Baseball's 'Nuclear Option': MLB Prepares for the Players' Union to Walk Away From the Bargaining Table

The fight over baseball's future may be headed somewhere the sport has never gone before. Major League Baseball has drawn up plans for the possibility that the players' union stops acting as a union altogether, The Wall Street Journal's Jared Diamond reported, according to a summary of the report by MLB Trade Rumors.

The step is called a disclaimer of interest. The Major League Baseball Players Association would give up its role as the players' official bargaining representative and operate instead as a trade association, MLB Trade Rumors explained. One sports law professor has described it as "the nuclear option". For now, it remains a contingency the league is preparing for, not a move the union has made.

The point of such a move would be to take the fight to the courts. Without a union in place, players could file antitrust lawsuits arguing that a lockout imposed outside of collective bargaining amounts to an illegal group boycott, RG.org reported. Baseball's century-old antitrust exemption long made that route unattractive, but the Curt Flood Act of 1998 is what opens the door for players to try it, according to both reports. The union has never disclaimed interest in any previous negotiation.

The league has answers ready. MLB could argue that a disclaimer is a sham meant to undermine bargaining and could pursue unfair labor practice claims under the National Labor Relations Act, RG.org reported. If a disclaimer comes at all, it would likely not happen until deep into a lockout, according to the same report.

Hockey offers the closest precedent. During the 2012-13 NHL lockout, players voted to give their union's leadership the authority to file a disclaimer of interest, CBS Sports reported at the time.

The calendar is tight. Owners gather for meetings Nov. 17-19, and the current collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 1, Yahoo Sports reported. Commissioner Rob Manfred has said the league will lock out the players if a deal is not struck, according to the same report. Sports attorney Chris Deubert of the law firm Constangy has called a lockout after Dec. 1 "near certain".

Fans have seen this movie recently. The last lockout began in December 2021 and dragged on until a five-year agreement was reached in March 2022, Yahoo Sports noted. That stoppage was resolved at the bargaining table. This time, the league is planning for the chance that it may not be.

The core dispute has not moved. Owners want a salary cap paired with a salary floor, and the union has refused to accept that system, CBS Sports reported. MLB's latest offer sets a $258.2 million cap and a $180.2 million floor that would not take effect until 2028, keeping the current luxury-tax and revenue-sharing system in place for 2027. The union has countered with its own proposals to revise revenue sharing instead, and says pushing the cap back a year does not change its objections.

Both sides have arguments worth hearing. The owners present a floor as a way to make low-spending clubs invest, while the players see a cap as a limit on what they can earn. Neither argument is helped by a season that does not start on time.

There is a simple word for what both sides owe the people who pay for the tickets, buy the caps and plan summer road trips around their team: good faith. A lockout is a legal tool. A disclaimer of interest is a legal tool. Neither one is a plan for the game.

The good news is that history is on the side of a deal. Since the Curt Flood Act became law, baseball's owners and players have reached an agreement in every negotiation without the union decertifying, MLB Trade Rumors noted. That record was built by people on both sides who decided the game mattered more than winning every point.

Families who pass baseball down from grandparents to grandchildren deserve a deal reached across a table, not a fight that drags through federal courtrooms for years. Next week's owners meetings will be the first real sign of which road this sport is on.