MLB llegó a un nuevo acuerdo con la Asociación de Peloteros

TODAY: Details on the new agreement continue to trickle in. The minimum DL stint will now be ten days, per a report from Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. By making the DL more readily utilized, the rule could also increase the amount of player movement — as well as the value of optionable 40-man assets.

Meanwhile, the All-Star game will return to simply being a spectacle, rather than determining home-field advantage for the World Series. Now, the World Series team with the better regular-season record will enjoy an added home game, which seems clearly a better approach.

YESTERDAY: Major League Baseball and the MLB Player’s Association have announced that they’ve tentatively settled on a new collective bargaining agreement, as Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports first reported (Twitter link). It’s another five-year arrangement, as Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports was first to tweet. The sides are still hammering out the final deal, per the announcement.

With the new deal, the owners and union have averted any impairment of the offseason market and continued a strong record of labor peace. Fresh on the heels of a thrilling postseason, and with the game sporting rising profits, the stage is set for continued prosperity.

The expectation all along had been that a deal would be found in advance of the expiration of the prior CBA at midnight tonight. With huge amounts of money at stake for all involved, and general agreement on all but a few areas, it would have rated as a major surprise had things gone south. Still, there were rumblings of late that there could be a lockout, and it took until about three hours before the deadline to finally resolve all the deadlocks.

There will certainly be many details to parse out as the results of the negotiation are revealed. Here are some key areas that have been discussed in recent months:

Roster Size

In one notable realm, there will be no changes. The sides decided against modifying the active roster rules, Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports on Twitter. Rosters will remain at 25 players, rather than moving to 26, and September roster expansion will not be curtailed.

Luxury Tax Line

Meanwhile, the luxury tax threshold will rise from $189MM to around $195MM in the 2017 season, Sherman further reports (links to Twitter). It’ll then reach $210MM over the five-year span. ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark provides the full schedule of the luxury tax line, via Twitter (as Rosenthal had previously suggested, also on Twitter). Between the $195MM starting point and $210MM max level, the tax will kick in for the intervening years at $197MM (2018), $206MM (2019), and $208MM (2020).

Additionally, the CBA imposes new penalties for spending over the tax line that figure to serve as a rather notable deterrent to big-market spending. Going past the threshold for the first time comes with a 20% tax, which increase to 30% for a second year and 50% for a third. There’s an additional 12% added on top when teams exceed the mark by between $20MM to $40MM, while going past $40MM triggers the maximum penalty — which can reach a 90% tax on overages. (That information comes via Bob Nightengale of USA Today, via Twitter; Sherman and Stark previously sketched the parameters.)

Qualifying Offer

The qualifying offer system has been another area of some uncertainty, and it seems as if it will undergo some highly significant changes:

• First-round picks will no longer be sacrificed in signings of QO-declining players, Jon Morosi of MLB Network tweets. These changes will not apply until the following offseason, Morosi notes on Twitter.
• All teams will stand to sacrifice draft picks if they sign players who declined qualifying offers, Stark tweets, but at varying levels. Organizations that are over the luxury tax line will punt a second and a fifth-round choice, while those who are under the threshold would stand to sacrifice a third-rounder.
• Importantly, players will no longer be able to receive more than a single qualifying offer, Rosenthal reports (Twitter links). Additionally, a team whose QO-declining player signs elsewhere will only receive compensation if that player signs for $50MM or more, and the draft compensation will be dependent upon the market size of the team that loses a free agent.
• All told, the above changes promise to represent a rather monumental shift in the function of the qualifying offer system. It will clearly hurt free agents less, and the reduced draft compensation will likely make it slightly more likely that veterans end up being traded in the season before they hit the open market. Whether less players will be tagged with QOs remains to be seen; though there’s less to be gained for teams, there’s also less of a disincentive for players to enter free agency.

International

There will indeed be a hard bonus cap for international signings, rather than a draft, Stark reports. It will only be about $5MM per team, he adds on Twitter, which seems likely to suppress international spending.

Cuban players who are at least 25 years of age and have six years of Serie Nacional experience will be exempt from these limitations, Morosi tweets. (It is important to remember, too, that the flow of Cuban talent will likely change in upcoming years; also, it’s not clear whether players from other countries will continue to be exempt from these limitations.)

Other

• The “performance factor” element of the revenue-sharing system will be removed, per Passan (Twitter links). That had functioned as what Passan terms a “revenue-sharing multiplier,” so its removal will likely mean that large-budget clubs are required to pay less into the pool.
• The Athletics “will be phased out as a revenue-sharing recipient over the next four years,” Rosenthal adds (via Twitter).
• To accommodate additional off-days, meanwhile, the league will kick off the season in the middle of the week beginning in 2018, per Rosenthal (via Twitter).
• Some of those days could go toward international marketing efforts. MLB intends to put on regular season games abroad as soon as 2018, Morosi tweets, with London and Mexico the most likely targets. The CBA is expected to accommodate that new addition.
• In another wrinkle, via Sherman (on Twitter), the league will ban incoming MLB players from using smokeless tobacco, with existing players grandfathered in.