Reese Kaplan -- Time to Talk About the Big C

Few things in life are absolutes.  There’s seldom a pure black or white.  Wading through the 50 or more shades of gray make for some interesting fodder on these cold February nights.  Lately there’s been a lot of chatter about the big “C” word.  No, it's not cancer nor one of George Carlin's 7 words you can't say on TV.  It's collusion.   Whether or not it’s taking place, the fact remains that the MLB owners have a rather checkered history when it comes to avoiding actions that would appear to suggest they had agreed to tactics to suppress the players’ salaries.  Already one agent, Brodie Van Wagenen of CAA, has hinted that he would like to see a players' strike in response to the inaction in the free agent market during this off-season.

Back in 1968 Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Marvin Miller, got the owners and players to agree to language that has been in every Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) ever since, “Players shall not act in concert with other Players and Clubs shall not act in concert with other Clubs.”

However, despite contractually agreeing to this aboveboard means of ensuring a level playing field for player salary negotiations in the free agent class, not once, not twice, but six times the owners have had formal accusations of collusion levied against them. 

Back in 1984 then MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth chided owners in a closed door meeting about how much money they had been spending on free agents.  He also suggested that long term contracts were a bad investment.  The message came through loud and clear. 

The first alleged collusion occurred between the 1985 and 1986 seasons when there were 35 players who filed for free agency but only 4 actually jumped ship to a new team.  It was proven at one point that White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf personally called George Steinbrenner to get him to withdraw the offer he was planning to make star catcher Carlton Fisk.  At that time teams also reduced rosters from 25 to 24 players to cut payroll costs.  The complaint filed by then MLBPA Chairman Donald Fehr is referred to now as Collusion I.

It got worse the following year with the majority of free agents getting just a single year contract or being retained by their former clubs due to the lack of alternative opportunities.  Baseball salaries went down across the board.  In February of 1987 the MLBPA filed a second grievance known as Collusion II and the arbitrator who heard the case ruled in the players’ favor.

The owners got a little more sophisticated the following year, creating a central repository to store the prospective contract information being offered by whom to which free agents.  That action resulted in a Collusion III grievance which ultimately resulted in a huge payback to the players as well as many being granted “New Look” free agent status where they could offer their services to new teams but still hold onto their existing contract if no one met their salary demands.  Kirk Gibson is an example of a player who joined the Dodgers during this period.

Ultimately both new Commissioner Fay Vincent and former MLBPA head Marvin Miller agreed with the ruling that the owners were indeed guilty of collusion.  Vincent said, “The single biggest reality you guys have to face up to is collusion. You stole $280 million from the players, and the players are unified to a man around that issue, because you got caught and many of you are still involved.”

You’d think the owners would have learned from their expensive mistakes, but almost getting away with saving $280+ million was far too attractive to keep them from trying once again.  During the 2002 and 2003 seasons accusations of nefarious behavior on the part of the owners were once again levied and the owners agreed to pay some of their luxury tax revenues back to the players (but never conceded why they were doing so). 

Some individual grievances were filed about both Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds but in these two cases nothing was ever proven. 

So now we fast forward to the 2017/2018 off-season and most of the top free agents remain unemployed.  Dodgers closer Kanley Jansen has been quite vocal in suggesting the players may need to go on strike to force the owners to come to the table to negotiate in good faith.  He was also incensed at the way in which the new Marlins ownership is doing everything possible to lower payroll in Miami, “That is something we might have to address, so you don’t have a lot of Miami Marlins doing this. Maybe it’s an adjustment for us, as the players’ union. Maybe we have to go on strike, to be honest with you. That’s how I feel about it."

Conversely, Brandon Moss feels that the players themselves have created the current environment.  “What we’re saying is we have the right to bargain and set our price just like the owners have the right to meet that price. What we’ve done is we’ve incentivized owners and we’ve incentivized teams to say, ‘We don’t want to meet that price, it costs us too much to meet that price. It costs us draft picks. It costs us international signing money. It costs us all these different things. We’re going to have to pay a tax if we go over a certain threshold that we’ve set ourselves.’ I just think that by doing all those things, what we have done is we’ve given the owners and teams and franchises an excuse to not pay top free agents. To have a reason to say, ‘No, we don’t want to go after these guys because this is why.’

Needless to say, Moss is not a very popular person right now among the players (and the free agents in particular), but he raises an interesting point.  If it is in the owners’ best interest to wait out the market, why shouldn’t they do that?  Where it gets hazy is whether or not they have met and agreed to adapt this strategy across the board.  Some will assert that owners merely have access to more advanced metrics and use that information in making their decisions.  Others say that the issue is that players are not paid enough at the beginning of their careers hence the big paydays of the past for their declining years are simply bad business. It's easy to cite a great many 9 figure contracts that went south by year 3 or 4.  Look no further than David Wright.  

So what do you think?  Why is the hot stove so uncharacteristically frigid?