*Photo from The Athletic*
Now, in the second week of January, the MLB and MLBPA have still not met for negotiations as it concerns a new CBA. Kansas City Royals star infielder Whit Merrifield is speaking his mind on how it's been going, appearing on the Cody and Gold show.
While on the show, Merrifield said that negotiations for a new CBA with the ownership has not gone well because the owners have been inflexible and reluctant to negotiate. The reason for that is because the previous CBA was tilted in favor of the owners, so they don't feel the need to change anything.
Merrifield said on the show that "We want to play, it's what we do, we love to play, and we're willing to work to get them to figure it out. We haven't gotten anything in response, so we can't work one-sided. We feel like we're standing up for ourselves, we've got to at some point."
Currently, Merrifield is the MLBPA representative for the Royals, so he reports to the team with the decisions made by the MLBPA. In proposals they made to the owners, Merrifield said the MLBPA outlined 3 main points of contention. Those points being changes to competitive balance, player compensation, and ending service time manipulation.
Merrifield said that "To each point, they pretty much just said, 'No, we're not going to budge on that, not going to adjust on that. And we've brought them countless different ways to adjust it, given them reasons why it needs to be adjusted and reasons why it not only benefits the players, but the ownership group to adjust these points, and again, they've pretty much just came out and said no."
He continued on, saying that "That’s difficult to negotiate with and that's not how negotiations go. So, we're at the point where we're not going to keep throwing stuff out. We're waiting for them to come to us with something, and they just haven't done it yet."
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