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For Braves fans, the good news is that Freddie Freeman hasn’t signed with another team. The bad news: He hasn’t re-signed with the Braves, either. He can’t sign with anybody.
MLB locked out its players two months ago. At a time when pitchers and catchers would be reporting to spring training, teams cannot speak of those pitchers or catchers. Go to the Braves’ website and you’ll find a photo of Andruw Jones on the splash page. He last played for them in 2007.
The reason for this data-scrubbing? NIL laws, believe it or not. The same vehicle that has enriched Georgia’s Stetson Bennett, who’s technically an amateur, applies to professional baseball players. Their names/images/likenesses cannot be used by their employer until the lockout is lifted, which should come … oh, when a blizzard hits Hades.
That last bit was meant as a joke. There’s reason to hope this won’t last all that long, though little has happened since MLB business ceased Dec. 2. On Dec. 1, representatives for the owners and players met for seven minutes. (A meeting is scheduled for Saturday in New York.)
MLB ordered its 30 franchises to say nothing, on or off the record, about anything. This isn’t a bad idea, given that the thing owners do best at such fractious times is make players madder. At 12:20 a.m. Dec. 2, the players association tweeted: “This shutdown … is not required by law or for any other reason. It was the owners’ choice, plain and simple, specifically calculated to pressure players into relinquishing rights and benefits.”
What do the players want? Basically, to have greater freedom, which would mean to make more money. Players are pushing for earlier access to arbitration and free agency. Owners don’t share this desire. Big shock there.
We’d known for years that Dec. 2, 2021, surely would yield some sort of work stoppage. That was the date baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expired. Had the owners not called a lockout, the players might well have gone on strike. Rob Manfred, the latest in a line of ham-handed commissioners, could say Monday, “Lockout’s over; you players get yourselves to spring training” – and not one would comply.
As ever, the players don’t trust the owners. There’s no chance players will play without a signed CBA. The owners recently suggested the sides agree to non-binding mediation. The players LOL’ed. The great pitcher Max Scherzer tweeted: “We don’t need mediation because what we are offering to MLB is fair to both sides.”
Also from Scherzer: “We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as caps, allows younger players to realize more of their market value, makes service-time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminates tanking as a winning strategy.”
Were the owners allowed to speak, they’d note that their sport – unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL – has no salary cap. That’s how a free-agent pitcher could sign a three-year contract with the Mets in November for an annual asset value of $43.3 million. The pitcher’s name: Max Scherzer.
The expectation has been that nothing would get done until at least one side starts losing money. MLB players aren’t paid for spring training. Teams, however, sell tickets for exhibition games. On cue, Manfred emerged Thursday to proclaim: “I see missing games as a disastrous outcome for this industry.”
Reality check: Everyone involved with baseball – owners, players, TV and radio rights-holders – lost serious money in 2020, the season slashed by the pandemic. The looming CBA expiration was a key reason MLB fought so hard to restart itself for 60 games plus the playoffs. The thought of losing an entire season knowing that some of 2022 could likewise be compromised was seen as a worst-case scenario.
For 2022, nothing of consequence has been sacrificed. (The start of spring training is, in the grand scheme, inconsequential.) It’s possible that the owners and players could bang out an agreement next week. The Braves’ first exhibition is scheduled for Feb. 26 against Boston in North Port, Fla. A link on the team’s website allows you to buy tickets.
Maybe Freeman will have re-upped by then. Maybe Mike Soroka’s rehab from a second torn Achilles will have gone nicely. Maybe Ronald Acuna, in the wake of ACL repair, will be running even faster. Maybe the best team in baseball still will be the best team in baseball. But so long as there’s no agreement between owners and players, we’ll have to subsist on our memories.
Toward that end, the trophy the Braves were handed for winning the World Series is about to embark on a 151-stop tour. It starts Tuesday in Midtown. Freeman won’t be there. Blooper will.
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