Bill Madden: MLB players face a bleak winter as reality of pandemic revenue losses set in
NEW YORK — Baseball’s version of “bargains galore” black Friday will arrive this Wednesday — or to paraphrase Marie Antoinette: After Dec. 2, le deluge, as in the deluge of players being non-tendered by their clubs, opening up potentially the most populated free-agent market ever.
Nobody would be more delighted with this development than Charlie Finley, the maverick owner of the Oakland A’s who, when free agency was in its infancy in the mid-’70s, made a proposal to his fellow owners to limit all the players to one-year contracts and make everyone free agents every year. Aghast, the baseball lords laughed at Finley, much to the relief of Players Association executive director Marvin Miller, who had to explain to his players that universal free agency was really a bad thing; that a flooded market would destroy the concept of supply and demand and salaries would actually decrease.
But this is only one reason why the players are facing a potentially lean offseason in which nobody has any idea what the owners’ revenues are going to be, or when the 2021 season is even going to begin, and with how many games. The only thing that appears certain is that, with a few exceptions, long-term (3 or more years) megabucks contracts aren’t going to be in the offing this winter. And at the end of the day, when the music stops, a lot of non-tendered veteran players, in the $2-$8 million range, are going to be left without a chair as clubs seek to replace them with minimum-salary players from their system, whether they’re ready or not.
That’s why the clubs are waiting until Dec. 2 to start assessing their needs. For example, the Yankees have made it known re-signing DJ LeMahieu is their top priority. After that, they appear inclined to scour the non-tenders list, and probably the trade route, to fill their remaining needs. Insofar as their own non-tenders, they’ve apparently fallen in love with Gary Sanchez again (big mistake) with Aaron Boone apologizing last week for the defensively/contact challenged catcher’s horrible last two years by saying: “I think he’s been unfairly criticized a lot.” So they will tender arbitration to Sanchez and return to the platoon of him and Kyle Higashioka behind the plate next year while passing on the two premium catchers in the free agent market, J.T. Realmuto and James McCann, and hoping for an accelerated development by either Anthony Seigler or Josh Breaux.
While Mets owner Steve Cohen has indicated he will be into big-game hunting this winter and possibly willing to sign at least two top-flight free agents from among Realmuto, George Springer and Trevor Bauer, he is the one owner in baseball who didn’t lose any money last year and is essentially starting from scratch. And he might just find the bidding for those players to be surprisingly tepid. Why? Every team in baseball had almost zero revenue last year and no idea when they can expect to start generating new revenue next year, or what those revenues will be. I’m told Phillies managing partner John Middleton told his baseball people that because of the massive losses (reportedly $145 million) the club suffered last year they may not be in position to re-sign Realmuto or any other big-ticket free agents.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has claimed the combined debt for the major league clubs this year was $8.3 billion. While teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Angels and Red Sox with the highest payrolls took the biggest hits, the low revenue teams like the Marlins, Rays and Brewers have been equally suppressed.
Indeed, as the Yankees concentrate on making sure LeMahieu stays put, the Rays are seemingly in the process of ceding the AL East to them — declining Charlie Morton’s $15M option and letting him go for essentially the same amount to the Braves and now shopping their other two highest salaried players, Blake Snell and Kevin Kiermaier. This is because they received none of their accustomed $50 million in revenue sharing this year and there are no guarantees they’ll get any for next year either. The Rays, who continue to play in front of sparse crowds at Tropicana Field, rely heavily on their revenue sharing to pay their players.
It’s the same for the Marlins and Brewers, but on top of that neither of them have local TV contracts for next year, their deals with Sinclair having expired. So how are they going to spend any money this winter? And what about the Blue Jays, who have been widely reported as likely big spenders this winter? With Canada’s COVID-19 travel ban until further notice they don’t even have a place to play next year. So how right now can they be thinking of investing heavily on free agents?
Despite this impending doom for free agents, Scott Boras, the Avenging Agent, has been telling all of his clients that everything is going to be back to normal — and, as such, acting accordingly in making his typically exorbitant demands for their services. Apparently, Players Association chief Tony Clark is taking the same stance. But the owners and players have barely talked about start-up plans for next season. As one club exec told me: “Even if there’s vaccines available next month, with all the COVID restrictions there’s no way we’re going to be able to have spring training in February and March.”
More likely, we’re looking at spring training in April and a regular “fannies in the seats” season beginning sometime in May — likely shortened to around 130 games, which will mean more lost revenue for the clubs. It’s all making for an even gloomier outlook for 2022. With the collective bargaining agreement expiring at the end of next season, Manfred finds himself dealing with multiple internal warring parties between the large- and small-market clubs. On the other hand, Clark, taking his marching orders from Boras, believes the owners’ reports of billions of dollars of lost revenues have been greatly exaggerated while remaining adamant about reversing all the impediments to free agency the owners out-smarted him on in the last labor negotiation.
Bleak as this winter figures to be for the players, next winter could be an apocalypse for all the parties.
———
©2020 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
