Newsstand

March 8: SNY’s Andy Martino tweets that MLB’s most recent proposal does not include any movement on the pre-arbitration bonus pool. The league is still offering a flat $30MM pool with no increases over the five-year term of the agreement. The MLBPA had lowered its ask from a $115MM peak to $80MM at last check, though the union was also believed to be seeking annual increases to the size of the pool.

March 7, 10:52 pm:  Jeff Passan of ESPN writes that if an agreement were to come together Tuesday, Spring Training camps could open as soon as Friday. However, he cautions that the gaps between the two sides remain significant enough to “temper expectations” about a deal coming to fruition.

8:50 pm: MLB offered to raise the base luxury tax threshold to $228MM next season, with that figure rising to $238MM over the course of the CBA, Drellich reports. That’s a fairly notable jump over MLB’s previous offers to start that mark at $220MM and rise to $230MM by 2026, and it’d be an $18MM year-over-year jump from last season’s $210MM mark.

However, Drellich cautions that the league’s offer to move on the CBT came with “major strings attached.” Those conditions aren’t clear, although MLB has sought a 14-team playoff field and a draft for international amateurs in past proposals and could again be trying to get the MLBPA’s approval on either or both topics. The union has been seeking to increase the CBT to $238MM next season and move to $263MM by the end of the CBA.

8:29 pm: After yesterday’s proposal from the MLB Players Association to the league was met with hostility, lead negotiators reconvened today, reports Evan Drellich of the Athletic (Twitter link). They’re expected to meet again Tuesday, and MLB has suggested those discussions could be of particular importance.

Drellich reports that the league views tomorrow as the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement to be in place to conduct a 162-game season (and with it, a full year of salary and service time for players). He and colleague Ken Rosenthal add that the league has informed the union it expects to cancel another week’s worth of games if no deal is done. Commissioner Rob Manfred already announced the cancelation of the first two series of the regular season last week, and the league had previously been adamant those games would not be made up. It now seems MLB is willing to entertain that possibility, although only if a new CBA is finalized on Tuesday.

This marks at least the second (arguably the third) time the league has imposed a deadline for an agreement to avoid the loss of regular season games. MLB had previously set February 28 at 11:59 pm EST as a marker to avoid delays to Opening Day. With the parties beginning to close the gap in negotiations that evening, the league pushed back that deadline to March 1 at 5:00 pm EST. Ultimately, no agreement was reached — the league claimed the union upped its demands overnight, while the MLBPA accused the league of exaggerating the previous night’s progress in the first place — and Manfred announced the cancelation of the first two series that evening.

The union expressed its displeasure with that decision. MLB had unilaterally instituted the lockout and set the end of February deadline for an agreement, while the MLBPA maintained that further negotiations should proceed without game cancelations. It’s not clear whether the union views tomorrow’s league-imposed deadline in the same manner. We’re a bit more than three weeks from the originally scheduled Opening Day, March 31. It seems likely that with those first two series already canceled, the path to 162 games would involve reworking the schedule and/or instituting doubleheaders rather than simply putting those games back on the docket.

Even if the lockout lingers to a point where everyone agrees a 162-game season is unfeasible, it stands to reason the union would embark on some efforts to recoup pay and service time lost. MLB instituted the lockout, after all, and their initial game cancelations were imposed over the objections of the union. MLBPA lead negotiator Bruce Meyer stated in the immediate aftermath of Manfred’s announcement it was the union’s position that players should receive compensation for games lost. As MLBTR’s Steve Adams noted last week, a battle regarding service time could be even more important than any dispute over pay.

Whether the parties will be able to come to an agreement tomorrow remains to be seen, but the recent tenor hasn’t been promising. There’s still a sizable gap on issues such as the competitive balance tax and the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players. Rosenthal wrote yesterday the league is willing to move in the players’ favor on the CBT in exchange for concessions by the union in other areas, but MLB’s other demands aren’t clear.

The league presented a formal counterproposal to the PA’s most recent offer at today’s call, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (Twitter link). According to Nightengale, that “(included) flexibility on several issues,” but it doesn’t seem the union viewed it that favorably. One player involved in discussions tells Rosenthal the offer remained too tilted towards MLB’s interests, while another said he was “done getting (his) hopes up” for an agreement.

