The Winners and Losers of MLB’s New CBA Agreement

0 of 8

Baseball is back, and it’s a whole new ballgame.Nick Wass/Associated Press

It took long enough, but Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association finally agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday.

It’s going to be long, complicated and frankly pretty dry document when it finally gets written up. But since we already know about its key features, we don’t need to wait for the full text to size up the biggest winners and losers of the new CBA.

We’ve highlighted eight that touch on four different categories: players, teams, the playoffs and, ultimately, what fans are getting out of all this.

Let’s start with the players.

1 of 8

Corbin BurnesAaron Gash/Associated Press

Going into the negotiations for this new CBA, one of the union’s top priorities was rearranging the league’s financial structure in ways that would ease some of its exploitation of younger players.

Well, mission accomplished.

Even players at the lowest rung of the pay scale can be happy, as the league minimum will increase from $570,500 in 2021 to $700,000 in 2022. That’s a 22.7 percent raise, which is the biggest brought on by a new CBA in nearly two decades.

For the first time, there will also be a $50 million bonus pool for 100 standout players who are not yet eligible for salary arbitration. For 2021, this pool would have cut big checks for National League Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes and Rookies of the Year Randy Arozarena and Jonathan India.

All told, Travis Sawchik of The Score estimates that pre-arb players will make $115 million more in 2022 than they did in 2021. Per our calculations, that’s not a small number.

2 of 8

Mark MelanconDerrick Tuskan/Associated Press

Another victory that the union scored in the new CBA concerns the first threshold for the competitive balance tax, which will bump up from $210 million in 2021 to $230 million in 2022.

How much this will benefit the union’s middle class, though, is at best uncertain.

Per ESPN’s Buster Olney, the average salary for middle-class players fell by 50 percent between 2014 and 2021. His example was Mark Melancon, who settled for a one-year, $3 million deal last winter even after a successful 2020 season as Atlanta’s closer.

What would hypothetically help players in this bracket are measures that would incentivize rebuilding teams and mid-level contenders to spend more. Say, a reverse luxury tax that would be a soft salary floor in the same way the actual luxury tax is a soft salary cap.

Alas, there’s nothing like that in the new CBA. And even if the universal designated hitter and new draft lottery lead to more spending on middle-class players, it’ll probably a drop in baseball’s multi-billion-dollar bucket.

3 of 8

Bob Nutting (L) and Ben Cherington (R)Associated Press

Apropos of what we just discussed, baseball’s cheaper owners have license to keep being, well, cheap.

As things stand now, the Cleveland Guardians, Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates don’t have even $40 million in guaranteed money on their 2022 payrolls. The latter of those clubs, which is owned by Bob Nutting, has also yet to spend that much on even one free agent in its history.

Granted, the increase in the minimum salary means these clubs will have to spend more no matter what they do. 

But once again, there really are no new mechanisms that will force more significant spending by teams on the lower end of the payroll spectrum. Rebuilding clubs can just decide to take their chances with the draft lottery, and the one new tweak to the revenue sharing system incentivizes revenue growth, not spending.

As noted by Andy Martino of SNY, small-market owners also succeeded in ensuring that the raise in the competitive balance tax threshold also came with a major string attached.

4 of 8

Steve CohenMary Altaffer/Associated Press

Though the new competitive balance tax threshold will make it easier for wealthy clubs to invest in their payrolls, they’ll need to be careful not to invest too much.

Previously, there were three penalty markers for teams went over the tax threshold. One for clubs that only just exceeded it, and then harsher ones for teams that went over by $20 million and $40 million.

Those still exist, and there’s also a new penalty marker for clubs that exceed the tax threshold by $60 million.

This is being referred to as the “Steve Cohen tax” in reference to the New York Mets owner, whose $16 billion net worth is reflected in the team’s competitive balance payroll for 2022. It’s projected at $272.2 million, or less than $20 million away the new threshold for penalties.

