Baseball Owners and Players can't seem to find a compromise
We should be in the middle of enjoying the second month of a baseball season right now, along with the NBA and NHL playoffs. The COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately stalled most major professional sports and each league is planning a methodical return.
In some ways, baseball should have the easiest path to return. They could do it without fans, it's outside and limit the participants in the dugout. Just look at what the KBO (Korean Baseball) has done and it's been pretty successful.
Baseball players will have to conform to playing in a safer way because let's face it, they are playing a pandemic.
But money is always the root of the problem. On Tuesday, Major League Baseball called for a significant cut in salaries that would significantly affect the highest-paid players according to ESPN.
Jeff Passan reported that those top-paid players would receive "perhaps less than 40% of their full-season salaries." The players making minimum might get most of their prorated salary, but they are going to have to sacrifice some money.
The schedule would include 82 games that would begin in early July with a 21-day spring training according to ESPN. The season would start with three exhibition games, move to start in early July and then end with a regular season finish on Sept. 27.
The players were disappointed with the proposal, the massive pay cuts and some of the healthy and safety protocols.
Understandably, players want to return to a safe environment. But if they are going to play half of the 162-game schedule, why should they get a full salary? Fans won't be in the stands (at least early on) so the owners will lose millions, if not billions, of dollars.
Nothing is fair at this point, but if the owners and players do not come to an agreement within the next week or so, we are all going to be losers. The fans lose out on an entire baseball season, knowing that at least part of the season could have been played. The owners lose out on revenue, while the players lose out on most of their salaries. If the players don't think this will affect the free agent market next season and that players' salaries will come down dramatically, they must be incredibly naive.