The Major League Baseball lockout imposed by the owner is on the verge of compromising the regular season. Monday marked the league’s self-imposed deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement before the regular season’s matches are canceled. This will be the first time in 27 years that competitions in the regular season have been affected by work stoppages. (The 2020 season was changed by the pandemic.)
Instead, the MLB and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) talked deeply during the night and then until the next morning before extending the deadline. It was 2:27 a.m. Tuesday when news broke that the two countries had finally announced the night in Jupiter, Florida. The new deadline you must meet before you decide to cancel your regular season matches is 17:00 ET on Tuesday, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN.
As for the progress made during the marathons on Monday / Tuesday early in the morning, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that there has been “some progress” but “major gaps remain in key areas”.
The meetings started seriously at 10 am on Monday, although it was on a sour note. MLB informs MLBPA that it is ready to miss the games for a month and took a more threatening tone, reports Evan Drelic of The Athletic. Earlier this month, Commissioner Rob Manfred said the missing games would be a “catastrophic result” for the sport, words that sound hollow in the weeks to come.
Throughout the day, however, reports of ongoing conversations seem to show some progress. Until 20:35 ET, report by Drelic pointed out that there is a movement towards a deal. The owners presented the players with two options according to the report:
1. Fourteen playoff teams, a minimum salary of about $ 700,000 and about $ 40 million in a bonus pool split between the best players before the arbitration.
2. Twelve playoff teams, a minimum salary of about $ 675,000 and about $ 20 million in the pre-arbitration bonus fund.
Hours later, numerous reports said the two sides had agreed on a playoff format with 12 teams. Even if both sides agreed on option two above, the issue of the balance sheet tax (also known as the luxury tax) – and the related sanctions for exceeding that threshold – discussions continued. More trivial issues, such as restrictions on moving to defense, were also reportedly part of the discussions.
In total, there were 13 personal meetings between the two countries at the spring training base in Jupiter for more than 16 hours. Again, there seems to be progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
The bottom line is that there is a glimmer of hope that the season will start as planned on March 31, but hard work must be done on Tuesday when the parties meet again.
CBS Sports provided a timeline of the block here, but the short version is that the owners put the padlocks on when the previous CBA expired. They were not obliged to do so, but this was described as a defensive maneuver. The league then waited more than six weeks to make its first offer. Since then, the two sides have held a number of personal talks, some of which are major obstacles, including a tax on the competitive balance; revenue sharing; the breakdown of players qualifying for Super Two status in arbitration; and the league – the minimum wage.
CBS Sports provides live updates for the talks Monday and now Tuesday. You can find them below.
