MLB owners can put pressure on players with specific raise

If MLB wants to put the MLBPA on the defensive overnight, all they need to do is offer a 12 percent raise of that league minimum salary.

At the end of the day, the bulk of the blame for the MLB lockout falls on ownership.

True, owners have always been the easy targets in these kinds of disputes across all sports. There just isn’t much sympathy to be found for billionaires, even before the 1 percent was labeled the 1 percent. There isn’t much sympathy to be found for rich athletes either, but they generally get more of a pass than their employers. However, this time around, the players do have some pretty legitimate gripes. MLB teams do actively manipulate service time to keep players from reaching free agency. MLB players can be kept from reaching free agency for an absurd length of time, at least relative to other professional sports leagues. Players do make an unequal share of a growing pie, and total player salary has declined as total league revenue has increased.

But … if MLB wants to end this lockout overnight, and put the MLBPA on the defensive, all they need to do is offer a 12 percent raise and dare the union to reject it.

Why? Because a 12 percent raise over that most recent MLB minimum salary would come out as just slightly more than the median household income in the United States. To be specific, that would be a pay bump in the neighborhood of $67,000. That’s life-changing stuff for the vast majority of fans. Consequently, that’s a sum that the MLBPA would have to very careful about dismissing out of hand.

Now, 12 percent in a single year is a massive raise, and one ownership could find hard to swallow at first. The average annual raise in the United States comes out at around 3 percent. However, MLB minimum salary has been largely static since the last CBA was signed five years ago. Since then, the only increases have been inflation adjustments that have typically fallen short of the actual inflation rate. Through that lens, a 12 percent hike is pretty fair.

More to the point though, it sets up that opportunity to put the MLBPA in the position of turning up their nose at being offered an amount of money most households are lucky to generate in a year.

If that’s too rich, how about a 9 percent raise that would surpass the average individual salary? Or go big and make it a 15 percent raise. That way the number would surpass the average salary of an ER nurse, perhaps the most prominent of our first responders. As long as the league leads off with a raise that allows this type of comparison to be made, they can pretty safely ignore anything else the union demands.

Trivializing those earnings is not the look you want. In fact, the MLBPA would be crazy to do it, even if, in reality, the owners are still getting off easy. After all, every year free agency is put off equals savings in the millions in terms of committed dollars.

If MLB owners really want to keep those six years of control before free agency intact, paying a little more than they would like those first three years is the best way to do it.