Deputy Commissioner Dan Hallem and MLBPA lead negotiator Bruce Mayer are expected to meet today at an “informal” one-on-one meeting in New York. tweets Evan Drelic from The Athletic. This will be the first time Commissioner Rob Manfred has announced the cancellation of Opening Day earlier this week, when representatives of the two parties met in person.
What is on the agenda is not clear, although it is at least slightly encouraging to see two key representatives meet just days after the “deadline” set by MLB. Six weeks have passed since the last deadline (the expiration of the previous collective agreement) before the league presented a counter-proposal to the union. It is currently the league that has made its latest offer, which the union has unanimously agreed to reject.
It should be noted Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweets that, moving forward, both sides hope to reduce some of the very public nature of previous talks and keep the talks closer to the vest. Both the recent more than a week of talks in Jupiter, Florida, and the 2020 return talks were public spectacles to varying degrees.
As it turns out, the league has only canceled the games for a week, although it seems entirely possible (if not likely) that additional cancellations will follow. Tim Dirkes of MLBTR recently expires, where both sides are sitting on the issues under consideration, for those looking for a quick reference point for gaps that still need to be addressed. Now, in addition to these issues, the league and the union will have to discuss scheduling issues – the union has reportedly expressed a desire to reschedule the canceled games; Manfred said on Tuesday that this would not happen – and the possibility of a proportional distribution of pay and / or service time based on missed games.