Arizona Diamondbacks players satisfied with baseball's new collective bargaining agreement

Diamondbacks right-hander Zac Gallen does not stand to benefit much from baseball's new collective bargaining agreement. He is not quite young enough to make a whole lot more in minimum salaries and has just one season — this upcoming one — to potentially earn more through the newly created bonus pool.

But Gallen is still excited about what he and his fellow players were able to win through negotiations over the past few months. And he points to another player with even less to gain as an embodiment of the selflessness of the players’ association.

“That’s what’s so cool about (Max) Scherzer stepping up (among union leadership),” Gallen said of the 14-year veteran who appears destined to finish his career in Cooperstown. “He is who he is — everyone in baseball knows his career and what he’s done. He’s made a bunch of money. But he was fighting for the younger guys. Those guys (union leaders) saw that with young players there was a lot of surplus value in terms of performance and not as much pay. In that sense, it’s awesome.”

In the new CBA, which was agreed to on Thursday, players will see their minimum salaries rise by nearly 23 percent, going from $570,500 to $700,000 before rising incrementally the next four years. The deal also calls for the creation of a $50 million bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, a way to give pay to some of the game’s top performers that is more commensurate with their production.

Players might not have scored massive victories against the owners like, say, the ability to reach free agency earlier or increasing the class of arbitration eligibles. But they seem pleased with what they were able to accomplish.

“I feel like we did a really good job,” Diamondbacks infielder/outfielder Josh Rojas said. “I think we had a lot of ground to make up from the last CBA and I think we did a really good job of staying together as a unit. You know, old guys, young guys communicating. I learned a lot this offseason.”

Analysis: Not many positives seen for Diamondbacks in new bargaining agreement

Rojas said that when the offseason began he wasn’t entirely sure what the CBA was. He went into the winter thinking the players should essentially take whatever the owners were offering. He wanted to play and didn’t want a labor dispute to stand in the way of that.

Rojas said the more he learned the more emboldened he became to stand against the owners. And, like Gallen, Rojas was appreciative of the fact that so many veteran players were willing to fight so hard for what they felt was right when it would have been easy for them to take a lesser deal.

“The stance we were taking, they were willing to miss games and they were willing to lose some of their money, which says a lot coming from them when their money per game is pretty high,” Rojas said. “So for them to stand by our side and have our backs and the future players and have their backs, it shows a lot. As a younger player, if I make it to the next CBA, I want to do the same for the next guys.”

Said Gallen: “We weren’t going to get it all back in one negotiation. It’s really about getting the ball moving in the right direction, showing the owners we weren’t going to back down. We were ready to fight for certain things that we believed in to kind of leave this thing in a better place for the next CBA going forward and subsequent ones after that.”

Diamondbacks players stayed in the loop on negotiations through a group text chain, with player representative Nick Ahmed passing along updates he received from the union.

“Guys were asking questions, you know, ‘What’s the next step? How’s it going to look? Where are we going with it?’” catcher Carson Kelly said. “Nick did a great job. He kept us informed as time went on.”

Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Diamondbacks players satisfied with CBA outcome