Labor issues lead MLB to cancel the Kansas City Royals’ season opener and home opener
Welcome to disastrous times, baseball fans. The Kansas City Royals season-opening and home-opening series — a total of six games — have been wiped out due to the ongoing lockout imposed by the Major League Baseball owners on the MLB Players Association.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred previously described the potential of canceling regular-season games as a “disastrous outcome for this industry.” That scenario has become reality.
Negotiations appeared to have heated up of late with in-person negotiations having taken place for nine consecutive days. The sides took a marathon negotiating session deep into Monday night and the early morning hours Tuesday.
An initial deadline of Monday, which had been imposed by the owners, got pushed back in an apparent effort to continue negotiations and reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
However, an agreement wasn’t reached before the new 5 p.m. (ET) deadline on Tuesday, and Manfred announced the cancellation of the first two series of the season in a news conference in Jupiter, Florida, where owners, league officials and MLBPA leadership were meeting.
“The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of the regular season, and those games are officially canceled,” Manfred told reporters in Florida.
For the Royals, that means the cancellation of a three-game series on the road against the Cleveland Guardians followed by a series against the Chicago White Sox at Kauffman Stadium. The games will not be made up.
“I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort by either party,” Manfred said during his news conference. “The players came here for nine days. They worked hard. They tried to make a deal. And I appreciate their effort.
“Our committee of club representatives committed to the process. They offered compromise after compromise and hung in past the deadline to make sure that we exhausted every possibility of reaching an agreement before the cancellation of games.”
Ownership and league officials as well as MLBPA officials were expected to leave Florida shortly after talks broke off on Tuesday. Manfred said the earliest bargaining sessions could resume again would be Thursday.
Ownerships’ latest proposal
While Manfred initially lauded both sides for their efforts, his remarks laid the onus for an agreement not being reached at the feet of the MLBPA.
The MLBPA rejected the last proposal made by ownership.
“The unfortunate thing, maybe the most unfortunate thing, is that agreement — the one we offered to our players — offered huge benefits for our fans and for our players,” Manfred said.
Manfred touted the MLB/ownership’s most recent proposal to the players as having offered:
- to raise the minimum salary by $130,000 from last year to $700,000
- to create an annual bonus pool of $30 million for the top young players
- a way to ”address” concerns about service time
- the implementation of a draft lottery
- the creation of an incentive system for club’s to promote top prospects to the majors earlier
- to eliminate draft pick compensation for free agents who received and rejected a qualifying offer
- a “significantly larger first-year increase” to the competitive balance tax than the last two agreements
- implementation of international draft to “more fairly” allocated talent
- an expanded playoff format to include more teams
- the implementation of the universal designated hitter
- a mechanism for a “timely implementation” of rules changes such as a pitch clock and potentially eliminating defensive shifts
Manfred also asserted that ownership’s side had made the “last proposal” on every topic in the agreement. He then added, “You draw your own conclusion on who ought to go next.”
The MLBPA response
In a statement, the MLBPA charged Manfred and ownership with trying to “break” the union.
MLBPA executive director and former MLB player Tony Clark described Tuesday as a “sad day,” in a separate news conference in Florida.
Clark also reasserted the MLBPA’s position that they were ready to begin negotiations earlier in the offseason, but ownership/MLB didn’t engage in talks for an extended period of time after they imposed the lockout.
“We are seeking improvements to our CBA because significant improvements are needed,” Clark said, “We’ve made no mistake about that fact over the course of the last three or four years based on what we’ve seen on the field and off the field.
“It’s against that backdrop of growing revenues and record profits for owners and the league that players seek and deserve nothing more than fundamental fairness. Players want to play. We all know that, but the reason we’re not playing is simple. A lockout is the ultimate economic weapon. In a $10 billion industry, the owners have made a conscious decision to use this weapon against the greatest asset they have: The players.”
Clark went on to boast about the unity of the players and proclaimed they would not be “intimidated.”
New York Mets pitcher and MLBPA executive subcommittee member Max Scherzer pointed to the impact of young players and the high level of productivity of young players as an area players felt strongly about addressing.
“We still feel that there’s dollars to be allocated towards them that would fairly compensate their contributions on the field more so than what’s on the table at this point,” Scherzer said. “As players, we recognize that and continue to fight for those guys.”
Free agent relief pitcher Andrew Miller, who also serves on the executive subcommittee, said that the players concerns weren’t just about money.
“We have been screaming for years about competition issues,” Miller said. “Those are important to us. This is not just about shifting pieces of the pie around. This is about getting the game that we love to work and operate as best as it can.”
Asked about the players being prepared to sit out, Miller replied, “We’re prepared.”
Where do things stand
MLB teams should have begun spring training camps two weeks ago, but players have not been allowed to have contact with their clubs, club officials or be at club facilities while the lockout continues.
Four weeks of spring training had been viewed as the minimum required before the regular season begins. Hence the need to reach a deal by Feb. 28 in order to keep the March 31 Opening Day viable.
Minor-league players who aren’t on their club’s 40-man roster are able to train at club facilities.
The Royals have already had many of their minor-league players and player development staff holding workouts and a mini-camp at their spring training facility in Surprise, Arizona. That group includes top prospect and Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year Bobby Witt Jr.
The Minor League Baseball season remains on schedule to begin in April for farm teams such as the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate the Omaha Storm Chasers. Though highly-regarded prospects such as minor-league home run king MJ Melendez and Nick Pratto remain barred from participating because they were placed on the Royals 40-man roster prior to the lockout.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 5:20 PM.
