Now It’s Time To Worry About Spring Training Games Being Lost Due To MLB Lockout

Major League Baseball. Remember them? You know, the sport that we’d normally all be talking about as the NFL ends their death grip on millions of fans in the winter and baseball brings about the thought of warmer days?

It may be hard to think about the league given that virtually no activity that the average fan would be interested in has been going on since just after midnight on December 2nd when commissioner Rob Manfred instituted a lockout. Since then, negotiations between the labor representatives for the league and players have been few, and movement toward a new labor agreement has been slower than Bartolo Colon on the base paths.

Up until now, fans have held out that an off-season work-stoppage was not much to worry about.

That was then. This is now.

This week the calendar will flip over to February and with it, the gap to get spring training off on time because more and more remote.

Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report on February 16. With the lockout, all free agent signings; all trades; all salary arbitration deals, and potential hearings, have been frozen.

Like the flurry of activity that occurred just before the lockout commenced, so too will the clubs and the players need to engage to finish out the business of the off-season before the 2022 championship season can get going in earnest.

Most everyone has pegged about two weeks for the “unfrozen work” to get completed. We’re here.

Key in all of this are two things: the players have to show that they will not lose another labor deal. The owners have to show they didn’t give in.

There have been signs that the sides can each claim victory with a bit of creativity.

The best example centers on the want of the MLB Players Association to see an increase in pay to young players in the first three years of club control. Up until now, clubs have only been required to pay the league minimum.

In the two recent days of negotiations, the sides moved toward the concept of creating a bonus pool for these pre-salary arbitration players. Using MLB central funds, players would receive bonus money based on being top performers. One metric being discuss to rank the players would be through wins above replacement (WAR).

The players and owners have knocked around increasing the overall minimum salary. The owners offered up a 5% increase, which would be the lowest all-time, sans the labor deal just after the ’94-’95 strike which saw the minimum stay flat, while the players countered with a 31% increase which would be the biggest, ever. The sides will assuredly meet somewhere in the middle.

The players have sought to bring in all players with two years of service time into salary arbitration, while the owners have remained steadfast in saying that is off-limits. Maybe the players get an increase in the number of those players (the last labor agreement saw the top 22% of players with two years of major league service time – MLST – enter salary arbitration), but it’s quite possible that creating these types of methods will allow the players to potential pullback. After all, if they get an increase in pay to younger players, how it happens is in the eye of the beholder. The players can say they got the increases. The owners will say they didn’t give in on the percentage of players going into salary arbitration. Both claim victory. Neither lose.

If there’s the hope of not having spring training games lost (and that is becoming more remote by the second), then this type of creativity needs to be applied to other concepts still not reached. The bad thing is time is running out. Unless there is a dramatic shift this week, a shortened spring training period is nearly assured.