MLB lockout news: MLB owners, players reach agreement on new CBA (2024)

The lockout is over and baseball is back.Players and owners on Thursday agreed on major points of a new collective bargaining agreement, and spring training will get underway on Sunday. The commissioner’s office and Major League Baseball Players Association reached the agreement Thursday on the 99th day of the owners’ lockout to end the first work stoppage the sport has had in 26 years. Free agency and the rest of the sport’s transactions, including trades, can resume immediately.

Despite how contentious the lockout was, and how bleak the scene at times looked, the deal's timing averts worst-case scenarios for the sport. In the end, baseball will still have a full 162-game scheduled, with some games rescheduled and the season ultimately starting later than was originally planned. Spring training will be shorter than usual, but the parties avoided doing significant damage to the sport with a prolonged, in-season work stoppage.

The Athletic is bringing you the latest news and updates. Follow along with our live coverage.

Required reading

• Baseball is back: MLB owners, players complete deal to end lockout
• Rosenthal: Rob Manfred needs to build a partnership with the players
• Drellich: How MLB players won, and why it also feels like they could have won more
• How will baseball’s new labor deal work? A look into the future
• One big post-lockout question for every MLB team
• The All-Unsigned Team: A roster of the top remaining MLB free agents
• Where will the top free agents sign? Freeman | Correa | Rodon | Bryant | Castellanos
• Top 70 free agents
• Why baseball is bracing for The Wildest Spring Training Ever

(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In the wake of months of tough negotiations between the league and the union, everyone on the major-league side of the game is looking to focus on the game again. But the dust is still settling on what were unfortunately, tense negotiations over the future of the game.

The Yankees have two players on the MLBPA executive subcommittee — Gerrit Cole and Zack Britton. Cole spoke with The Athletic on Thursday, shortly after an agreement was reached. Britton spoke with The Athletic on Friday afternoon, explaining his perspective on the negotiation process during a break from packing for spring training.

The league and the union just went through months of contentious negotiations. Is everybody just going to move on now that baseball is back on the schedule?

Britton: "I think the guys that had been around the negotiations from the start understood that there’s the baseball that takes place on the field, and then there’s the business side of baseball. You’ve got to be able to separate the two. From a negotiation standpoint, I feel like anything that was contentious is over. There’s respect there. I hope it’s mutual, but definitely on our side. We have a lot of respect for the owners and Dan Halem, the league’s lead negotiator, even though it was really frustrating and even annoying at times. Ultimately, it’s a partnership and we’re trying to grow the game and make it more entertaining for our fans. In my eyes, it’s a joint mission."

Check out the full interview below.

I'm hearing from teams in Florida that there will be a new spring training schedule.

Teams will be grouped in similar pods to last year, according to geography.

So there will be a Tampa pod, Fort Myers pod and South Florida pod. If you have tickets, stay tuned for how that works. The Orioles and Pirates will play teams in both the Tampa and Fort Myers pods.

Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer of the MLBPA addressed the media at their office in Manhattan:

Clark: “As has been the goal from Day One, a fair and equitable deal was the focus”

Meyer: “This was a long hard, labor fight… (Players) remained unified throughout in the face of every pressure tactic in the book. … Players made significant gains in this agreement"

Clark on Rob Manfred’s call yesterday once players voted to take a deal: "He did call to congratulate me and us on the ratification. I responded accordingly and suggested to him that there’s a lot of work to do with respect to our game is at."

Clark: "I’m not a fan of drafts in general. Having said that, as a part of this agreement, we agreed to have a conversation about the possibility of an international draft. … There’s no one rushing to put further restrictions on players, whether domestic or international."

Meyer: "The system is we have in terms of the luxury tax, obviously we'd rather there was no luxury tax at all. I would disagree with the notion that it’s, as you say, a hard cap. I’ve experienced real hard caps in the other sports & believe me they’re much worse than this"

It is pretty remarkable that in 2022, baseball players not only went on the offensive, but actually left a stoppage with more than they arrived with, not less. The $20 million increase in the competitive balance tax from 2021 to 2022, now starting at $230 million this season, is the largest increase ever. The $129,500 increase in the minimum salary, up to $700,000 for this year, is also the largest year-over-year jump. The pre-arbitration bonus pool amounts to $250 million in new money over the course of the deal alone.

Yet, it is telling that the union’s vote on the proposal they accepted Thursday afternoon was 26-12. That roughly a third of the executive board felt there was more to accomplish right now, in continued negotiations in 2022, not in the future.

Read more from Evan Drellich

Unless you’re a lawyer, a negotiator or a serious labor wonk, we’re guessing you won’t be reading all 130 pages of baseball’s new labor deal. Trust us. It doesn’t exactly zip along like “Bossypants.”

