MLB News: League Fires Shot Across the Bow on Wednesday

The league is prepared to cancel regular season games if an agreement is not reached with the MLBPA by February 28th.

Baseball's CBA meetings took another turn on Wednesday. The league reaffirmed to the players that if an agreement can't be reached by February 28th, MLB will cancel, instead of postpone, regular season games. In other words, the league will not compensate players for a full 162-game season.

ESPN's Jesse Rogers had the scoop on the MLBPA's response to the league's message.

“Union sources are saying, ‘If we don’t get paid for 162, you’re not getting expanded playoffs.’ The rhetoric has gone up a notch. The urgency has taken hold here with just a few days left before the end of the month, they need to come to an agreement by Monday.”

Expanding the playoffs is a key topic for league owners. Increasing the number of playoff teams, and games, would increase MLB's television contract revenues. The regular season popularity of baseball has been in a tailspin, but their postseason product is one of the few things that still garner national attention.

As far as what progress made on Wednesday during the meetings, Rogers had this to:

“Very little. The league offered a $10,000 raise to the minimum salary so starting in 2022, that minimum would be $640,000 and then go up $10,000 each year of the deal. That’s the only proposal that went either way and it was a slight movement towards the players. That’s it.”

At this point, the two sides inching along will result in regular season games being cancelled. Rogers' co-worker, Jeff Passan, highlighted how far apart MLB and the MLBPA are on financial issues.

Five days before the deadline MLB says will postpone regular-season games, here's the gap between the sides in their latest proposals:

CBT: $31M
Pre-arb bonus pool: $95M
Minimum salary: $135K/player
Draft lottery: 3 picks

That's a lot to cover in less than a week. Like, a lot.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 23, 2022

Common ground has been quite uncommon during the most recent bargaining sessions.

It’s fascinating MLB setting a hard deadline to play a full season for Monday. They locked us out. Had barely any contact for two months post lockout. Have yet to make a single good faith offer to even initiate real conversations to get a deal done. Just make a real offer 🤷🏻.

— Alex Wood (@Awood45) February 24, 2022