Yankees team president Randy Levine gave a lengthy interview with ESPN Radio on Monday, addressing many facets of the current lockout and CBA negotiations. Among the many comments he made, one that struck a particular chord with the wider baseball world centered around the money coming into MLB—or, as Levine framed it, the lack thereof.
“People seem to think that all this money that’s come into Major League Baseball, that we’ve recouped all the losses from COVID, and everything is back to the way it was. Nothing is farther from the truth,” Levine said. “Speaking for the Yankees, the highest revenue team, we didn’t have fans in the stands for a year and a half. We lost television games, we lost all kinds of revenue, and baseball lost billions and billions of dollars. Players lost salary, players lost money, it was a very unfortunate circumstance.”
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Levine declined to discuss specifics in regard to precise revenue figures for the Yankees or MLB, though his sentiments provided a window into how owners have operated during lengthy and contested negotiations with the players association, with financial concerns lying at the center of most unresolved issues.
Levine also addressed the players union’s efforts to raise the league minimum and enable younger players to make more money earlier in their careers, suggesting that such a concession would prove costly to older players given the “finite amount of money” throughout the league.
“But understanding that there’s a finite amount of money…the players said that it was really important to them to take care of the youngest players, the people coming into the game. So the clubs responded, they offered a minimum of $700,000 to start. That may or may not be enough for the union, but it’s a giant, giant increase,” Levine said. “They’ve offered a new bonus for top 30 players, a new $30 million…but what you have to understand is, if you give money from the pot to young players, then there may be less money for older players in free agency. Different types of players.
“Maybe a guy who’s a fourth-year or fifth-year arbitration-eligible guy gets non-tendered because there’s not enough money in the system for him. Or maybe a free agent who’s like 29 or 30 doesn’t get a job because there’s not enough. From a union side, they have to measure all of these various constituencies and do what’s in the arc of what’s practical.”
Levine also said that the dispute over raising the current competitive balance tax is “nothing to shut the season down over,” per The Athletic's Evan Drellich, and urged compromise on both sides in order to reach an agreement. On the prospect of the entire 2022 season being lost, Levine said he’d rather not consider that possibility.
“I don’t even want to think about that. I couldn’t think about that,” Levine said. “That’s a mind-boggling, horrid, horrid thought. Shame on all of us if it ever gets to that, shame on all of us.”
