Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams, of nine players each, that take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when.
Baseball: Lockout| Free agents| Free agency| free agent signings
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Lockout:
The world of a baseball player is defined by wins and losses. Thursday was defined in positive terms for Major League players. With the end of a collective-bargaining agreement dispute that pushed baseball one toenail away from falling into the abyss.
The players gained the greatest increases they ever obtained in minimum salaries and the Competitive Balance Tax while also getting an unprecedented bonus pool for young players—without losing a paycheck.
Free Agents:
If the lockout that owners imposed on Dec. 2 and ended Thursday was a fight over money in a $10 billion business, the players won.
They recovered ground they lost in the prior CBA when they took their eye off economic issues and the owners let front offices McKinsey-fy the game to “commoditize” them, as union chief Tony Clark so expertly put the hacking and dulling of the game.
Free Agency:
The owners also won—on their own terms. They traded economics for quality of the product. They won the right to start crafting a faster, more watchable, more modern game, gained an expanded postseason, and—this was job No. 1—avoided the first in-season work stoppage in 27 years.
Fans get a balanced schedule, the expanded postseason and a game played with better pace and no defensive shifts (starting in 2023).
Asked why baseball is moving away from those heavy intra-division schedules, commissioner Rob Manfred said, “Our teams and our fans like a greater variety of opponents.” With more playoff spots, it makes even more sense to have schedules that are more alike.
Free Agent Signings:
The CBA agreement arrived at the right place in the nick of time. Manfred put a 3 p.m. deadline on the owners’ last proposal Thursday. And just as the 6 p.m. Wednesday deadline he gave the union set the endgame in motion, this one worked just as well.
Manfred may have stumbled as a messenger—touting stocks as a better buy than owning a ballclub and daring to chuckle on the day he announced Opening Day was canceled—but he reproved why he is the owners’ commissioner: he is a labor lawyer who knows how to close a deal. Baseball’s streak of not losing games to a work stoppage stretches to 31 years.
