After Sunday’s negotiations, the players and owners remain deadlocked, and the MLB lockout has no end in sight.
Each time the owners have made a proposal, which they haven’t since last Tuesday, they have barely budged on any of the issues.
They only increased their proposed amount on the pre-arbitration bonus pool by $5 million on their last proposal.
The two sides are currently $50 million apart on that issue.
But as the lockout rages on, the stakes get even higher, and Buster Olney of ESPN notes that in order for this to end swiftly, the MLB owners have to be reasonable and make some sacrifices.
Underneath the negotiations, FO execs, staffers, players, agents are shocked a new CBA hasn't been reached to end the owners' lockout of the players. As each day passes, the stakes escalate for each leadership group, a terrible recipe for a deal. A major owner concession needed.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) March 6, 2022
Just One Concession
In all honesty, it shouldn’t be this hard to end the lockout.
The owners could simply just meet the players in the middle on the remaining issues and this could all be over soon.
But instead, they choose to drag this process out even longer and run the risk of potentially losing more games on the 2022 regular season schedule.
The two sides are far apart on so many key points, but they really don’t have to be.
All it takes, as Olney mentions, is just one big compromise from the owners.
It should not be this hard, especially when the owners make billions upon billions of dollars as a result of them owning a baseball franchise.
But the more they continue to act as if it isn’t “profitable” to own a baseball team, the longer this lockout will drag on and the more games will be lost.
It appears that there really is some substance to the theory that a certain number of owners are willing to completely scrap the month of April and begin the season in May instead.
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