9:25 pm: Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the league is willing to increase the first CBT threshold if the union makes concessions in other areas. The most recent negotiations have had the owners unwilling to raise the threshold beyond $220MM with the players trying to push it to $238MM. Even that $220MM has been difficult for the owners, as four of them voted against that offer.

In order to bridge that gap, Rosenthal says the owners would want “a variety of adjustments,” which would include the players lowering their ask on the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players. The players did indeed drop their ask on the pool in their proposal today, from $85MM to $80MM, but a further reduction would apparently be necessary in order to get the league to budge on the CBT issue. Furthermore, Rosenthal adds that the league “would want the union to accept a streamlined process for implementing rules changes beyond the 2023 season.” This would apparently go beyond what the union already agreed to earlier today, as Rosenthal writes that “The league wants the ability to make other changes for subsequent years within 45 days of the end of a season. Such changes would be implemented upon the recommendations of a competition committee composed of more league than union representatives, effectively giving commissioner Rob Manfred the power to act as he chooses.”

3:59 pm: Bob Nightengale tweets that the union disputes MLB’s characterization of the situation, listing several concessions they have made.

3:40 pm: Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports that the sides could meet again as soon as Monday, with the league expected to announce further game cancellations.

3:28 pm: MLB spokesperson Glen Caplin responded to today’s meeting, with James Wagner of the New York Times providing the full quote on Twitter:

“We were hoping to see movement in our direction to give us additional flexibility and get a deal done quickly. The Players Association chose to come back to us with a proposal that was worse than Monday night and was not designed to move the process forward. On some issues, they even went backwards. Simply put, we are deadlocked. We will try to figure out how to respond, but nothing in this proposal makes it easy.”

The use of the word “backwards” is a bit confusing on its face, given that the union made notable concessions on some of the issues detailed below. However, Wagner elaborates in another tweet that “MLB felt that things were suggested verbally in Florida on Monday, such as the size of the pre-arbitration bonus pool being smaller than $80M, that weren’t reflected in today’s offer,” and that is why they characterized today’s written proposal as going “backwards.” The MLBPA denies moving backward from any verbal offer.

1:20 pm: Representatives from the league and the MLB Players Association met today in New York, with the union bringing both some written responses and counter-proposals to the owner’s most recent collective bargaining agreement offer.  Today’s negotiating session lasted around an hour and 40 minutes, and details have begun to emerge (from The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes) about the union’s latest proposal.

Perhaps the most notable difference is that the players agreed to give the league the authority to make on-field changes within a 45-day window of initial proposal, in regards to three specific rules — a pitch clock, restrictions on the use of defensive shifts, and the size of the bases.  The last CBA gave the league the ability to implement rule changes a full year after an initial proposal to the union, and reports recently emerged that the owners were looking to drastically shorten that period of time in this latest agreement.

Any of the proposed rule changes would be explored via a committee that would have player representation.  The three proposed rule changes would begin in the 2023 season.  One other rule change that the MLBPA did decline was in regards to the “robo-ump,” or an automated system for calling balls and strikes.

The players had been seeking an $85MM bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, though that number has now been dropped slightly to $80MM.  It should be noted that this would be the starting price for a pool that would be expected to gradually increase over the five-year span of the CBA, and presumably those increases are still part of the latest proposal.  The drop to $80MM probably isn’t too likely to get the league’s attention, as the owners have been open to the idea of a bonus pool, though at the much lower price of a flat $30MM pool for each of the next five seasons.

Should teams surpass the various tiered thresholds of the luxury tax, the league had been proposing methods of punishment beyond just a financial penalty, such as the last CBA’s penalties of moving a team’s top draft pick back 10 slots if they exceeded the tax threshold by more than $40MM.  The MLBPA had been resistant to such “non-monetary penalties” as Drellich called them, but the union has now okayed some similar type of punishment in exchange for the elimination of the qualifying offer.  The league had previously floated the idea of eliminating the QO, so teams who sign particular free agents would no longer have to give up draft picks as compensation, though the teams that lost said free agents would still get a pick.

