The business of baseball could come to a screeching halt if the MLB owners and the players’ union haven’t agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement by 10:59 p.m. Wednesday.
That’s when the current CBA expires, after which Major League Baseball may impose a lockout that would freeze trades and free-agent signings and ultimately could threaten the start of spring training and even the regular season.
A lockout would be MLB’s first work stoppage since the infamous strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred hasn’t committed publicly to a lockout, consistently stating that the focus is on reaching an agreement with the Players Association. But he seemed to confirm the long-presumed likelihood during a press conference following an owners’ meeting in Chicago last week.
“Honestly, I can’t believe there’s a single fan in the world who doesn’t understand that an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” he said.
Here are five things to know about where baseball soon could find itself:
1. Why would the owners launch a lockout?
The expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement doesn’t automatically trigger a lockout (or a strike). The owners, essentially represented by the commissioner’s office, could let free agency and other offseason business proceed as usual while continuing to negotiate with the union, which is led by executive director Tony Clark. But the main argument for a lockout sooner rather than later is what happened in 1994.
Some 4½ months into that season, on Aug. 12, 1994, the players commenced what turned out to be a season-ending strike. A lockout this offseason would be a preemptive tactic, intended to lessen the likelihood of losing games next year by creating leverage and urgency four months before the scheduled start of the regular season.
“I think when you look at other sports, the pattern has become to control the timing of the labor dispute and try to minimize the prospect of actual disruption of the season,” Manfred said. “That’s what it’s about. It’s avoiding doing damage to the season.”
But whether a lockout would accelerate an agreement, or simply deepen divisions and harden positions and inflame the negotiations, is debatable.
2. What’s MLB’s history of work stoppages?
There have been eight of them, all from 1972-1995, including five strikes and three lockouts. Strikes are initiated by the players’ union and lockouts imposed by the owners, but the result is largely the same: a shutdown of the sport on and off the field.
Baseball’s longest work stoppage was the 232-day strike in 1994-95. The second-longest carved almost two months out of the 1981 season. Five of the work stoppages resulted in no regular-season games ultimately being lost (if games were canceled, they were made up).
The specific issues have varied, but unsurprisingly always have boiled down to money. The first strike in 1972 was in part about pension benefits. Subsequent strikes or lockouts centered around fights over salary arbitration, free-agency eligibility and compensation for teams losing free agents. The ugliest fight of all, in 1994, was triggered by the players’ well-founded belief the owners intended to implement a salary cap.
Baseball has enjoyed 26 years of labor peace since resuming in 1995, reaching agreement on four CBAs during that stretch without strikes or lockouts, but progress toward a deal has been much slower this year.
