Will the End of the MLB Lockout Change the Future of Baseball? Holy Cross Sports Economist Weighs In

Victor Matheson, professor of economics, is seen here teaching a class at Holy Cross in 2018. Photo by Tom Rettig

The Conversation

On the heels of the news that Major League Baseball has reached a five-year agreement with its players — ending the second-longest labor disruption in the organization's history — questions now arise on whether or not the new collective bargaining agreement actually addresses players' biggest grievances.

In a recent piece for The Conversation, Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross who has studied labor disruptions in sports, says that the historic deal brings improvements for minimum salary players in MLB — which is about half of all players, according to Matheson — but the major issues remain unresolved.

"The new collective bargaining agreement takes some important steps toward correcting these problems. But it mostly just pushes the big issues another five years down the track," said Matheson. "The deal also leaves baseball players with a fundamentally different — and very likely worse — arrangement than their counterparts in the other major American sports leagues."

To read the full article, go to TheConversation.com.