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Jupiter, Florida. Major League Baseball canceled this Tuesday the opening day of the 2022 campaign and commissioner Rob Manfred announced the sport will miss regular-season games due to a labor dispute for the first time in 27 years, after acrimonious lockout negotiations collapsed in the hours before management’s deadline.
Manfred said he canceled the first two series of the season that was scheduled to start March 31, cutting the schedule from 162 games to probably 156 games at most. Manfred said the league and the union have made no plans for further negotiations. Players will not be paid for lost games.
“My deepest hope is that we reach an agreement quickly,” Manfred said. “I’m really disappointed that we haven’t come to an agreement.”
After the sides made progress during 13 more than 16-hour negotiating sessions on Monday, the league sent the players’ union a “best and last offer” on Tuesday in the ninth straight day of negotiations.
The players rejected that offer, setting the stage for MLB to make good on its threat to cancel Opening Day.
“Today was not a particularly productive day,” Manfred said.
At 5:10 p.m. (6:10 p.m. PR), Manfred issued a statement that many fans feared: There will be nothing to look forward to on opening day, which is normally a springtime standard of renewal for fans across the country and some in Canada as well.
The ninth work stoppage in baseball history will be the fourth to cause regular season games to be canceledand will leave Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium as quiet next month as Joker Marchant Stadium and Camelback Park have been during the third straight interrupted spring training.
“The concerns of our fans are at the top of our list of considerations,” Manfred said.
The stoppage, in its 90th day, will plunge a sport reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and plagued by numerous on-field issues into a self-inflicted hiatus over the inability of players and owners to carve up a $10 billion-a-year industry. .
By losing regular-season games, scrutiny will fall even more intensely on Manfred, the commissioner since January 2015, and Tony Clark, the former All-Star first baseman who became a union leader when Michael Weiner died in November 2013.
Previous walkouts have been based on issues such as the salary cap, free agent compensation and pensions. This time it’s practically for money.
This fight was years in the making, with players upset that payrolls were down 4% from 2015 to last year, many teams shedding a portion of high-priced veteran players in favor of lower-priced youngsters, and some clubs quitting. to compete in the short term to better position itself for the coming years.
The sport will be affected by its second shortest season in three years. The 2020 schedule was shortened from 162 games to 60 due to the pandemic, a decision that players filed a complaint over and are still litigating. The interruption will create another problem if 15 days of the season are cut: stars like Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Jake Cronenworth and Jonathan India would be delayed another year to reach free agency.
Players would lose $20.5 million in salary for each day of the season that is canceled, according to a study by The Associated Press, and the 30 teams would lose large sums that are harder to pin down.
Members of the union’s executive subcommittee stand to lose the most, with Max Scherzer losing $232,975 for each regular-season day lost and Gerrit Cole losing $193,548.
