The CBA ends in December.
The sparring between Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association Tony Clark continues as MLB gets ready for the 2026 season. The collective bargaining agreement between the players and the owners ends in December and the central issue seems to be this. The owners want cost certainty which could mean a salary cap and the players want no part of that. There is also the question of how much the owners are really hurting financially when the Los Angeles Dodgers owners can give Kyle Tucker a $64 million signing bonus within a four-year deal reportedly worth $240 million and the owner of the New York Mets franchise Steve Cohen can hand out a three-year deal to Bo Bichette that reportedly is worth $126 million. Of course, New York and Los Angeles are the two biggest markets in the country with a lot of wealth. It is the small market owners who are going to tell Manfred that cannot compete with the Dodgers and the Mets.
Manfred is trying to put a positive spin on the negotiations. “Until I got elected commissioner, all I did was labor relations. That’s how I made my living. I’ve never been in a negotiation where, before the first piece of paper went across the table, I, or anyone I represented, was out there saying, ‘This, we absolutely will not talk about.’ I just think it’s a hard way to begin a negotiation.” The players put out a statement that contradicts Manfred. “The league and owners say they want to avoid missing games but at the same time they appear to be dead-set on trying to force players into a system that, the last time they proposed it, led to the most missed games ever and a cancelled World Series” in 1994. The sniping continues.
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Kyle Tucker
