Major League Baseball cancels second week of season after discussions fail to produce CBA

Major League Baseball canceled the second week of the regular season Wednesday after days of discussion with the MLB Players Association failed to generate a new collective-bargaining agreement.

The international draft, long part of negotiations but not until recently a central issue, scuttled talks Wednesday afternoon. A day earlier, the league had proposed tying an international draft that would cover amateurs from Latin America and Asia to the removal of direct draft-pick compensation, in which teams are penalized draft picks for signing top free agents.

Players balked at the idea, rejected proposals from the league to address it and sent a counteroffer. The league then canceled another week of matches.

The fallout could be enormous. The league had tied a deal this week to playing a 162-game schedule with full pay and full service time for players. The MLBPA has said that if the league refuses to agree to full pay and service time, it will remove expanded playoffs — a key to a new basic agreement for MLB — from its proposal.

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With the sides already unable to agree on core economic issues, the potential removal of a vital gain for the league and an additional item to bargain for the union — full service time is paramount — would add even more difficulty to the already-terse discussions.

On the 98th day of MLB’s lockout, an already problematic situation worsened, sources said.

Talks on the international draft bled from the late hours of Tuesday into Wednesday and picked back up Wednesday morning.

Though financial gaps had been bridged enough to bring a deal within range, players balked at the international draft. A large contingent of the rank-and-file from Latin America opposes it, and player leadership, sources said, bristled at what it felt was the late introduction of it as a key issue to the league.

On Wednesday afternoon, sources said, MLB presented a trio of options to players and said it would not negotiate on other issues unless the union chose one of the paths:

One: Study an international draft, and if it is not accepted by the union by Nov. 15, 2022, reopen the entire collective-bargaining agreement after the 2024 season; additionally, remove direct draft-pick compensation.

Two: Take the international draft out of the deal — and maintain direct draft-pick compensation.

Three: Implement the international draft in 2024 in exchange for the removal of direct draft-pick compensation.

The union turned down the offers and countered by asking for the removal of direct draft-pick compensation in 2022 while the parties study the draft, sources said. If the players were to reject it, they proposed, the current international system would stay and draft-pick compensation would return following the 2022-23 offseason.

“The owners’ decision to cancel additional games is completely unnecessary. After making a set of comprehensive proposals to the league earlier this afternoon, and being told substantive responses were forthcoming, players have yet to hear back,” the union said in a Wednesday statement. “Players want to play, and we cannot wait to get back on the field for the best fans in the world. Our top priority remains the finalization of a fair contract for all players, and we will continue negotiations toward that end.”

The failure to reach a deal Wednesday could come with severe consequences if the parties don’t re-engage and strike an arrangement soon. Service-time considerations are especially vital to players, who reach salary arbitration after three full years of major league service and free agency after six. Players receive a full year of service if they spend 172 days on a major league roster. There are typically 186 days in a season, and if more than two weeks of the season are canceled, recouping service time would become part of any further negotiations.

While the two sides continued to talk into Wednesday night, in-person bargaining is done for the day, sources told ESPN. Even with the league saying Opening Day will be postponed until at least April 14, negotiations on a new labor deal continue.

Had the sides agreed to a deal Wednesday, the second-longest work stoppage in the game’s history would have ended and some semblance of normalcy would have returned after months of fraught negotiations. Now baseball finds itself in its most difficult position yet, with new obstacles to traverse as the game attempts to find its footing among an increasingly displeased fan base.

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