It’s officially a new year, but it’s the same old bologna when it comes to negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the Players’ Association.
Well, I guess negotiating is the wrong word since not much happened during the month of December when the lockout was put in place, and there isn’t anything scheduled to happen yet this month, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. What’s even more frustrating to hear from Nightengale is that during the two meetings MLB and the MLBPA did have last month, the core economic issues that both sides must eventually agree on weren’t discussed.
For those wondering, these issues include things such as the service time structure for team-controlled players, the competitive balance tax, and the possible expansion of playoffs in October. In the hours after the lockout was first made official at the beginning of December, commissioner Rob Manfred and Tony Clark both shared a desire to sit down and get this stuff sorted out, but clearly, that desire didn’t at all match the actions that followed.
Why is that, you ask? It’s similar to what any high school or college student can relate to when they’ve got a huge project that needs to get done — why do it now when the deadline is in a month or two?
It seems as if no real progress will be made in these talks — when they actually talk, that is — until there’s some kind of urgency in the form of a deadline. While free agency has been interrupted because of the current lockout, neither side is losing any money from games getting canceled, so there is no rush to get anything done at this point in time.
We’ve seen labor negotiations look bleak in the past, only to watch both the league and players’ association magically come to an agreement at the buzzer. This time around, the hypothetical buzzer is the start of spring training and Opening Day. Nightengale suggested about a month ago that February 1st has been seen as a “soft deadline” to get an agreement done in order to not disrupt the league’s calendar. And, since players will need some time to ramp up before the regular season, March 1st is another important date to get something done by (if it hasn’t happened yet) so the current 162-game schedule is only minimally impacted.
Time will tell what happens from here, but not even having a plan to talk yet this month isn’t a good start. If both sides are committed to getting something done so the in-season schedule isn’t impacted too much, a meeting will appear on the calendar soon, but not soon enough for all of us who are impatiently waiting for the lockout to end.
