Kansas City Royals Whit Merrifield and Brad Keller: MLBPA moved things in right direction
After those three months of take-no-prisoners labor negotiations that threatened to cut the Major League Baseball season short and ultimately pushed back Opening Day one week, the players and owners reached an agreement that put the sport on a slightly different course for the next five years.
For the players like Royals All-Star Whit Merrifield and starting pitcher Bad Keller, the lockout and the negotiations were an important, if not necessary, evil.
The players certainly didn’t come away having achieved all their objectives. However, that doesn’t mean the players walked away feeling as though they’d gotten run over in the dealings.
“Time will tell,” Merrifield, the Royals’ union player representative said. “It’s hard to say now. We got some numbers up. We didn’t get them to where we think they should be. But we got them moving in the right direction.
“But the main goal was to not only reflect what players are making based on the growth of the game, but to improve the game and improve competitiveness and making it to where teams are fighting to win year in and year out. We feel like we did some things to help with that. Time will tell if teams adapt and try to win more consistently than they have been.”
The lockout stretched 99 days, the majority of which took place during offseason months when the biggest league-wide events have to do with transactions (Winter Meetings, Rule 5 Draft) as opposed to actual games played.
By lasting as long as it did, it threatened regular-season games and shortened spring training camps as well as Cactus League and Grapefruit League exhibition slates.
It also frustrated fans who were faced with uncertainty and the possibility of a second truncated season in three years, this time due to labor strife instead of a pandemic.
“It was kind of a mix of emotions throughout the league and with fans and everything,” Keller, an assistant player representative, said. “But I think, honestly, to see the game get back and to play was first and foremost.
“We held strong. They held strong. It kind of got iffy there. I’m sure everyone saw that with the fans (asking) when are we going to be back. I think ultimately we got a step in the right direction. We got mostly what we wanted. Obviously, it’s a negotiation. You’re not going to get everything, same thing with owners. You’ve got to kind of meet in the middle.”
The new CBA
Some of the key changes the new CBA features include:
- Raising the major-league minimum salary from $570,500 in 2021 to: $700,000 in 2022; $720,000 in 2023; $740,000 in 2024; $760,000 in 2025; and $780,000 in 2026
- Creating a $50 million bonus pool for players who have not yet reached salary arbitration with an emphasis on players in the running for awards such as MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and All-MLB selections
- The Competitive Balance Tax thresholds will be $230 million in 2022, $233 million in 2023, $237 million in 2024, $241 million in 2025, and $244 million in 2026
- Changing the domestic amateur draft selection process to include a draft lottery system which restricts a club’s inclusion in consecutive years based on whether they were revenue sharing status
- Draft-pick incentives for clubs that promote top prospects and avoid service-time manipulation
- Expanding the postseason from 10 teams to 12 teams
- Limiting the number of times a player can be optioned to the minors in a single season
- Awarding service time credit for players who finish first or second in the Rookie of the Year voting
- Elimination of draft-pick compensation attached to free-agents (contingent upon the agreement on an international draft)
“A lot of it — this affects that, everything affects everything,” Merrifield said of the union’s view that many of their issues were interconnected and shouldn’t be viewed individually. “So we were making sure that if we moved in one direction, it wasn’t affecting — or it was keeping what we were trying to do on this end where we wanted even though this end was being affected.
“For example, if we move the minimum up, and we get the bonus pool, and we’re playing young players more, which is a great thing, but we don’t get that CBT up, it shrinks the window for teams to go spend on free agency. We wanted to make sure we addressed younger players, the middle class of free agency, obviously the high-end class will always take care of itself, but wanted to make sure that those guys getting neglected were taken care of.”
Keller also pointed to the universal DH as a feather in the cap of the players.
“I think the universal DH is going to be pretty big to kind of open up jobs for guys,” Keller said. “You don’t have to limit DHs to just 15 teams. They’re now open to all 30.”
Former Royals slugger Jorge Soler, the MVP of the World Series last year for the Atlanta Braves, is currently a free agent who might cash in on that expanded market.
Getting involved and shaping the future
Merrifield is a two-time All-Star who has led the majors in steals and hits in past seasons.
He signed a multi-year contract extension prior to the 2019 season — had he not, he’d just be reaching his third arbitration-eligible year this season at the age of 33.
A case could be made that Merrifield’s best season came in 2018 before he’d even become arbitration eligible.
The players in the first three years in the majors (before they reach arbitration) were a major focus of the union because many of the game’s breakout stars come from that group, yet they remain years away from free agency.
“Baseball’s weird where teams have so much control over players versus other sports,” Merrifield said. “You get guys that come in, especially with the way our game is now with Vladdy (Guerrero) and (Fernando) Tatis and (Ronald) Acuna, guys who come in and set the world on fire, they’re making $550,000 a year.
“While it’s a lot of money, based on the amount of revenue they’re generating for their club and for the league, it’s pennies. We needed to try to get that going in the right direction. Hopefully we did that. There’s still work to be done. We’ll talk again in six years.”
Royals top prospect Bobby Witt Jr., last year’s Minor League Player of the Year and a consensus pick as one of the top three prospects in the sport, has been viewed by some as having similar breakout potential.
Last month in an interview with The Star, former Royals star Alex Gordon joked that he handed over the player rep duties to Merrifield at just the right time considering the global pandemic in 2020 and these labor negotiations.
“The Covid year was worse,” Merrifield said. “That was worse. This was, it was long, tedious calls, but I really felt, after you got done with calls, I would step back and think about, man what we’re doing is going to change the future, the landscape of the game. When I thought about that, I was like, ‘OK, these calls are worth it. It’s worth it to be on these calls and be informed, be engaged.’”
Gordon was actually the one who suggested the idea of Keller and Hunter Dozier becoming assistant player reps for the Royals.
“I was always curious about it before,” Keller said. “Obviously, you want to get involved in how everything is working because you just want to know. Knowledge is power. Honestly, it was a great time to get involved because all of this went down and to be able to be in on the meetings and understand what was going on, it was big. Especially looking forward to the next few years and how it might shake out then.
“It was stressful at times, but fortunately Whit is great as a player rep. He did a lot. He does very well communicating everything. We kind of sat back and let him do his thing until he needed us.”
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 7:30 PM.
