Chicago Cubs: 3 ways a new CBA can save the game of baseball

For the first time since MLB owners launched a lockout of the players, subsequently ending anything baseball related until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached, MLB and the MLBPA met for the first time last Thursday in a first attempt to come to a new agreement.

It’s no secret – the two sides don’t tend to see eye-to-eye on much. The relationship between the league and players association is the worst in any professional sport. In the last two years, that relationship has only soured further. In the early stages of the pandemic, the league and players refused to get on the same page on certain key elements needed to play any baseball in 2020. That caused unwarranted ramifications, ultimately delaying Opening Day even further, and shortening the regular season to a mere 60 games.

With neither sides willing to budge on their belief of how certain aspects of an agreement should look, the two parties found themselves in a standoff, forcing MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to initiate the start of the season on his own. At least to me, both sides came off rather entitled in the sense of how much money each of them should earn.

Meanwhile, fans had become riddled with anxiety due to a raging pandemic that’s cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States. Lost lives, people losing their jobs and a general uneasiness that emanated throughout society. Those same fans, who are the heartbeat of the game after all, desperately just wanted a distraction in the form of their favorite sport, caring very little to hear about how many millions of dollars both sides think they should earn.

After what seemed like the grim reality of there being no season at all was about to be upon us, finally the cleats were laced and the boys played ball. Unfortunately, in an ironic twist of fate, the arguments over finances that further delayed the start of the season served as the catalyst as to why both sides didn’t make as much as they could have if they just dealt with their disdain for each other and moved on from the very start.

Fast forward two years and here we are again. Spring training is now just a little over a month away and in regards to the offseason, teams aren’t even finished signing free agents yet. Still, the sense of urgency is much lower than you would like to see at this point.

Though the truth is that it won’t take a very lengthy period of time to ramp up and get ready for spring training once a new CBA is reached, the clock is ticking. With the history of these two sides and their ‘drag their feet’ approach to negotiating, it is time to get this ball rolling and not have a repeat of 2020. Ironically, with both sides negotiating how to make baseball better as a whole, the reality is that the image of baseball is only being tarnished further the more the bickering continues.

In regards to making baseball better, as a whole, there are several avenues and agreements the league and players association can reach to provide a much needed spark to the excitement of the game. Though the options are plentiful on the how game can improve, let’s analyze just three that are a good starting point.

Chicago Cubs: 3 ways a new CBA can save baseball – #3: Preventing tanking

Although teams won’t come out and say that tanking is something that definitely exists in the world of sports, it’s really no secret that it exists. Once you lose enough games and realize you’re out of the postseason hunt, a general manager’s state of mind can quickly turn to maximizing draft position the following summer.

Why? Because, with how the game is currently structured, you’re better off losing 100 games and having a top-five draft pick sets your franchise up better long-term than barely missing the postseason and winning 85 games.

Take the Baltimore Orioles, for example. In the 2022 draft, the Orioles will have a top five pick for the fourth time in a row and their second first overall pick in as many years. As for the Orioles farm system, it is no surprise they are listed as having the top farm system in baseball, with five prospects in the top 100. That number more is than likely to grow during the 2022 campaign, especially after next year’s draft. That’s all fine and good until you realize the Orioles are 18th in net worth in the league and with a value of 1.4 billion, really don’t have a lot of room for excuses to at least try.

There must be some form of incentive put in place for teams to get competitive again to make MLB, as a whole, a better product. Here’s an example: you have two teams that are competing to win a division down the stretch. Team A in its final series is playing a team that is also legit and fighting for home field advantage throughout the postseason. Team B is facing a team that is not even trying to win because at this point they benefit more from losing and securing a top draft pick. It seems safe to say this puts team B at an unfair advantage to clinch their division because their opponent isn’t even trying.

Situations like this are terrible for the game of baseball. Enabling teams to put an atrocious product on the field year after year not only hurts the league, but takes badly needed revenue out of those smaller market teams. After all, nobody wants to pay to watch their favorite team lose in person.

Coming out of a stretch where baseball’s owners cried poor,  you would think they would want to fill as many seats as possible. Losing teams lead to a loss of potential revenue and nobody wants to wait around for four years to secure enough prospects that hopefully help the team turn the corner.

Winning baseball teams are fun for the city in which they represent. A good example of this is taking a look at the Chicago Cubs attendance over the years. By and large, you can track when the team has been good – and when it hasn’t – based on the number of folks in the seats at the Friendly Confines.