In regards to the larger and more thorny issues of the luxury tax thresholds themselves, the union made no changes to their past proposal.  As well, the MLBPA stood by their previous demands for an increased minimum salary.  The concept of an expanded postseason continues to factor into negotiations, yet while the union had been open to a 14-team playoff with a particular format, the players today opted to just stick with a 12-team format.  The MLBPA also continued to decline the league’s overtures for an amateur draft for international players, and in regards to the domestic draft, the union still wants a proposed draft lottery to cover the top six picks in the draft (while the league wants only the top five picks impacted).

While the owners are sure to reject this proposal on the whole, some small positives could be taken from today’s news, even if the bigger obstacles holding up a new CBA remain in place.  The union’s previous issue with the league’s rule-change proposals had more to do with the introduction of the topic at what seemed to be a pretty late stage in CBA talks, rather than an objection to the content of the rule changes themselves.  Given how the three rules in question have already been being tested at the minor league level, it was no surprise that the league was seeking implementation eventually, though commissioner Rob Manfred said back in December that the owners would likely hold off discussion of any alteration of on-field rules in order to focus on the big-picture financial concerns.

Limiting the 45-day implementation to just these three rules represents a seemingly acceptable compromise for both sides, and such, it now seems like a fairly safe bet that for the 2023 season, fans will see a pitch clock, larger bases, and some changes to how teams deploy defensive shifting.  Any of all of these concepts can be argued as ways to improve the on-field product, with the larger bases and the limited shifts in particular intended to promote more offense and action on balls hit into play.

A clock could also potentially lead to more action, should a pitcher (perhaps feeling the pressure of a ticking countdown) rushes a mistake pitch that the batter knocks for a hit.  But in general, the pitch clock is intended to address the longstanding concern over the time and pace of games.  The exact mechanics of the rules are still to be worked out and quite possibly determined by committee, and The Score’s Travis Sawchik also notes that the clock could be a way of enforcing rules already on the books about keeping batters in the box during plate appearances.

ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reported earlier today that the league was aiming for a 14-second pitch clock with the bases empty, and a 19-second clock with runners on base.  This represents a change from the times tested in low-A ball last season, as pitchers had 15 seconds to throw with the bases empty and 17 seconds when a runner was on base.  Looking at the numbers from 2021, the clock seemed to indeed result in shorter games, as the low-A games saw a reduction of about 21 minutes in the average game time.

TODAY: The league and the MLBPA have scheduled a meeting for tomorrow, according to Ken Rosenthal (Twitter links).  The union will be presenting responses, in writing, to the league’s last proposals.

MARCH 4, 8:55 pm: Jeff Passan of ESPN writes that the union’s “ghost win” proposal would actually function as akin to starting a three-game series up 1-0. Under that scenario, the division winner would only need to win one game to move on to the Division Series, while the Wild Card club would need to win two straight games.

4:58 pm: In an effort to finalize a new collective bargaining agreement before the league’s imposed deadline to avoid regular season game cancelations, MLB and the Players Association reportedly agreed to move forward with the framework for a 12-team postseason field. With that deadline having passed with no overarching agreement and the league having since scrapped the first two regular season series, the union is apparently willing to reconsider a more expansive field.

Buster Olney of ESPN reports (Twitter link) that the MLBPA has informed the league it’s amenable to reopening talks on a possible 14-team playoff. That has been an important initiative of MLB’s throughout negotiations, with a broader field giving the league more postseason games it can sell to television providers. Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported this week that a 14-team playoff would see MLB recoup an extra $100MM annually as part of its broadcasting agreement with ESPN.

That makes the 14-team playoff an enticing carrot for the league, one the union would no doubt make contingent on movement from MLB in other key areas. Where to set the competitive balance tax thresholds has been perhaps the biggest sticking point in negotiations. The league is reluctant to go beyond a $220MM base tax marker next season, while the union’s latest offer included a $238MM CBT base. That $18MM gap would only widen over the course of the potential agreement, with the MLBPA seeking more rapid increases in future seasons than the league has proposed. The parties also disagree on the amount of money that should go towards the pre-arbitration bonus pool and the league minimum salary, among other issues.

