NEW YORK -- Commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday acknowledged that he worries Major League Baseball's labor negotiations could lead to a long work stoppage resembling the 1994-95 players' strike that cost the league 948 regular-season games and the entire 1994 postseason.
"Of course I do," Manfred said Wednesday during the owners meetings. "We want to make an agreement. We made a proposal on one set of topics. At the outset of negotiations, I went and said myself, 'We're open to whatever ideas people have, but we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans' concerns about competitive balance.' You just can't ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us."
Last week, a day after the MLB Players Association made the first proposal in collective bargaining talks, MLB formally proposed a hard salary cap for the first time since 1994 -- the last time games were lost to a work stoppage -- saying it is necessary to fix the sport's competitive balance concerns.
While MLB's proposal calls for an overhaul of the sport's economic structure with a firm salary cap of $245.3 million and a hard floor of $171.2 million, the union's offer works within the current competitive balance tax system.
The current collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1. If the two parties cannot negotiate a new one by then, owners are expected to lock out the players until a deal is reached. The owners instituted a lockout when the last CBA expired in December 2021. That work stoppage lasted 99 days before an agreement was reached in March 2022, narrowly avoiding any missed games.
Unlike the previous negotiations, MLB is seeking to revamp the game's financial structure.
"We have tried, mightily, over several rounds of bargaining to use a competitive balance tax to address competitive concerns," Manfred said. "And sometimes you've got to admit you failed."