Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants were 21-29 on May 24 last year, fresh off an 18-2 destruction by Arizona, long before a July surge brought them onto the periphery of contention. Mike Yastrzemski wouldn’t debut in the majors until the next day, May 25. Mauricio Dubon was a pipe dream.
What if the season concluded right there?
The latest volley from Major League Baseball to the Players Association, ESPN first reported, will entail a significantly shorter season than the union proposed, somewhere in the 50-game neighborhood. In moving further apart in schedule, MLB is trying to move closer in payment structure; under the especially abbreviated season, it would adhere to the prorated contracts the union believes the two parties agreed upon in late March.
The previous offer from MLB involved large cuts from those prorated salaries on a sliding scale, significantly chopping off the earning power of the higher-paid players in the league.
In response, the union, which is adamant additional cuts should not have to be absorbed following the prorating of deals, countered with an offer that featured a 114-game season (up from MLB’s proposed 82) that would extend the World Series past Thanksgiving. The more games, the bigger a prorated contract gets.
MLB does not want to extend the season that deep in part because of the threat of a second wave of COVID-19 would grow larger, and in part because the more regular-season games, the more money owners would dish out in a season that likely won’t include fans in stadiums.
According to the ESPN report, MLB believes the March pact allows it to decide the length of the season. By moving so far away from the union’s 114-game offer, it’s sensible the league aims to meet somewhere in the middle — which would be the low-80s number it originally proposed.