MLB raises pre-arbitration bonus pool money by just $5 million during Monday’s discussions with the MLBPA

By the reports that were coming out of today’s meetings in Jupiter, Florida it felt like there was going to be some significant progress made between Major League Baseball and the Players Association. However, that was not the case, according to Evan Drellich of The Athletic.

The reason there was optimism among baseball fans today was because of the reports that said that both parties hadn’t left the facility for five hours. However, the two sides initially met for an hour and ten minutes before meeting amongst themselves for three hours before ending their session at around 6 pm ET. Thus, it isn’t clear how long the players and league actually met with each other.

The owners don’t seem motivated right now to make huge concessions to the players if we’re basing it off of their modest $5 million pre-arbitration bonus pool money increase (that would go to the top 30 pre-arb WAR players). The players, though, will still have to make concessions as well in this area because there’s no way the owners are going to give them $100+ million to share with pre-arbitration players.

The players also want a much higher CBT than the $210 million that it was at last year and this issue wasn’t even discussed today, so there’s a lot of ground to be made up there as well.

Both sides plan to meet again on Tuesday and the MLBPA is expected to make a counterproposal at this meeting, according to Jeff Passan.

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