There’s no end to the Major League Baseball lockout in sight. No meetings are scheduled between the owners and the players, despite reports that talks would restart in early January. Nothing has happened, and there has been no progress, casting some doubt over whether or not we’ll have a full season in 2022.
So if that’s the case, what will the 2022 MLB season look like? When will it begin? Will Spring Training be put on hold? Where will the remaining free agents sign? Will we have a season at all?
Early on in the process, we kept hearing that we weren’t at risk of losing any games in 2022. However, that’s looking more and more likely as each day passes. At this point, it’s a forgone conclusion that we’re not going to have a full season in 2022. We just have to hope that this doesn’t drag out until late June like the negotiations for the 2020 season did. But it honestly would be no surprise if Rob Manfred and the owners did what they did then and intentionally make bad proposal after bad proposal so they can have exactly 60 games with expanded playoffs.
Realistically, we’ll have more than 60 games, or so we hope. But even if we do, it doesn’t appear that this lockout will be ending anytime soon. I imagine we’ll end up getting around 82-110 games once it’s all figured out, but again, that’s going to be a while. There are still so many hoops to jump through, and with Spring Training rapidly approaching and no deal in place, there’s little hope that a new deal will be put in place by then.
So when will a new CBA be agreed upon, you ask? Well, as stated, not anytime soon. The tensions between the league and the players’ association have reached a boiling point, and the two sides are at each other’s throats. They met twice in December, but didn’t discuss the core economic issues that are holding the process up. There’s no way of knowing when they’ll work out the kinks and finally agree on a new CBA.
It feels like it’s never going to end. The original consensus was that the lockout would be settled by the end of January or beginning of February. But with no meeting scheduled, I think the earliest possible date that this will be settled comes in either late February or early March, and that’s putting it nicely.
So if it’s agreed upon by then, that means that Spring Training is automatically pushed back. The league will need a month or so to get through the rest of free agency, which means we’ll probably see Spring Training begin in mid to late April, which puts us right around late May or early June for opening day. That would give us about 110 games for the regular season.
The next question is, will we have expanded playoffs? And if so, will there be 14 teams in the postseason like the league wants, or will there be 12 like the players seem to prefer? 12 is more likely. It’s a nice middle ground between 10 and 14. Both sides would be making a compromise, and that’s ultimately what we need to get the season going and to get baseball back to where it needs to be.
Obviously right now, it’s a hodgepodge. It’s a big mess that’s going to take time to sort out. It’s Rob Manfred’s world, and we’re all just living in it.
