Major League Baseball and its locked-out players have agreed to resume negotiations on Saturday after an 11-day break.
The session in New York will follow three days of owners meetings in Orlando that end Thursday and three days of player association sessions in Arizona and Florida. It will be only the fifth trading session on the central economy since the lockout began in early December.
There’s virtually no chance spring training could start as scheduled on Feb. 16, a victim of baseball’s ninth work stoppage, the first since 1995.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is expected to hold a news conference Thursday after the end of the owners meetings. He has not publicly addressed the confrontation since Dec. 2, the day the walkout began following the expiration of the sport’s five-year contract.
In the last financial fundamentals bargaining session on Feb. 1, the union reduced the proposed pool of money for eligible players before arbitration from $105 million to $100 million. The union also reduced the number of players it wants to credit with an additional year of major league service to the top 20 at each position in each league by WAR, or the top seven, depending on position, from 30 and 10.
