McAdam: MLB keeps making the same offer to Players Association - with predictable results

The definition of insanity, it's often said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Welcome, in other words, to Major League Baseball's curious negotiating strategy.

Over the last few weeks,  MLB has made three different offers to the Players Association concerning salary payments for a shortened 2020 season.

Initially, the offer was an 82-game schedule featuring a sliding-scale proposal, with those players at the upper end of the pay scale being asked to sacrifice the most and players nearer the bottom seeing their salaries reduced by a smaller percentage.

Next came a 50-game proposal in which the players would earn their full pro-rated salaries for the season, translating into a little less than one-third of their original expected pay.

Finally, on Monday, MLB countered with an offer to guarantee half the pro-rated salaries for a 76-game schedule. Should the entire postseason be completed, salaries would be funded to 75 percent of the pro-rated figure.

All three had one thing in common: in each proposal, owners would be paying out a total of $1.4 billion, give or take a few million here and there. They can decorate each offer however they wish and put different bows on them, but in the end, they're all pretty much identical.

No matter how Major League Baseball presented it, or how they arrived at the math, the final number remained the same. The rest -- amount guaranteed, length of schedule -- is mere wrapping paper.

All of which makes it impossible to ignore that one of two things are true about MLB owners: either they don't want a negotiated settlement, or they're completely intractable. Or both, which can't be dismissed.

To be fair, MLB's offers have contained some minor tweaks that could help the players materially in ways that are difficult to currently quantify. For instance, Monday's offer included the proposal that MLB do away with free-agent compensation for the first time in more than 40 years. (Under the current CBA, free agents who receive a qualifying offer would cost their signing teams draft picks; that would be suspended for the 2020-2021 offseason). Such a gesture was designed to remove any additional impediments for a free-agent class which already will be impacted like no other, thanks to the pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown.

But the meat-and-potatoes aspect of the deals hasn't changed much. It's just MLB reshuffling the same stacked deck.

The players haven't exactly been creative with their own counter-proposals. Every one of them has continued to insist on a full pro-rated basis, as they believe the memorandum of agreement agreed upon in March guarantees them.

But if there's going to compromise made to reach agreement, the owners are far better positioned to make it and still recover. Even if teams suffer short-term losses this season - what business won't take a hit under the circumstances? -- they can still recover in years to come, all the while experiencing growth in franchise value. Long-term, teams will be made whole, especially with the expected uptick from the TV  rights fees for a portion of the postseason currently up for renewal.

The same can't necessarily be said of the players, whose careers are limited to begin with and whose earning power is capped over the first five seasons.

Another consistent aspect of the proposals from the owners side is the insistence that the regular season end when it was supposed to end -- Sept. 27 -- before the pandemic struck.

The motivation here is obvious: Experts are already predicting a second wave of the coronavirus to strike this fall when the weather cools and owners fear the cancellation (or shortening) of the postseason, from which they gain the biggest percentage of their revenue.

If MLB is as inflexible on the end date as it is with its economic proposals, then time is truly running out to save the season.

Then again, that might be the point.

The March memorandum gives commissioner Rob Manfred the right to unilaterally implement a schedule of his own determination so long as A) players receive their full pro-rated share of salaries and B) all other efforts to salvage the season have been exhausted.

Increasingly, sources with knowledge of Players Association's thinking believe that's been MLB's plan all along: a short season (50 or so games) to minimize losses and a late September conclusion to allow for the completion of the lucrative postseason.

The players would have little recourse, other than to refuse to agree to an expanded playoff format or participating in other enhanced marketing ideas (wearing microphones during games). Ironically, opting out of both suggestions could serve to take some money out of some players' pockets while passing on an opportunity to better promote the sport.

That's how entrenched both sides have become -- with the players, out of spite, passing on ideas which could benefit them and the owners giving every indication that they don't care whether this season is played at all and negotiating accordingly.

And that -- perfectly and sadly -- sums up the state of the game in 2020.