Changes on table as CBA deadline nears

The stakes are high as the Major League Baseball Players Association executive board meetings take place in Dallas this week.

Specifically at stake is the fate of the sport’s collective bargaining agreement, and the players and owners were still at work Monday in Dallas on coming to terms in advance of the expiration of the current CBA, which will happen on Wednesday when the clock strikes midnight and the calendar turns to Dec. 1.

Time is obviously of the essence, and multiple reports indicated that the owners’ push for an international draft had been a chief sticking point. Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan reported that “a significant number” of Latin American players were expected at Monday’s meeting to voice their objections to the international draft, and perhaps those objections carried weight. On Monday night, Ken Rosenthal of MLB Network and FOX Sports tweeted that the owners had “backed off the international draft as a requirement for a new collective bargaining agreement.”

Though a lockout is not a certainty should the deadline pass without an agreement, it was enough of a possibility that team executives received an e-mail last week detailing protocol for such an arrangement (i.e., no Major League roster activity of any sort and no club attendance at the Winter Meetings). A December lockout would not necessarily be a precursor to an actual work stoppage, but it would put a freeze on player benefits and delay free-agent signings. 

Let’s review a few of the primary — though certainly not the only — issues being sorted out in the CBA discussions:

The international draft

Why did owners want an international draft in the first place? Well, for one, much like the Draft in June, it would feature a total spending cap that keeps bonuses in check. Also, importantly, it would address the “wild, wild west” environment that currently pervades the Latin American markets, where some agents have been known to take advantage of players.

Other goals include leveling the playing field, giving all teams fair shots at getting players into their pipelines, raising the bar for compensation overall, introducing more MLB-ready interest in the Draft as a whole and not requiring a system of spending limits applied only to players in other parts of the world.

However, the players in an increasingly international sport (a record-tying 18 countries were represented on Opening Day rosters this year, and 27.5 percent of those rosters were made up of players born outside the U.S.) have been leery of the idea of a draft that would limit the leverage and earning potential of part of the next generation of prospects.

Recent agreements have seen players making certain compromises arguably at the expense of future members. The 2011 CBA, for example, fell short of a hard slotting system for the June amateur Draft but did introduce a ceiling on the total number of dollars a team could spend on its picks. This had an instant impact on bonuses.

Despite that, and …

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