for the first time publicly seemed to acknowledge the inevitability of how the players would be paid: "I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were going to pay the players full prorated salary that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26."

Perhaps he was referring to doing so in a shortened schedule, but then implementing one and inviting a grievance from the MLBPA for not "using best efforts to play as many games as possible," as the agreement mandates, would run a risk for the league.

A risk, sources said, MLB would prefer not to take. It's why multiple sources told ESPN that a negotiated settlement with the union -- one that would pay players their full pro rata -- is now the preferred course of action. Players remain skeptical of the league's motives, much as the league's suspicion of the union persists, but there is movement toward meeting and discussing a mutually beneficial agreement, sources familiar with the league and union's thinking told ESPN.

"The clubs are interested in finding a way back on the field." -- Rob Manfred, June 15, 2020

Then do it.

First, end the bluster. Manfred told Greenberg that a still-not-agreed-upon health-and-safety protocol was standing in the way of any agreement. While it's true that multiple baseball players recently testing positive for COVID-19 offers a stark reminder of the dangers players and others will take playing a season, Manfred five days ago had told MLB Network: "We're very, very close on the medical protocols." Even though the union had cut off negotiations on salaries, lead negotiator Bruce Meyer said to deputy commissioner Dan Halem in a letter on Saturday that the union was "available at your convenience to continue discussions on" the manual outlining health-and-safety procedures.

Next, find a reasonable compromise. This, of course, is easier said than done. If the league acknowledges it will pay players their full pro rata, though, all it takes is settling on a number of games. The league's last offer maxed out at $1.5 billion in compensation -- or 60 at full pro rata. The union's previous proposal suggested 89 games -- about $2.24 billion. Meeting in the middle, 74 games, feels workable and representative enough for a season. If the union is willing to respond to a letter Halem sent Monday with a cut to perhaps 80 games, it would represent the sort of good faith effort the league has charged the union isn't fulfilling. If MLB, also accused by the MLBPA of bad faith negotiating, were to follow with a substantive leap of its own, a deal could come together quickly.

Also: Don't forget to make sure the schedule works. Teams need to bake in at least a week to gather players at facilities and three weeks of spring training on top of that, making the earliest possible start date, in the event of an unlikely quick agreement, mid-July. The likelier opening day is closer to July 20, which leaves 71 days through the end of September.

MLB could, according to sources, consider moving off a season-ending date at which it has held firm: Sept. 27. The league has cited a potential second wave of the coronavirus as the reason for the cutoff. Pushing the playoffs into October and potentially November, while not ideal, could prove a satisfactory solution. Build in off days, schedule doubleheaders. It's not easy. It's not ideal. But then nothing is.

Whatever the parties do they should do fast. Every day without an agreement is another day not traveling to spring training, not preparing for the season, not playing games.

Finally, waive all rights to grieve. There will be plenty of time to fight going forward, especially with the sides at loggerheads and their current collective bargaining agreement expiring Dec. 1, 2021. A negotiated settlement in 2020 would portend well for the necessary repair of a bargaining relationship gone so sour.

Clearly it's not this easy, but it's far easier than the sides have made it. If Manfred wants to show the idea of teams finding a way back on the field is more than a talking point, he is in the best position to tell ownership labor hawks that not playing a season is simply not an option. It is, of course, but it's the worst of all, one that deserves a warning label: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS.

Monday felt like as much emergency as baseball can muster, especially if Manfred wants to make words he spoke March 26 come true.

"The one thing I know for sure is baseball will be back," he told ESPN's Scott Van Pelt on March 25. "Whenever it's safe to play, we'll be back. Our fans will be back, our players will be back, and we will be part of the recovery, the healing in this country."

This is his chance, MLB's chance, the MLBPA's chance. After everything, the hunger for baseball has not faded. Even if it's to a lesser degree, baseball can be part of the recovery, the healing in this country.

They only need to do it. To start anew. To give the fans something to root for. To ensure those words repeated again and again aren't hollow.

To bring back baseball.

Will there be baseball this year or not? Jeff Passan breaks down MLB's ugly labor fight

By Jeff Passan

Here are some truths about Major League Baseball right now.

The league and players have spent the past two months bickering, not listening to one another and prioritizing self over sport. Their only job was to figure out how to get the game back on the field as soon as possible. They failed.

