MLB, MLBPA strike vital deal amid coronavirus shutdown

Transcript

00:00 Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have reached a service time agreement

00:04 during this coronavirus pandemic.

00:06 For more, I'm joined by SI legal analyst Michael McCann.

00:09 Michael, the gist of it is an advance that is going to the players for the games that

00:15 may not be played, and if the season is canceled, they keep it?

00:19 That's right.

00:20 So the players are getting some certainty that some money will be coming forward this

00:24 season, even if the games are all canceled.

00:26 Obviously, none of us want that to happen, but in a worst-case scenario where the season

00:30 is canceled, players would get about $170 million, and most of that money, as I understand

00:36 it, would be going to lower-paid players.

00:39 The $170 million would be paid in two tiers.

00:42 But that also means about $4 billion in salaries wouldn't be paid if the season is canceled,

00:49 though in truth, the owners in the league had the leverage here.

00:53 And that's because in the uniform player contract, there's a national emergencies clause which

00:58 says if the president declares a national emergency, essentially, players don't have

01:04 to be paid.

01:05 And President Trump declared that emergency on March 13th, and it hasn't been lifted.

01:09 So that gave the owners a lot of leverage.

01:11 Now, you know, how much negotiating goes on during a crisis like this?

01:16 Because you would think people would want to reach an amicable deal rather than fight

01:19 it out over every dollar and every cent.

01:22 Yeah, that's exactly right, especially with everything going on.

01:26 It would be horrendous optics for both the league and players if they're filing lawsuits

01:33 or going to the NLRB arguing that there's some type of labor matter while the country

01:38 is enduring a pandemic, while everyone's lives have been disrupted in ways that we've never

01:43 experienced before.

01:45 If they're arguing over how to allocate billions of dollars, I just don't think that would

01:49 be good for baseball.

01:50 It's the league, of course, that has had that issue before.

01:53 If we remember the strike from the mid-90s, they lost a lot of attendance because the

01:57 American public thought they were all being greedy.

02:00 So I think baseball has learned its lesson.

02:03 And here, they've resolved some key issues.

02:06 Service time.

02:07 What happens if there's no season?

02:09 Baseball system of arbitration and free agency rests on how service time is calculated, and

02:15 they've agreed to an arrangement that's favorable for players, that they'll get service time,

02:20 [BLANK_AUDIO]