MLB, players meet into the wee hours Tuesday, sparking hope for an agreement without canceling games

After three months of fits and starts, incremental movement and scant progress, Major League Baseball and the Players Association met into the wee hours Tuesday morning with renewed hope of reaching a collective bargaining agreement.

With MLB setting a Feb. 28 deadline — the players viewed it more as a threat — to make a deal or begin canceling regular-season games and withholding full-season pay, the sides bargained for more than 16 consecutive hours — until approximately 2:30 a.m. — at a spring-training ballpark in Jupiter, Fla.. The luxury tax, minimum salary, pre-arbitration bonus pool, and expanded playoffs were all on the table in the 11th-hour back-and-forth.

Talks are expected to continue Tuesday, with MLB extending its self-imposed deadline to 5 p.m.

Multiple reports indicated progress on a few fronts, notably a 12-team expanded postseason. (The owners had been seeking a 14-team format.) But indications were that the sides still have work to do on most other issues. Chief among them: the luxury-tax thresholds.

It seemed all but impossible when talks started at 10 a.m. Monday that yawning gaps on so many topics could be bridged even in one marathon negotiating session. Early in the evening, a source familiar with the talks cautioned that the sides were still “very far apart” on most core economic issues. But as they chipped away, there was late-night resolve to blow past MLB’s artificial deadline and continue talking.

By day, the players were still bracing for the possibility that MLB and the owners would follow through on their threat to begin snipping the 162-game schedule. A source confirmed that the Players Association was taking steps to organize alternate training sites in Florida and Arizona that could be accessed by locked-out players.

But breaking off talks would bring additional consequences. A new set of issues would be introduced to the negotiations, including how many games to lop off the schedule and how to compensate the players.

The players were also vowing to veto expanding the playoffs, the owners’ greatest desire in a new agreement. The owners’ preferred 14-team field would bring in at least $100 million from ESPN. The players, who had concerns about devaluing a six-month regular season by letting nearly half the teams into the playoffs, were poised to take back even their proposed 12-team compromise if the MLB moved to cancel games.

Since the owners locked the doors on Dec. 2, many players have expressed frustration with what they perceive to be an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith and raised doubts over whether some small-market owners want to play a full season.

The owners refused to budge on changes to the six-year reserve clause, making more two-plus-year players eligible for salary arbitration, and adjustments to revenue sharing. Entering Monday, the sides were $135,000 apart for this year ($215,000 by 2026) on the minimum salary and $95 million apart on the concept of a bonus pool to reward pre-arbitration (entry-level) players based on high performance.

But the biggest sticking point was the luxury tax. Talks nearly broke off entirely Saturday, after the players made an imperfect but wide-ranging proposal on multiple issues and saw the owners respond by moving $1 million on the luxury-tax threshold in one of the five years of the agreement while only slightly lowering tax rates that were still higher than the ones that sunset with the expired CBA.

“Owners actions have made it clear all along that they have a set # of games where they still make profits/get TV money,” New York Yankees pitcher Jameson Taillon, who attended some of the bargaining sessions last week, tweeted Monday afternoon. “They don’t want to play. It’s sad that these are the guys who drive the direction and ‘future’ of our amazing sport.”

Monday’s talks began at 10 a.m., three hours earlier than most of the previous seven days and one hour before Derek Jeter’s surprising announcement that he will step down, effective immediately, as CEO of the Miami Marlins. In a statement, the Hall of Fame Yankees shortstop said “the vision for the future of the [Marlins] franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead.”

The curious timing of Jeter’s resignation was not lost on many players, who weighed in on social media. As Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner tweeted, “My sources, common sense and reading in between the lines, tell me that one of our game [sic] greatest champions, Derek Jeter, is stepping away from a team with one of the best young pitching staffs in the game because ownership isn’t committed to winning and spending.”

Other players chose to bring levity to social media. On Instagram, Bryce Harper superimposed a Yomiuri Giants uniform on a photo of himself and wrote, “Aye @yomiuri.giants you up? Got some time to kill. I know you got @borascorp number. Let’s talk.” Yankees slugger Joey Gallo tweeted a photo of his newly created LinkedIn page which included the following skills: striking out, hitting into the shift, and getting dressed weird.

Meanwhile, MLB.TV announced it would suspend billing for its Feb. 28 renewal date for 2022 subscriptions until a collective bargaining agreement is finalized.

Monday marked the 89th day since the owners locked out the players minutes after the expiration of the CBA, a move that commissioner Rob Manfred described at the time as “defensive” and necessary to spur negotiations. But MLB waited 43 days before re-engaging the players in talks on core economics. The sides met on back-to-back days only once prior to the last eight days in Florida.

A few weeks ago, when Manfred memorably said that missing regular-season games would be a “disastrous outcome,” he also touted his reputation as a master negotiator and, in fact, a deal-maker at the bargaining table.

“In the history of baseball, the only person who has made a labor agreement without a dispute — and I did four of them — was me,” Manfred said in a Feb. 10 news conference. “Somehow, during those four negotiations, players and union representatives figured out a way to trust me enough to make a deal.”

That streak was being tested early Tuesday morning.