Max Scherzer Details MLBPA Wants in Latest Interview

The newest member of the New York Mets, Max Scherzer, sat down with the Los Angeles Times to discuss the MLB lockout and what players are looking for during the new CBA negotiations.

Scherzer serves on the MLBPA eight-player executive subcommittee along with teammate Francisco Lindor. Andrew Miller, Marcus Semien, Zack Britton, James Paxton, Jason Castro, and Gerrit Cole make up the rest of the contingent.

The main goal of the players union is to eliminate teams purposely losing AKA tanking so they can build a team to contend with. One of their main goals is to pay younger players larger salaries to eliminate service-time manipulation.

Talks are currently stalled but are expected to resume this month.

Before sitting down with the LA Times this week, Scherzer detailed union concerns in his introductory press conference with the Mets.

“When you look at how the 2016 CBA agreement and how that has worked over the past five years, as players, we see major problems in it, specifically, first and foremost, we see a competition problem and how teams are behaving because of certain rules that are within that,” Scherzer said in December. “Adjustments have to be made to bring up the competition. As players, that’s critical to us to have a highly competitive league, and when we don’t have that, we have issues.”

Scherzer maintained the same talking points in his latest interview.

One new point he brought up is how owners take advantage of something called the “grand bargain.”

“Well, that’s the kind of third key component to our economic proposals. When you look back at the history of our union, we made a deal called the grand bargain,” Scherzer said. “The grand bargain is that you make less money early in your career so that you can make more money later in your career. Teams have shown that they’re not willing to pay for players’ past production for a whole slew of reasons. And if that’s the case, that’s the case. But if we’re going to look at players that way, then we need to then allocate more money to players earlier in their career. We’re seeing that happen more than ever now, of front offices chiding away middle-class free agents. That’s going at the fundamental part of the grand bargain, and a solution must be found to balance it.”

Scherzer says players are not trying to tie themselves to owner revenue, even as new revenue streams like gambling and media deals grow. The players encourage the owners to make as much money as possible but the economics of the game only works if all 32 MLB teams are actively trying to compete. Scherzer claims that when teams choose not to compete the players’ “slice of the pie gets reduced unnaturally.”

Scherzer also believes teams are treating the luxury tax as a cap on salaries rather than as a way to prevent breakaway spending as was negotiated. The Mets estimated salary for 2022 will blow past the luxury tax threshold with a total payroll currently sitting at $248 million, according to Spotrac. The luxury tax threshold for 2022 was set at $210 million.

“That’s the concept of how we should see the luxury tax function — to prevent one or two teams completely outspending the rest of the league,” Scherzer said. “That’s not what’s happening in the game today. Look no further than how many teams nuzzled just underneath the threshold in 2021.”

Scherzer said during his opening press conference that Mets owner Steve Cohen’s willingness to spend to contend was a reason for him wanting to sign in New York.

Union leaders like Scherzer believed this is the strongest they’ve ever seen it on players being on the same page for their wants. “We all believe in the same thing,” Scherzer said.

So what do baseball players believe in?

According to Scherzer, tanking has increased because of the slot values of draft picks and the amateur and the international marked have surplus value. He says the only way the CBA allows teams to get those players is by losing.

“That has become the winning strategy, yet that shouldn’t be a winning strategy in professional sports,” Scherzer said.

And when teams use the tanking component it leads to service-time manipulation. “Free agency’s supposed to be six years, and they’re manipulating it into seven years and that’s not OK in our book,” Scherzer said.

Most importantly to the fans, does Scherzer believe the season will start on time? Who knows?

“It’s too hard to even speculate what the future looks like,” Scherzer said. “You’re just in limbo right now. You’re training ready to be good to go for when spring training starts. If that doesn’t happen, then you make different decisions based on that. But until that happens, you have to have the mentality that we’re going to be playing on time. Any other kind of speculation is just hearsay.”

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