Earlier this week, Major League Baseball made its first attempt at resolving its self-inflicted lockout by submitting the league’s first proposal of 2022 to the MLB Players Association. As part of our coverage of this event, we decided to take a look at the history of the “core economics issues,” beginning with Thursday’s history of the Competitive Balance Tax and how it represents ownership’s commitment not to competitive balance, but low player salaries. Today, we’ll dive into one of the players’ unions biggest demands: the reduction of service time requirements for free agency from six years to five years.
The history of team control over players