The public faith in baseball is at its lowest point in a quarter century, and every last bit of damage done is self-inflicted. It did not need to be this way.

Unless there is a drastic change in the relationship between league and union leaders, baseball will spend at least the next two years stuck in an endless pattern of fighting, ugliness, pettiness and counterproductivity.

In the middle of a pandemic with no end in sight, amid unemployment reaching Depression-era levels, as the country finally begins to grapple with the festering wound of racial injustice, baseball is fighting over money.

The person with control over the sport's schedule has suggested he will choose a season with fewer games over a season with more games. When it comes to playing games, less is not better than more.

Know what can save baseball? Baseball. Players in uniform. Actual games. Which should be the case already. If all had gone according to a very workable timetable outlined by MLB, players would have reported to camp five days ago. By July 4, games could have been played. Instead, all we're left with is questions -- 20 of them -- on what should have been, what actually is and how this mess that didn't have to be came to be.

Is there going to be baseball this year?

Probably? Last week, commissioner Rob Manfred said "unequivocally we are going to play Major League Baseball this year" and put the chances of a season at "100%." Those are not adverbs and percentages a commissioner uses unless he intends on standing behind them. But then on Monday, he walked that certainty back. Probably and 100% are not the same thing.

This is true, and we may finally get the answer in the coming days. There are a number of potential impediments to baseball restarting, and they begin with the infamous March 26 agreement between the league and players. The deal, which was agreed upon around the time Manfred could have invoked the national emergency clause in players' contracts and suspended the contracts, sought to outline parameters for the sport's return. It's simultaneously funny and sad that some of MLB and the union's deepest disagreements have involved ... an agreement they negotiated together.

Both sides acknowledge that the agreement gives Manfred the ultimate ability to set a schedule for the season -- and the league has explored options in the 48- to 54-game neighborhood. On Saturday, as it rejected the league's latest return-to-play proposal, the union did not bother countering. In a statement, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said: "It's time to get back to work. Tell us when and where." A letter from the union's lead negotiator, Bruce Meyer, said: "If it is your intention to unilaterally impose a season, we again request that you inform us and our members of how many games you intend to play and when and where players should report. It is unfair to leave players and the fans hanging at this point, and further delay risks compromising health and safety. We demand that you inform us of your plans by close of business on Monday, June 15."

So is MLB going to inform them of its plans?

Here's where it gets complicated.

First: Some owners are incensed at the hard-line stance the players have taken regarding salaries, according to sources. Never mind that owners have taken every bit as hard-line positions and that their incremental bargaining did as much to calcify the union's position as anything the players themselves did. Owners are angry, and Manfred works for them, so if their support for a season wanes, that adds a not-insignificant layer of potential peril.

Second: If the league abides by the March agreement, setting a schedule isn't as easy as just presenting one to players. The agreement calls for the parties to meet in good faith to discuss a number of issues -- including "the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators," a key issue for owners who say playing games will add to losses already in the billions. The union has requested information from the league to support such claims, and in his letter Saturday, Meyer wrote: "(T)he league has continued to obstruct the Association's efforts to obtain even a modicum of financial transparency."

In other words: The sides need to talk before MLB sets a schedule. And while they've done a lot of things, talk isn't one of them. These have not been discussions. A discussion necessitates conversation, and the leaders rarely converse. This was not a negotiation, either. A negotiation needs back-and-forth responses, and the players' and league's proposals have acted like the other party does not exist.

Scheduling follows a process, and according to a copy of the March agreement obtained by ESPN, the process goes accordingly: "Based on that feedback received from the Players Association, the Office of the Commissioner will construct and provide to the Players Association, as promptly as possible, a proposed 2020 championship season and postseason schedule (or multiple schedule options) using best efforts to play as many games as possible, while taking into account player safety and health, rescheduling needs, competitive considerations, stadium availability, and the economic feasibility of various alternatives."

Now, it's possible that Manfred could suggest a pair of different paths: one with one set of games and terms (say 50 with 10-team playoffs), another with another set of games and terms (60 with playoffs expanded to 16 teams). The choice could spur discussion, negotiation -- even settlement, the optimal outcome, for the further ugliness it allows the parties to avoid and for the reality that if the union is involved in setting the schedule there will absolutely be more games than if MLB were to choose a season of its desired length.