Reopening talks on the 14-team playoff could serve to kickstart talks as the parties regroup following MLB’s game cancelations. However, it’s worth noting that the 12-team postseason framework already marked a notable concession by the union. The status quo, of course, had been a 10-team field. Merely agreeing to bump from 10 to 12 teams created the possibility for extra playoff rounds and a corresponding windfall for the league. Marchand reported that a 12-team format would itself have led to around $85MM per season in extra revenue for MLB, again per the terms of the league’s broadcasting agreement with ESPN.

Approximately $85MM per season isn’t $100MM per season, though, so it’s little surprise the league had sought a 14-team playoff for most of negotiations. The union has maintained that it’d prefer a 12-team field. The MLBPA has expressed concerns that allowing 14 teams in would disincentivize clubs from ardently upgrading their rosters. The MLB postseason is more variable than those of other leagues — the playoff team with the worst regular season record won the World Series just last season, as an example — and the union fears those fluctuations could allow teams with already-strong rosters to be content not to push hard for further upgrades. That could have a trickle-down effect of limiting teams’ urgency to spend in free agency, a behavior the MLBPA wants to avoid.

The previous 10-team format offered a powerful incentive for clubs to try to win their division. Wild Card qualifiers were tossed into a one-game playoff, leaving little more than a 50-50 shot for any Wild Card team to advance to the Division Series. MLB’s proposed 14-team playoff setup would offer a first-round bye to the team with the best record in both the AL and NL (as in the case with the NFL’s system). However, the relatively minor favors for the other two division winners over the four Wild Card qualifiers — the division winners would get home field advantage and have the right to choose their first round opponents from among the bottom three Wild Card teams — weren’t significant enough needle-movers, in the players’ eyes.

Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive subcommittee, expressed reservations with that setup earlier this week. “It really came down to a format issue,” he told reporters (including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). “In a 14-team playoff structure we felt that competition could be eroded in that area. … (When one team gets a bye), solely home-field advantage was not going to be the advantage to go out and win the division.”

Scherzer’s comments leave open the possibility for alterations to the league’s playoff format that could still see 14 clubs qualify. During earlier stages of negotiations, the union floated the concept of a “ghost win” for the first round. Under that system, the two division winners per league that did not receive a bye would automatically get the equivalent of a 1-0 advantage in a best-of-five series against the bottom two Wild Card qualifiers. Thus, the division winner would only need to win two out of a potential four games to advance to the second round; the Wild Card club would need to win three out of four to move on. The top two Wild Card teams in each league, meanwhile, would face one another in a standard best-of-three set (via Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic).

There’s no indication the league was on-board with the “ghost win” idea, but it highlights the possibilities for the sides to find a mutually-agreeable solution in this area. The MLBPA would likely prefer a standard 12-team playoff group, but agreeing to 14 teams seems to be the best way to get the league to move on other issues the union considers important. It stands to reason the MLBPA will push for strong bonuses (like the “ghost win” concept) for division winners as the parties reengage on the 14-team postseason.

That might reinvigorate talks between MLB and the union, but the league’s call to cancel regular season games now looms over all discussions. Rosenthal tweeted this morning that the MLBPA is preparing a response to the league’s final pre-cancelation offer, which the union rejected on Tuesday to end a stretch of nine consecutive days of negotiation in Jupiter, Florida. The parties are expected to schedule their next talks fairly soon, but they’ll face a whole host of new challenges whenever they do meet again.

Commissioner Rob Manfred is on record as saying the league is of the opinion that players shouldn’t be compensated for lost regular season games. MLB has been adamant those games are officially canceled and won’t be made up. Union lead negotiator Bruce Meyer has unsurprisingly argued that the MLBPA will pursue compensation for salary lost to game cancelations. As MLBTR’s Steve Adams wrote yesterday, the union figures to take an especially hard-line approach to making sure players aren’t forfeiting service days as a result of the lockout. The MLBPA has also previously indicated they’d refuse to expand the playoff field in 2022 if the league cancels games and strips players of any salary (as it since has). That all sets up even more difficulties for leadership on both sides to work through, but the hope is that the union’s willingness to reconsider a 14-team postseason could be a catalyst for progress on those issues.

