Although we have presumed that representatives for the owners and the Players Association would get back together sometime this week to continue negotiating the Collective Bargaining Agreement, we still don’t have any kind of official word on when or what it will look like. At last check, the owners made a revised offer on Saturday – just their second offer of the now 77-day lockout – that moved the needle on several economic issues, but only very slightly. It was not the kind of offer that was going to save Spring Training, which has now officially been delayed. But it was reasonable to hope that it was at least enough to get the players, sometime this week, to come back with another revised offer (presumably making similarly small moves on a variety of issues).
As of last night, Evan Drellich reported that no meeting was yet scheduled because the players were still considering how they wanted to respond. As of this morning, Bob Nightengale reports that a meeting is indeed expected to happen this week, though the particulars are still lacking:
MLB and the players union are expected to meet again later this week but nothing yet has been formally scheduled as of this morning. They have met once in the last 14 days on core economic issues.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) February 16, 2022
We’ll see what information shakes loose by … tonight? Tomorrow?
Your constantly updated hopeful-but-at-least-plausible hypothetical timeline looks like this: a new offer from the players by Friday, a counter by the owners next Wednesday, another offer from the players by Monday of the next week (that’s already March 1). It’s just gonna take multiple more back and forths to chip away at the huge gap. So maybe after a few of them, then the sides are able to hunker down to do the marathon final bargaining sessions to get a deal in place by, say, that Friday, March 4. If it were ratified over the weekend, you could then have a week of Offseason Part Two, and Spring Training begins somewhere around March 14 and lasts four weeks. That would leave MLB having to cancel or reschedule only the first full week of the regular season. (Yes, again: we’re already to the point where the hopeful-but-at-least-plausible hypothetical timeline includes the first full week of the regular season being mucked up.)