NEW YORK — And just like that, after five years of posturing, 99 agonizing days of an owner-imposed lockout and three months of intermittent negotiations that left many wondering if anyone really wanted to get a deal done at all, Major League Baseball is back. The league’s owners and players tentatively reached a new collective bargaining agreement Thursday afternoon in New York.
The specifics of the deal, which still needs to be ratified, were not immediately available, though after all the back and forth, the broad concepts were clear. The competitive balance tax threshold will be higher than ever before. The postseason will expand to include 12 teams. League revenue will fund a new bonus pool to be distributed among high-achieving young players with less than three years of service time. Minimum salaries will rise, and the amateur draft format will now include a lottery for the first pick.
Opening Day is now expected for April 7, with spring training officially expected to start in the coming days.
Most importantly, at least to the logistics of the day, the deal will not include the creation of an international amateur draft — at least not yet. Disagreement over that issue halted negotiations briefly Wednesday night when the league gave the union an ultimatum: Agree to an international draft with which many union members were not comfortable or maintain the draft pick compensation/qualifying offer process players believe suppresses free agent spending.
But by Thursday morning, the sides had agreed to a rare compromise, to set a July 25 deadline by which the union will agree to an international draft and enjoy free agency without draft pick compensation or maintain the international signing system that exists and endure free agency with it.
Once they worked around that roadblock, the league made the MLB Players Association another proposal and indicated that if they agreed by 3 p.m., the owners could ratify the deal Thursday night in time to save a full 162-game season that would start a week late, according to a person familiar with the talks.
Thursday’s agreement was less a triumph than a relief, something that stopped self-inflicted wounds from bleeding further, rather than avoided scars altogether.
And scars will likely linger, particularly when it comes to the perception of league owners as self-interested and concerns that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and his staff are less loyal to the health of the sport than to the whims of team owners.
But even when talks did begin in mid-January, they weren’t regular negotiating sessions until spring training games were already canceled. Ten straight days of talks at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., in late February didn’t lead to a deal. And a Tuesday deadline this week stretched into Wednesday, which led Manfred to cancel another week of games Wednesday night.
Yet when the sides cleared the international draft hurdle midmorning, MLB’s negotiating team told the union that a deal by 3 p.m. could still save the season. This time, the sides met their deadline.