10:00am: The league is also in the process of setting up a fund for impacted workers, tweets ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.

9:06am: The Major League Baseball Players Association announced Friday that it will launch a $1MM fund for workers impacted by the ongoing MLB lockout and the cancellation of regular-season games. The MLBPA and the AFL-CIO will administer the fund and provide aid to “stadium workers and others who face financial hardship through no fault of their own due to the MLB franchise owners’ lockout.”

“There are a lot of people who make our game great,” MLBPA executive board leaders Andrew Miller and Max Scherzer said in a joint statement. “Many aren’t seen or heard, but they are vital to the entertainment experience of our games. Unfortunately, they will also be among those affected by the owner-imposed lockout and the cancellation of games. Through this fund, we want to let them know that they have our support.”

“This fund is intended to support workers who are most affected by the MLB-impost lockout but whose livelihoods have been disregarded by the owners in their effort to pressure Players into accepting an unfair deal,” said MLBPA executive director Tony Clark in his own statement.

The ongoing labor strife between Major League Baseball and the Players Association reached a tipping point earlier this week, when the union rejected the league’s “best offer” prior an MLB-imposed deadline to avoid the cancellation of regular-season games. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Tuesday that the first two series of the regular season will be canceled — not postponed — as the two sides continue to work toward an agreement. The widespread expectation is that additional games will also be wiped from the schedule.

While the players, owners and the negotiators leading these talks have been at the forefront of the labor dispute, the subsequent stoppage has a broad-reaching effect that will impact thousands throughout the industry. There are plenty of team employees (scouts, for instance) whose careers have been placed on hold, but stadium workers and the businesses surrounding MLB stadiums/Spring Training sites that depend on baseball for revenues are, in particular, adversely impacted. The financial impact felt by third parties throughout the sport will only mount as negotiations continue.

Today’s press release indicates that the MLBPA and AFL-CIO will work together to “determine the hardest hit communities and align resource distribution to those who need it most.”

In the wake of today’s league-imposed deadline to reach agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement passing, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced this afternoon that the league is canceling the first two series of the regular season. As Max Molski of NBC Sports writes, that’d mean the loss of 91 total games. The league has stated on multiple occasions they have no plans to reschedule those contests — either via doubleheaders or the rearranging of previously-scheduled off days. In addition to the delayed start to the regular season, the league informed teams it is pushing back the start of Spring Training until at least March 12, as noted by Micheline Maynard of the Washington Post (Twitter link).

The commissioner’s announcement would seem to indicate that a 155-game schedule is the maximum number that’ll be played in 2022. Asked why the league was set on outright cancelations as opposed to postponements, Manfred pointed to the challenges of reworking interleague play in a suitable manner (via Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post). Reports last week indicated that the league intends to merely pick up where the schedule left off if/when an agreement is in place, so it seems each club’s first two series (to this point) will just be lopped off the league calendar.

Unsurprisingly, Manfred added that it was the league’s position that players would not be paid for any games that aren’t played (via JJ Cooper of Baseball America). That sets the stage for a second season in the past three years with possible debates regarding prorated salaries, as the union has maintained that they didn’t believe today should’ve represented a drop-dead date to avoid game cancelations.

MLB instituted the lockout unilaterally and could’ve lifted it at any time, electing to proceed under the terms of the 2016-21 CBA. There was never any possibility of the league taking that course of action, but the decision to set a hard deadline (first last night, later delayed until this evening) for an agreement was also made solely by MLB. The Players Association has never assented to that deadline, and Giants outfielder Austin Slater — the club’s player representative — argued that the union preferred continuing negotiations over today’s outcome.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Slater told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle of game cancelations after the league deadline passed. “The PA has been setting up training camps and in 2020, we showed we could do it in three weeks. .. But that’s their prerogative and Rob’s bargaining strategy was to push up past this deadline and see if they could shove a deal down our throats.”

