If Major League Baseball does indeed intend to cancel regular season games if a new collective bargaining agreement isn't reached by Feb. 28, it appears that we're trending towards a season that won't be 162 games, at a minimum.
Audacy Sports MLB Insider Jon Heyman reports that there was "very minor movement" as the league and MLB Players Association met for a fourth consecutive day, adding that the league's threat of cancelled games "didn't immediately trigger anything different."
Meanwhile, ESPN's Jesse Rogers tweeted a few nuggets from today's negotiations, starting off by ominously saying that "it's not good" in regards to news from Thursday's sessions before offering some more specifics:
While the idea of the league and MLBPA having "nothing more to discuss" feels like an Onion headline, that sentiment from the league appears to be very real:
Perhaps the most troubling development from today's talks comes from Jim Bowden, a former general manager who now writes for The Athletic:
Quite a few Twitter users responded to say that Bowden either dumbed this down or was altogether incorrect, but there's a good chance that someone on the league side of things floated this idea to him. And as Bill Shaikin of The Los Angeles Times noted, going this route wouldn't help the two sides to come to an agreement anytime soon:
Mind you, there's still quite a large bridge to gap in terms of what the luxury tax threshold will be in each year of the new CBA, and what penalties will exists for teams who surpass the given thresholds. To still have that bridge to gap before the owner-imposed deadline of Feb. 28 doesn't leave you with a good feeling.
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