Minnesota Twins fans didn't necessarily get the news they had hoped for regarding the 2022 Major League Baseball regular season starting on time after the latest round of labor negotiations ended with MLB owners giving locked out players until Monday, February 28 to salvage the March 31 opener and a full season.
Following a third straight day of negotiations with little movement, MLB went public with what it had told the MLBPA earlier in the month. The league proposed adding $10,000 to the minimum salary per year and dropped a requested for the minimum salary to be based on service-time tiers.
Despite the impasse, Minnesota Twins President and CEO Dave St. Peter shared his optimism about the season on Thursday during the WCCO Radio Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar.
"At the end of the day, I am very optimistic that we will be playing baseball and hopefully with the regular season starting on time," St. Peter said. "We'll watch what happens over the next few days."
St. Peter said he was not involved in the negotiations and continues to learn the latest information through media reports.
"Obviously our fans deserve baseball and the system we're working on right now is important for the teams' abilities to shape their rosters," he added.
According to reports, owners offered to raise the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players to $20 million, up from their original offer of $15 million for the top 30 players. The offer also included no change to a previous luxury tax proposal and rescinded a request to control the number of minor-league teams.
"There's a lot of core economic issues and alternately there will be dialogue around how we can evolve and improve the game," St. Peter said. "The latter issues is what I am most excited about. Those are going be central for the growth of our game moving forward."
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Players have not accepted Monday as a deadline and have suggested any missed games could be made up as part of doubleheaders, a method MLB said it will not agree to. Players, in turn, have said they would then not agree to an expanded playoff scenario or advertisements on their uniforms.
As for what's next for the Twins ahead of normal regular season, Target Field will do a full field replacement over the next two weeks that includes replacing the grass.
The Twins home opener is scheduled for April 7 against the Seattle Mariners.
