Chicago Cubs: A ‘new’ season after all? Don’t count your chickens

On Wednesday, reports surfaced that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark met in Arizona. The meeting was seen as a positive when it comes to negotiations for the potential 2020 season.

Despite the Chicago Cubs and the Players’ Association said they would not counter the league’s last proposal, simply telling Manfred and company to “tell us when and where” to play the season and worry about negotiating later.

The newest proposal includes 60 games, full prorated salaries for players, expanded playoffs going from ten to sixteen teams for 2020 and 2021, as well as a universal DH for the next two seasons as well. The most crucial thing in this proposal is arguably the union’s agreement to waive any grievance.

Early reports on this proposal say the players want more than 60 games.

Back on March 26, the union and the league reached a deal where players agreed to prorated salaries, which is part of an agreement that included a guarantee of service time regardless if there was a season or not, according to ESPN.

This is a 180 from Monday when Manfred says he wasn’t confident there would be a season after all of the negotiating, not to mention there are at least six owners who don’t want to play a 2020 season at all. How sad is it that an owner of a BASEBALL franchise doesn’t want to see their own business in action at a given time? If there is an owner in another sport who doesn’t want their respective sport to be played, I would like to see it.

Ken Rosenthal reports that if the union counters with an offer for more games, 65 games would give players around 40 percent of prorated salaries of their original projected salary for 2020.

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This is a step in the right direction for negotiations after what seemed like a dead-end last weekend. There is still work to be done, but a path to a deal exists. The league proposed 72 games last weekend, and that’s where talks stalled.

Keeping that 72-game proposal in mind, and 60 games being too low of an amount, the happy medium to get a deal done is somewhere in the middle of the two figures.

The whole negotiating process has made baseball look bad in the sports world. The NBA and NHL have been able to work out contingency plans, with the NHL starting camps back up July 10 and the NBA planning to play the rest of the season in Orlando. The NCAA has even approved a preseason workout/practice plan for the upcoming football season, starting July 13, with practices set to begin August 7.

The popularity of the game has also been in question over the past number of years, and this doesn’t help. Manfred made concessions to the game (pitch clock, limited mound visits, etc.) in an attempt to draw new fans to the game, but this farce of negotiation has shattered all of those efforts.

On top of all that, COVID-19 is still the biggest obstacle for a season, and even if a season gets going, it may be stopped because of the virus. However, if baseball is happening, I will be there to watch, because I miss it, and sometimes we need to escape from the real world.