from the this-again? dept

Back in the much simpler times of 2021, we wrote about some of the games Major League Baseball decided to play as part of a brief owner’s lockout of players while both sides negotiated a collective bargaining agreement. This included essentially scrubbing the MLB website of all pictures of current players, stories about current players, and other references to current players other than their names, current and career stats, and the teams they played for. The league claimed that this was all to comply with federal labor laws, but nobody seemed to think that made much sense. Instead, this looked like an attempt to punish members of the MLBPA by taking them out of the spotlight as much as possible. That ultimately backfired, with MLB players changing their social media profiles to the blank silhouette that appeared on MLB.com while they made fun of the entire effort. It all made the league look very petty and very stupid.

And now, with yet another lockout looming as MLB owners attempt to incorporate a salary cap on teams despite record team valuations, the league has sent a memo to teams to say they plan to do it all over again, and more.

In addition to instructing teams on what they are allowed to speak with players about, as well as what conduct they are allowed to engage in if they attend the weddings of players (yes, seriously), the website will once again be transformed into a useless landing page filled with all the things the public doesn’t care about when it comes to baseball.

Additionally, the league’s website will once again remove videos and player images during a lockout, per The Athletic. That includes altering articles and headlines.

“Player images (including from their profile pages) and videos would be removed, and player names and pictures would be removed from article headlines.”

There will almost certainly be a lockout, which means this is likely to go into practice once again, unless the league reverses course. Which it absolutely should. This petty nonsense is not a needle-mover for public sentiment, which is half the game in a labor dispute in professional sports. The league is also on very shaky footing arguing they need a salary cap for competitive balance, given the last four teams in the playoffs that are currently going includes three teams that are small-salary teams compared with the rest of the league.

This is purely about MLB owners attempting to claw back money from the players who are actually performing on the field through artificial limits on spending. Spending that, by the by, is currently being done by those same owners who say they need to limit spending.

None of it makes much sense in the macro. And, for our purposes, it’s worth pointing out that trying to strong-arm the players’ union by playing petty games with the league website is pointless and self-defeating.

Filed Under: baseball, lockout, salary cap, websites
Companies: mlb