(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
  First two series Major League-season cancelled
Nederlands
 JUPITER, Florida (USA) -
The first two series of the upcoming season in the Major League have officially been cancelled, as there still is no new Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA).
Major League Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the decision on Tuesday-afternoon (March 1) after a deadline had passed.
Last month, the deadline was imposed by MLB, as Commissioner Manfred then stated that based on injury data and the experience of the 2020 pandemic-shortened season, Spring Training should be at least four weeks long in order for players to properly prepare for the season.
In order to begin the season as scheduled on March 31, the 5 PM (local time, New York) deadline was initially imposed by MLB for Monday-afternoon, but after a long, 16-hour session on that day, it was hoped that an agreement was possible and the deadline was postponed to Tuesday.
However, proposals made by MLB were rejected and so, the deadline passed without an agreement.
A few weeks ago, Rob Manfred already had announced that regular season-games would be cancelled when there would be no agreement in place.
These games will bot be re-scheduled.
On Tuesday, in a letter to the fans, the MLB Commissioner confirmed that the first two series have been cancelled.
These are the series for which games were scheduled for March 31 through April 6.
The first regular season-games are now scheduled for Thursday, April 7.
As a result, the start of Spring Training also has been delayed again.
Initially, the 30 Major League-clubs were to open their Spring Training-camps half February and the first exhibition games were to be played on February 26.
As the talks continued, Spring Training-camps could not open and the start of the exhibition seasons in the Grapefruit League (Florida) and Cactus League (Arizona) were postponed to March 4, then March 7.
On Tuesday, it was announced that the first Spring Training-games will not be played before March 12.
After thene had been several talks in the past months, an intensive week followed.
Since Monday last week, representatives of MLB and the MLBPA held meetings and had talks daily in Jupiter, Florida.
After a long talk on Saturday, another (very) long session followed on Monday, which was the ninth consecutive day of talks.
However, an agreement was not reached.
In his letter addressed to the fans, MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. writes:
,,I had hoped against hope that I would not have to be in the position of canceling games.
We worked hard to avoid an outcome that is bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs.
I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort on the part of either party.
The Players came here for nine days, worked hard and tried to make a deal.
I appreciate their effort.
Our committee of Club representatives committed to the process, offered compromise after compromise, and hung in past the deadline to exhaust all efforts to reach an agreement.
So far, we have failed to achieve our mutual goal of a fair deal.
The unfortunate thing is that the agreement we have offered has huge benefits for fans and players.
We have listened to the Players Association throughout this process.
A primary goal of the Players Association has been to increase pay for younger players.
As I have said previously, we agree and share that goal.
We offered to raise the minimum salary to $700,000, an increase of $130,000 from 2021.
We offered to create an annual bonus pool of $30 million for the very best young players.
In total, we are offering a 33% raise to nearly two-thirds of Major League players and adding more than $100 million annually in additional compensation for younger players.''
After listing several discussions and proposals in the letter, Manfred continued and underscored the preparation period of four weeks:
,,So, what is next?
The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of regular season games and those games are officially canceled.
We are prepared to continue negotiations.
We have been informed that the MLBPA is headed back to New York meaning that no agreement is possible until at least Thursday.
Currently, camps could not meaningfully operate until at least March 8th, leaving only 23 days before scheduled Opening Day.''
Besides a raise of the minimum salary, there are also discussions and proposals concerning a so-called 'draft lottery', service-time for rookies, free agency, draft pick compensation, Competitive Balance Tax, the International Draft, expansion of the Play-Offs and rule-changes, which included the use of a pitch-timer, the automated strike-zone and the universal designated hitter.
As of now, the DH can only used in the American League and not in the National League.
(March 1)
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