Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association will meet in-person Tuesday to continue discussions about the collective bargaining agreement, according to ESPN‘s Jeff Passan. It is the two sides’ first meeting this week, but it comes off the heels of MLB and the MLBPA having meetings on back-to-back days last week.

The two sides discussed the core economic issues both sides are interested in addressing, only one side (the MLBPA) wants to even the playing field more than the other (MLB). Last week, the two sides talked about, among other things, minimum salaries and bonus pools for top-performing pre-arbitration players. On these issues, the two sides are still pretty far apart:

  • The players want a $775,000 minimum salary, and the owners offered $615,000 to start, scaling up to $700,000 in a pre-arbitration player’s third year. However, those salaries are rigid, and teams wouldn’t be allowed to pay any top-performing player a higher base salary (i.e. Pete Alonso getting $100,000 over the minimum salary in his third year of pre-arb).
  • MLB offered a $10 million bonus pool for the top 30 pre-arbitration players, based on WAR (wins above replacement). The MLBPA wants a bonus pool of over $100 million and for players with just 0 to 2 years of playing time to get to dip into that pool. The MLB offer would include all pre-arbitration players, including Super 2 players.

The MLBPA dropped its wish to have an age-based free agency system in the whole back-and-forth. MLB also drew a hard line in the sand regarding changing its arbitration process at all.

While there were reports coming out of last week’s two meetings that the two sides were making good progress, The Athletic‘s Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal wrote an article today cautioning against overoptimism, noting that the two sides are still worlds apart on the core issues of the CBA. Talking is good, but not all talking is good talking, if that makes sense.

Multiple reports have come out about the players’ reactions to every MLB offer as underwhelming and disappointing. If those reactions don’t turn to something more hopeful in the next couple weeks, spring training and the regular season starting on time will likely turn to fantasy.