Others on the players’ side have taken a similar stance, arguing that the league deadline was a negotiating position of MLB’s to press the union into accepting an unfavorable deal. Slater’s teammate Alex Wood was among the players to take to Twitter this afternoon to accuse the league of exaggerating the progress made in negotiations last night, thereby allowing MLB to suggest the union was at fault for the lack of agreement today. Manfred made some references to that effect in his press conference this evening, noting the truism that finalizing a new CBA requires agreement from both parties.

After the past week and a half of daily negotiations didn’t result in an agreement, what’s the next step? Asked by Hannah Keyser of Yahoo! Sports whether the league’s “best and final” offer this afternoon meant that MLB had no plans to continue negotiations, Manfred pushed back. “We never used the phrase ‘last, best’ offer with the union,” the commissioner replied. While he conceded that the parties were “deadlocked,” he indicated that the league was open to continued negotiation. Manfred stated that today’s proposal was only the league’s final before canceling games, not of negotiations entirely. On the other hand, Bob Nightengale of USA Today hears from a source the league did use the “best and final offer” terminology.

That’s an important distinction. As Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times pointed out this afternoon, the possibility that the league had made its “best and final offer” could give way to MLB declaring a formal impasse in negotiations — a decision that could halt bargaining and involve the court system. Manfred declined to speculate on that possibility, but his stated amenability to continuing negotiations would seem to indicate that the league doesn’t plan to pursue that course of action at this point.

When negotiations will pick up isn’t clear, although the commissioner indicated they couldn’t resume talks until Thursday at the earliest. Manfred also made clear he considered the ball to be in the union’s court, stating that the league has made the most recent offer on issues “without exception,” and rhetorically told reporters to draw their own conclusions about which side should make the next move (via Scott Miller of Bleacher Report). That the league has made the most recent proposal may technically be true, although doing so an hour before the press conference with no willingness to continue negotiating today makes Manfred’s pointed barb a bit odd.

Manfred also made some ancillary statements about negotiations that are sure to draw some attention. He claimed that the past five years have been “difficult” for the industry financially, an assertion that immediately sparked backlash. As Erik Boland of Newsday points out (on Twitter), the league grossed a record $10.7 billion in 2019. The past two seasons have indeed seen pandemic-driven revenue losses — particularly in 2020, a year mostly without fan attendance — but Manfred’s claim that the entirety of the most recent CBA involved financial hardship is easy to dispute.

The commissioner also discussed the terms of the league’s most recent proposal. He highlighted what he felt to be player-friendly economic provisions (i.e. the creation of the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players) and added that the league was also seeking alterations to the on-field product. Manfred claimed MLB had proposed ways to implement a pitch clock and limits on defensive shifting during their last offer. The league’s desire for a pitch clock has been previously reported, but it hadn’t been apparent that MLB was trying to outlaw the shift this winter.

Of course, changes to the sport’s aesthetics take a back seat so long as core economics disputes continue to rage. The MLBPA released a statement in response to Manfred’s press conference (on Twitter). It reads in part:

“Rob Manfred and MLB’s owners have cancelled the start of the season. Players and fans around the world who love baseball are disgusted, but sadly not surprised. … What Rob Manfred characterized as a ’defensive lockout’ is, in fact, the culmination of a decades-long attempt by owners to break our Player fraternity. As in the past, this effort will fail.“

3:23 pm: The union’s player leaders voted unanimously to decline the league’s offer, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN (Twitter link). A person associated with the MLBPA told Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press, “We are done. This was always (the league’s) plan.” That’s in line with other allegations by those on the players’ side who believe the league exaggerated the extent of the progress made last night in order to frame today’s lack of agreement as the fault of the union.

3:17 pm: Major League Baseball made its “best and final” offer before their imposed 5:00 pm EST deadline to avoid game cancelations. The union is planning to reject that proposal, reports Jon Heyman of the MLB Network (on Twitter). Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet hear from a source involved with negotiations that talks are “over.”

