Well, there’s the update we’ve been hoping for. Er, that is to say, we’d hoped for *AN* update during these owners meetings, so I’ll take what I can get.
The owners will indeed be making a new Collective Bargaining Agreement proposal this week, and the sides will meet for another negotiating session on Saturday:
MLB is planning to make a new proposal following the owners meeting which ends tomorrow. It is expected to involve core economic issues, and hope remains that it could trigger something to get a deal done on time for the regular season to begin as scheduled, or close.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 10, 2022
#MLB and #MLBPA’s negotiations session on Saturday will be their first in 11 days.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) February 10, 2022
It’s possible the proposal will simply be first unveiled at that session on Saturday, though it seems like it could help spur things along if the MLBPA got a chance to review it before the meeting. Unless it’s a bad offer …
So this news comes out tonight, before Commissioner Rob Manfred faces the media tomorrow for the first time since the lockout began in December. I would imagine he and the owners wanted it out there tonight that, yes, yes, an offer is coming and another session is coming, which will allow Manfred to mostly lean on that fact tomorrow. He won’t have to get into too much substance, because he can simply say, as you’ve heard, an offer is coming, and then we’ll negotiate.
From there, as we’ve discussed, Opening Day cannot realistically come on time if a deal is not done by the final week of February (and that is PUSHING it). And unless this new offer is very reasonable and actually moves the ball meaningfully, I don’t see how it’s possible the sides could squeeze in on a deal in just two weeks, given the pace of the negotiations to this point.