It’s roughly two hours before BOTH sides meet – again – to attempt to try to complete a collective bargaining agreement by the end of business, as per the stated threat of Major League Baseball (MLB), or the scheduled March 31st Opening Day gets cancelled.
As stated in earlier postings, this means players losing their pay, and presumably the owners – contending that spring training must last four weeks and that three days will be required to ratify an agreement before camps open – will take a similar approach with each day that passes, and the corresponding games slated for 31 days later.
But…
That’s just a guess on the old Lobsterman’s part.
In my opinion, today represents too much ground to cover on too many matters.
As best I can determine, NO formal proposals were/have been exchanged, which means that, technically, they must execute considerable work on nearly every core economic issue, including the competitive-balance tax; the minimum salary; the pre-arbitration bonus pool; mitigating service-time manipulation; the draft lottery; the number of teams in the expanded playoffs; and, an international draft as well as arbitration and revenue-sharing.
There also exist field-of-play issues, with MLB looking to shorten the time between proposal and implementation for such innovations as the pitch clock.
It’s times like this that I wish I could have ’round-table discussions’ with the likes of Jackie Jensen, Jim Piersall, Dick Gernert, Leo Kiely, Billy Consolo, and Del Wilber.
Lobster on the Prairie 