So here’s the deal. Here at The Athletic, we do the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. We’ve dug deep into six of the most important new aspects of this labor agreement — and we’re happy to give you a preview of why they’re in there, how they’re supposed to work and whether they will accomplish their mission.

As always … you’re welcome!

The modern definition of the commissioner job is to act in the best interests of the owners, and essentially fake the rest of it.

Alas, Manfred has related so poorly to players, he united them against him, helping produce the second-longest work stoppage in league history. And while he demonstrated rare grace and accountability at a news conference announcing the new labor agreement on Thursday night, his actions going forward will speak louder than his words.

The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal examines how Manfred needs to bridge the gap below.

It is hard to know how Rodón will perform in 2022.

Will he resemble the frontline pitcher he was for much of last season? Or will he revert to the form he showed during his first five seasons in Chicago? It is the sort of analysis that any interested club must parse.

Rodón could be elite. Or he could be a dud.

The Athletic's Andy McCullough breaks it all down below.

With Major League Baseball’s lockout finally over, the focus can get back on the field. And with a frenzy of free-agent signings and potential trades on tap for this weekend, there are plenty of questions — for before spring training camps open and for once real games finally get underway.

Below is one big question for all 30 teams …

Baseball’s extended offseason is over. After more than three months of a league-imposed lockout, MLB and its players have agreed to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement, restarting the sport immediately.

Yankees pitchers Gerrit Cole, Zack Britton and Jameson Taillon all took part in negotiations in person in February, sitting across from Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner at the bargaining table.

Cole and Britton are members of the union’s eight-player executive subcommittee, and Taillon served as the Yankees’ team representative. The subcommittee unanimously voted “no” on the league’s final proposal, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, as did four team representatives, including the Yankees.

The final vote from players was 26-12 in favor of the CBA.

Shortly after the vote was taken, Cole spoke with The Athletic about the negotiation process and his position on the PA’s player subcommittee.

Read the full story below.

Correa, the 27-year-old, two-time All-Star shortstop, was far from blind to the arrival of free agency.

He made waves when he suggested in the spring of 2021, after turning down a six-year, $120 million extension, he would likely be somewhere else in 2022. He wanted to capture a second World Series ring to pair with the tainted title from 2017. Correa fell short in that endeavor. But he still figures to accrue generational wealth in free agency.

An elite class of shortstops filled this market. Correa was probably the best of the bunch, a Gold Glove defender in 2021 who hit 26 home runs with an .850 OPS.

Where will Correa end up, you ask? The Athletic's Andy McCullough gets into it all below.

There is little doubt Freeman will be an elite player in 2022. Few hitters have been more dangerous over the past decade. He won the National League MVP in 2020. His .940 OPS since 2017 ranks seventh among all qualified hitters. He looked excellent once more in 2021, with an .896 OPS in the regular season and a 1.045 OPS in October.

The question for Atlanta, or any team pursuing Freeman, involves the perceived wisdom of committing to a long-term deal for a player who turned 32 last September. The actuarial tables on those types of deals tend to dissuade executives and owners. Yet there will be suitors, even if the Braves decide to move on from the most recognizable player from their most recent championship squad.

The Athletic's Andy McCullough breaks down Freeman's options in the coming days.

Major League Baseball owners have ended their lockout. They voted to ratify the new CBA, 30-0, a formality after the players accepted the owners’ proposal earlier today. Very soon: play ball.

On a technical level: the lockout will be lifted at around 7 p.m. ET, MLB says.

Some details emerging on how the expanded playoffs will work:

• No more Game 163 tiebreakers. All playoff spots will be determined through NFL-type tiebreaker formulas.
• No re-seeding for the LDS. No. 1 seed plays winner of No. 4 vs. No. 5 Wild Card Series. No. 2 seed plays No. 3 vs. No. 6 winner.

Those tiebreaker games have to go away to make sure the Wild Card Series can start two days after the end of the regular season. That's especially true in this postseason, which has to fit into a tighter window so World Series dates don't have to be moved.

MLB can implement rule changes now with a 45-day notice — meaning, in a single offseason — rather than the prior one year’s notice.

There will be a committee to discuss rules with six league appointees, four player appointees and one umpire. (The league has more votes, so, MLB has the power.)

With MLB and MLBPA finalizing a new collective-bargaining agreement, the 2022 season is back on track.

Come chat in a Live Room with The Athletic MLB writers about your team, your thoughts on the lockout and look forward to the free-agency frenzy.

Some final details of the CBA:

• Pre-arbitration bonus pool at $50 million
• Minimum salary: $700k, $720k, 740k, $760k, $780k
• CBT thresholds: $230 million-$244 million (There is also a new third surcharge, a fourth level, sometimes referred to as the Steve Cohen tax.)
• Draft lottery at six picks
• Universal DH
• Amateur draft is 20 rounds
• Player can be optioned five times per year

(Photo: Adam Hagy / Getty Images)