It also could keep burning clock, which cynics on the players' side believe the league is trying to do so it can implement a shorter season simply because it's all the calendar will allow. The union asking the league to set a schedule was its best defense against any sort of four-corners strategy.

What do the players want?

To prove a point. To stand on principle. To end a pattern of what they see as mistreatment by the league and teams.

Yes, this is about money, but only inasmuch as money is the easiest conduit to prove their point. Recently, during a video conference call held by the union, a veteran player finally started to understand. For months, in individual conversations with other players, he had wondered whether the union's unyielding approach was smart, practical, right. He had questioned players' insistence on receiving a fully prorated portion of their salary, figuring a slight pay cut might get players back on the field instead of in Zoom chats. He had worried the MLBPA was backing itself into a corner against an unrelenting opponent.

Listening to player after player on the call, hearing their tone and their words and their anger, it dawned on him. This was not bluster. It was not narrative and it was not breakable and it most certainly was not a bluff. This was the players taking a stand.

Years down the road, when the fallout from this tussle and the increasingly likely labor war following the 2021 season undergoes an autopsy, these past two months will be seen as the moment that the players found religion. Stirred by a number of factors -- what they see as disingenuous bargaining by the league, tone-deaf statements by owners and a desire to be paid what they bargained for -- they have coalesced around the idea of full pro rata. OK, can you please explain what full pro rata means since you say it, write it and tweet it like 5,000 times a day?

Take a player making $1 million. In a full 162-game season, he would make $1 million. In a season that pays full pro rata, he would make $1 million multiplied by the number of games played divided by 162. In a 72-game season, that's $444,444. In a 50-game season, it's $308,642.

In each of its three proposals, the league has asked players to take significant pay cuts off their pro rata salaries: a minimum of 30%, 25% and 20%. In both of its proposals, the union has asked for its full pro rata -- something that the March agreement says it will receive "(i)f and when the conditions exist for the commencement of the 2020 championship season."

No wonder the union wants the league to start the season, even if it's without an agreement.

The exact interpretation of the language may find its way into the hands of an arbitrator if it goes down that path, but, yeah, that's the union's view: When Manfred starts the season, the players get full pro rata. It was an idea sold early and reinforced with frequency. It turned into a slogan reminiscent of organized labor past: "Players remain united in their stance," Meyer wrote in his Saturday letter to deputy commissioner Dan Halem, "that a day's work is worth a day's pay."

The players' anger stems from a number of areas. There is the present treatment, in which they feel like owners are trying to force them to bear the brunt of business losses when they don't reap commensurate rewards of business gains. Even more are actions in recent years players find unseemly and at odds with the partnership the league has said it wants to forge with them. The attrition of the middle class in free agency. Service- time manipulation. Salaries not growing with revenues. The so-called punitive renewal, in which teams penalize players who have not reached arbitration by unilaterally implementing a salary if they don't accept the team's offer.

Some of these issues stem, directly or indirectly, from a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the union. That doesn't lessen the frustration that has burbled for years and found its voice in this fight. To what end? Well, skeptics of the MLBPA's approach ask that, too, wondering if this is principle for principle's sake and how sticking together on pro rata will help the union in the even harder upcoming negotiation: for a new CBA when the current one expires in December 2021.

What coalesced them even more, two player leaders said, were MLB's proposals that fell far short of full pro rata. The closest the league came was at 70% guaranteed and 83% if all playoff games are played. "They should've given players a meaningful choice," one team executive said. Without the option of a much smaller pay cut to tempt the moderates in the union, full pro rata became players' rallying cry.

What do the owners want?

To stem financial bleeding. Even the most hard-line player will admit that teams forgo billions of dollars in revenue playing games with no fans in the stands. The notion that the league would negotiate the March agreement without some sort of contingency for fan-free games defies logic. The phrases "economically feasible" and "economic feasibility" don't appear six times on the first two pages of the agreement by accident.

Though the sides continue to disagree on the agreement, Halem, in a letter Friday to Meyer, wrote: "Everyone involved in the negotiations understood that if we could not resume play with regular fan access, the parties would have a subsequent negotiation over reductions to player compensation to account for the loss of billions of dollars of gate/in-park revenue the Clubs would suffer in that scenario. The Commissioner had two conversations with Tony in which Tony confirmed his understanding that there would be another negotiation over player economics if we could not resume with fans."

What should the owners want?

