Wednesday night, Washington pitcher Max Scherzer, speaking for the players, drew the line in the sand.
— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) May 28, 2020
Now, when I first saw that, I thought that meant that the players were done talking. That’s not quite the case, as the union is expected to send a proposal over to the owners today. It just won’t include anything on pay reduction, instead focusing on increasing the number of games so that the players can get paid more. This is probably going to get a similar response from the ownership as their proposal got from the players. Which means basically a week will have gone by, a week that the 2020 season may not really have, and nothing will have changed.
There’s still some flickering hope that the season isn’t completely in peril. Like we talked about some yesterday, this is kinda how negotiations go. However, there is so much bad blood, so much distrust, between the two sides that it feels like there’s a huge chasm that has to be navigated and it’s not going to happen in one jump. The players want to see more financial proof for the claim of the owners that they’ll lose so much money. Somehow the owners will lose more money per game after 82 games–I’m not sure exactly how that’s possible, unless it has something to do with the advance in salary that the owners agreed to in March being fully paid back by then. That’s going to really conflict with the players’ desire to play as long as possible since they are being paid by the game.
I just….I don’t know. I have real problems believing that baseball would do anything to jeopardize a chance to be on the national stage by itself for a bit, with limited other distractions. Then again, I have no problem believing that because baseball has so many holes in its collective foot from self-inflicted gunshots that it resembles Swiss cheese. When baseball has a chance to mess things up, it will.
And, being that this is 2020, we’ll probably see them come to some agreement late, get started late….and have to shut down after a month or so because the coronavirus has flared up again. That’d be fitting for this season, wouldn’t it?
Hopefully both sides have rattled their sabers enough and there can be some sort of mid-range agreement. If not, like Jon Doble wrote yesterday, soon you won’t have the virus to blame and that will put the onus straight on the owners, which is a terrible look right now.
We’ll see what the weekend bring us. Perhaps some good news, for once, is around the corner.