clarinews@clarinet.com (JOE ILLUZZI, UPI Sports Writer) (02/02/90)
NEW YORK (UPI) -- Major league owners will lock out players from spring training unless management sees sufficient progress toward a labor agreement, baseball's chief negotiator said Thursday. Players and owners have been operating without a contract since the end of last year and talks have produced little, if any, progress. With spring training less than two weeks away, the owners refuse to enter the season without an agreement. ``The camps will not open (unless progress is made),'' said Chuck O'Connor, general counsel for the owners' Player Relations Committee. The decision to lock out the players could come at an owners' meeting Feb. 9 in Chicago. Pitchers and catchers are to report to spring training in Florida and Arizona Feb. 15. ``You implicate opening day from the first day of the lockout,'' Donald Fehr, executive director of the Players' Association, said at a news conference. ``You never take extreme measures until you have no alternative. I don't see February as a time where there are no alternatives.'' Fehr said a spring training lockout would last longer than a mid-season stoppage because the owners wouldn't lose as much money. Players would have received little of their salaries and ticket sales would have been minimal. Even if an agreement were to be reached in March, it would take the players time to get into shape. There is also the likelihood of more injuries should players rush to prepare. Owners are calling for revenue sharing, pay-for-performance and a salary cap. The union opposes the last two proposals, claiming it inhibits a free market. The owners' plan would eliminate salary arbitration, a substantial gain made by the players in the last decade. Fehr said the union is willing to discuss revenue sharing. ``Does revenue sharing make for higher salaries, lower salaries or about the same?'' he said. ``We asked them that and they said `Gee, we don't know.' If the industry has done this well, why change it?'' The PRC says the dollars from revenue sharing would include money from gate receipts and national and local broadcasting contracts. In 1988, the PRC said that totaled $836 million. The PRC suggests 48 precent of that money go toward player salaries and benefits. From 1982-88, O'Connor said, salaries took up 30 to 40 percent of teams' revenues. Total revenues for major league baseball in 1988, the PRC said, amounted to $1.018 billion. The additional money came from concessions, parking and licensing. The salary cap, a system introduced by the NBA, would assess each of the 26 clubs a total payroll figure. Any team 10 percent above the cap would be ineligible to bid for another team's free agents. Also, a club could not be more than 20 percent under the cap. ``It would drastically change free agency and the way the market works,''fehr said of the salary cap. ``If a team is at the cap, they can't bid 10 cents. If they're under the cap, they're limited to how much they can spend.'' The owners say a cap would prevent teams in big television markets, such as New York and Chicago, from outbidding smaller market teams, such as Seattle. the union says the Mariners can't be too badly off since they were just sold for about $70 million. The pay-for-performance provision would determine player salaries on the basis of service and statistics, effectively eliminating contractual battles with agents. Players would be ranked by computer and grouped by postition: starting pitchers; relief pitchers; first basemen, third basemen, outfielders and designated hitters; and middle infielders and catchers. Pay scales would be imposed on players with less than six years' major league experience. Their salaries would be determined annually and their rankings would be derived from performance over the previous two seasons. ``There are ways to reflect the value of a player other than stats,'' Fehr said. Players with more than six years' experience would continue to negotiate contracts and be eligible for free agency. Now, players with less than three years' experience are ineligible for salary arbitration. ``It doesn't surprise me to see they want to pay zero-to-three players with money that isn't theirs,'' Fehr said. ``The players pay for it (out of revenue sharing).''