Just one minute before midnight Wednesday night, the world of baseball stopped spinning.
Just as most people in the sport had long feared, the collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and MLB Players Assn. (players union) expired without a new agreement in place, prompting baseball’s first official work stoppage in more than a quarter of a century.
Minutes after the Wednesday night deadline passed, Commissioner Rob Manfred announced in an open letter that the league had instituted a lockout, a move that will halt nearly all offseason activity and, if prolonged. Enough, it will potentially jeopardize the start of the season.
“We believe that an offseason lockout is the best mechanism to protect the 2022 season,” Manfred wrote. “We hope that the lockout will spur the negotiations and lead us to an agreement that will allow the season to start on time.”
MLB hasn’t had a lockout since 1990 and hasn’t experienced a work stoppage since the players went on strike in 1994, causing that season to be canceled without crowning a World Series champion. In the 26 years since, baseball has been the only one of the four major American sports that has not had a work stoppage.
But after previously agreeing to four consecutive non-stop CBAs, the most recent of which was finalized in 2016, players and owners couldn’t find enough middle ground this time around.
“As players, we see big problems,” New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive committee, said Wednesday of the now-expired deal.
The failure of the league and union to reach a new agreement before Wednesday’s deadline came as no surprise. The parties had reportedly been widely separated in the negotiations, especially regarding possible reforms to the sport’s economic structure with regard to player salaries and team spending.
At the heart of the disagreement is a compensation model that players believe has led to low pay. While top free agents can sign nine-figure deals, contracts that were once lucrative for mid-level players have shrunk in recent years as teams have begun to prefer younger alternatives with controllable salaries.
There are a variety of factors that play into the issue: The amount of service time players must accumulate before reaching free agency (players wish they could get to free agency sooner); the salary arbitration process that determines their compensation before they arrive; and rules on a luxury tax that some teams have begun treating as a de facto salary cap.
There are other issues at play as well, from a draft structure that players say has incentivized the tank, and thus led some teams to deliberately spend as little money as possible during years-long rebuilds, to possible changes to the tank. the rules that affect the style and pace of play.
In Manfred’s strong letter, the commissioner pointed to the union and said that “the vision of the Major League Baseball Players Association would threaten the ability of most teams to be competitive. It’s just not a viable option. “
Manfred added: “The MLBPA has not been willing to move from its initial position, compromise or collaborate on solutions.”
The MLBPA responded with its own statement, noting that the lockout was not necessary after the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement (although lockouts are not typical in other types of labor negotiations, they have become commonplace in sports in such situations. ) and called the closure “a dramatic move.”
“It was the owners’ choice, plain and simple, calculated specifically to pressure Players to relinquish their rights and benefits, and abandon good faith negotiation proposals that will benefit not only Players, but the game and the industry. as a whole”.
Representatives from both the league and the union have been negotiating throughout the year, but without much progress. At homeowners meetings in mid-November, Manfred practically guaranteed a lockout if the collective bargaining agreement expired, but was hopeful that it would not affect the 2022 season.
“An offseason lockdown that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” he said.
Still, the countdown to starting the next season on time has officially started. Players are scheduled to report to camp in mid-February. Spring training games are scheduled to begin near the end of the month. Opening day is March 31st.
That is the clock that the two parties are now working against. They couldn’t meet the Wednesday deadline. And until they get over their differences, the rest of the sport will be stuck in the middle, waiting for a winter to pass that is about to be eerily still.
