JUPITER, Florida. Somewhere there will be redcoats hanging, and somewhere trucks will be waiting, and somewhere a spectacle like NL flags and pennants will unfurl to open the house at Bush Stadium. But there was no deal in Manhattan, so there will be no April 7th, Major League Baseball says.
Keep the Clydesdales comfortable.
Despite two long days of negotiations in New York and a last-minute three-way push from the owners, MLB and the players’ union failed to reach an agreement before the commissioner’s deadline to secure a 162-game schedule. With the counteroffer from the MLB Players Association still on the table Wednesday night, Commissioner Rob Manfred officially extended the baseball lockout and edited episodes three and four from the 2022 schedule in another episode of the theater cancellation.
This pushes back the Cardinals’ first home game from its original date and, per MLB’s schedule, cancels the first home stand.
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The next scheduled home game for the Cardinals is April 25.
“In a last-ditch effort to save the 162-game season this week, we made bona fide proposals that address the specific concerns voiced by the MLBPA and would allow players to return to the field immediately,” Manfred said. statement. “Clubs have made great efforts to meet the essential requirements of the MLBPA. … Unfortunately, after our second overnight trade in a week, we are left without a deal.”
The union said in a statement that “the decision of the owners to cancel the extra games is completely unnecessary. After a number of comprehensive proposals were made in the league this afternoon (Wednesday), and after they received a response on the merits, the players have yet to receive a response.”
As the lockout reaches its 99th day, the owners have kept the need for a 28-day spring practice and reengineered the cancellation from there, and MLB, citing a full season, is struggling “due to the logistical realities of the calendar.” The Commissioner moved the opening day to April 14th.
“At least” was not in the statement.
These pesky realities of the calendar have now put the Grapefruit League’s entire schedule in jeopardy as teams were expected to leave Florida in the last week of March. Major League Baseball is also on the verge of being out of the field on April 15, the 75th anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson made his major league debut and broke the color barrier.
The commissioner and owners cannot unilaterally impose a shorter regular season or proportional salaries on players—the real economic threat of cutting games. Players will now be negotiating a full season reinstatement, protecting their salaries for all 162 games and pushing for full season work time.
It’s like both sides need another jagged mountain to move.
For the second time in a week, Major League Baseball set a deadline for an agreement and then extended it. Less than seven days after Manfred said there was no option for a full season, Manfred told the MLBPA what it really was: a deal by Tuesday, no later. As negotiations that day extended past midnight, approached 3 a.m. New York time, and lasted 17.5 hours over several meetings, MLB agreed to extend the deadline so the union could hold a meeting with its members early Wednesday morning and respond at the suggestion of the owners.
It was an international draft that the owners linked to the elimination of free agency draft pick compensation, a goal that the union had pursued for decades.
Earlier this year, Manfred said the owners had agreed to forego a draft the teams lost due to signing multiple free agents, while retaining the draft pick that the player’s former team is receiving. For the union, this means unlocking the salary governor for players who receive qualifying offers. This deterrent will disappear. The catch is that the owners will get what they have been striving for for years – an international appeal – and what the union categorically rejects. He has featured on several proposals from the owners since July, and has been rejected by the union each time. Sources say that while the union would like to see an improvement in the international system, its members do not see an international draft that cuts dollars and opportunities for international players rather than a better immediate mechanism.
Especially the one that was built in New York to match the CBA.
“The Dominican (Republic) is not the US,” Hall of Famer David Ortiz told ESPN. “You can’t flick your finger and everything works right. We need to do it slowly.”
The owners and the union reacted to the more deliberate schedule with their final trades on Wednesday, right before Manfred canceled another week of games. The owners presented the union with three options to complete the deal, as detailed by New York reporters who spoke to a league spokesman. First, the union may accept the international draft and forfeit the penalty for selecting some free agents. Secondly, the union may delay the implementation of the international draft until 2024, give time to work on its structure, and immediately lose the draft pick assigned to free agents. But if the project isn’t approved by November 2022, the owners could reportedly reopen the central bank for talks and, given this off-season, introduce another lockout until they get their way.
Thirdly, the status quo: the draft penalty remains, there is no international draft.
According to reports from New York and a spokesman, the union proposed a fourth option on Wednesday. The MLBPA agreed to delay the international draft with a November deadline, and if a plan was not developed, the draft pick penalty would be refunded.
The two sides continued discussing this option Wednesday night, according to The Washington Post and other media outlets.
Max Scherzer, a St. Louis native and a leading member of the union’s executive committee, tweeted that MLB is making the international draft a sudden turn to a deal, “clouding the waters and absolves itself of blame.”
There has been a narrowing of gaps in the stock markets this week, like two lines curving towards each other but not yet ready to touch. On the minimum wage issue, the parties settled on $10,000 in the first year, with the owners increasing their offer to $700,000 in the first year and to $770,000 in the CBA’s fifth year. The union requested between $710,000 and $780,000. The bonus pool for pre-arbitrage players, which did not exist until proposed by the union and has since been adopted by the owners in their offers, has been reduced from the $115 million requested by the union to the proposed $65 million, which is closest to being offered. owners. 40 million dollars.
And wealth tax thresholds — a glaring issue under the Florida sun — have shown progress, with owners and the union now offering $230 million and $232 million, respectively, for the first year. According to The Athletic, the union wants that amount to rise to $250 million and the owners to $242 million.
All this movement was conditional, and the condition, strategically fixed by the owners, was the draft, which the union resisted in order to get what the union was chasing.
Over the past two weeks, as talks give hints of rapprochement, the only certainty is that opening day is getting farther away.
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