For fans, it marks a disheartening end to the past week and a half of daily negotiations. Those proved last-ditch efforts to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement before the league’s self-imposed deadline (originally yesterday at midnight, later delayed to 5:00 pm today) for a CBA to be in place to avoid the cancelation of regular season games. That’s all but a certainty now, and Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets that the league is expected to formally announce a delayed start to the regular season upon receiving the union’s official declination.

Throughout the lockout, MLB has maintained that canceled games would not be made up. That’s likely to mean lost game checks for players; the union has previously said that in that event, they’d respond by refusing to agree to an expanded playoff field for the 2022 season. Postseason expansion — from which MLB would stand to benefit financially — has been a goal of the league’s throughout negotiations, and the parties had reportedly decided to proceed with a potential 12-team format last night.

That decision, as with everything else discussed in collective bargaining to date, is up in the air after today’s developments. Commissioner Rob Manfred is scheduled to speak with reporters in Jupiter at 5:00 pm EST. He seems likely to announce a delay to the start of the season at that point, marking the first time since the 1994-95 player strike that regular season games would be lost due to an official work stoppage (although one could argue that the contentious run-up before implementation of the shortened 2020 schedule served as something of an unofficial lockout).

Manfred has previously called the possibility of lost regular season games “a disastrous outcome for the industry.” Many fans would no doubt agree with that characterization, but the league has apparently reached that point. Given the response to today’s discussions from those on the players’ side, some may question whether the commissioner and the league would genuinely consider today’s outcome “disastrous.” The league, after all, instituted the lockout — ostensibly as a means of kickstarting negotiations — but didn’t make a formal proposal for over a month during its early stages. MLB could lift the lockout at any point and proceed under the terms of the 2016-21 CBA, but there’s no chance they’ll do so.

The league suggested in talks with the union yesterday they’re willing to scrap a month’s worth of regular season play. How many games will be canceled remains to be seen, but the mere loss of any contests will surely drive away some fans frustrated with the entirety of the work stoppage. It’s also not clear what the next steps will be in terms of a resolution, as the parties are no longer expected to continue to bargain on a daily basis.

2:45pm: MLB’s offer to the union, per Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post (Twitter link), includes a $30MM pre-arbitration bonus pool with no yearly increases, a $700K minimum salary with $10K annual increases, and no changes to prior luxury-tax thresholds ($220MM from 2022-24, $224MM in 2025, $230MM in 2026). That leaves a $55MM gap between the union’s proposed bonus pool (which also includes yearly $5MM increases) and a $25K gap in minimum salary. As for the luxury-tax thresholds, the two sides still face an $18MM gap in 2022 proposals, which grows to a $33MM gap by their proposed 2026 terms.

2:10pm: Major League Baseball is preparing to extend its best and final offer to the Players Association before today’s self-imposed 5:00pm EST deadline, a league spokesperson announced to several reporters (Twitter thread via Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald). The league official indicated MLB believed there to be a “path to a deal” late last night and agreed to extend its deadline while awaiting a counteroffer regarding the luxury tax.

The league contends that the union’s “tone” has changed today, whereas MLBPA officials have told reporters that their tone has remained consistent (Twitter link via Yahoo’s Hannah Keyser). The union’s message throughout the day has been that, for all the optimism MLB tried to express last night, a good bit of work remained in many key areas. Giants pitcher Alex Wood, who’s been involved on the players’ end throughout the process, adamantly states that the union has “had the same tone all along.” Wood contends, via Twitter, that last night’s optimism from the league was deliberately feigned in an effort to cast blame upon the player’s side if and when talks ultimately failed to produce a deal. Mets catcher James McCann tweets a similar message, accusing MLB of trying to “control the narrative.”

The MLBPA continues to broadcast a desire to negotiate — even beyond the 5pm deadline the league has set — but the league is now once again drawing a hardline status and implying a take-it-or-leave it style offer will soon be made. The league characterizes the forthcoming offer as “fair for both players and clubs.” Based on the manner in which past negotiations have transpired, it’s hard to imagine the union will view things similarly.

MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets that one dispute still, unsurprisingly, centers around the luxury-tax thresholds. MLB’s latest offer reportedly set a $220MM luxury-tax barrier for the next three seasons before climbing to $224MM in 2025 and to $230MM in 2026. The union, meanwhile, proposed first-level thresholds of $238MM in 2022, $244MM in 2023, $250MM in 2024, $256MM in 2025 and $263MM in 2026. Both offers represent slight movement from the parties’ original proposals, but it’s still a large bridge to cross.

Meanwhile, Evan Drellich of The Athletic tweets that the MLBPA dropped its ask on the pre-arbitration bonus pool from $115MM to $85MM — effectively asking each team to contribute $2.83MM rather than the prior ask of $3.83MM. That pool, per Drellich, would increase by $5MM annually over the life of the collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, the league remains set at $25MM — roughly $833K per team.

As for the minimum salary, Drellich further tweets that the union has dropped its ask to $725K, with yearly increases of $20K throughout the CBA. The league is offering $675K and an annual increase of $10K, as was reported yesterday.

Public relations tactics like the ones characterized by Wood have been employed throughout these negotiations (and not solely by MLB), but there’s a large portion of the MLB fanbase that cares very little about which side is to “blame.” The broader takeaway from the entire situation is that the scheduled March 31 season opener remains very much in jeopardy. Commissioner Rob Manfred has previously called missing regular-season games a “disastrous outcome” while touting his own track record of labor peace, but that disaster feels closer than at any point to date.

To reiterate, today’s “deadline” is only seen by one of the two parties (the league) as a hard stopping point in talks. It would teeter on impossible to facilitate the optimal four-week Spring Training that Manfred mentioned as a target in mid-February, but if the two sides were to continue talking in the coming days, there’s no reason a deal that at least preserves a March 31 or an early-April start to the season couldn’t be salvaged. For now, MLB is drawing a firm line in the sand in hoping that the players accept an offer that, with just 80 minutes until the purported “deadline,” has yet to even be presented to the union.

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are apparently in agreement on a 12-team playoff in the upcoming collective bargaining agreement, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (Twitter link). As part of that deal, Nightengale adds that the league is likely to keep the penalties for exceeding the luxury tax in a similar level as they’d been under the previous CBA.

The league’s desire for an expanded postseason field has been evident throughout negotiations. MLB had pushed to expand from the previous 10-team field up to 14 clubs throughout discussions, but the union had resisted that possibility. It seems the league has agreed to settle for 12 during this round of negotiations, presumably via adding one more Wild Card team in each league.

Specific terms of the format being discussed are unclear. Hypothetically, it seems the likeliest scenario would see the top two teams in each league receive a bye through the first playoff round (similar to the format utilized in the NFL until that league expanded its own playoffs two years ago). That’d leave the division winner with the worst record and the three Wild Card teams in each league playing some kind of series to advance to the second round.

MLB reportedly offered more player-friendly terms on issues like the minimum salary and pre-arbitration bonus pool to try to get the union’s approval on a 14-team playoff. However, the PA continued to express concerns that broadening the field to that extent could reduce the incentive for teams to earnestly pursue upgrades to their rosters.

There’s a high degree of variability in the MLB postseason — just last year, the playoff team with the worst regular season record went on to win the World Series — and the union fears that under a 14-team system, front offices might be content to build marginally above-average rosters and let the chips fall where they may once the playoffs begin. That could have a trickle-down effect of diminishing free agency spending, one with which the MLBPA was surely uncomfortable.

In recent discussions on playoff expansion, the union has floated the concept of a “ghost win” in the first round for the division winner that doesn’t receive a bye. As Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported (on Twitter), that’d system involve the division winner playing the Wild Card team with what amounts to an automatic 1-0 lead in a five-game series. So under that setup, the division winner would only need to win twice in the remaining four games to advance. The Wild Card qualifier, on the other hand, would need to take three out of four.

It’s not clear whether that kind of format made it to the end of discussions on the issue. It also remains unclear how many games each first-round series would comprise. What is apparent is that the parties’ reported willingness to settle on a 12-team postseason marks a key step in their progress towards eventually hammering out a CBA. Postseason expansion has been one of the most important topics of these negotiations for years — with Commissioner Rob Manfred voicing support for a 14-team field as early as October 2020.