AP Photo/John Raoux
The MLB Players Association was told by Major League Baseball that they need to reach a new collective bargaining agreement by Monday, February 28, in order for the season to start on time.
Evan Drellich of The Athletic confirmed that the news was reported by Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
The pitchers and catchers were supposed to report Tuesday, but that didn't happen because of the MLB players' strike. The previous collective bargaining agreement expired without a new one in place.
Spring training is scheduled to begin on February 26, but as Nightengale wrote, that appears to be all but impossible.
If the MLBPA agrees that Feb. 28 is the right cut-off date, there cannot be much wiggle room.
Thursday, March 31 is the opening day. All 30 teams are playing that day.
The sides met in New York. The Washington Post provided more details about the meeting, as well as some context behind it.
Chelsea Janes @chelsea_janes15 minutes is bleak, but it seems like the union basically handed them their proposal and wasn’t surprised that they didn’t have an immediate response. Expected MLB to need to take it back and analyze it. So I don’t think the timing itself signals catastrophic developments
Chelsea Janes @chelsea_janesUnion’s proposal today: dropping their request to put all players with two years of service time into arbitration. Instead, they propose Super Two, which currently puts the top 22 percent of two-year players in terms of service time into arb, expand to the top 80 percent.
Chelsea Janes @chelsea_janesBig sticking point will remain the CBT… namely MLB’s proposal to raise the tax rates. If league doesn’t come down on those, hard to see deal getting done.
In a New York Times article on December 4, James Wagner described some of the issues.
"Although star players are setting contract records in a system without a hard salary cap—a mechanism present in the other major North American professional sports leagues—players feel owners aren’t struggling as much as they say they are; that too many teams are receiving tens of millions in revenue sharing from their counterparts yet purposefully aren’t competing for playoff spots; that the industry has grown but the average major-league salary (roughly $4 million) has remained flat or dropped; that younger, cheaper players are being relied on more than ever and having their service time manipulated.
"Owners, though, believe baseball players have the best deal in professional sports and point to this off-season’s free-agent spending, which was on pace to set a record, as one point in that argument."
Jeff Passan did a Q-and-A with readers on Thursday that gave some insight about where things are currently.
This is the ninth work stoppage in MLB history and the first since the 1994-95 strike that resulted in the cancellation of the final month-and-a-half of the 1994 regular season and the beginning of the 1995 regular season.
This is the first time since 1990 that there has been a Lockout. There have been no canceled games as of now.
If the two sides can come to an agreement, the season will begin on time. Time.
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