MLB extends deadline for deal to be made. Will sides come to terms with Opening Day in jeopardy?
As a small contingent from the MLB Players Association walked into the Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium complex on Sunday, one fan standing near the gated fence shouted three words toward the group.
“We want baseball!”
The pressure was felt by both sides one day later.
There’s no deal yet, but the chance that baseball starts on time lives on.
As Monday turned into Tuesday, as the 89th day of the lockout turned into the early hours of the 90th of the league’s lockout of its players, MLB and the MLB Players’ Association continued to make progress but have not come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.
And while the league originally made Monday its deadline for a deal to be made in order for Opening Day to take place as scheduled on March 31, a brief bit of life support was given.
The new deadline: 5 p.m. Tuesday.
An MLB spokesperson said the deadline extension came as a way to “exhaust every possibility to get a deal done.”
The sides showed that effort on Monday, their eighth consecutive day of collective bargaining agreement negotiations at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium and MLB’s original self-set deadline for a deal to be done before it said it will begin canceling regular-season games.
A total of 13 meetings took place over the course of 16 and a half hours.
Negotiations resume at 11 a.m. Tuesday, giving the sides six hours to agree on a deal.
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Andrew Miller and New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer were the only two players on site Monday. Texas Rangers shortstop Marcus Semien was also in attendance Sunday.
While an MLB spokesperson said it viewed its round of negotiations on Sunday as “productive,” the union said the two sides entered Monday still far apart on all key issues. No formal proposals were exchanged Sunday, and players and owners did not meet directly.
The main issues: luxury tax thresholds and rates, the size of a new bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, minimum salaries, salary arbitration eligibility and the union’s desire to change the club revenue sharing formula and expanded playoffs, among others.
“We’re working at it,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, after leaving the second of the sessions that he attended, said bluntly around 6:15 p.m.
About eight-and-a-half hours later, the two sides ended talks for the night with a little more time to come to terms.
If MLB holds true to its decision to cancel games if a deal isn’t agreed upon, it would mark the first time outside of the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season the league did not play a full 162-game season since 1995. Spring training has already been delayed, with exhibition games starting no earlier than March 8.
Manfred previously said canceling regular-season games would be “a disastrous outcome for this industry.
Will it happen? We’ll find out soon enough.
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 8:10 AM.
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