Not a shorter season, even if they claim the more games they play, the more money they lose. This is doing deep harm to their game -- maybe not irretrievably deep but certainly not the equivalent of a paper cut, either. As much as the players make baseball what it is, owners remain in the game far longer than the average player. The duty to shepherd it to the proper place, then, falls on them. And to have taken the tack they have -- to have not understood the desires of both players and fans and negotiated the former to satisfy the latter -- has been a dereliction.

What could get in the way of a season?

The owners certainly could shut it down. Remember that clause that precedes the pro rata sentence: "If and when the conditions exist for the commencement of the 2020 championship season ... " Well, the conditions actually haven't come close to being met.

The first says there are no restrictions that will limit teams' abilities to play in front of fans. There are. The next is that there are no "relevant restrictions on traveling throughout the United States and Canada." There are. The agreement does give Manfred the ability to overlook the conditions. But that's just the start.

There remains no agreed-upon health-and-safety protocol, either. The uptick of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Arizona, Texas and other states is worth watching over the coming weeks.

Then is the nuclear option that at least some players have talked about, if not outright considered: just not showing up.

Wait. Players can just not show up? Well, can and would are two different things. Suppose MLB does set a season for 50 games. A significant number of players look at a 50-game season as a joke. "A World Series ring in a 50-game season wouldn't be the same," one player said.

While younger players will show up because they can generate a year of valuable service time even in a shortened season, veteran players -- especially those who have maxed out their service at 10-plus years -- don't have nearly the same incentive. MLB said in its Friday proposal that it would allow players who aren't at high risk for severe COVID-19 cases to opt out of the season without salary or service.

But what happens if it's big names? If those younger players, recognizing they had a season foisted on them, support the players sitting out, even if it's detrimental to their team? Would MLB truly try to force the players to play if they suggest they're wary of the coronavirus? Could the league file a grievance?

What is a grievance?

The procedure by which the union and league solve disputes. Rather than a disagreement going to court, either side can grieve to the arbitrator, who can be fired at any time without cause by one party. An arbitrator has ruled on everything from collusion by MLB to the Kris Bryant service- time case.

It's worth bringing this up because there's a lot of grievance talk going on these days.

Why else would the league file one?

Because it believes the union has acted in bad faith -- a legal term that accuses a party of dishonest dealing. In his latest letter to Meyer, Halem wrote: "We are convinced that the Association has purposely failed to fulfill its obligations under the March Agreement, and has deprived the Clubs the benefit of their bargain in the March Agreement -- all while continuing to enjoy the lucrative benefits the Clubs agreed to provide the Association in return, such as $170 million in salary advances and full service time irrespective of whether or not games are played. This failure to act in good faith has caused enormous damage to the sport."

Games, by the way, can be played during a grievance case. So if a party were to grieve, it wouldn't necessarily shut down the season.

Why would the union file one?

If the league does impose a shorter schedule, the MLBPA believes MLB will not have fulfilled its duty in the March agreement to use "best efforts to play as many games as possible." MLB's response likely would argue that it could not fulfill the "best-efforts" clause based on the caveats included: "while taking into account player safety and health, rescheduling needs, competitive considerations, stadium availability, and the economic feasibility of various alternatives."

The endgame is twofold. First: Players, who have complained about a lack of transparency in MLB's financial disclosures, believe the discovery phase of a grievance case could compel the league to turn over financial documents. Second: If the arbitrator were to rule that MLB didn't fulfill its best-efforts provision, the arbitrator could force the league to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to players for missed pay.

Meyer, in his letter to Halem, also suggested the league's desire to end games by Sept. 27 -- a date from which it has not moved, like the players with full pro rata -- is a smoke screen: "We believe your position is part and parcel of your general bad faith determination to play as few games as possible to punish players for refusing to capitulate to MLB's demands for massive pay cuts." A grievance over negotiating in "bad faith" could be filed as well, though between the advice of the league's coronavirus expert regarding the risk of a longer season and TV networks that around $800 million in postseason money asking MLB not to play into November, a bad-faith claim regarding the season's end date may prove difficult.

What about the financial documents?

Even if the union didn't win a grievance, the players believe taking a peek behind the curtain would be worth an enormous sum. Currently, the union simply guesses when it comes to the league's revenue streams except for the one team that publicly reveals them: the Atlanta Braves, whose parent company, Liberty Media, must do so for shareholders.

