JUPITER, Fla. — The efforts to get Major League Baseball out of the bargaining room and onto the field continue to go nowhere slowly.
With four days left before the owners’ stated deadline to start the regular season on time, the teams and players stand far, far away from an agreement. Thursday served primarily as a day for the players to seethe over their partners’ threats and for the owners to fret over their partners’ lack of movement.
It was an optimist’s holiday, in that glass-half-full types should have taken the day off.
With new attendees including Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner (a member of the owners’ labor policy committee), Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. and Marlins infielder Miguel Rojas, the full talks lasted for less than 30 minutes. The sides caucused for an hour and 15 minutes before the day wrapped with a breakout session featuring deputy commissioner Dan Halem, senior vice president Patrick Houlihan and the MLB Players Association’s senior director Bruce Meyer.
The players, mindful of the owners’ complaints that their more recent counteroffers featured givebacks from one area and takes from another, moved toward the teams on two fronts. They lowered their ask on service-time manipulation to a formula that would ensure a full year of service for an average of four high-performing rookies a year, based on what transpired during the life span of the prior Basic Agreement (2017 through 2021). Their previous proposal would have rewarded an average of nearly six rookies per season. And the players tweaked their proposal for a draft lottery so that rebuilding small-market clubs would receive more leeway before getting tagged and penalized as repeat tankers.
According to an industry source, MLB’s restated vow Wednesday — that the league would start canceling games without a deal by the end of Monday’s talks — served only to further mobilize the players in their resolve. And according to a second source, the owners find themselves frustrated by the players’ refusal to move more, with particular agita reserved for two issues — arbitration eligibility and revenue sharing — that the owners designated as immovable and that the players still want to move.
They’ll nevertheless meet again Friday, still hoping against hope for a breakthrough or a blink.
