The Phillies’ Ranger Suárez as the face of the MLB labor fight

It’s easy to see the dollar signs and decimal points, the posturing and legalese, and dismiss the threat of a delayed opening to the Major League Baseball season as a food fight between billionaires and millionaires. Look again, though, and you will find that baseball’s first labor conflict in a quarter-century actually has a human face.

And it bears an uncanny resemblance to Ranger Suárez.

Suárez had a historic season for the Phillies in 2021. The 26-year-old lefty became the first pitcher since Bob Gibson in 1968 — and the fourth in the last 102 years — to make at least 10 starts, throw 100 or more innings, and post a sub-1.50 ERA. He also picked up four saves and was valued at three more wins than a replacement-level pitcher, according to Fangraphs’ WAR calculus.

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Yet as a player with less than three years of major-league service time, he made a base salary only slightly higher than $570,500, the MLB minimum.

Suárez was well-paid relative to the general population. But in the realm of professional sports, he fell short of entry-level players in the NFL, NBA, and NHL. For decades, MLB’s service-time-based salary structure has disadvantaged less-tenured players, and in this round of collective bargaining, the Players Association is focused on getting higher wages for that underserved constituency.

“Ranger is kind of what the fight is for,” said Daniel Szew, Suárez’s agent. “He’s one of the poster children in all of this.”

Most players make little more than the minimum salary until they achieve three years of major-league service time and become eligible for arbitration. At that point, they often receive more substantial annual raises until they can file for free agency after accumulating six years of major-league service.

But a majority of players never get that far. According to MLBPA data, 63.2% of major leaguers in 2019 had less than three years of service time. And because the players failed in the last collective bargaining agreement to secure significant increases in the minimum salary, the result has been a drag on the average overall salary.

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This time around, the MLBPA has proposed mechanisms to move the salary structure in a meaningful way for the players at the bottom. In addition to raising the minimum salary, it is seeking to make more two-year players eligible for arbitration, a nonstarter for the owners since these negotiations began. Short of that, the union proposed a bonus pool from which pre-arbitration players would receive additional money for high performance. The owners support the concept but have a far different idea of how much money to put into the pool.

Let’s examine each of the issues and the practical impact that they would have on Suárez and players like him:

Since 2013, the top 22% of two-year players in terms of overall major-league service time have been eligible for arbitration. This year, the cutoff for those so-called “Super Two” players is two years and 116 days of service.

Suárez finished last season with two years and 112 days.

Many players, most prominently Kris Bryant when he came up with the Chicago Cubs, have accused teams of keeping them in the minors longer than necessary to prevent them from achieving “Super Two” status. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Suárez, who missed most of the shortened 2020 season after testing positive for COVID-19 and the first month of last season due to complications in obtaining a work visa.

(It’s worth noting that Suárez, unable to communicate with the Phillies or to receive their assistance during the lockout, has a mid-March meeting to get his visa, according to Szew. If the lockout is settled before then, the Venezuela native would be late to arrive in Phillies camp.)

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In an attempt to combat service-time manipulation, the MLBPA proposed that 100% of two-year players be eligible for arbitration, a request that was subsequently revised last week to 80% and this week to 75%, cutoffs that Suárez would easily achieve.

For Suárez, receiving arbitration this year could add at least $1 million to his salary, a significant bump for a pitcher who turns 27 in August and isn’t due to reach free agency until he’s 30. Based on MLB Trade Rumors’ projection model, he would make $1.8 million this year through arbitration as opposed to roughly $650,000 on his pre-arbitration contract.

Making arbitration available to more players has historically been a third-rail issue for owners. Assuming they won’t touch it again in this negotiating cycle, the players proposed a bonus pool that would reward pre-arbitration players based on performance.

The owners agreed, in theory. But a Grand Canyon-sized sticking point has been the value of the bonus pool. The players’ most recent proposal is $115 million for 150 players; the owners are proposing $20 million for 30 players.

It’s also unclear, even to agents, which criteria will be used to receive bonus money and how the money would be divided up. WAR and end-of-season awards have been mentioned as benchmarks.

But as long as players with more than two but less than three years of service time are eligible, Suárez and Milwaukee Brewers ace Corbin Burnes likely would have been among the pitchers at the front of the bonus-pool line in 2021. Burnes made $608,000 last year and won the National League Cy Young Award.

Over the life of the 2007-11 CBA, MLB’s minimum salary grew by 26.6%. In the 2012-16 agreement, it increased by 22.6%. But in the recently expired CBA, the rookie minimum moved only from $507,500 to $570,500, a 12.4% bump.

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Notice a trend?

MLB’s minimum salary also has fallen behind other pro sports leagues. It’s an imperfect comparison because the NFL, NBA, and NHL have salary caps, but the minimum salaries in those leagues are $660,000, $925,258, and $750,000, respectively. In 2012, only the NHL had a higher minimum salary than MLB.

Regardless, then, of whether the players succeed in expanding the “Super Two” group or rewarding pre-arbitration players with bonus money, it’s vital that they make gains on minimum salary. A higher minimum for rookies would equate to higher pay for second- and third-year players, too. If the minimum is raised to $775,000, as the players have requested, Suárez’s third-year pay would have to increase accordingly.

It should come as little surprise that the sides are far apart (about $135,000 per player) on that issue, too.

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