In 2018, the Braves reported an operating profit before depreciation and amortization of $94 million. Last year, it was $54 million -- though after depreciation and amortization, plus stock compensation, the team showed a paper loss of $32 million.

During a presentation to the union early in negotiations, MLB said its teams collectively have not earned before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization more than $250 million in a single year over the past decade. "And we're supposed to believe the Braves, the only team whose financials we see, accounted for 40% of that two years ago?" a union official asked.

The distrust runs deep. And last week, it was only compounded when Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr. told a St. Louis radio station: "The industry isn't very profitable, to be quite honest."

The what isn't what?

The industry isn't very profitable. Perhaps it doesn't need to be said, but just to emphasize this point: People rich, poor and otherwise rarely are in the business of buying into industries that aren't very profitable. While there is unquestionably an intrinsic value baked into ownership of a professional sports franchise, the idea of a team that sells 3.4 million tickets every year, enjoys incredible community support and owns a mixed-use development adjacent to the stadium not being very profitable is just difficult to fathom. DeWitt is under no obligation to speak the truth about his private businesses publicly, but when players hear that -- or Cubs owner Tom Ricketts saying: "The scale of losses across the league is biblical" -- they simply won't abide.

Why?

Franchise values. Yes, there is a difference between earnings and franchise value for teams just as there is cash flow and net worth for individuals. And yet even in the midst of the financial downturn and pandemic, there are multiple suitors for the New York Mets. The intrinsic value of owning a baseball team becomes transparent during its sale.

Consider teams bought this decade. Ten years ago, the Texas Rangers were bought for $593 million. Today, Forbes estimates their value at $1.75 billion. The Houston Astros sold nine years ago for $615 million. Today: $1.85 billion. Even though their annual gain in value has been under 9%, the Los Angeles Dodgers have grown from a $2 billion purchase to a $3.4 billion franchise value.

The point players have tried to make is that not-very-profitable companies with biblical losses in the middle of a pandemic still have the ability to pay players their full pro rata.

How do they know?

The union claimed Manfred said it could during a meeting, though the intent of that statement was interpreted differently by the league (a short season) and the union (a longer season). Perhaps you're sensing a pattern here.

The rest of baseball's financials are fairly opaque. For example, the regional sports networks that provide teams with billions of dollars in local television revenue have been paying rights fees to organizations. It is not clear how much. And at what point those payments stop, and how much teams may have to return for not providing an inventory of games, is unknown too. The league claims it will make $980,000 per game in local TV money this year. The union says it cannot verify that number.

The revelation Saturday that MLB and Turner had struck a contract extension worth nearly $500 million a year -- a bump from its previous figure of $325 million -- certainly piqued the interest of the union. Even if the revenue won't arrive for two years, the MLBPA gladly unleashed it as a talking point -- that the business of baseball is going to be plenty healthy and the players shouldn't bear the brunt of it this year.

It's worth considering the overall compensation of the five offers thus far to see the chasm between the parties:

MLB Offer 1: 82 games, $1.03 billion guaranteed, $1.23 billion max MLBPA Offer 1: 114 games, $2.86 billion guaranteed MLB Offer 2: 76 games, $989 million guaranteed, $1.432 billion max MLBPA Offer 2: 89 games, $2.24 billion guaranteed MLB Offer 3: 72 games, $1.27 billion guaranteed, $1.5 billion max MLBPA: We're not getting anywhere. Set the schedule.

"Neither of these parties negotiates that much," one person involved with the talks said. "It's clunky. It's like watching a bunch of old guys playing pickup basketball, throwing elbows, doing their juke moves. That's what makes it hard."

Whose fault is that?

Everyone. Again: The top priority for baseball was to get back as soon as possible. As much as the union wanted to use the opportunity to strengthen itself before bargaining in 2021, it suffers deeply from any resultant downturn in business or impairment to the brand. As much as MLB wanted to socialize the losses, it couldn't risk this outcome, where baseball is now the sport that reflects the confusion and division in the world rather than being the salve.

This was never going to be a winning situation. The players weren't going to win. The league wasn't going to win. The 99th percentile outcome was to make the best out of a terrible situation. What baseball has right now is trending far closer to the 1st percentile.

Even if the sides can't agree on the most salient parts of the March agreement, it's still rearing its ugly head and did so in particularly unpleasant fashion Sunday.

