When Rob Manfred locked the players out at the beginning of December, he lied and said that the purpose of the lockout was to force the two sides to the table and make them come to an agreement quickly. Then the two sides didn’t discuss economics, and they kept not discussing economics, and they followed that up by continuing to not discuss economics.
Economics, as you’ll recall, are the main issue, and presumably require some discussion.
But now? Now things are looking up!
Within two weeks from yesterday! Why, that’s January 24th! It’s so soon! And then the union can counter (after another week) and the owners can think for a while and counter again (after another two weeks) and then it’ll be the week that pitchers and catchers should report so the players can either accept the owners’ terrible offer or be pilloried in the media for not caring enough about the game to sacrifice a little money in order to start playing.
And it’ll be Valentine’s Day! What a great time for togetherness.
If we’re being honest, the players will choose Option B from that list, and they’ll be right to do it. Even if the timeline I have above isn’t quite right, if the two sides get their offers in faster and exchange proposals more often, it’s still wildly unlikely that anything will actually get done, because both the owners and players know that the actual game here is to put pressure on the other side by getting as close as possible to the point where they will lose a bunch of money.
That point is the beginning of the regular season. Any negotiation strategy other than waiting as long as possible is sub-optimal, and would be roundly derided by the people the negotiator represents. Therefore, it won’t happen. Therefore, we’re absolutely going to get into mid-February (and probably later) without a deal. Therefore, the Spring Training schedule is going to look different.
Now, it’s possible that they find a way to play the games without, uh, major league players. Everyone on a 40-man roster is in the union, but that leaves lots of minor leaguers who are still going to have a full minor league season to play no matter what happens, and they can be forced to play Spring Training games too.
Do I think that’s likely? Oh, no, absolutely not. The logistics of actually starting Spring Training whenever a deal is reached would be a pain, and fans would get mad if, instead of six innings of Brandon Crawford at Scottsdale Stadium, they got six innings of Simon Whiteman.
No disrespect intended to Simon Whiteman, who I understand is quite fast.
In all likelihood, as long as there isn’t a deal, there won’t be Spring Training games. And when you consider that the real deadline for everyone is March 31, the day that the regular season is due to open, it’s easy to see everyone sacrificing some exhibitions to put themselves in a better negotiating position.
Of course, even delaying Spring Training by a couple weeks will mean a delay in the regular season too. Players are good about staying in shape in the offseason these days, but that’s not necessarily game shape, and they won’t be at game speed immediately. These things take time, and sure, the spring schedule could probably be compressed a bit, but not that much. We saw what happened in 2020 when every team got just three weeks to train, and it took a huge toll on the starting pitchers in particular. They took several regular season starts each to get up to even six innings, so we should expect that even a compressed spring schedule would probably take at least a month.
So the bad news is that there won’t be a deal until both sides are feeling some economic pressure from losing money, which won’t be soon. The good news is that, according to an NBA labor negotiator who Evan Drellich recently talked to for The Athletic, once they start feeling that pressure, negotiations can go quickly. A deal by March 1 still loses some Spring Training games, but has a good shot at either preserving the whole regular season, delaying it by a week, or only losing a week’s worth of games.
The biggest wild card is this, though: the owners have won the last two contracts. The players settled for quality of life improvements and didn’t see how the luxury tax was essentially a salary cap, and they got some decent table scraps from the owners’ money banquet.
Did that metaphor get away from me? Look, the important thing is that we’re all going to move on.
The owners, then, are used to winning, and might not settle for anything less. The players are tired of losing and might not settle for anything less than winning, since it should be their turn. If things get contentious, maybe it takes losing more money for the sides to present their best deals. Maybe the season gets delayed even longer, more games are canceled, this thing drags out even longer.
Let’s hope not, though. There’s just about no way that Spring Training games start at the end of February, as they’re currently scheduled to do. There’s still a shot, though, at the regular season starting at the end of March. I don’t want to wrap this up by saying that I just hope there’s a deal that’s fair for all sides, because one of the sides sucks shit and should get nothing.
But I hope that the season doesn’t get delayed. I hope everything works out well. And I hope that Covid goes away tomorrow and I win the Double Secret Lottery that you don’t even have to buy a ticket to win. It’s good to have hope, even when it’s stupid hope.