MLB Cancels Another Week of Game as Lockout Continues

Despite another marathon negotiation session Tuesday morning through Wednesday night — with just a short nap — the Major League Baseball and player union were unable to reach a workers’ agreement before another self-imposed deadline by the league. As a result, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Wednesday night that regular season games have been canceled for another week.

“Due to the logistical realities of the calendar, two more series are being removed from the schedule, i.e. Opening Day is postponed to April 14,” Manfred said in a statement. “We worked hard to reach an agreement and offered a fair deal with significant improvements for the players and our fans. I’m sorry for the continuing impact this has had on our game and everyone who was a part of it, especially our loyal fans.”

While MLB once threatened not to reschedule canceled games or pay players for them, the league this week gave the league a chance to play a full 162-game season with rescheduled games, and therefore full pay and time in service.

The parties spent the whole of Tuesday negotiating, and the conversations continued into the early hours of Wednesday. The union wanted and took time to meet with the player’s board in the morning regarding the league’s latest bid and then come back with a counteroffer. In the early afternoon, after union officials had submitted their answers, they left the MLB offices in Manhattan and returned to their headquarters a few blocks away.

Progress has been made in recent days and offers have advanced significantly. But it wasn’t enough to reach a deal or end the lockout – already the second longest business stoppage in league history.

On March 1, Manfred canceled the first two series of the regular season, which was scheduled to begin on March 31, after the parties failed to agree on a new deal before the first deadline the league would impose on them. By April 6, 75 games were lost.

Earlier last month, Manfred said that losing regular season games “disaster“for the industry. MLB has canceled games twice since Manfred went into effect. locking on December 2

Sensing the urgency of this week, parties began making progress between Monday and Tuesday on big issues like the luxury tax system or the bonus pool for players not yet eligible for salary arbitration. Bidding packages have evolved repeatedly, but the implementation of an international draft and the removal of the qualifying bid system emerged as major hurdles Wednesday.

Now an already tense and complex business dispute can become even more thorny on one important issue: pay and service time for players tied to missed games.

While MLB is changing its stance on canceled games this week, the wiggle room on the calendar is shrinking. With more delays, it’s unlikely that there will be enough time to reschedule two weeks of games while keeping the same dates for the World Series in October.

In MLB’s eyes, losing matches means less revenue for their club and therefore the league does not believe it should compensate players for missed matches. The union’s position was that players would either demand full pay and time in service for games that MLB unilaterally canceled, or seek to have them rescheduled.

The previous two collective bargaining agreements seemed to tilt the balance of power and economy more in favor of the owners. Realizing that major changes to the system will be tense and fraught stay on the sidelinesThe union has spent years preparing for this fight against MLB owners, who ran a $11 billion-a-year business before the coronavirus pandemic.

With the latest developments, sides face the possibility of missing first games due to the business stoppage since the 1994-95 player strike, which resulted in the cancellation of more than 900 games and the 1994 World Series. This remains the longest job interruption in baseball history.