Daily Meetings Could End Lockout Sooner

As the baseball lockout thunders down the tracks like a runaway locomotive, the warring parties have finally made a significant agreement.

Starting Monday, a federal holiday when most workers stay home, they’re going to meet face-to-face every day in a valiant effort to save the season.

Regular-season games are slated to start March 31 but teams insist players need four weeks of spring training ahead of the 162-game grind. To achieve that, the deadline date would be March 1.

The first week of exhibition games has already been lost, along with the Baseball Winter Meetings and the traditional Hot Stove League publicity mill that keeps fans flush with trades, free agent signings, and rumors.

The lost publicity also hurts teams that use the winter months to sell season tickets, hype special games, and promote such events as the retirement of Will Clark’s No. 22 jersey by the San Francisco Giants.

Players aren’t paid during spring training, though teams earn revenue through sales of tickets, concessions, and parking. Player paychecks start on Opening Day.

Until now, the second-longest work stoppage in baseball history has been marked mostly by malaise. Since its start on Dec. 2, the two sides held just a half-dozen meetings – most of them embarrassingly short – on core economic issues.

Pitchers and catchers, who traditionally report a week ahead of full squads, were supposed to gather on Feb. 15. Instead, that date went into the calendar as the 77th day of baseball’s nuclear winter.

Not surprisingly, money is the matter, with major areas of disagreement from minimum salary and luxury tax thresholds to revenue sharing, arbitration, and expansion of the postseason format from the current 10 teams.

“I just hope something gets resolved quickly,” two-time batting champion DJ LeMahieu told Ronald Blum of The Associated Press. “Baseball becomes a business – it’s not as much fun, but it’s something that definitely needs to happen.”

To preserve the planned 2022 schedule, that “something” needs to happen quickly. Major League Baseball has already announced cancellation of exhibition play at least until March 5.

Brian Snitker, manager of the World Champion Atlanta Braves, believes spring training is too long anyway.

“I don’t care if we lose spring training games,” he told Jeff Schultz of The Athletic.“I think we need four weeks to actually get them [the players] where you want them.

“Two years ago, when we shut down [for Covid-19], I only had guys playing four innings and we were two weeks in. We break them in slower than probably what they want. Guys are like ‘I want to keep playing’ because they’re already there and they’ve worked out.”

Equipment trucks have quietly been dispatched to Florida and Arizona by the 30 teams but without the usual hoopla of Truck Day. Clubs just want to be ready when baseball’s Iron Curtain lifts.

Even if negotiators reach a deal on a new Basic Agreement this week, the union will still need several days to complete the ratification process.

Although many players have been working out on their own at college or private facilities close to shuttered big-league camps, a significant number of Latino players still in their home countries could encounter visa problems – causing further delay in joining their teams.

One thing is certain: general managers will be off and running the minute the lockout lifts. Hundreds of free agents were frozen in their tracks when the lockout hit and a wild scramble for their services is certain to dominate the news coming out of the camps for the first few weeks.

Among the studs remaining in the Twilight Zone of free agency are former Most Valuable Players Freddie Freeman and Kris Bryant, All-Star shortstops Carlos Correa and Trevor Story, and former Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw, winner of three Cy Young Awards.

Despite a pre-lockout signing frenzy, the volume of unattached players is staggering.

According to Fangraphs’ Roster Resource, there are 199 major-league players available as free agents plus more than 400 minor-league free agents.

Spring training sites from Phoenix to Palm Beach are already feeling the economic impact. The normal six-week training period, which includes about 30 exhibition games, stretches from mid-February through the month of March and generates significant revenue for host communities.

The 15 training sites in Arizona, clustered around Phoenix, generate $644 million for the local economy, according to an Arizona State University study, while Florida hotels, restaurants, car rental companies, and attractions also bank heavily on spring training revenue.

The only longer work stoppage in baseball history was a 232-day player strike that wiped out the 1994 post-season, including the World Series. There were eight previous labor interruptions but none since that strike ended, albeit with reduction of the ‘95 campaign from 162 games to 144. Neither side wants that to happen again.

MLB has already begun to refund fan-purchased tickets to cancelled games. Now it just has to hope that unhappy chore doesn’t linger much longer.

The clock is ticking.