We all knew this was going to happen at some point. Yet when there was any so-called “progress,” we got our hopes up, thinking that maybe the owners and players would finally get it together and pull off a deal to end the lockout.
But now, it’s as we all feared. Opening Day has officially been delayed, as commissioner Rob Manfred has cancelled the first two series of the 2022 regular season. These games will not be made up, meaning that for the second time in three years, the regular season will be shortened. The “disastrous outcome” that Manfred talked about has come to fruition.
There’s no end in sight, contrary to what we might’ve thought after a long night of bargaining on Monday. It’s still anyone’s guess as to when this will all be over, and there’s a strong chance that more than just the first two series of the season will be lost.
It’s clear now that the optimism from Monday night was all just a ploy by the owners. They likely knew that things would go south yesterday, and got everyone’s hopes up so that they could paint the players as the villains. But the vast majority of MLB fans know the truth.
It was the owners that locked out the players, when there really was no need to do so, claiming that it would speed up the bargaining process, which is the opposite of what happened. They then waited over six weeks to deliver their first proposal, and just like in 2020, intentionally made bad offers so that when crunch time came, the players would agree to their terms in order to avoid missing games. They set artificial deadlines to threaten the players, then when things started looking better, they went south and the owners then had all they needed to try and convince the public that the players were the bad guys.
As Jeff Passan said on Twitter, yesterday was a sad day for baseball. Fans are turning away from the sport at a rapid rate, especially those of the younger generation. Even when this all gets settled, fans will be disinterested, and some of the fans that were lost as a result of the lockout may never come back to the sport.
The sad reality is, the owners know that they’re ruining the sport. They just want all the money for themselves and will stop at nothing to ensure that they get it, even at the cost of games. All this does is prove that they don’t care about the fans and are willing to put the sport in jeopardy to make a point.
For more MLB coverage, click here.
