Brewers Union Rep Brent Suter Present At Crucial Labor Negotiations

Things are heating up in MLB’s labor dispute. With only a week to go to reach a deal and save Opening Day, MLB and the MLBPA are planning to meet every day this week. Among the players present is Brewers reliever Brent Suter.

Each MLB team elects a union representative from their roster and Brent Suter is the representative for the Brewers. Throughout this lockout Suter has been in charge of disseminating the information from the union out to the rest of his Brewers teammates.

To this point, we haven’t seen any reports that Suter has been present at any previous meetings between these two sides, but now it’s crunch time, and all hands are on deck.

The Players’ Association has an eight player executive subcommittee that Suter is not on, but includes players such as Max Scherzer and Andrew Miller.

Brewers reliever Brent Suter is in Jupiter, Florida for labor negotiations between MLB and the MLBPA in order to reach a new CBA.

A Harvard grad, Suter is an extremely intelligent man, and he should be a great advocate for the players in these talks. It’s unknown how big of a role he’ll have, but his presence is noted.

MLB has placed a deadline on February 28th, one week from this article’s publication, to reach a deal in time for Opening Day to happen as scheduled. The first week of spring training games have already been canceled and more are in jeopardy the longer these two sides wait to reach an agreement.

Currently, these two sides are far apart.

They have a lot of progress to make on several fronts, including arbitration eligibility, pre-arbitration bonus pool, league minimum salary, competitive balance tax, and anti-tanking measures.

This is not going to be easy, and both sides have a lot of compromising left to do before they reach an agreement to allow the season to start.

What will be interesting to see is how having more players present at these talks impacts the pace of negotiations and any potential progress. Adding new voices such as Suter’s to the room now could help speed things along, or slow them down as the new guys try to catch back up to speed. If Suter negotiates like he pitches, we could have this whole thing wrapped up by Tuesday.

As the days and negotiations go along this week, we’ll see how much progress is made and if we can be on pace to start the season on time. Whether progress is made or not, the Brewers voices will be heard with Brent Suter sitting at the negotiating table.

The fate of baseball depends on what happens this week. If all goes well, baseball will be well, if it all falls apart, baseball will be irreparably damaged.