What happened?

At least 67 undrafted college players, according to Baseball America, signed with teams for a maximum of $20,000.

Part of the league's willingness to guarantee service time for players and give them the $170 million cash advance in the March agreement was because the union allowed it the right to shorten the draft to as few as five rounds. The league did just that, over the objections of plenty. The league and union also agreed teams could sign an unlimited number of undrafted players for $20,000 or less. So a player who might have gone in the sixth round last year and been in line for a signing bonus of $237,000 to $301,600 got $20,000. Even a later- round pick who might've gotten $50,000? Nope, $20,000 for him, too.

For a sport like baseball, which is already struggling to attract the best athletes, what sort of a message does it send to shorten the draft from 40 rounds to five and then limit those who don't get drafted to signing for pennies on the dollar? The most troublesome kind: that today is simply more important than tomorrow -- and that baseball is impervious to shortsightedness.

Speaking of shortsighted: What happens if a short season does get implemented?

Teams already have called some players and told them to prepare to report to spring training within a week.

Of course, teams were saying the same thing to players in May, and here they are, a month later, still not in uniform, still not back for games on the Fourth of July, still possibly beaten back to live games by the NBA.

Whether the league delivers the schedule or the parties come to an agreement, the next month will be as logistically hectic as any in baseball in years. Get players to spring training sites (for some teams their home stadiums, for others their actual spring facilities), coronavirus test them and family (multiple players have tested positive recently, sources said), launch a totally new style of camp (happy social distancing) to get players into shape in three weeks, run through a few exhibition games and start a however-many-game-season that will either have 10 or 16 playoff teams.

What does the future hold?

This week could dictate that. If Manfred seeks the opinion of the union and sets a schedule that does not result from a negotiated agreement, we had might as well start counting down the days to the lockout after the 2021 season. A work stoppage already feels like a fait accompli, but if things are so bad that in the most important moment in recent memory they can't work with one another on a deal to help salvage the sport's reputation ... well, that's quite the illustration of how deeply broken the relationship is.

Already this upcoming winter, because of the seeming lack of revenue, teams are going to make significant budgetary cuts across the board -- including on the player side. Arbitration-eligible players will not be offered contracts, sending them to free agency. The glut of free agents could depress the market further. Every team will have built-in excuses not to spend. Maybe there will be a few outliers, but the expected lack of ticket revenue in 2020 and the fear of the same in 2021 will scare most teams away from big-ticket free agents.

"The players don't know what's coming," one longtime agent said, "and it's going to be terrible. And owning a baseball franchise is an equity play. What does this do to their equity stake? They don't have a season, or they have a short season and short playoffs and pissed-off players, and good luck."

At very least a negotiated agreement would allow the parties not to spend the rest of 2020 bringing new levels of aggressive to passive-aggressive. The players and league could partner on broadcast enhancements to ensure that post-return TV games are must-watch. They could set a committee of the best minds on both sides to bandy about ideas and find common ground leading up to 2021 CBA talks. They could illustrate that as far gone as something looks, it is never beyond rescue, so long as the incentives and priorities are properly aligned.

Is there any hope for baseball?

Sure. Baseball, for all of its faults and foibles, deserves better. People inside the game and out love it. They don't want to see it fail.

But they also wonder if it has to.

One longtime executive saw this coming a few weeks ago. He noticed the burgeoning breakdown of norms -- the letters, the name-calling, the public airing of every article of laundry.

"It has to die," he said. "And then it will come back."

Die as in fall apart in ugly fashion. Send the sort of shockwave through the system that illustrates what's actually at stake here -- beyond the March 26 agreement, beyond pro rata, all the way to next year, when fighting will be over the tens of billions of dollars to come in future years and not just a few billion this year.

This isn't a collective bargaining negotiation, and it never needed to act like a proxy. It's what it always was: an obligation in the middle of a pandemic, a job crisis, a societal reckoning to remind everyone what makes baseball great.

New York Post

Rob Manfred failed MLB players by delivering wrong message: Sherman By Joel Sherman

Rob Manfred went on national TV on Monday and delivered the wrong message.

It is not just that he did such a public 180 by announcing that he no longer is confident there will be a 2020 major league season, five days after putting it at 100 percent that there would be.

