After the Braves capped off the 2021 MLB season with a World Series victory, the MLB Players and owners were set to finish up their collective bargaining agreement that had been in the works for several years. With so many issues unresolved as the deadline grew near, no one was surprised when the owners initiated a lockout, effective December 2nd, when concessions were not agreed upon in the allotted time.
Fast approaching a month since the lockout began, where are they now? And what does a "lockout" even mean? Let's catch up with the news and look at history to answer whether this could this possibly effect spring training or even Opening Day of the regular season.
A Brief History On Lockouts
The MLB Players Association is universally recognized as the most powerful union in sports, but it didn't get that way overnight. Beginning in the 1960s, players began to resist the level of control the owners had over them as a unit. Up to that point, the rules concerning labor in baseball were extremely weighted in the owner's favor and when a pension agreement could not be settled in April of 1972, the Players went on the first-ever strike. After 13 days and 83 missed baseball games, the owners caved, and the players' demands were met. One year later, the owners imposed their version of a strike, or "lockout", where they suspended spring training activities in absence of coming to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. The regular season was not affected.
This all culminated in the 1976 lockout, where Players Union head Marvin Miller fought all the way to the Supreme Court to get free agency implemented as a permanent part of the MLB. Several years before, Curt Flood had famously laid the legal groundwork, but it was in 1976 where Miller made it a reality and gave the players more power than they ever had before. The owners responded by initiating the lockout, but commissioner Bowie Kuhn mandated the owners to reopen Spring Training as the owners had exhausted all options of rebuttal. Free agency was essentially an automatic pay increase for MLB players, and the age of bidding wars over talent began.
There were numerous strikes throughout the 1980s, all centering around how teams were compensated for lost free agents, and basically haggling over the owners' insistence of a salary cap. The owners were also found to be guilty of collusion (to suppress free agent market values throughout the 80s) and ended up having to pay the players over $400 million in damages after the player's lockout of 1990.
And now we are at the big one, the player's strike of 1994-95. The season began without a new CBA in place, but after the owners imposed the salary cap without approval of the Players Association, the players began their strike and Commissioner Bud Selig cancelled the World Series. In what quickly became the most explosive sports labor dispute of all time, the owners called the players' bluff and attempted to use replacement players (known as "scabs") to finish the 1994 season. The fireworks lasted well into1995, when once again the Supreme Court stepped in and forced the owners to comply with player demands after arbitration decided in the players' favor. The stoppage and the ripple effect it had lasted for decades, but in many ways, it was such a monumental victory for the Players Association that it gave them the power to control their narrative into the 21st century.
2021 Lockout
The current CBA expired after the 2021 season and the two sides could not come to terms on the areas of contention before the deadline. This gave the owners the opportunity to impose a lockout, halting all team activities such as free agency until further notice, which immediately put pressure on the Player's Union to get a deal done before the lockout effects player's salaries. Players do not get paid in the offseason, so the lockout doesn't technically cost them any money...until team activities begin. Which is February. Which is soon.
The Lockout doesn't mean that baseball won't happen or will be delayed even. Unlike previous disputes, this one is occurring at the only time of year where not much is happening anyways, meaning they have set themselves up with the best possible timeline to get the deal done before the fan experience is affected.
As you can imagine, the "areas of contention" mainly have to do with money. You may be familiar with several of the issues on the board, but let's hit the main points and why they are so contentious.
Expanded Playoffs/Universal DH: The owners have been pushing for this one for a while. Baseball notoriously has the longest season and the fewest playoff spots, thus expanding from 10 to a 14-team postseason would dramatically increase the interest in the sport from September onward. This would also mean a lot more playoff games, and currently the owners receive nearly 100% of the TV revenue while the player's only get a cut of the gate sales. The owners have offered a shortened 154-game season and the implementation of the Designated Hitter in both leagues to compensate, but that's small potatoes in comparison to the hundreds of millions in added revenue the owners would receive.
Free Agency Rule Changes: Perhaps the issue the two sides are farthest apart on is the free agency rule changes. The way the current free agency rules for players are set gives the teams massive control over talent early in their careers, and the ability to essentially stash talent at bargain rates and then discard them as they exit their prime athletic years without ever having seen a payday. The Player’s Association is pushing for prospects to be eligible for free agency earlier in their career and restructure the pay scale, so talent receives more money in their early years of service. In response to this, the owners have essentially said "no", but the Union has made it clear this is a major point to be settled in arbitration if Spring Training is to begin on time.
Tanking: The players have caught on to the tanking philosophy adopted by some teams in the past few decades, especially as technology has caught up to the sport and going out to a baseball stadium can be more about taking selfies for your vlog than caring about the game. The Baltimore Orioles are a prime example of this, as they have a bevy of high draft picks every year, receive hundreds of millions in revenue sharing with the MLB, yet pay their roster nearly $100 million below league average. The Colorado Rockies (whose owner Dick Monfort is the chair of the labor board) have selectively paid their star players over the years but are also guilty of taking advantage of revenue sharing despite a lack of team success. When teams aren't concerned about winning because they have no financial incentive to do so, they also have no incentive to pay their players, and those highly coveted prospects are locked under their control through the prime of their careers. Hence why the players want to change that rule as well.
To this point, no major news has broken about concessions being met or made by the owners, but much of that is because both sides still have time. In a few weeks that time will become scarce however, as generally teams begin reporting for spring training activities as early as February 1st. If nothing has been agreed upon by then, that's when the mad scramble will begin, for once Spring Training games start getting cancelled is when everybody starts losing money.
Even if spring training were to be cut short, a deal reached as late as mid-March could still see Opening Day roll out as normally scheduled March 31st, but the chaos of the early season with essentially no offseason will be a sight to see. Obviously, both sides (and the fans) are hoping this all gets settled in the coming weeks. No matter what happens, baseball is set to look a little different when it's all said and done, either with a 14-team playoff, DH in the National League, free agents moving sooner in their careers, or some combination of all the above.
by Cody Oliver w/ Mark Erbacher 2021
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