After an extension of Monday’s informal deadline, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association on Tuesday continued working toward an agreement for a new collective bargaining agreement that would end the owner-imposed lockout. Representatives from both sides arrived on site in Jupiter, Florida at around 10 a.m. ET and met face-to-face for the first time around 1:30 p.m. after the players had a conference call to discuss their proposal, per The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. Although optimism prevailed following Monday’s marathon, 16-hour bargaining session, Tuesday occasioned a step back, at least to hear league sources tell it.
Here’s one of multiple reports along those lines:
The union side, however, pushed back against that characterization of Tuesday morning’s events:
The two sides appear to be the farthest apart on what the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) on payrolls will look like moving forward. The CBT, which has come to function like a salary cap of sorts, has in the past mandated penalties for teams that cross certain payroll levels. The union would of course prefer those levels to be much higher than what the league is proposing.
That, however, is not the only substantive issue that needs to be resolved. There’s still a divide when it comes to the minimum salary and the size of a theoretical bonus pool for pre-arbitration players. While everything is still fluid on all fronts until an agreement is reached, a 12-team playoff does seem likely moving forward.
MLB had originally created a Monday (Feb. 28) deadline to reach an agreement before canceling regular-season games and postponing 2022 Opening Day. CBS Sports has provided a timeline of the lockout here, but the short version is that the owners placed the padlocks on when the previous CBA expired on Dec. 1 — exactly three months ago. They were under no obligation to do so, but it was labeled as a defensive maneuver. The league then waited more than six weeks to make its first proposal. The two sides have since had a number of in-person negotiations.
CBS Sports is providing live updates of Tuesday’s talks. You can follow along below.
