Major League Baseball commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. and Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark speak during a press conference before Game 3 of the Championship Round of the 2017 World Baseball Classic. (Photo by Alex Trautwig/WBCI/MLB via Getty Images)
Tick tock, goes the clock,
And Now what shall we play?
Tick tock, goes the clock,
Now Summers gone away.
That nursery rhyme is perfect for this debacle of a CBA negotiation between the owners and players. It is like the two playground bullies arguing over dessert on the playground in elementary school. The two sides in baseball are acting like children. They are 20-25% apart in some instances and each side is budging by about 1% which will not make up any ground. The war of words has been played out in the media, and perhaps the worst of it hit the fan today.
MLB today indicated a willingness to miss a month of games and took a more threatening tone than yesterday, sources briefed on the day’s first meeting between MLB and the Players Association tell me, @Ken_Rosenthal and @FabianArdaya. Full context of conversation not yet known.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) February 28, 2022
What to make of that tweet. On the surface, it is more damaging to the owners that the tweet surfaced. It makes ownership look like they are willing to throw in the towel on the month of April to have the players get a feel for what a month without their big pay feels like. For Max Scherzer, that is a $7 million hit. For an entry player like Keibert Ruiz, that is a loss of 1/6th of his annual pay and approximately $100,000 even though the MLBPA will set-up a relief fund for players. The real loss here is to vendors and stadium workers who need that income in April. And of course the fans get screwed, again.
For Bryce Harper, he took to social media with a photoshop of himself in a Japanese League uniform.
As the sides take shots at each other, the deadline set for today to either have a signed CBA, or Opening Day set for 30 days from midnight, will be postponed, looks like a real possibility.
