MLB to Union: Monday Deadline for Deal or No 162-Game Season

JUPITER, Fla. — National Renewal Day came early for Major League Baseball in 2022. Those frisky owners and players just couldn’t wait until May 4, the actual holiday (thanks, Google), to renew their threats against one another.

On Wednesday, at the unsubtly named Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium, the owners responded to the players’ latest lame counteroffer with a lame counteroffer of their own. Sometime amid the chatter, though, the owners reiterated a statement they first made at their Feb. 12 bargaining session in Manhattan: If they don’t get this deal done by Monday, then there won’t be a 162-game season.

“A deadline is a deadline,” an MLB spokesman emphasized. “Missed games are missed games. Salary will not be paid for those games.”

The MLBPA, according to a source, responded with a repeated counter-vow of sorts: If the players don’t get paid for a full season in 2022, they will not sign off on an expanded postseason in the Basic Agreement.

This exchange sequel occurred as a result of union scuttlebutt that next Monday need not be the deadline, that alternate avenues exist, be that via holding spring training for less than four weeks or shoehorning some doubleheaders into the schedule, to pull off 162 contests. The owners naturally dislike twin-bills for revenue reasons, and they contend that the three-week “summer camp” held in 2020, after the COVID-19 shutdown, proved too short, as exemplified by the flurry of injuries that followed.

Of course, if the owners consistently prioritized the players’ health, they wouldn’t view the implementation of the universal designated hitter as a financial concession. They’d see it as the smartest way to keep their pitchers (by and large their most prized assets) healthy by keeping them away from hitting and baserunning.

The players’ parry concerning the expanded postseason feels like a proposition to shoot one’s own foot. Even within the players’ camp, there is debate over the merits and drawbacks of allowing more clubs into the playoff party. What’s indisputable is the increased revenue that would generate, and for all of the concerns about watering down October, a look at the other major sports shows customers love it when their club, no matter how mediocre, puts itself in the tournament mix.

In any case, five days of bargaining remain before that deadline passes, and an expectation exists that the two sides will meet here every day until then. If the talks continue at their current languid pace, then we won’t see anything resembling a deal.

With the players welcoming three reinforcements — Yankees Zack Britton and Gerrit Cole and free agent Andrew Miller — to their group as the Reds’ Sonny Gray left, the two sides met in full for about an hour and 40 minutes, during which the owners raised their minimum-salary offer from $630,000 to $640,000 for 2022, with an increase of $10,000 each season through 2026.

After each side caucused for more than two hours, one more smaller breakout session occurred, with Miller, new Met Max Scherzer and the PA’s senior director, Bruce Meyer, joining MLB’s deputy commissioner, Dan Halem, and Rockies CEO Dick Monfort for about a half-hour. Talks were said to be civil, if vigorous.

While a move in the right direction, MLBs minimum-salary uptick didn’t dramatically alter the vibe of inertia surrounding these talks. Nothing will, really, until we see someone blink on the competitive-balance tax, over which the owners have drawn a hard line, implementing harsher penalties for surpassing the threshold (which barely increase in their package), while the players are aiming sky-high, with a $31 differential, $245 million versus $214 million, just for 2022, which grows larger from there.

Those who want the season to start on time, therefore, should root against renewals, replays and rewinds and hope for some strikingly new material. If that doesn’t emerge soon, then another holiday, Opening Day, will come later, not earlier, than it reads on the calendar.

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