MLBPA slams MLB’s revenue sharing proposal as salary cap

Major League Baseball’s plan to start the 2020 season was approved by the sport’s owners on Monday, but it sounds like the players are going to be a different story.

The league’s plan proposes a revenue sharing system that ties player salaries for the 2020 season to league revenues. MLB says this is a one-time proposal that simply pro-rates salaries based on how much money the sport is earning. The MLBPA sees it very differently, however, and said the plan essentially represents a salary cap.

“A system that restricts player pay based on revenues is a salary cap, period,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said, via Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic. “This is not the first salary cap proposal our union has received. It probably won’t be the last.

“That the league is trying to take advantage of a global health crisis to get what they’ve failed to achieve in the past — and to anonymously negotiate through the media for the last several days — suggests they know exactly how this will be received.

“None of this is beneficial to the process of finding a way for us to safely get back on the field and resume the 2020 season — which continues to be our sole focus.”

In other words, the proposal as written appears to be a non-starter economically. It’s no secret that players are firmly opposed to any efforts to reduce their salary, but it’s unlikely that ownership is going to back off on this too much. That’s going to make negotiations very difficult.