Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball Have Threatened To Walk Away From Minor League Baseball Completely
The war between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball escalated significantly last night, with Minor League Baseball releasing a memo accusing Major League Baseball of “repeatedly and inaccurately” describing the former’s stance in negotiations and Major League Baseball responding by threatening to cut ties with Minor League Baseball entirely.
Relatively slow news day on this fine Monday so I figured it might be interesting to talk about how Major League Baseball has threatened to completely cut ties with Minor League Baseball as negotiations between the two have been public and hostile. This is a very confusing situation so bare with me as I try to explain.
So to bring you up to speed, both sides have been negotiating a new Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA), since the new one expires at the end of next year. Major League Baseball wants 42 minor league teams cut whose facilities are not sufficient enough. Bottom line, there are too many players in the minor league system. Owners want less players and would like a hard capped number per organization. Major League Baseball pays the salaries of not only the players but also the managers, coaches, trainers and staff members who support the farm systems throughout the 190 affiliates in the minors. In exchange, the minors pay MLB a fee, which last year was $20 million. There's been a plea from many to pay minor leaguers more money. I'd assume making teams improve their facilities and cutting teams would allow more money to be spent on the players.
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MiLB has come out and said there were teams on the cut list who made strong efforts just recently to improve their facilities and that it wasn't fair to them. Essentially the criteria needed to be met by the teams to avoid elimination was not clear and was total bullshit. I can see why the MiLB would be pissed about that along with the fact that the teams are being cut and player limits being shrunk.
Bottom line, negotiations have not gone well. Manfred originally was furious these talks were happening in public and now he's publicly threatened to start an entire different league and fuck over Minor League Baseball. Not great! I can't see in any scenario where Minor League Baseball becomes non-existent. It's one helluva threat, but I don't think they have the balls to do it. That's just not a practical resolution to any of this. I now have a massive headache after reading and writing all of this. Just figure this out.
(if I missed any important details about why each side is angry please let me know)