So how do you prevent tanking moving forward? How can you ensure competitiveness throughout the league or at least come closer to that mark? One way, similar to the NHL, could be the addition of a salary floor. In implanting one, you are essentially forcing teams to at least spend something on players in the offseason, generating a better product on the field automatically. Hockey is one of the most competitive sports there is and a big reason is because of a salary cap floor.

You can also crack down on teams for not caring about winning by turning the draft into more than just something where the worst team gets the best pick year after year. Instead, implementing a lottery draft for the top five picks each year, almost the same as the NBA, provides less incentive to lose. Furthermore, you can even add to that by creating a rule where you can only have a lottery pick up to three years in a row. Should you still be a bottom-5 team in the league a fourth year in a row, you automatically become disqualified from a lottery pick and receive the sixth pick in the draft and the sixth-worst team slides into your lottery position.

By forcing teams to spend and have a certain amount of payroll attached to their team, along with penalizing teams that choose to not be competitive are two ways the league can make baseball more fun to watch again. In turn, it makes teams more balanced, helps provide everyone an equal shot at a postseason and the owners’ favorite, earns the league/teams more money as a whole.

Chicago Cubs: 3 ways a new CBA can save baseball – #2: Expand the postseason

This goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned prevention of tanking. By expanding the postseason, you give those teams on the brink of October to a real shot at coming away with a World Series title. As many can relate, when teams are eliminated from making the postseason, the reality is most baseball fans turn off the TV not caring who wins because that dream of a championship is on hold for at least another year.

As a baseball fan, nothing is more exciting than realizing your team is going to the postseason and has a chance to win it all. In 2021, there were nine teams that won at least 90 games that went on to the postseason. Three of those teams won 100 games. In the end, it was the 88-73 Atlanta Braves, the team with the worst record going into the postseason that won it all. It goes to show you, absolutely anything is possible if you just get there.

By preventing tanking and forcing teams to become more competitive, expanding the postseason is only going to make October baseball more exciting and engaging. Winning becomes incentivized because everybody realizes they have a shot and questions whether it’s really worth it to lose that many games and possibly not even secure a top four pick in the draft either.

This is where teams earning more revenue comes in handy for owners, which ultimately comes to fruition for players, as well. In most cases, owners that become more wealthy have less of a problem spending more money to acquire bigger names knowing that the fans will show up to see these players compete night-in and night-out. In the end, it is a win-win-win situation: owners receive more revenue, players can take home postseason shares and elevate their standing on a national stage and more fans get to root on their team when the games matter most.

Correct me if I’m wrong, as a fan when it comes to the world of baseball, nothing is more exciting than watching the team you love so passionately succeed and make it to the postseason. Currently, you have the one-game winner-take-all wild card matchup between two teams that earned a wild card spot, with the winner going on to face the #1 seed in the Division Series while the 2 and 3 seeds battle it out to advance to the LCS before the final two teams square off in the World Series. MLB has already proposed an expanded postseason and you can see details here.

The question simply becomes, does “watering down” the postseason make teams not try as hard if there’s a greater chance to make it to October? Or, does giving teams a better chance to make the postseason provide the confidence for more teams to go for it? Either way, it is something that can provide a spark to baseball. In my opinion, giving more teams incentive and the reality of being able to make the postseason is enough to make more teams go for it.

What team in baseball is going to see more teams going for it and say to themselves “Eh, we don’t care about getting a high seed in the playoffs now.” If anything, more teams going for it forces the best teams to remain on their “A” game anyway in hopes of receiving that first-round bye or home field advantage throughout. No team is going to not want to try to lock up home field advantage or be the best team in baseball just because more teams can get in now. As far as the level of competition in the postseason, I understand the sentiment to a degree. Personally, I highly doubt anybody wouldn’t be excited if their team made it to the playoffs regardless of how many teams got in.

Furthermore, I circle back to the fact that the team with the worst record heading into the 2021 playoffs, and therefore the biggest underdog, just won the World Series a mere 2.5 months ago while winning just 88 games during the year. Does adding in four more teams, such as a team like the Toronto Blue Jays who won 91 games and missed the playoffs or Seattle who also won 90 games and narrowly missed the postseason as well really water down the level of competition that much? Anything can happen if you get hot at the right time.