Owners May Be Softening Stand : Baseball: Sources indicate Player Relations Committee has offered revisions to revenue-sharing proposal.

There was a perception of movement in baseball’s stalled collective bargaining talks Tuesday as Commissioner Fay Vincent and the owners’ Player Relations Committee suggested revisions in their revenue-sharing proposal.

The key change, according to a source familiar with the negotiations, would install a 75% ceiling on the amount of increase a player can receive in salary arbitration, and dump the pay-for-performance system based on a statistical table for determining the salary of players with six or fewer years of major league service.

The pay-for-performance plan would have eliminated arbitration. The new proposal would retain it with a modification.

Whether the Major League Players Assn. will accept any plan that restricts arbitration and free agency--and continues to include the umbrella concept of revenue-sharing--remains doubtful.

But the revisions seemed to indicate a softening of the owners’ position that surfaced after their meeting in Chicago Friday and may represent a step toward graceful capitulation and ultimate acceptance of the status quo.

In fact, Vincent is believed to have suggested Tuesday that management would accept the status quo, providing the union agrees to a joint study of revenue sharing and, perhaps, eventual implementation when the industry’s salary outlay reached a certain level.

Dennis Rasmussen, the San Diego Padres’ player representative, said he has been in frequent contact with the players’ association and thought that the owners’ stance was definitely slackening. “I’ve got to believe something major will happen in the next seven to 10 days,” Rasmussen said, adding it is his understanding that training camps will open a week after an agreement is reached.

In the meantime, the owners’ lockout will begin Thursday, when pitchers, catchers and other invited players were scheduled to report to six American League and five National League camps.

Neither the union nor the owners’ committee would discuss details of what they called a series of suggestions offered by Vincent during a 45-minute meeting Monday and a 90-minute meeting Tuesday.

General counsel Charles O’Connor of the PRC said some of Vincent’s suggestions were procedural, some substantive.

Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, said he was summoning his 17-player bargaining team to New York today to discuss the latest changes and developments, though he doesn’t expect all of the players to be able to make it. The negotiations, he said, will resume Thursday.

“We’re in a lockout situation, and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel yet and I don’t see a quick agreement yet,” he said. “It would be premature to suggest there’s been a breakthrough that will lead to a conclusion. The mere fact that we have a framework for discussing the proposals puts us ahead of where we were.”

Fehr said he would discuss the situation in detail after updating the players. Asked about Vincent’s emergence as the PRC’S chief negotiator, Fehr said he welcomed input from anyone, even an obvious representative of the owners.

“This commissioner has never made a pretext of who he works for,” Fehr said. “Coming from a commissioner of baseball, that’s refreshing.”

The owners have consistently related revenue-sharing to the need for a degree of cost certainty.

A 75% cap on arbitration raises--either as part of revenue-sharing or in lieu of it--would provide considerable saving.

Angel first baseman Wally Joyner, for example, made a base salary of $920,000 last year. He filed in arbitration for $1.75 million--a raise of $830,000, or 90% of his previous salary. The arbitrator awarded Joyner the $1.75 million. Had he been limited to a 75% increase, Joyner could have only filed for a $690,000 raise, to $1.61 million, saving the club $140,000.

As another example, Paul Molitor of the Milwaukee Brewers is seeking $3.25 million in arbitration--a $1.85-million raise from his $1.4-million salary of last year. Under a 75% cap, Molitor would have been restricted to a $1.05-million raise and forced to file at $2.45 million, a potential saving of $800,000 for the Brewers.

Said an agent, requesting anonymity: “The players aren’t going to accept a cap and they aren’t going to accept a plan that would eliminate arbitration. They aren’t going to turn the clock back. I would think that should be clear by now.”

NEGOTIATIONS

* Commissioner’s role: Vincent is believed to have suggested that management would accept the status quo, providing the union agrees to a joint study of revenue sharing and, perhaps, eventual implementation when the industry’s salary outlay reached a certain level.

* Fehr’s response: The executive director of the players’ union said he welcomed input from anyone, even an obvious representative of the owners. “This commissioner has never made a pretext of who he works for. Coming from a commissioner of baseball, that’s refreshing.”