For reference, even the first tax threshold would have risen to $290 million in 2021 if MLB had kept the growth rate established under the 2007-11 CBA. By instead turning that figure into a sort of third rail, small-market owners have effectively guarded their own pockets while also ensuring that their big-market counterparts don’t reach too deep into theirs.

5 of 8

Joey Votto and the 2021 Cincinnati RedsAssociated Press

Setting aside all the financial mumbo-jumbo, arguably the most impactful change brought on by the new CBA concerns the playoff field. It will grow from 10 teams to 12, with a new format to boot.

The top two division winners in each league will now get a bye for the new Wild Card round, consisting of the worst division winner and three wild-card teams playing best-of-three series.

As such, there’s now extra incentive for the elite teams in the American and National League to chase after division titles and lopsided records. But as there’s now an extra playoff spot in each league, this is as much a boon for clubs that might previously have been also-rans.

Think last year’s Cincinnati Reds, who would have made the National League playoff field despite winning only 83 games. That’s assuming they would have held off the Philadelphia Phillies, who finished with 82 wins.

As the do-or-die Wild Card Game is now a thing of the past, mid-level contenders such will also be able to pursue playoff spots knowing they’ll be guaranteed at least two games if they make it.

6 of 8

Mookie Betts and the 2021 Los Angeles DodgersAshley Landis/Associated Press

Bully for mid-tier contenders, but there’s just something wrong about playing a 162-game season only for 40 percent of the league to make the playoffs.

To be fair, it made sense when MLB expanded its playoff field in 2020. Because the pandemic forced (well, “forced“) Commissioner Rob Manfred to cut the regular season down to 60 games, the 16-team field that the league adopted was necessary to really separate the pretenders from the contenders.

Under normal circumstances, however, 162 games are more than enough for that separation to take place in the regular season. After a season that long, the playoff field should be the Best of the Best. With a 12-team field, it’ll be more like the Best of the Best and Some Other Guys.

While the first-round bye is nice, it’s still only a ticket to three guaranteed playoff games in the best-of-five Division Series round. To wit, just think of how the 107-win San Francisco Giants would have earned only one more postseason contest than the 83-win Reds in 2021.

Baseball also erred in not adopting NBA-style seeding. It’s not the two teams with the best records that get the byes, meaning that clubs like last year’s 106-win Los Angeles Dodgers still stand to get screwed.

7 of 8

Robert F. Bukatay/Associated Press

If you’re a fan who was monitoring the CBA negotiations with the simple hope that a 162-game season would be salvaged for 2022, well, congratulations. You got your wish.

And against all odds, too.

OK, maybe only some of the odds. This particular labor battle never did figure to get as nasty as the one that occurred in the 1990s, when the players went on strike in 1994 and then-Commissioner Bud Selig canceled that year’s World Series. The 1995 season was subsequently delayed and shortened to 144 games.

Even still, things weren’t looking good for a while there. In and of itself, the lockout marked baseball’s first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike. And once Manfred announced “cancellations” on March 1 and again on March 9, a full 162-game season seemed unlikely.

Though it will take three extra days and scheduled doubleheaders to make it happen, MLB and the MLBPA thankfully avoided that fate with their agreement on Thursday. In the end, all the lockout really did was move Opening Day back a week from March 31 to April 7.

8 of 8

Rich Schultz/Getty Images

If, on the other hand, you’re a fan who was hoping that baseball’s new CBA would bring some changes to the game itself, you’d better sit down for some bad news.

No dice.

Yes, the universal designated hitter will finally, mercifully end the practice of pitchers batting for themselves in National League parks. But that’s really it as far as on-field rule changes are concerned, as MLB and the MLBPA basically decided to punt on other ones.

The bright side, according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, is that there will be a committee in 2023 that will weigh changes such as a pitch clock, regulations on defensive shifts, bigger bases and an automated strike zone. If so, there may only be a one-year wait for changes that baseball badly needs.

In the meantime, it’ll be the same ol’ game in 2022. There’s obviously plenty to like about that, but it also means more long games, more strikeouts and generally less action than there used to be.

    

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.