Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining deadline has come and gone. What’s next?
The longest continual period of labor peace since the formation of the Major League Baseball Players Association was founded in 1966 came to an end in Thursday’s earliest hours, as the league’s collective bargaining agreement expired at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Members of the union were then locked out by ownership and management.
The lockout is baseball’s first work stoppage since the strike which forced the cancellation of the World Series in 1994. Twenty six years and eight months elapsed between the resolution of that strike on April 2, 1995, and Thursday’s action, which throws the MLB offseason into stasis and leaves open the question of whether the 2022 season will begin as scheduled.
Players and the MLBPA are seeking, among other issues, a faster path to free agency for the game’s young and talented stars and a method to address the intentional tanking which has infected the game, as well as what they believe is an equitable distribution of the proceeds from expanded digital access to the game.
Ownership and management desire an expanded postseason to generate additional revenue, as well as revisions to the core economics of the game that they believe would provide them with enhanced cost certainty.
The introduction of the designated hitter to the National League, a rule change that works in favor of both parties, is widely anticipated to be the one of the most significant gameplay changes to result from the looming negotiations.
Former Cardinals reliever Andrew Miller is a member of the union’s executive committee and was intimately involved in negotiation sessions outside of Dallas this week that, ultimately, failed to avert a work stoppage.
Given the amount of time left in the offseason, the immediate impacts of a lockout are largely limited to a freeze on off-season activity such as free agency and trades. Teams and their employees, including coaches and trainers, are forbidden from having any contact with players, and team facilities are not available for use except by those rehabilitating an injury which occurred while the player was covered under the previous CBA.
Players who are not members of the MLBPA are permitted to sign minor league contracts and be traded, though few are likely to pursue that path in solidarity with the union.
Next week’s scheduled Winter Meetings in Orlando, Florida, are expected to be canceled. The Cardinals still intend to hold their annual Winter Warm-Up convention, scheduled for Jan. 15-17, though if the lockout remains ongoing, no current players will be in attendance.
Still ample time to reach an agreement
With spring training not set to open until February, there remains adequate time for the parties to reach an agreement and avert any cancellation of games that could be disastrous in the face of the sport’s unsteady recovery from the losses of the pandemic.
Indeed, the delayed start to the 2020 season served in many ways as a dress rehearsal for the current negotiations, with each of the parties negotiating publicly in ways they later would acknowledge were regrettable.
Whether an entirely productive media posture can be maintained in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen. Many players feel as though the previous agreement, reached in 2016, was insufficiently forward-thinking in terms of protecting their interests, and are likely to want to achieve significant gains in this negotiation to make up for what they believe were functionally losses in the prior negotiation.
The rash of free agent activity to begin this week, which has seen more than a billion dollars in contracts signed by players, stands in stark contrast with the abrupt activity freeze now settled in over the game. Indeed, that such agreements were made introduces significant skepticism to any claim management might make over the precarity of their own financial position.
Those deals also illuminate what could turn out to be a silver lining around the black cloud of a lockout. They were reached, in large part, because both players and teams anticipated an extended period of mandatory inactivity, and neither side had the stomach for the uncertainty that might otherwise have resulted from an entirely barren market.
Feb. 1 looms as key checkpoint
Just as Dec. 1 stood as an ad hoc free agency deadline, so too does Feb. 1 loom as a rough checkpoint for progress on the labor front. An agreement reached by that date would allow spring training to proceed as normal and would guarantee the season will be played as scheduled.
If no agreement is reached by the beginning of February, then stakeholders around the game will likely begin to express concern and pursue contingencies. In that eventuality, a country just beginning to emerge fully from a years-long crisis might find its national pastime not there to be leaned on, and public backlash may be swift and strong.
Such a stoppage could pose an existential risk to the long-term health of the league, and no core economic issues could supersede the concerns that would come with even a single canceled game.
