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On Saturday, representatives for the MLB owners and the MLB Players Association will sit together in a room and talk. By the time the first person speaks, the lockout will be in its 73rd day, and it will have been a while since the two sides met to discuss a potential new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Eleven days, to be exact.
A lot can happen in a time frame like that. During one 11-day stretch last season, Juan Soto reached base 36 times via hit or walk (18 of each). Heck, during one 14-day stretch last year, Shohei Ohtani hit 11 home runs. It’s easy to miss baseball right about now, isn’t it?
If we’re lucky and things go very well on Saturday, maybe the sides will talk about timing.
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But that’s getting ahead of things. Here’s what we know: Commissioner Rob Manfred will deliver a proposal to the players’ union, and that proposal will be discussed. It’s been a while since the last MLB proposal, too. The players felt they were promised one last week, but instead of a CBA proposal, MLB proposed bringing in a third-party mediator instead. The players declined that offer, instead asking to get back to the negotiating table.
Things looked bleak. The MLB owners have spent the past few days meeting — an annual meeting, held every offseason — and they have an offer ready to give the MLBPA. Manfred said as much during his wrap-up news conference Thursday morning. If nothing else, that’s a step up from the activity — well, non-activity — of the past week or so.
“It’s a good proposal,” Manfred said on Thursday.
Will the MLBPA attach the same adjective to the owners’ offer?
That’s the big question. Because here’s the truth: This is a really, really important meeting on Saturday. Is it the most important meeting of the lockout? For now, yes. When baseball is finally being played again at some point, will we look back and say it was the most important meeting of this whole labor impasse? Maybe? Possibly, with the benefit of hindsight. But we’re a long way from hindsight, folks.
Manfred did announce a bit of good news. The sides have agreed to bring the DH to the National League on a full-time basis, and the sides have agreed to drop the draft-pick compensation attached to upper-level free agents that inhibited their value on the market.
Now, these are both elements that were always likely to happen, so acknowledging that there’s an agreement on those issues isn’t a watershed moment. But that it took until Feb. 10 to announce something that could have been knocked out as a gesture of goodwill on Dec. 2 tells you a lot about how these negotiations have progressed to this point.
Baseball is getting down to crunch time. We’re not officially there yet, but we’re close. Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report next week, and spring training games are scheduled to start in the last few days of the month. Pushing those dates back a bit wouldn’t be ideal, but they’re not a do-not-cross deadline.
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Truth is, if a deal was reached in the first few days of March, baseball could get ready for an on-time start. Manfred said as much on Thursday; baseball gave players a 21-day prep period before starting the pandemic-shortened season in 2020, and the injury rates were less than ideal. Four weeks for spring training seems like the minimum.
To get a deal done by the first few days of March, though, actual, real work has to begin. The PR-driven posturing and gestures not followed up by actions needs to stop, and conversations that could lead to compromises need to happen. Manfred said he’s optimistic. He’s optimistic by nature, he said, and he’s optimistic because since he’s been in the role as a lead negotiator for MLB since 1998, the sport hasn’t missed any games.
“You’re always one breakthrough away from making an agreement. That’s the art of this process,” he said. “Somebody makes a move — and that’s why we’ll make additional moves on Saturday — that creates flexibility on the other side, and what seems like a big gap on this topic or another topic isn’t such a big gap anymore.”
Makes you wonder why “additional moves” from MLB’s side didn’t come in December or January. Stay tuned, folks.
Saturday is a really big day for baseball.
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