New York Yankees reliever Zach Britton, Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Lucas Giolito, and new Texas Rangers infielder Marcus Semien were on an episode of Jomboy’s Chris Rose Rotation that was released on Monday and the trio shed light on the current state of the MLB lockout.
As you may expect, the trio said that there have been no recent discussions as negotiations are supposed to resume in January, but there were some things that we learned from them about their side of negotiations after we heard from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this month.
New York Yankees reliever Zach Britton had a lot to say about the MLB lockout
While Lucas Giolito (who is the player rep for the Chicago White Sox in the MLBPA) and Marcus Semien (who is an Alternate Association Player Rep) each had some things to say about the lockout, New York Yankees reliever Zach Britton (who is Pension Committee Representative for the Players) had the most things of note to say about the state of the MLB lockout.
Unsurprisingly, Britton said that he believes that the MLBPA gave some good proposals to the owners but, obviously, the owners balked at them.
“We feel like we’ve offered some good proposals,” Britton said. “And really we didn’t get anything from their end in Dallas (where negotiations were in the final few days of November before the lockout started).”
Semien added that MLB could have continued to negotiate and not put the lockout in place upon the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) expiring.
Giolito, essentially, echoed what Britton said in saying that the Players tried to “tango” but the owners were having none of it. “We’re here, we’re ready to negotiate,” Giolito told Rose. “We’re pretty much waiting on MLB. We’ve made our proposals, we’ve made multiple proposals right before they decided to lock us out. They said no, they weren’t interested at the time. … We’re not going to negotiate against ourselves. It takes two to tango.”
One issue that Britton spoke about was the issue of competitive balance, which would keep teams from being able to tank. Britton claimed that the players believe that they are looking out more for competitive balance than the owners.
“We want every team to be trying to win year-in and year-out,” Britton said. “We think that’s fair to the fanbases and that’s what we want. We’re going to continue to send that message.”
Another issue with the lockout is that it could delay the start of Spring Training and the start of the regular season. Semien showed optimism from the union about it not going that far but he said that “January is (going to be) a huge month.”
During the pandemic, the two sides fought over how many games would be played. The players proposed as many as 110 games to be played in the regular season while the owners proposed far fewer. Eventually, the sides compromised and agreed on 60, but MLBPA eventually filed a grievance alleging that MLB didn’t negotiate in good faith to play as many games as possible last year due to a lack of attendance for fans and, therefore, little revenue.
Giolito said that it was, essentially, a learning experience for them.
“(Waiting it out) is part of the process right now,” Giolito said. “Going through the pandemic year, kind of fighting for what we wanted as players, really coming together, communicating well, that puts us in a good position now. … Even if things are delayed a little bit, we’re here, we’re ready to negotiate. We’re going to keep pushing for getting a season going as soon as possible.“
If MLB Trade Rumors poll of (as of early Tuesday morning) nearly 16,000 people, the vast plurality of the people are in favor of the players in the CBA. Between neither side or the players’ side, nearly 86 percent of voters were not in favor of the owners.