JUPITER, Fla. — Somewhere the redcoats will hang and somewhere the trucks will wait, and sometime the pageantry, like bunting and NL pennants, will unfurl for a home opener at Busch Stadium. But there was no deal in Manhattan, so it won’t be April 7, says Major League Baseball.
Keep the Clydesdales comfortable.
Despite two lengthy days of negotiations in New York and a three-pronged poke by the owners at the last minute, MLB and the players’ union could not strike an agreement before the commissioner’s moving deadline to assure a 162-game schedule. With a counterproposal from the MLB Players’ Association still on the table Wednesday night, commissioner Rob Manfred officially extended baseball’s lockout and redacted the third and fourth series from the 2022 schedule in another episode of cancelation theater.
That pushes the Cardinals’ home opener back from its original date and, on the MLB schedule, cancels the first homestand.
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The Cardinals’ next scheduled home game is April 25.
“In a last-ditch effort to preserve a 162-game season, this week we have made good-faith proposals that address the specific concerns voiced by the MLBPA and would have allowed the players to return to the field immediately,” Manfred said in a statement. “The clubs went to extraordinary lengths to meet the substantial demands of the MLBPA. … Regrettably, after our second late-night bargaining session in a week, we remain without a deal.”
The union, in a statement, said “the owners’ decision to cancel additional games is completely unnecessary. After making a set of comprehensive proposals to the league (Wednesday) afternoon and being told substantive responses were forthcoming, players have yet to hear back.”
As the lockout reaches its 99th day, the owners have maintained the need for a 28-day spring training and have reverse-engineered the cancellations from there, and MLB referred to a full season has difficult “because of the logistical realities of the calendar.” The commissioner postponed opening day until April 14th.
An “at least” was not included in the statement.
Those pesky realities of the calendar now put all the Grapefruit League schedule in jeopardy as teams were expected to leave Florida the final week of March. Major League Baseball is also on the brink of not being on the field for April 15th, 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 on the players or prorated salaries — the real economic threat of reducing games. The players will now negotiate to restore the full season, to defend their salaries for all 162 games, and to insist on securing service time for a full season.
As if the two sides need one more jagged mountain to move.
For the second time in week, Major League Baseball established a deadline for an agreement and then extended it. Less than seven days after saying there was no way to have a complete season, Manfred told the MLBPA there actually was: a deal by Tuesday, no later. When negotiations that day carried past midnight, neared 3 a.m. New York time, and spanned 17 ½ hours over several meetings, MLB agreed to extend the deadline so that the union could caucus with its members early Wednesday morning and reply to the owners’ offer.
At issue was the international draft the owners had linked to removing draft-pick compensation from free agency — a goal the union has had for decades.
Earlier this year, Manfred said that the owners had agreed to drop the draft pick teams lose for signing some free agents while keeping the draft pick the player’s former team gets. For the union, that represents unlocking a governor on salaries for players who receive qualifying offers. That deterrent would vanish. The catch is the owners would get what they’ve sought for many years — an international draft — and something the union has steadfastly rejected. It has appeared in multiple proposals from the owners since July, and each time the union has rejected it. While the union would like to see an improvement to the international system, sources have said, its members do not see an international draft as possible, reducing the dollars and opportunities for international players and not the best immediate mechanism.
Especially not one built in a New York Minute to fit the CBA.
“The Dominican (Republic) is not the U.S.,” Hall of Famer David Ortiz told ESPN. “You can’t snap a finger and everything lines up to operate the right way. We need to do this slowly.”
The owners and union both responded to a more deliberate timeline with their final exchanges Wednesday, right before Manfred canceled another week of games. The owners presented the union three options to complete a deal, as detailed by reporters in New York who talked with a league spokesman. First, the union could accept the international draft and lose the draft pick penalty for signing some free agents. Second, the union could delay the implementation of the international draft until 2024, give time to work on its structure, and also immediately lose the draft pick attached to free agents. But, if a draft was not in place by November 2022, according to reports, the owners could reopen the CBA for negotiations and, given this offseason, impose another lockout till they got their way.
Third, status quo: draft-pick penalty stays, no international draft.
The union countered Wednesday with a fourth option, according to reports from New York and a spokesperson. The MLBPA agreed to delaying an international draft with a November deadline, and if a plan wasn’t in place, then the draft-pick penalty would return.
The two sides continued discussing that option Wednesday night, The Washington Post and other outlets reported.
Max Scherzer, the St. Louis-area native and leading member of the union’s executive committee, wrote on Twitter that MLB making the international draft the sudden hinge to a deal was “muddying the waters and deflecting blame.”
Within the exchanges this week there was a narrowing of the gaps, like two lines curving toward each other but not yet ready to touch. On the issue of minimum wage, the sides were $10,000 apart in the first year, with the owners upping their offer to $700,000 for the first year and rising to $770,000 in the CBA’s fifth year. The union has sought $710,000 to $780,000. A bonus pool for pre-arbitration players that did not exist until the union proposed it and the owners have since adopted it in their proposals has dropped from a $115 million ask from the union to a proposed $65 million, closest yet to the owners’ offered $40 million.
And luxury tax thresholds — a glaring issue in the Florida sun — has seen progress as the owners and union are now proposing $230 million and $232 million, respectively, for the first year. The union wants to see that climb to $250 million, the owners $242 million, per The Athletic.
All that movement was conditional, and the condition strategically affixed by the owners was the draft, something the union had resisted to get something the union had chased.
Over the past two weeks as the negotiations give hints of getting closer together, the only certainty has been opening day getting further away.