The union and the league puffed out their chests before the All-Star Game. Here’s what stood out

PHILADELPHIA — To commissioner Rob Manfred, baseball’s owners are more resolute today than they were even during the 1994-95 strike, which lasted a grueling 232 days.

During that dispute, the owners ultimately caved on a salary cap, a system they are still trying to impose some 30 years later. But the commissioner’s suggestion that owners are even more unified now is nonetheless a loaded statement: an intimation that this go-around, the league might be willing to fight for an even longer time to get what it wants.

“I do know this: I think that I have an ownership group that is more united than any group in my entire time in baseball,” said Manfred, who started working with MLB as outside counsel in the late 1980s. “I think they are a group that believes in what I have been arguing for, and that is listening to our fans, trying to make changes to produce the best possible game that we can produce.”

Of course, both players and owners alike are incentivized to publicly project strength, and only strength, during collective bargaining. Such is the nature of a labor negotiation.

“Our union, the MLBPA, has been the most successful of the unions in professional sports,” said interim union head Bruce Meyer, who, like Manfred, spoke to members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday prior to the All-Star Game. “The other unions look to the MLBPA. I sometimes get asked about a salary cap, ‘Why does baseball not have one? Why is it the only one that doesn’t have one?’ The answer is very simple. It’s because our union has been the strongest.”

Between now and the time that the players and owners finally work out a new labor deal, whenever that might be — the current one expires in December, when a lockout is likely to begin — a lot of the same talking points will come up again and again.

Manfred and Meyer again spent a lot of time on Tuesday on the state of competitive balance in the sport. Manfred thinks it’s broken, Meyer doesn’t. But a few nuggets came out that at least had the appearance of being fresh additions.

More than once, Manfred tried to lean on the value of change, painting himself as the tip of the spear guiding baseball into a new era. The players for years have resisted a cap. But that alone, he said, should not deter his effort.

“This is an interesting thing. It has always puzzled me why people think because one side to a negotiation says, ‘I’m opposed to this,’ that ought to take it off the table,’” Manfred said. “You know, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, just like the beginning of the salary-cap opposition, you had owners who said, ‘I’m never going to play a player a million dollars.’ Well, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen in a changed world. So that’s a very puzzling thing to me.”

Manfred also pointed to perhaps the most prominent feather in his cap over his 11-plus years leading the owners, the pitch clock, as a reason why he and the owners should be trusted with other changes. The league is having “another good year” in attendance and ratings, he said.

“Momentum in the game is a great thing,” Manfred said. “We got that momentum by listening to our fans and making changes that, candidly, the MLBPA was not interested in.

“Those changes have paid off in terms of creating that momentum, and the best way to lose momentum is to stand still. We’re doing exactly the same thing that we did with the rule changes — we’re listening to our fans.”

Manfred’s reliance on fan sentiment isn’t new, but he hasn’t often connected an argument for a salary cap to the same mindset that produced the pitch clock.

The union thinks it’s silly for the league to suggest it’s simply listening to fans when it is also, actively, trying to convince them that their product is broken, by running ads advocating for a salary cap.

Setting the record straight on 2022

For Meyer’s part, he took on what has been a lingering talking point on the owners’ side, and indeed could be an influential slice of history as this negotiation proceeds.

When the last round of bargaining ended in March 2022, the MLBPA’s 38-player voting body, its executive board, accepted the league’s proposal to end the lockout by a 26-12 tally.

Two groups make up the union’s 38-man board: the executive subcommittee, a group of eight players who work closely with union officials like Meyer, and the union’s 30 player reps, one from each team.

All eight subcommittee members voted to turn down the deal. All but four of the 30 player reps, however, voted to accept.

That accounting has planted a seed with owners, a sense that the union leadership was disconnected from its rank and file. It’s fueled speculation that when push comes to shove again next spring, players might value the preservation of a full 162-game season over anything else — even if it meant bucking union leadership. Even if it meant accepting a salary cap.

Saying he hears “a lot of misinformation” about the end of the last lockout, Meyer emphasized the importance of the overall group of 38, not just the eight subcommittee members.

“We don’t have a negotiating committee other than our executive board,” Meyer said. “Our executive board is not the eight members of the subcommittee. Our executive board is the 38. … At every step in bargaining, last time and this time, all 38 are involved.”

He also pointed back to Manfred’s own announcement from March 1, 2022, that games would in fact be canceled.

“What I think gets forgotten is — and I know the league leaves this part out — is that we started negotiating in April or May (2021),” Meyer said. “In our view, we didn’t get serious proposals from the league until February (2022). At the end of the day, in February, they started making real moves.

“At one point, they said … ‘We are going to miss games. That’s it.’ At that point, our players unanimously, the entire executive board, all 38, said that deal is not good enough.

“The league went back and they made their offer better. And again, they said, ‘All right, this time we mean it. If you don’t agree, then we’re going to miss games. That’s it. It’s too late.’ Again our players, and again unanimously — all 38 — rejected it.”

The third time, the owners’ offer had grown sufficiently, in Meyer’s view. He also said he did not recommend turning down the deal that turned into the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement that’s about to expire.

“My point is, the players were completely unified and willing to miss games up until the point where the league finally put enough on the table,” Meyer said. “Some of the narrative leaves out the two steps before that, where all 38 were unanimous in saying, we are willing to miss games unless you make the deal better.

“At the end of the day, yes, we did have disagreement. We had some players who thought we should try to miss games and see if we could do better.

“That included all eight members of the executive subcommittee, but … (former MLBPA head Tony Clark) and I, we did not recommend against the deal. We were not overridden by the players. We could have done that. We thought it was a good deal. And I do think still that it’s a good deal.”