MLB players ripped off by ‘team control’

Normalcy has returned to baseball. Manny Machado is with the Padres, courtesy of a $300 million investment. The Rockies are re-upping Nolan Arenado for a reported $260 million. And with those dominoes lying prone, Bryce Harper will probably be next. Only a diamond-ful or two of notable free agents remain unsigned.

Finally, after another offseason of grumbling and finger-pointing, we can settle in, listen to the sound of baseballs popping into gloves and soak in the sun-drenched, butterfly-visited fields of the national pastime.

Umm, no.

It doesn’t matter if every eligible player lands with a team and Harper signs for $400 mil. Major League Baseball has a problem. And not only is it not going away, it’s bearing down upon the game like Bo Jackson rounding third base and heading home.

For the second straight year, January and February were an icebox for MLB transactions. It took veteran free agents weeks to get signed. Some good ones, like Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel and Adam Jones, still don’t have a team. And many of those who did reach agreements settled for one- or two-year deals. It has been a buyer’s market. Again.

Everyone pretty much assumes at this point that there will be a strike or lockout when the current MLB collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2021. My question: Can the players really wait that long to upend the order?

I’m still a sports fan at heart, and I cringe at the idea of a work stoppage. It’s the ultimate intrusion of business into the world of athletics. It steals our last remaining childlike feelings and tells us to grow up, and to hell with that. But if I represented major-league ballplayers, I would seriously consider lighting a fuse under the current labor agreement.

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright seems to share my sentiment. “Unless something changes, there’s going to be a strike. One hundred percent,” he recently told InsideSTL.com. “I’m just worried people are going to walk out midseason.”

There are several things serving to suppress the salaries of veteran players. The luxury tax is one of them. The willingness of some teams to shed payroll and rebuild from the farm system is another. But there is a more fundamental flaw in the structure. It’s MLB’s service time rules, and that’s what I want to focus on here.

Get drafted by a Major League Baseball team, and you will spend some time in the minors. If you’re a college draftee or an experienced international player, it might be just a couple seasons. If you’re a high school athlete with some mechanics to work out, it could take most of a decade. And excluding whatever you might receive as an initial signing bonus, you’ll make peanuts until you reach the bigs.

Then you’re ready to earn some real money, right? Not even close. Under the current CBA, a guy has to play three MLB seasons — a threshold that teams can manipulate, but that’s another column — before he is eligible for salary arbitration. Arbitration is likely to bring a sizable raise for a productive player, but nothing like true market value. Only after six accrued seasons does a player qualify for free agency. And because of the way a “season” is defined, it often turns out to be more like seven years.