If baseball’s labor dispute shortens the regular season, as MLB has said will happen unless a deal is reached by Monday, the financial losses will be steep for Braves players.
Starting pitcher Charlie Morton, whose $20 million salary is currently the highest on the Braves’ books for this year, would lose more than $107,000 per day starting March 31, the scheduled season-opening date.
Outfielders Marcell Ozuna and Ronald Acuna, whose contracts call for 2022 salaries of $16 million and $15 million, respectively, would forfeit more than $80,000 each per day.
And relief pitcher Will Smith, set to make $13 million, would lose almost $70,000 per day.
MLB players, who aren’t paid in the offseason or during spring training, are slated to receive their salaries across a 186-day (162-game) regular season. For each day of the season lost to the lockout, players would face the forfeiture of 1/186th of their salaries.
That risk was underscored Wednesday when an MLB spokesperson told reporters after a bargaining session in Jupiter, Florida, that some regular-season games will be canceled if a new labor deal isn’t agreed to by the end of Monday.
“A deadline is a deadline. Missed games are missed games. Salary will not be paid for those games,” the spokesperson said.
The Players Association certainly could be expected to fight that stance. For example, if a deal were to be made relatively soon after MLB’s Monday deadline, the union could argue that enough time still remains for an abbreviated spring training and an on-time start of the season. And even if a limited number of regular-season games are canceled, the union could argue that the games can be made up later in the year, perhaps in doubleheaders.
But with Wednesday’s pronouncement, MLB was sending a hard-line message to players, perhaps as a pressure tactic, that they’ll lose substantial money if there isn’t a deal Monday.
Across all of MLB’s 30 teams, The Associated Press estimated that players would combine to lose about $20.5 million for each day of the regular season eliminated by the lockout, based on last year’s total base salaries.
According to calculations by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Braves players would lose a combined total of more than $800,000 per day, based on a projected 2022 payroll at or above last year’s end-of-season level of approximately $150 million.
“A deadline is a deadline. Missed games are missed games. Salary will not be paid for those games."
That would include daily losses of $107,527 by Morton, $86,021 by Ozuna, $80,645 by Acuna, $69,892 by Smith, $43,011 by catcher Travis d’Arnaud and $26,882 by second baseman Ozzie Albies.
Salaries for 2022 haven’t been set for many other Braves players, including those who are eligible for arbitration, which has been delayed by the lockout. But the salaries eventually set in arbitration also would be subject to reductions for games lost to the lockout.
The Braves’ arbitration-eligible players include shortstop Dansby Swanson, third baseman Austin Riley, outfielder Adam Duvall and pitchers Max Fried, Mike Soroka, Luke Jackson, Tyler Matzek, A.J. Minter and Sean Newcomb.
Among the many unresolved issues in the labor negotiations is setting the minimum MLB salary. The owners on Wednesday proposed a 2022 minimum of $640,000, compared with the players’ earlier proposal of $775,000. At the midpoint of those figures, a player making the minimum would forfeit $3,804 for each regular-season day canceled.
The Braves had eight players on last year’s opening-day roster making at or near the minimum. Players typically are paid near that level until they become eligible for salary arbitration.
At the other end of the spectrum, pitcher Max Scherzer has baseball’s highest 2022 salary, having signed a three-year, $130 million contract ($43.33 million per year) with the New York Mets as a free agent before the lockout began. He stands to lose a whopping $232,975 per day if the regular season is shortened, the AP reported.
