BRADENTON, Fla. -- The group text came just days before Major League Baseball’s lockout was expected to go into effect. Jacob Stallings was letting his teammates know that he had just been traded to the Marlins.
Not only were those players losing a clubhouse leader and a Gold Glove fielder, they were also losing their players association representative just before the sport’s first work stoppage in 26 years.
Stallings’ friend Chris Stratton told the catcher that he would step up and take over player rep responsibilities. He was hoping to become more involved in the process before Stallings was traded anyway, so he was more than willing to help. He was also a logical choice, being one of just six players remaining from the 2019 team and one of the few on the team who has been in the league long enough to qualify for arbitration.
It wasn’t exactly the best environment to learn the job on the fly.
“I definitely didn’t think it would get that intense for that long,” Stratton told me at his locker at LECOM Park Tuesday. “I probably bit off more than I could chew there.”
What ensued was a 99-day lockout, the second-longest work stoppage in the sports’ history. In the end, the league and players associations were just barely able to reach a deal for a new collective bargaining agreement in time to ensure a 162-game season.
Failing to play a whole season and jeopardizing player salaries and service time could have potentially extended the lockout further and cost significant games played for the second time in three years, the other coming during the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everyone wanted to play a whole season,” Stratton said. “The owners want to play a whole season.”
Making that desire into a reality was a more difficult process. The heart of the negotiations centered around the league’s finances, with players working to find ways to get a larger share of the league’s revenues while finding ways to compensate younger players more now and try to eliminate service time manipulation.
While some hoped a lockout could potentially bring changes to the league's finances, there was little chance of that ever happening. The players association still holds a grievance over the Pirates despite dropping one against the league as part of the new deal. Stratton could potentially be the team's highest paid pitcher this year, assuming he receives the full $2.2 million arbitration salary MLB Trade Rumors projects he will and the club doesn't acquire a pricier pitcher than that.
Stratton politely stepped around answering what the most important issues that Pirates players expressed to him were, pointing out the big issues that defined the negotiations instead.
“There were just so many little detail topics that would pop up,” Stratton said. “I feel like that’s another reason why it took a long time. You would get the meat and potatoes, make sure you get that, but then something else would be off or wrong in the document.”
One such example of a detail popping up late was a league proposal to implement an international draft rather than the current free agent system in place. The players pushed back that such a proposal was brought up so late in the process – with it becoming a major issue just one day before the two sides did reach a deal – and the two sides eventually agreed to continue negotiating through July 25 rather than try to come up with a system on such short notice.
When that deal was reached last week, the 30 owners voted in favor of ratifying, showing a sign of unity despite the fact that behind the scenes, there were dissenters late in the negotiating process.
On the players side, all eight members of the union’s executive committee voted to turn down the deal, but 26 of the 30 player reps, including Stratton, voted in favor of the CBA and to end the lockout.
Not having a unified vote was not a sign of division among the players, in Stratton’s opinion, and he commented that he was “surprised” how unified the players were during the negotiating process.
“Some of those guys who were there on the executive committee, they were there for the last CBA,” Stratton explained. “They’ve seen what happens when we agreed to terms and they felt like things didn’t go like they should have for those five years. I think they’re just trying to look out for the best interest for everyone. I don’t think there was anything wrong with that.
“I think there’s certain opinions of what’s going to help make the game competitive, and at the end of the day, that’s what we want. Just to have a fun game that fans want to come see. That’s what we want.”
The new CBA brought minor adjustments to the finances of the game, raising the collective bargaining tax, establishing a bonus pool for pre-arbitration players and implementing a draft lottery system.
There will also be a variety of rule changes coming in the coming years, including the National League adopting the designated hitter in 2022, a pitch clock to potentially speed up games next season and banning infield shifts next year as well.
Those changes, in Stratton’s mind, are for the quality of the game more so than the players or owners.
“It all comes back to the fans for me,” Stratton said. “They deserve a good product. That’s why there’s DHs now. There’s no more pitchers hitting because that’s just kind of a nightmare for the most part. Guys want to see more offense. I think we’re trying to make changes to the game that are for the betterment of everyone.”
Those changes, plus ensuring a full season is played, are a vital reason why a deal like this CBA needed to be done and make the game more engaging.
“It’s hard to make decisions five years down the road, but at the same time, we have to try to bring fans back in that regard."
