The best week of the baseball calendar is happening right now, and both sides of the sport’s labor fight picked it to announce they’re not budging.
Before Game 1 of the World Series, commissioner Rob Manfred said the players’ union boss, Bruce Meyer, “is not prepared to do a status quo deal.” Meyer said anything’s possible, but the two sides haven’t even discussed an extension. The current labor agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, and owners are widely expected to lock the players out the moment it does. That’s 36 days from today.
Here’s what’s actually in dispute. MLB has proposed a salary cap of $245.3 million with a floor of $171.2 million, plus a 50-50 revenue split. The union won’t negotiate inside a cap framework at all. So this isn’t a gap you split down the middle. One side wants a wall and the other side won’t discuss walls.
I’ll say again what I said in my salary cap post: the owners aren’t crazy. Small-market teams really do get priced out, and the Yamamoto bidding showed it. As a Royals fan I’ve watched this movie for decades. But a real problem doesn’t mean the owners’ fix is the only fix, and it doesn’t excuse shutting the sport down to get it.
A lockout also freezes the offseason. No signings, no trades, nothing, until a deal exists. Spring training is supposed to start in February and Opening Day is March 25. During the last lockout the sides needed 99 days to settle, and that one at least ended with a full 162-game schedule after a short delay. One anonymous player told ESPN he didn’t expect to play until June. If that’s the mood, forget the first two months of 2027.
The history isn’t comforting. The 1994 strike wiped out the World Series, and baseball spent years earning fans back. Nobody in either room seems to remember that the fans who show up and buy the overpriced beer are the entire business. Neither proposal gives them a thing, by the way. Nothing on ticket prices, and no guarantee the games even happen. Even the 154-game idea is a bargaining chip, not a gift.
I don’t want the government in the middle of this. Two groups of very rich people are fighting over how to divide up a very large pile of money, and they can sort it out themselves. What I want is a deadline that matters to them, and the only one that does is a missed paycheck. So here’s the part I find hard to forgive: they both know exactly what happens in the first week of a lockout, and they’re scheduling it anyway.
My take is simple. Owners, drop the hard cap as a condition of talking. Players, admit the small-market problem is real and bring an actual answer instead of just a no. Both of those are easy to say and apparently impossible to do.
My two cents: if the games vanish in 2027, don’t let either side tell you it was the other guy’s fault. It’ll be both of them.