Continuing with our project of asking New York’s labor leaders for their views on the collective bargaining negotiations this year, we posed the same question to Michael Conforto on Tuesday that we previously asked Gerrit Cole, Zack Britton and Francisco Lindor: What, in your opinion, are the primary issues and priorities in the upcoming talks?
Like the others, Conforto hit on the keyword of “competition.”
He also delved more specifically into the connected problem of young players earning less than market value, and veteran free agents unable to find jobs.
Here are his full comments:
“The primary issue for me is competition. We want this to be a competitive league. We want all 30 teams trying to win. I guess there is no perfect league out there, but we can make it better. We can do things to incentivize winning and not incentive losing.
“Whether it’s draft picks [or] whatever we need to do, but we want a league where every team is going out there and trying to win. We know the players are going out there fighting and trying to win. No one is doubting that. But when there are great players out on the market that no one wants to touch, we see that as a problem. We think that those guys should have a job. They can help teams win.
“I understand that the analytics say ‘This guy is going to give us two wins, and that’s not going to put us over the top.’ And I understand that, and I think analytics has its place. But you have talent on the market, guys who can still play at a very high level, those guys should have a job, in my opinion. All those teams should be trying to win.”
How do you do that? Shortening arbitration years?
“Yeah. You have guys who are playing at a bargain price early in their careers. Guys like Pete [Alonso]. Guys like [Juan] Soto. A number of guys. There are lots of ideas out there. Having an age where you become a free agent. Shortening the duration of control, among a bunch of other ideas.
But somehow, some way, we need to figure out a way to get guys their value when they’re providing value, or allowing guys to test free agency earlier -- there’s a number of ways we can go about it.”