Yep, that was bad. Just like Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt going on the radio during Great Depression-like financial ruin in this country to declare the baseball “industry isn’t very profitable.” Just like MLB’s new significantly higher deal with Turner becoming public as MLB has cut jobs, cut the draft and is trying to cut player pay.

MLB is losing the game of optics.

But losing player hearts and minds has been worse for Manfred than any flip-flop at this late date of negotiations.

It is understood that Manfred represents the owners. He was hired and can be dismissed by them. His pay is decided by them. But I am going to give a quaint concept: The role of the commissioner of Major League Baseball was created at one of the lowest points in the sport’s history — much like today — in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal. To take the job, Kenesaw Mountain Landis requested sweeping powers to act “in the best interest of baseball.”

Reread those words — best interest of baseball. Not the best interest of owners, though they probably think that is one and the same.

Enlarge ImageError! Filename not specified.Rob ManfredAP

What Manfred needed to do on national TV was to make a direct appeal to the players that they are the most important element of Major League Baseball. There are no profits without them. No one comes out to watch an owner own. The players are the engine.

Manfred needed to convey that whether the union or the public believes it or not, the owners are enduring a negative economic impact that he must react to as the commissioner. But that should not mean stomping on players. That is so 1965.

Manfred needed to acknowledge the players are the reason people were excited for baseball to return. He must find a way to escape a narrative that for something to be good for management it has to be bad for players. Ultimately, what is good for the players is good for the game.

Instead, in restrictive offers and biting rhetoric MLB has turned even moderate players into firebrands. MLB has not been used to this version of the union holding so firm on a position nor the impact that social media could have in players not just bonding, but communicating their distrust and distaste to the public. There are a lot of familiar calls of greedy players, but more fans than ever holding management to account.

Manfred would be battling from way behind with the players. The relationship has been deteriorating over the past few years in particular as he has overseen a sport in which the analytic wave has leveled off average pay and eliminated jobs for many veteran players while at the same time manipulating service time so shamelessly. That wouldn’t be tolerable if the sport were struggling. But before the pandemic the revenues were going up annually.

The commissioner — make that the commissioner of all baseball — should still try even at this late moment in the negotiations to let the players know he cares. That what grows the game is good for all and that the people best positioned to grow the game are the players. Despite all their hard-line words these days, players want to play. It is what they love to do. Even an abbreviated year in a short career is better than no year. Manfred needs to give them a reason to get back to that posture. The players should be the best salesmen in the game.

Manfred needs to offer a season not only with — at minimum — a way to get to full prorated pay, but with reassurances of a future in which the best players will be on rosters, stars will be promoted not debased and a partnership roadmap to grow the game’s appeal and esteem can be demonstrated.

Will all the players believe him? It probably won’t even be a majority, especially with the union in as much of a fighting stance as it has been in a quarter century. But the game has taken sizable hits during the pandemic and there has to be a starting point for a better tomorrow. Tearing each other down and hoping fans love your sports is as ludicrous as it sounds.

The partnership has to get better. The players have to believe they are more than part of baseball’s bottom line. One person must begin this rebuild of trust — that would be the commissioner of all of baseball.

Associated Press

Commissioner Rob Manfred says baseball season in jeopardy By RONALD BLUM

NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred says there might be no major league games this year after a breakdown in talks between teams and the players’ union on how to split up money in a season delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The league also revealed several players on big league rosters have tested positive for COVID-19.

Two days after union head Tony Clark declared additional negotiations futile, Manfred reversed his position of last week when he said he was “100%” certain the 2020 season would start.

Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem sent a seven-page letter to players’ association chief negotiator Bruce Meyer asking the union whether it will waive the threat of legal action and tell MLB to announce a spring training report date and a regular-season schedule.

These were just the latest escalating volleys in a sport viewing disagreements over starting the season as a preliminary battle ahead of bargaining to replace the labor contract that expires on Dec. 1, 2021.

“It’s just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it,” Manfred said during an appearance on ESPN. “It shouldn’t be happening, and it’s important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans.”

Spring training was stopped because of the pandemic on March 12, two weeks before opening day, and the sides reached an agreement March 26 on how to revise their labor deal to account for the virus.

Since then, the hostility has escalated to 1990s levels as the sides exchanged offers. MLB claims teams can’t afford to play without fans and pay the prorated salaries called for in the March deal, which included a provision for “good-faith” negotiations over the possibility of games in empty ballparks or neutral sites.

