After a long series of deadlines, threats and delays, a tentative agreement was reached and a full season should begin on April 7.
It took 99 days of a contentious lockout, but baseball is back.
An agreement reached Thursday by Major League Baseball’s club owners and its players’ union after two months of heated negotiations will allow for a full baseball season, with opening day scheduled for April 7.
The new five-year collective bargaining agreement will increase the players’ minimum salary, among other provisions. Over the last two days, the deal was nearly derailed by the league’s insistence that it create a draft system for overseas players, but a compromise was struck that will be finalized later.
“Being back on the field is exciting for owners, players, fans as well,” said Gerrit Cole, a Yankees star pitcher and a member of a union subcommittee that was working on the deal. “I think that’ll be the first step to maybe trying to mend some of the fences with some of the fans that have probably been upset with this process, and rightfully so.”
The news was welcomed by fans, players and even politicians, like Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.
“The jobs and economic activity that baseball supports will bolster our ongoing economic recovery,” Hochul said, “and I know New Yorkers are looking forward to experiencing the hope and joy of springtime baseball.”
With the agreement, baseball will get to approach something closer to a normal season for the first time since 2019. The last two seasons have been disrupted by the pandemic that limited the number of fans who could attend games and the dread of what was expected to be a bitter labor dispute.
Now, with the lockout behind them, the league and its players will begin a mad dash to the regular season. Despite a flurry of activity before the lockout, there are more than 200 unsigned players, including stars like first baseman Freddie Freeman and shortstop Carlos Correa.
M.L.B. Off-Season Updates
- Lockout Ends: After a contentious labor dispute, the league and players’ union struck a deal that would allow a full season to be played starting April 7.
- Jeter Resigns: A winner on the field, Derek Jeter resigned as chief executive of the struggling Marlins, ending an ambitious second career.
- A Hall of Famer: David Ortiz, who led the Red Sox to three World Series titles, was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot.
During what is expected to be a frenzy of transactions, players will need to get to spring training camps in Arizona and Florida this weekend. Spring training, which is normally six weeks, will be reduced considerably. Players are required to report by Sunday and exhibition games will start on March 17.
“In terms of the shortened spring, we had to go through this in 2020,” Cole said. “There’s some experience there before. And I think that that will impart some wisdom on some players and some organizations about how they go about that.”
Baseball’s last work stoppage had come when the players went on strike in 1994, with that dispute dragging into the 1995 season. For nearly three decades after, Major League Baseball and its players had enjoyed labor peace.
It was not always a friendly relationship, and the players’ union, the strongest in professional sports, became increasingly vocal about their complaints. Those included salaries lagging behind club revenues and how younger players were paid less despite being heavily relied upon by teams trying to win.
In negotiating this agreement, the owners of M.L.B.’s 30 clubs and the players pushed each other to the brink. The wiggle room with which to fit in a full 162-game season without major changes to the schedule was shrinking with each passing week. In the end, a full schedule will be retrofitted into the existing calendar, with the previously canceled games being made up on off-days and with nine-inning doubleheaders scattered throughout the season, which will end only three days later than normal.
The dates for the World Series will remain the same.
The agreement came after an exhausting three days of negotiations this week, with Thursday’s deal effectively ending the second-longest work stoppage in league history. Although a top union subcommittee voted 8-0 against the deal, the union’s larger executive committee voted 26 to 12 in favor of it. The deal was ratified by the owners on Thursday night, officially ending the lockout.
The sides initially began discussing a new labor deal last spring, trading proposals through the summer and fall. After Atlanta beat Houston to win the 2021 World Series, a new pact became the foremost concern in the sport.
Despite many record-setting contracts in recent years, the average major-league salary of roughly $4 million has reached a plateau. The average career length is about four years, and salary arbitration — which provides raises — generally starts after a player has accrued three years of service time. According to the union, 60 percent of players who played in a game in the major leagues last year were paid roughly the league-minimum rate of $570,500.
Face-to-face talks in Texas in late November failed to produce a deal. So did meetings in New York throughout the winter. There were lulls, too, with M.L.B. going 43 days between instituting the lockout and making another economic proposal in January.
Nine straight days of negotiations in Florida, beginning Feb. 21, resulted in only modest progress, and when a deal wasn’t struck by M.L.B.’s self-imposed deadline of March 1, Manfred called off the first two series of the season for every team — nearly 90 games through April 6 — and said players would not be paid for unplayed games.
A week after Manfred called off the games, M.L.B. tried again to facilitate a deal with a new deadline. It altered its stance and offered the players the chance to play a full season and receive full pay and service time if the players reached a deal by Tuesday, with a corresponding threat of more games being canceled. Every lost day of the regular season would cost the players an estimated $20 million. It is not known how much it would have cost the owners.
Sensing the urgency, the sides began making progress on big issues — such as the luxury tax system and minimum salaries — Monday and into Tuesday. The packages of proposals evolved repeatedly. But on Wednesday, when a roadblock over the implementation of the international draft and the end of a draft-pick compensation system emerged, the sides could not agree to a solution ahead of M.L.B.’s 6 p.m. deadline.
Even though Manfred announced the cancellation of another week of games — bringing the total to roughly 180 contests — the sides kept talking and cleared the remaining hurdles over the international draft and qualifying-offer system on Thursday morning, with the final decision on those issues pushed until July 25.
The players had held firm throughout the process because the previous two collective bargaining agreements had been viewed as having further tilted the balance of power and economics in the owners’ favor. Realizing that significant changes to the system would be tense and full of brinkmanship, the union spent years preparing for this very fight against M.L.B. owners, who ran an estimated $11 billion-a-year business before the pandemic.
Although some players wanted to keep pushing because they felt some aspects of the deal hadn’t kept pace with club revenues, the players overall made progress in certain areas.
They saw significant changes: The minimum salary will jump to $700,000 in 2022 (and increase $20,000 each year), and the luxury tax threshold, which effectively penalizes owners for overspending, will increase from $210 million in 2021 to $230 million in 2022 (and finish at $242 million in 2026).
A bonus pool will be created for top young players not yet eligible for the raises of salary arbitration; a lottery system will be added for the top six spots of the amateur draft as a way to stop teams from losing to gain the top overall pick; the postseason will be expanded to 12 teams (the owners wanted 14, which the union argued watered it down); and there will be new ways to prevent clubs from manipulating the service time of young players (those who finish first or second in the annual Rookie of the Year voting will be credited with a full year).
By striking a deal on Thursday that included a full regular-season schedule, the sides narrowly avoided the first loss of games because of a work stoppage since the 1994-95 players’ strike, which cost more than 900 games and canceled the 1994 World Series. That remains the longest work stoppage in baseball history.
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