Chicago Cubs: The two sides must come to an agreement soon – or else

Major League Baseball and the MLBPA are at a standoff when it comes to 2020 and if an agreement doesn’t happen soon, we won’t see the Cubs play this year.

While most Chicago Cubs players have remained quiet, others in the league, including  Max Scherzer and Trevor Bauer have come forward in staunch opposition to the league’s latest proposal, noting that players had already agreed to prorated salaries – and are now being asked to give up even more money.

The latest proposal from the league calls for pay cuts on a sliding scale – with the game’s highest-paid players receiving the largest cuts and the lowest receiving the most of their promised salaries.  ESPN’s Jeff Passan laid out the numbers in a tweet – making one thing clear: this is highway robbery.

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Personally, I am of the mindset that players should not make a full season’s worth of money for a half-season. It’s like any other job, if you work less you should make less. But that’s the thing – the players already agreed to prorated salaries months ago. Now, owners are looking to recoup major losses that come without fans in attendance this summer by further slashing payroll.

Players are upset and fans are growing more frustrated with each passing day. The MLBPA is expected to counter with a new proposal including more games and full prorated player salaries which, obviously, would mean more money in payroll for team owners.

To top it all off, Passan adds that over 1,000 Minor Leaguers may be released by the end of the week as part of the new Minor League re-structuring.

The current CBA for Major League Baseball expires after the 2021 season, and if things don’t change, and right now it looks bleak, there will be a lockout. The current discussions are doing nothing but causing long-lasting damage and ill will between the two sides.

Players are just like us at the end of the day – they have bills to pay, families to feed and they want to be safe. Granted, we’re talking about salaries a lot of us can scarcely fathom – but the owners had no problem rolling in the cash when things were good and it’s not right to ask the players to bear the burden now.

Cubs outfielder Ian Happ remains hopeful that there will be a season, recently telling 670 The Score that any conversations the two sides are having is positive and that dialogue means they are closer to a deal.

Not playing can’t be easy for the players, but they are sticking to their guns and you have to applaud them for that. It will be interesting to see what’s in the new proposal from the players’ side and whether they go back to prorated salaries or start over economically.

Scherzer has been around the game a long time, and he’s the type of player whose opinion carries weight around baseball. He’s a Hall of Fame pitcher and just won his first World Series.

Baseball would be a nice escape from the real world right now. We can only hope that Happ is right and in mere weeks, we’re seeing the Chicago Cubs and the rest of the league get back to work with an eye on opening the much-anticipated 2020 season.