Shortened Season in Major League Baseball Looming as Talks Remain Stalled
The cancellation of regular season games is very much a possibility as Major League Baseball and the Players Union remain steadfast in their respective corners, and have still — after three days at the bargaining tables in Florida, — still have not come close to any kind of agreement.
According to a spokesperson for Major League Baseball, if an agreement is not reached by February 28, regular season games would be canceled and will not be rescheduled, and players would not be paid full season salaries.
Last week MLB stated clearly that in order to have a complete 162-game season begin March 31, a new CBA would need to be agreed upon and ratified by February 28. The Players meanwhile have not acknowledged that deadline.
MLB says the Feb. 28 deadline is a real deadline. If there’s no deal in place by then, games would be canceled and player pay lost, they say.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 23, 2022
An interesting wrinkle according to reports is that the union is likely to pull expanded playoffs off the table if players aren’t paid a full season’s salary.
After 13 hours of back-and-forth negotiations, all that has come out of it are tweaks to previous offers:
• On Monday, the league added $5 million to a proposed bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, now offering $20 million in it. The union wants $115 million.
• On Tuesday, the union reduced its ask for Super Two eligibility, requesting that salary arbitration come to players who rank in the top 75 percent in terms of service time, down from a previous request of 80 percent. It was 22 percent in the previous CBA.
Disagreements on the competitive balance tax, revenue sharing, service-time manipulation and the draft are still a major issue.
Should regular season games get lopped off, it will be the first time since 1995 that a lockout/work stoppage over a CBA has resulted in canceled games. Of course the 2020 season was reduced to 60 games after the Players Union and Major League Baseball struggled to find common ground on playing a season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The last North American sports league to see regular season games canceled over a lockout was the NHL in 2012-13, which saw its regular season cut down to 48 games. The NBA lockout in 2011 resulted in a truncated 66 game season. The 2004-05 NHL Lockout resulted in the cancelation of the entire season.
It would be rather amazing if MLB a canceled regular season games after Rob Manfred said the lockout was necessary in part to protect against the cancelation of regular season games.
— Michael Baron (@michaelgbaron) February 24, 2022
The damage that could result from lost games due to the lockout is anyone’s guess. Of course when and if baseball is played this year, fans will return to the ballpark one way or the other. Others will be more cynical. Keep in mind the NBA and NFL are more popular (TV ratings-wise), and with the growing demand for streaming services (which became a quarantine/sports-less world staple two years ago) it’s not like people won’t find something to do until the Major’s return.