New CBA Brings Five More Years of Peace to the Greatest Sport
If you were to ask any baseball fan that can remember 1994, they’ll tell you it was one of the darkest days in the history of the greatest sport in the world. Who could forget the decision to stop play and cancel the rest of the ’94 season.
Well, thanks to a new agreement on the CBA, there will be another five years of uninterrupted baseball, bringing the running total to 21 years of peace.
According to Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe, the new CBA is both a give and take for the owners and players. The biggest stipulation for the players is the addition of blood testing for HGH, which adds to the list of testing for steroids and amphetamines, already taking place.
The free agent compensation will also see radical changes as noted by Abraham. Only the “true” elite players will garner a draft pick for compensation. How will this be determined? Well, the Elias rankings of free-agents will no longer be in play, meaning if a team feels that their free-agent is worth a first round pick they must make a qualifying offer of a one-year, $12.4 million to that player in order to get the draft pick. This makes sense but at the same time, leaves the possibility of inflated salaries for over achieving players.
Take the Papelbon scenario this year. Because the rule won’t take effect until December of this year, the Red Sox will receive the Phillies first-round draft pick. Going forward, the Red Sox could’ve potentially been stuck with paying Papelbon $12.4 million when it’s clear he is not worth that, no matter who’s paying.
Other changes include the minimum salary to be increased from $414,000 to $480,000 and eventually hit a ceiling of $500,000.
One area that the owners certainly feel that they won is the salary cap on draft picks. Going forward, each team will have a limit as to what they can spend on signing draft picks and international free agents. While the cap was not disclosed, it was noted that if a team exceeds the limit they will be heavily taxed to the tune of 75-100% or potentially lose future draft picks.
As Abraham notes, this will help reduce the number of 18 year-olds who are making $1 million dollars and never get out of class A ball.
This particular notion of the new CBA will help small market clubs like Pittsburgh and Kansas City who have been gun shy to draft high profiled draft picks, knowing they won’t be able to sign them to the ridiculous hoards of money they ask for. Take the Toronto Blue Jays for example. In the past couple of drafts, they’ve stayed away from top prospects who were represented by super-agent, Scott Boras. With Boras’ history of demanding top dollar, the Jays organization knew they couldn’t afford the prospect, nor did it make sense for them to sign him to the boat loads of money.
Let the bantering begin as to who won this CBA, the players or the owners. But really, as a fan, who cares. All that matters is that for five more years there will be baseball every year, for six months plus. Yes changes are needed and some are being worked out as evidenced by the HGH testing and draft salary cap. We’ll let the lawyers and unions figure out the rest. For now, we can count on hearing the words that every baseball fan loves to hear – “play ball.”
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