Tag / 2022 Lockout

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A Disastrous Outcome

For the first time since 1995, a work stoppage will wipe the scheduled Opening Day off the schedule for Major League Baseball.  Weeks after saying that missed regular season games would be “a disastrous outcome.” Commissioner Rob Manfred, with a telling smile on his face, announced he was cancelling the first two series of the regular season after the MLBPA (rightfully) turned down the so-called final offer from the owners yesterday afternoon.  With talks breaking down, the earliest the two sides will get back together is tomorrow.

Locally, both teams would lose two series against Central division foes.  The White Sox would miss out on the opening series against the Twins at Guaranteed Rate Field and a trip to Kansas City to face the Royals.  The Cubs would avoid opening the season at Great American Ballpark against the Reds and their home opening series versus the Cardinals at Wrigley Field.  Of course, there has been no mention yet of refunds for fans who bought tickets to those cancelled games.

Who knows what will happen at this point.  The owners won’t see any real financial pressure to start the season until late April, when they will have to start returning money to their television partners for missed games.  As we saw in 2020, when the pandemic shut down the sport for months on end, there are plenty of owners who would prefer to play the fewest number of games they can get away with and still make all of their money.  Of course, they could just lift the lockout and continue negotiating while the season played out, but that is only something mature adults might do.

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Still Waiting

Yesterday’s deadline for a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement between the MLBPA and the owners and maintain a 162-game schedule has come and gone, with the only deal in place to push that deadline back to today at 5 PM Eastern.  After weeks of dragging their feet, the owners seemed willing to finally negotiate yesterday, and the negotiations went deep into the night (or early this morning).  Does that mean we are any closer to a deal?  Hard to tell.

Last month, Rob Manfred said it would be catastrophic for the game if the regular season was impacted.  Yesterday, the owners threatened to cancel the entire slate of April games.  That rhetoric seemed to calm down as the day wore on, but today will see if the owners truly understand the potential harm they are causing to the sport or if their only interest is in extracting as much money as they can and then dumping the husk on the next unsuspecting sucker who will reap what the current batch have sown.

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Spring Delay

In normal times, pitchers and catchers would have been reporting to training camps throughout Arizona and Florida this week, starting their workouts and getting ready for the 2022 baseball season.  Thanks to the ongoing lockout, however, these are far from normal times.  While there has been no official announcement from MLB, spring training has been delayed due to a work stoppage for the first time since 1995.

Given the lack of actual negotiating between the two sides, it’s hard to tell when this thing may get resolved.  Spring training games are still scheduled to start one week from tomorrow, which seems very unlikely, even if a resolution were to come this weekend.  Maybe the lost revenue from those games will start to force the owners to the negotiating table.

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Spring Bleak

More than three months into a lockout that has extinguished the hot stove, the lack of progress on a deal between the owners and the MLBPA has put the on-time opening of spring camps in peril. Pitchers and catchers for all 30 teams were to start reporting to spring training next week, but with no deal in place, big league camps across Florida and Arizona will remain shuttered.

With this second milestone passed, and the first to impact any on-field activities, you have to wonder what the end game is here. A delayed start to spring training most certainly means the loss of spring training games, which have become a not-insignificant source of revenue over the past few years. If this lockout stretches into March, then Opening Day and the start of the regular season starts to become a question mark.