Padres News: Roller coaster of negotiations continues

A 2020 Padres season may be close, but the roller coaster that has been the negotiations between MLB owners and the MLBPA continues.

After the reports surfaced that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA President Tony Clark met face-to-face in Arizona, I think that raised several eyebrows. Especially coming on the heels of the MLBPA rejecting the owners’ last proposal and indicating that negotiations were over.

“Tell us where and when.”

That’s been the mantra of the players since then, basically telling the league to implement a shortened season with prorated salaries.

And yesterday, Jon Heyman got the fans really excited with this tweet, alluding to a potential deal between the league and MLBPA was just about done.

However, that seemed to be far from the truth as several people, including the MLBPA, came forward to dispute Heyman’s tweet. As such, the league’s proposal included the following:

• 60 games in 70 days
• Season starts July 19th
• Players receive full prorated salaries
• Expanded playoffs in 2020 and 2021
• Waiving of any potential grievance

Also, a little nugget that came out of this much later was that a universal DH would be implemented this year and next, with the expectation that it would be permanent under the league’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2022.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic suggested that the MLBPA may counter with a 65-game season, with the hope to squeeze a bit more money out of this less-than-ideal situation. Which raises the question, are we really going to lose a season over five games? We’ll see what happens, but I feel like we are heading in the right direction.