Despite the dubious financial shenanigans taking center stage in all conversations about the Los Angeles Dodgers and the upcoming MLB CBA fight, the league is not stepping back from continuing to supply proposals to the players in advance of the CBA’s expiration on December 1. (Or perhaps they want to keep pushing in part because no one quite knows how the Mark Walter stuff could wind up impacting the Dodgers’ structure and the public perception of its spending/competitiveness, which goes directly to the league’s stated justification for getting a salary cap in place.)
The latest round of proposals, as shared by Mark Feinsand at MLB.com, among others, features a whole host of transaction-related tweaks. The cap-and-floor system, of course, is also included.
Among the many changes proposed:
- Free agency features the biggest change. There would be a quiet period until the Winter Meetings, where teams and players could negotiate, but not ink any deals. Then, with the start of the Winter Meetings and through December 21, free agents could sign new deals and teams could make trades involving big league players. But then, it’s frozen. Then, the first Monday in February, things would open back up again for transactions. The idea is that there would be a more frenzied transaction window like the other sports, which would definitely be more fun and MLB has wanted for a while.
- … the rub? In a league with a cap and floor system, teams are going to be HEAVILY incentivized to transact as early in the offseason as possible anyway (which is why that happens organically in the capped leagues). So this really doesn’t matter much if there’s a cap in place, which is tethered to all MLB owner proposals right now.
- Massive Rule 5 Draft changes, including a year earlier eligibility AND the ability for drafting teams to option the selected player to the minors(!). This is a tremendously player-friendly proposal, though I’m sure MLB clubs are thinking about the fact that accelerated promotions mean more cheaper players in the bigs and fewer affiliated minor league teams necessary. So it might be very player-friendly for one subset of players, but might help justify a future squeeze.
- Teams would set a weekly roster (like they do for the postseason), and couldn’t freely call players up and down during that week absent an injury (or similar circumstance).
- Rosters stay at 26, but teams would be allowed to carry 14 pitchers if they wanted and 12 position players (right now, it’s required at 13 and 13).
- The number of optionable assignments permitted for a player in a given year would drop from 5 to 4.
- Injured List stays would drop from 10 days (position players) and 15 days (pitchers) to 7 and 14 days, respectively.
