NEWSLETTER
I’m not being a chump, I swear. I have zero expectation that a shocking, zero hour deal is going to come together to avert a lockout tomorrow at midnight. But I *DO* have hope that the owners and the players can at least make minimal progress in their Collective Bargaining Agreement talks – on core issues, I mean – so that whatever comes next can be productive. What I don’t want to see is the sides doing the heel-digging thing today and tomorrow, where they each decide they are so far apart that the only next step is to completely break things off until the pressure of Spring Training forces them to start talking again, for the first time, in late January. That would be a serious problem.
To that end, I guess today has been a success from the externally-available information? I’m not saying these were good and productive talks or anything, but at least it was a lot of back and forth all day (definitely follow Evan Drellich for this stuff):
The MLBPA walked MLB through a proposal this morning in Texas. Meeting didn’t last long, but people with knowledge of talks say best not to read into duration. Owners didn’t appear thrilled, though. MLB will get back to union, parties may meet again later today. CBA expires tomm.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) November 30, 2021
Owners are leaving the hotel now. Players and owners met in a group for about 35 minutes. They separated for an hour, before Bruce Meyer and Andrew Miller walked off with Dan Halem and Dick Monfort, chair of MLB’s labor committee. That went for about 45 minutes.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) November 30, 2021
MLB and MLBPA plan to meet again tomorrow morning. Whether they wind up bargaining up until the 11:59 p.m. expiration of the CBA is to be seen.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) December 1, 2021
I kinda hope we DON’T hear anything about the particulars or progress or anything like that until after the lockout begins, because maybe that’ll be a signal that it was modestly positive. Historically, it’s when you start hearing lots of specifics about proposals from each side – complete with obvious spin and snark – that you know things are going very badly.
This is about as bad as I am willing to hear (with some caution provided by Maury Brown):
Dozens of items have been discussed and agreed upon. It’s the core economics that are at issue. Talks always go somewhere. They are not trending toward an agreement by the the deadline. https://t.co/yucwojTdvB
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) December 1, 2021
An important side point also raised by Brown:
It’s not like they suddenly got it all sorted out. But the sides are talking. Hard to tell. But it may be the ground rules of what can and can’t take place in the lockout. One open issue is rehabbing players and reporting to team facilities and trainers. NHL did in lockout. https://t.co/S0Jl6Q9Jm6
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) November 30, 2021
It would be nice if the sides were able to come to some kind of interim agreement, specifically, on the ability of players on the 40-man roster to continue using team facilities and medical services for rehab purposes. Like, bare minimum. I just hate the idea of, for example, Miguel Amaya just undergoing Tommy John surgery this week, and then, boom, sorry, the team literally cannot even communicate with you about the rest and recovery process until the CBA is done. That might be multiple months of radio silence. Ditto guys like Nick Madrigal and David Bote as they recover. Only minor leaguers off of the 40-man roster and not part of the union – Pete Crow-Armstrong, for example – could continue working with the team.
