MLB Season In Jeopardy With Talks Going Nowhere

What’s The Issue?

With the MLB season set to start on March 31 the urgency for both the MLBPA and the owners to come to a deal for the collective bargaining agreement has reached an all-time high. This week both the MLBPA and owners met and talked with each other about the current proposals and what needs to be done to reach an agreement. However, the sense around the league is that both sides are still nowhere close to coming to an agreement.

ESPN insider and writer Jeff Passan highlights what he has heard around the issue.

Who’s to Blame?

While no one side is to blame each party has issues that they are standing by and not willing to give up.

The MLBPA is focused on player agency. Some of their main proposals focus on players having to play a shorter amount of time in the league before having the ability to become a free agent. As well as wanting to raise the player’s minimum salary to be more in line with other professional sports. Along with this, the players association wants to incentivize competition by punishing teams that go consecutive years ending in the bottom of the league by moving draft picks.

There's a lot of talk about tanking and how to fix it. This, according to sources, was part of the MLBPA's proposal today — similar to what it has proposed in the past. The league's counter has been simple: the top four picks are subject to a lottery with no other adjustments. pic.twitter.com/Ikz41Wk36h

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 25, 2022

As for the owners they want to on expanding the post-season. This with the hope to grow the game of baseball and expand the reach that the game has and increase viewership across the board. Along with wanting to increase viewership owners are also wanting rule changes to make the game more exciting things like a pitch clock and no infield shifts have been discussed among many others.

Fans should be hopeful that a deal gets done in the coming days. However if a deal does not get agreed upon by the “deadline” of Feb. 28 many fear that the loss of games during the season would be inevitable.