Nearly 100 days into the Major League Baseball (MLB) lockout, and after two announcements of games getting canceled, a last-minute bid to salvage a full season was successful. By a 26-12 vote, the MLB Players Association voted Thursday to end the lockout. The season will start April 7, a week later than originally planned. According to USA TODAY Sports Major League Baseball columnist Bob Nightengale, MLB will make up for the lost time by extending the end of the regular season by three days and using nine-inning doubleheaders.
The vote to end the lockout and get back the canceled games came just hours after the MLB and the MLBPA agreed to negotiate implementing an international draft. In MLB’s proposal for an international draft, teams would rotate picking in different quadrants of the first round over a four-year period. A slotting system would be installed similar to what is used in the current amateur draft.
Under Thursday’s agreement, the deadline to establish an international draft is July 25. If this deadline is met, direct amateur draft-pick compensation would be removed for free agents starting with the 2022-23 offseason. The international draft would start in 2024.
The topic of an international draft weighed down negotiations on ending the lockout altogether Wednesday. The sides narrowed many economic differences to a small margin, but the international draft obstacle caused MLB to refuse to counter the union’s latest overall proposal.
“The owners’ decision to cancel additional games is completely unnecessary,” the MLBPA said in a Wednesday statement. “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.”
MLBPA dropped its threshold for the luxury tax to $232 million this year, with increases to $235 million in 2023, $240 million in 2024, $245 million in 2025 and $250 million in 2026; its proposed bonus pool for pre-arbitration-eligible players from $80 million to $65 million; and its proposed minimum salary from $725,000 to $710,000, rising to $780,000 by 2026.
The MLB also released a statement Wednesday, in which Manfred announced “another two series are being removed from the schedule, meaning that Opening Day is postponed until April 14.” The move would have canceled 93 more games, bringing the total number of canceled games to 184.
“We worked hard to reach an agreement and offered a fair deal with significant improvements for the players and our fans,” Manfred said in the statement. “We have the utmost respect for our players and hope they will ultimately choose to accept the fair agreement they have been offered.”
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