On Thursday, Major League Baseball will officially have a work stoppage.
With apparently little progress made in negotiations on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, baseball owners unanimously voted to lock out the players, starting at an undetermined time on Thursday.
The current CBA expired at 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday. The league and the players’ union cut off negotiations earlier in the day after a meeting that lasted just seven minutes.
This is the ninth work stoppage in MLB history. Though it’s the first since the 1994-95 players strike that wiped out part of the 1994 season, along with the playoffs and World Series.
After three days of face-to-face talks, the two sides were no closer to an agreement than they were a month ago. The MLB player’s union voiced opposition to the lockout shortly after midnight Thursday morning.
“This lockout is a dramatic measure regardless of the timing,” the MLBPA wrote in a statement. “It is not require by law or for any other reason. It was the owners’ choice, plain and simple, specifically calculated to pressure Players into relinquishing rights and benefits, and abandoning good faith bargaining proposals that will benefit not just Players, but the game and industry as a whole.
“These tactics are not new,” the statement continued. “We have been here before, and Players have risen to the occasion time and time again — guided by a solidarity that has been forged over generations. We will do so again here.”
The lockout, however, is still viewed by many around the game as a necessary evil if they want to get anything done.
It only becomes a true disaster if it cancels games. The whole point of doing it now is that it provides enough time for a resolution before spring training begins in late February. But as long as the players are locked out, the following things will be true:
No free agent signings, trades involving players on the 40-man roster or other types of player movement involving members of the MLB Players Association will be permitted.
Players will not be able to access any team facilities. While most players retreat to their hometown in the offseason, or some non-affiliated gym in a warm-weather state, players like Jameson Taillon (who has been rehabbing at Yankee Stadium) will have to find somewhere else to workout.
The annual Winter Meetings, typically baseball’s largest summit of executives and media members, would be canceled. They were originally scheduled for Dec. 6-9 in Orlando.
The Rule 5 draft, which had been slated for Dec. 9, would also be postponed.
Arbitration hearings would be halted until the lockout is over.
Seiya Suzuki, the Japanese star looking to make a stateside jump, will have his 30-day “posting” window paused until the lockout is over.
Some of the major talking points in the negotiations between the players’ union and the owners include postseason expansion, pace of play reforms, draft rules, possible payroll floors, how to address rampant and obvious tanking and developing one standardized baseball that is both easy for pitchers to grip and not overwhelmingly “dead” or “juiced.” Players will also want to put a stop to service time manipulation that often delays them from hitting free agency.
WHAT CAN HAPPEN
The international signing period, which was moved from July to January due to the pandemic, would go on as planned. Amateur players are not affected by an MLB lockout. Both the Yankees and the Mets got some of their top current prospects from the international signing period, with the Yankees getting shortstop Oswald Peraza from Venezuela and outfielder Jasson Dominguez from the Dominican Republic. Francisco Alvarez, the Mets’ catching prospect who won their Minor League Player of the Year award in 2021, was signed out of Venezuela in 2018. Ronny Mauricio, the club’s third-ranked prospect by MLB Pipeline, was an international signing from the Dominican Republic as well.
Teams could still technically make trades, they’d just have to involve players not on the 40-man roster, meaning minor leaguers could still theoretically get dealt. Minor leaguers are not represented by the Players’ Association.
Teams with job openings can contact, interview and hire potential managers and coaches. This is particularly important for the Mets (who still do not have a manager) and the Yankees (who are looking to hire two more hitting coaches, an extra pitching coach, and a first base coach).
