NEWSLETTER
I should caution up front that, although words like “lockout” or “strike” or “work stoppage” are scary in the abstract, everyone in the baseball world has been anticipating that a new Collective Bargaining Agreement would *NOT* be in place by the time the current CBA expires on December 1. So, by definition, virtually everyone in the game already agrees that something is going to happen on December 2, whether it’s a formal lockout or a work stoppage or a temporary freeze or whatever.
Still, because we know that CBA negotiations have been ongoing between the players and the owners, and because we’re just shy of a month before that fated date, we have to take note of reports like this:
Baseball’s ninth work stoppage and its first in 26 years appears almost certain to start Dec. 2. If so, it will freeze the free-agent market and threaten the start of spring training in February.
by @ronaldblum
https://t.co/GWs4YMVDUj— AP Sports (@AP_Sports) October 25, 2021
Per the AP report:
“Negotiations have been taking place since last spring, and each side thinks the other has not made proposals that will lead toward an agreement replacing the five-year contract that expires at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 1 ….
This lack of pace in negotiations is similar to what occurred in 1989-90, when the agreement expired Dec. 31 and owners announced on Jan. 9 that a lockout would begin Feb. 15 absent an agreement. A deal was reached March 1 and opening day was delayed a week until April 9, causing 78 games to be postponed and rescheduled.”
The report goes into greater detail on the state of negotiations, and it looks exactly like what you’d expect, with each side believing the other side’s position on banner issues are unreasonable. Previously-reported details come in for additional mention, including the changes to the luxury tax and payroll floor system, free agency at 29.5 years old, and the player grievance about last year’s season being too short. That is to say, the report does not read as though there are any NEW hurdles popping up, and the major takeaway should simply be that there are no surprising BREAKTHROUGHS yet to report.
And barring a change on that front, you should continue to expect that the CBA will indeed expire at midnight on December 1, and then we’ll all have to wait to see what happens. If negotiations have been going moderately well by that point, you could conceivably see a continue of normal business operations while the sides continue to negotiate (and the rules of the old CBA would still govern the game for a few more weeks or whatever). You could also see an agreed-upon, semi-shutdown until X Date, at which point a full lockout would kick in (the only thing these sides love creating more than drama is deadlines). Or, if things haven’t been going well, we could see either side just say eff this, and lockout (owners) or strike (players).
Given how previous negotiations have gone, I don’t know why you’d be optimistic that this would be resolved WITHOUT (1) extremely angry words, (2) a shutdown, and (3) some actual pain being inflicted. That’s all the more true when you consider how well the ownership side has done in the last two CBAs, and how critical certain player issues are this time around (when revenues keep climbing but the average player salary keeps going down … that’s just a core-level, fundamental problem that has to be resolved). In other words, the owners are always ready to dig in their heels, and the players have all the more reason to do so this time around.
Again, long story short: nothing about the AP report surprises me or concerns me more than I was before. I still expect the CBA to expire, and I still expect the resolution of the new CBA to be ugly.
If you want optimism, I will at least play the part of the fool-me-twice-shame-on-me guy and say I don’t think we actually see any games lost in 2022. It’s possible we see a delay to Spring Training, or maybe even the season, but I just don’t think the sides are going to have the appetite to lose a huge chunk of money for the second time in three years. (And, speaking as a fan, you’d love to believe that they also care about not doing that to the fans after the last two years …. )
