Another day of collective bargaining brought about only additional consternation between Major League Baseball and the Players Association as the calendar inches closer to a delay in the start of the season.
For the second day in a row, the sides met Tuesday at a spring-training ballpark in Jupiter, Fla., with the players taking their turn to revise a previous proposal. The pitch, according to sources familiar with the meeting, included a 5% decrease in the number of two-year players who would be eligible for salary arbitration but annual increases in the minimum salary from a starting point of $775,000 in the first year of the deal.
The players’ proposal was characterized by sources as a proportional response to MLB’s Monday proposal, in which the owners agreed to add a total of only $5 million to the bonus pool for pre-arbitration (entry-level) players. But MLB’s number-crunching produced a different interpretation, sources said, with the belief that the reductions in arbitration eligibility didn’t offset the raises in minimum salary.