“The proliferation of COVID-19 outbreaks around the country over the last week, and the fact that we already know of several 40-man roster players and staff who have tested positive, has increased the risks associated with commencing spring training in the next few weeks,” Halem wrote in his letter to Meyer, which was obtained by the AP.

Halem sent Meyer a letter with a sarcastic tone Friday accompanying MLB’s latest offer, and Meyer responded with a hostile timbre Saturday as the sides memorialized positions ahead of a possible grievance before the panel chaired by independent arbitrator Mark Irvings. Halem’s letter Monday asked the union for many clarifications of its positions.

“I note that both the NBA and NHL, two leagues which you repeatedly reference in your letter, do not intend to resume play until about Aug. 1, and both intend to resume play at a limited number of sites with a quarantine approach,” Halem wrote. “Please let us know the association’s views on quarantining players in league-approved hotels (like the NBA’s Disney World model) when they are not at the ballpark if conditions worsen over the next few weeks.”

Clark had issued a statement Saturday that told MLB: “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.” The union then said it might file a grievance seeking additional economic documents and money damages that could total $1 billion or more.

“Players are disgusted that after Rob Manfred unequivocally told players and fans that there would ‘100%’ be a 2020 season, he has decided to go back on his word and is now threatening to cancel the entire season,” Clark said in a statement Monday.

“This latest threat is just one more indication that Major League Baseball has been negotiating in bad faith since the beginning,” Clark added. “This has always been about extracting additional pay cuts from players and this is just another day and another bad faith tactic in their ongoing campaign.”

Manfred said ahead of last week’s amateur draft that the chance of a season was “100%.”

He reversed his position Monday.

“I’m not confident. I think there’s real risk; and as long as there’s no dialogue, that real risk is going to continue,” Manfred said on ESPN. “The owners are 100% committed to getting baseball back on the field. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I’m 100% certain that’s going to happen.”

Players think Manfred is delaying to shorten the schedule — and their pay.

“So, Rob, explain to us how you can be 100% sure that there’s going to be baseball but not confident there will be baseball at the same time?” Cincinnati pitcher Trevor Bauer tweeted. “The tactic is to bluff with `no season’ again and delay another 2-3 weeks.”

Halem asked the union for written permission to go ahead with the season.

“Rob Manfred and the owners are walking back on their word...AGAIN,” tweeted Washington pitcher Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s eight- man executive subcommittee. “The fans do not deserve this. So I’ll say it one more time, tell us when and where.” MLB has made three economic offers, the last offering to guarantee players 70% of their salaries as part a 72-game schedule beginning July 14 and increasing the total to 80% if the postseason is completed.

Players previously offered two proposals, holding their position that no additional pay cuts were acceptable beyond the prorated salaries for 2020 that they had agreed to in March. That deal called for $170 million in salary advances and a guarantee of service time credit if no games are played this year.

Manfred had threatened a shorter schedule, perhaps of about 50 games. The union could respond by filing a grievance, arguing players should be paid for the season of 119 games they initially proposed. The union’s first plan would result in salaries of nearly $3 billion.

Players are angry following five years of flat salaries, a lost grievance claiming the Chicago Cubs manipulated the service time of star third baseman Kris Bryant in violation of the labor contract and allegations several teams did not properly use revenue sharing proceeds, which the union called “tanking.”

Players hope to see documents detailing regional sports networks’ agreements with teams, financial interests of MLB owners in RSNs and real estate ventures adjacent to ballparks, plus MLB affiliated companies such as the MLB Network, MLB Advanced Media and BAM Tech. During a grievance, they would ask Irvings to order document production.

In their March agreement, the sides vowed to “work in good faith to as soon as is practicable commence, play, and complete the fullest 2020 championship season and post-season that is economically feasible, consistent with” a series of provisions.

Absent Manfred’s consent, the agreement said, the season would not begin unless there were no travel restrictions in the U.S. and Canada impacting play, no restrictions on mass gatherings at all 30 regular-season ballparks and no health or safety risks in playing in front of fans at the regular stadiums. But it also provided that the sides “will discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators or at appropriate substitute neutral sites.”

MLB told the union it would lose an additional $640,000 for each regular-season game played with no gate revenue and does not want to extend the regular season past Sept. 27 because it fears a second wave of the coronavirus could endanger the postseason, when $787 million of broadcast revenue is earned.