With MLB and the MLBPA meeting today in New York, another deadline has been put into place by the owners.
This one, like the others is simply there to preserve a full season.
But how is this the case?
Why is it that after cancelling games last week and having these “deadlines” in place to supposedly preserve a full season, the owners are still saying that there is a chance to play a full 162 games?
Why even cancel the games in the first place?
Evan Drellich of The Athletic points out the hypocrisy of the owners and how they really were bluffing about cancelling games.
How are 162 games still on the table after commissioner Rob Manfred postponed Opening Day and canceled the first two series of the season? Presumably, those two series can still be rescheduled, even if Opening Day is later than the originally scheduled March 31.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 8, 2022
More “Deadlines”
It’s clear at this point that these “deadlines” are soft ones and are simply there for the owners to try and scare the players into accepting a deal on their terms, without getting any of the leverage back that was lost in 2016, when the last CBA was agreed upon.
Having soft deadlines in place to try and threaten the players is counterintuitive and is a bad attempt at a scare tactic in these negotiations.
As fans, we find ourselves once again asking: “where was this urgency back in December?”
Where was the urgency after the end of the 2020 season, a year before the lockout happened?
Why couldn’t they have hashed things out then?
Why is there urgency now all of the sudden?
MLB has proven that it’s pointless to even have these deadlines in the first place, and that they don’t really mean anything.
Why act like these are drop-dead dates when they’re really just soft deadlines that are put in place as a fear-mongering tactic?
Apparently, none of that matters to the owners, who continue to show that they’re hypocrites trying to force a deal, then proving that the deadlines mean absolutely nothing.
NEXT: MLB Is Set On A Specific Expanded Postseason Format
