Baseball is my favorite topic of conversation. I can bring almost any topic back to baseball. Economics? Baseball! Perseverance? Baseball! Job security? Unions? Race? Baseball! Baseball! Baseball! Unfortunately, baseball isn’t a particularly fun topic to come back to at the moment. Labor issues, while always simmering in the background, are at the forefront of public baseball discussions now that the owners have locked out the players following the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and labor issues, while vital to the sport, are decidedly not baseball. 

What’s more, the baseball was hot! Before the disruption of the off-season, we were in the middle of one of the more active and interesting stretches of player moves in years. Free agents were signing seemingly every hour. Big names, big money, big surprises as to where they signed. Throw in some surprise trades and wow! The baseball off-season was as fun and exciting as it had been in years. 

Of course, it probably isn’t news that many of those moves, while need-to-sit-down exciting, were, at least in part if not wholly in response to the CBA ending as much as they were baseball moves in the purest sense. Free agents were afraid their earning power might be restricted by a new CBA or by a long work stoppage. Teams were afraid that they might miss out on some of the best players available. The combination of those factors lead to one of the most active months in recent memory, something that probably isn’t repeatable unless the new CBA gets renegotiated every off-season (please no). 

For as great a sport as baseball is, it often feels that the business side of the sport is yin to that yang, taking negative steps for every positive one. An amazing and exciting off-season? Sure! Also, lockout time! Now the follow-up for all those transactions is likely to be one of the most inactive periods in recent memory. Like reading about minor league signings? I sure hope so!

But here’s the thing: that’s not necessarily bad, for two reasons. From a fan’s standpoint, there were enough moves in the last month to spend the next two months analyzing. As a writer both here and at my own newsletter, being able to focus on some of the intricacies that might have been missed is not really a punishment. Second and more importantly, from a player’s and owner’s standpoint, this is one of those ‘how the sausage is made’ moments. We fans might not want to hear about it or see it happen, but it is important to the future health of the sport.

It’s easier to sit back and chastise those involved for forcing labor issues on the rest of us when all we want from baseball is, well, baseball. Sure it’s more fun to analyze trades and free agent signings and maybe to take a moment to celebrate Buck O’Neil’s long overdue election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but the truth is baseball is a business (I know, I love writing that as much as you love reading it), and capitalistic businesses depend on the push and pull between owners and labor. That’s just the reality of our system. 

The reality of our system doesn’t make it pleasant, of course, just necessary. The good thing, as far as these things go, is that both these groups are quite well off. I’m not talking about the Mike Trout’s and Fernando Tatis, Jr’s of the world here. Obviously they’re going to be fine, but even those in the majors for a small amount of time make good money. This isn’t to denigrate their life’s work or the decades of effort they put into making the show, just to say that perhaps there are bigger labor struggles out there or at least ones with more on the line. 

In fact, you could even stay in baseball and find one, as the plight of the minor leaguers, who have no union to support them, is increasingly in the public eye. Recently the owners, likely out of fear for what a unionized minor leagues might look like for their bottom line, agreed out of the goodness of their hearts (something it took them just over a century to locate) to provide minor league players with free housing. Up to now, players were responsible for their own housing, which sounds normal, but, when you think about it, is crazy. Minor league players get shipped all over the country and even to other countries sometimes multiple times in the span of a week, and somehow they’re expected to locate their own housing and sign leases like the rest of us, all while getting paid very little. 

So it’s great news that the owners have finally bowed to pressure from players and public activism on this front. It’s a victory for the players, but it’s really a victory for teams and better baseball, too. I wouldn’t expect the owners to suddenly find compassion when it comes to the next CBA though. At least, not without a few months of lost revenue staring them in the face. 

That’s the question that everyone wants answered: When will baseball come back? Most smart people I’ve listened to and spoken with seem to think this will be a short-term stoppage. That’s entirely possible, and I remain hopeful on that front, but I must confess, it’s not my view. The players have been worked by the owners over the last few CBAs and so negotiations with the Players Union are going to be more difficult this time. You might think, okay well the owners will come to the table and give a bit back after taking so much, but if you think that you’ve never been through a labor negotiation in baseball (or really anywhere) before. That’s not and never has been how these things work. 

There’s even evidence for that in the owners’ unserious public proposals to the players union. The owners proposed what was effectively a salary cap to the union before the lockout, a proposal the Union would rather dissolve than agree to. Then Rob Manfred, who has the title of Commissioner of Baseball but is really Head Owner, said the Players weren’t bargaining in good faith. So it seems this could go on for a while. 

The thing that will bring it to an end is the threat of lost revenue or actual lost revenue itself, should the lockout stretch into spring training and potentially the season. So we might be in this for the long haul, or at least for a while. We should be used to dealing with indeterminate unpleasantness as a society by now, so welcome to more training on that front, I suppose.

Matthew Kory
Matthew Kory

Orioles Analyst

Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.

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