This article by @KenDavidoff may have set a new low for both-sidesim. It completely ignores facts and doubles down on a completely and utterly debunked "smoking" published by @Joelsherman1. A short retort 1/
Davidoff: "With Major League Baseball dangling on a branch on the side of a cliff above shark-infested waters, in the wake of Manfred’s announcement Monday that he won’t unilaterally implement a 2020 restart schedule after all"
Wait, what? MLB is reaching out an olive branch
Wait, what? MLB is reaching out an olive branch
Actually, what has happened is MLB has walked itself back into a corner & needs a way out. MLB has attempted to renegotiate a mutually agreed March agreement. There is no reciprocal duty for the parties to do that, so the PA has said "no" about two dozen times publicly
and privately. Maybe Davidoff has missed that. Maybe he has missed the legal explanations. Here they all are in a thread of threads:
MLB has admitted this in private correspondence and more recently, the Commissioner has said it publicly.
MLB has admitted this in private correspondence and more recently, the Commissioner has said it publicly.
On May 22, MLB lawyer Pat Houlihan wrote a letter to MLBPA lawyer Jeff Perconte that said, "We agree with the Association that, under the [March] Agreement, players are not required to accept less than their full prorated pay."
"I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were gonna pay the players' full prorated salary that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26," Manfred told ESPN.
They got to that conclusion because the Commissioner kept making mistakes. He said he would unilaterally impose the schedule and they would play. That's his right under the March 26 agreement. But, the Union called his bluff. He would be giving up the expanded playoffs, something
his constituency needs. The owners want to expand their revenues, and playoff money is how they do it. He now accepts pro rata pay was the agreement in March and it wasn't going to change.
Tony Clark doesn't owe anyone an apology for saying he wants to enforce an agreement
Tony Clark doesn't owe anyone an apology for saying he wants to enforce an agreement
between the parties. An agreement that was negotiated with eyes wide open, by experienced professionals on both sides. Clark didn't snooker anyone. MLB got a lot in that March agreement too, including the ability to set the schedule, a significant reduction in the draft, and
the cost of signing undrafted free agents. It was a very long and detailed agreement. And, yes I'll say it, "both sides" got something. When one party doesn't like that outcome, it's not the duty of the other party to give more to make them happy.
Davidoff: "As a matter of fact, thanks to that pesky Joel Sherman of The Post, it’s public knowledge that we knew what we were signing — even though, in retrospect, the language in the pact should have been far clearer."
It was clear, if you're a labor lawyer or negotiator.
It was clear, if you're a labor lawyer or negotiator.
It's not clear if one party puts propaganda out through its own writers. Yes, Sherman works for MLB Network. His articles in the Post should be Op-Eds. @officialBBWAA needs to look at the professional standards of membership for those who work for the people they are purportedly
covering.
Davidoff: "We did not competently communicate these nuances to our players. To the contrary, we created the perception that this was a done deal. It wasn’t, obviously."
See MLB's May 22 letter. DONE DEAL.
Davidoff: "We did not competently communicate these nuances to our players. To the contrary, we created the perception that this was a done deal. It wasn’t, obviously."
See MLB's May 22 letter. DONE DEAL.
Then the Manfred apology, which I can't even quote because it's so offensive. It's not an apology, but a touchdown dance. That's why we are where we are. Because management has been doing a touchdown dance since the last CBA. It's why Tony Clark hired Bruce Meyer.
When you
When you
negotiate a CBA, you need to ensure that both parties can sell it to their consciences as a win. If you tell the public and the other party you beat them badly, it makes them retrench. It ruins any potential partnership. Doing more of that now is the worst thing MLB can do.
There are ways out of this. But, the most important is to admit that the March agreement is done and complete and the parties still have other obligations. The apology from MLB is that they wasted 10 weeks by trying to undo the deal to which they had just agreed, step back, and
make the proposal they should have made 6 weeks ago when the Union made it clear that there was not going to be any renegotiation of pro rata pay.
Sigh.
Sigh.
