The MLB has been in a “lockout” for nearly three months. The lockout began when 30 owners all voted in support of the Lockout. A lockout is when the team owners are not allowing the players to come to work. Meaning the players aren’t allowed to sign to teams, organizations aren’t allowed to trade. Nothing is going on.
This is the first MLB stoppage in almost 30 years. In 1994 the players went on strike, ended the 1994 season early and delayed the 1995 season.
When asked, when will the season start, Dillon Heck, a warehouse associate from Hulmeville, answered, “Not for another two months. Due to the fact that, the owners don’t want to have to pay their players any more than they already do.”punctuation goes inside quotes.
The lockout has yet to end because the players and the owners have yet to agree to a new CBA. A CBA is a “collective bargaining agreement” and without that agreement there will be no baseball.
The player’s union waited for almost six weeks for the league to come up with a proposal. When they did, unfortunately the player’s union rejected that proposal.
The main goal for the players is getting more money for the younger players and increasing the minimum salary. The players have decreased the amount that they originally asked for from revenue sharing.
Revenue sharing, in Major League Baseball, is when larger or more popular teams, who make more money, share a portion of that money with small market teams. The players are looking for more of this to prevent teams from purposely tanking or playing bad on purpose.
When asked who is to blame for this lockout, local baseball fan and Penn State Engineering student, Noah Brodecki who is he? Need some background info says “Team owners are greedy and don’t care about minor leaguers, or their teams outside of the star players”. Brodecki sounds like every other baseball fan these last few months.
The two sides met on Monday Feb. 28, the owners let the players know that they are willing to miss a month’s worth of games, according to Evan Drellich of the Athletic. This is a major stance by the owners as they could lose some serious money due to this thought process.
As a fan, Blaze Binkowski, an AMC Theater employee from Hulmeville, says, “From a fan’s perspective this is annoying and it has me worried about the future of the game. That being said, I am definitely on the side of the players, because contracts, and the threats that come with them, have been going on for a while, and the players have a good point on their end.”
According to the MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, opening day is canceled along with the first two weeks of the season. The schedule for the regular season was originally 162 games but now is down to 156 games.
With ongoing negotiations still causing further delays and players sitting unpaid for the missed games it’s anyone’s guess who will make what sacrifices in order to salvage the season. Only time will tell.