PHILADELPHIA — MLB players and team owners aren’t just far apart on the specific proposals of ongoing labor talks. They also don’t have remotely the same view on the state of the game.
With the collective bargaining agreement expiring in less than five months, bargaining is in a grim state.
Speaking separately Tuesday morning with the Baseball Writers Association of America, MLB Players Association interim executive director Bruce Meyer and league commissioner Rob Manfred detailed two very different assessments of the sport’s health.
Meyer pointedly said that management has spent the last several years “selling negativity” to fans in pursuit of measures such as a hard salary cap, heightened restrictions on amateur entry into the sport, and strict limitations on free-agent contracts.
“The supposed stewards of the game have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince fans that they don’t have hope, that they shouldn’t have hope, or that the product that they’re paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken,” Meyer said of the league. “I think it’s perverse.”
