MLB and MLBPA are ‘Deadlocked’ on CBA after Sunday’s meeting

On Sunday, the MLB Players Association gave a written collective bargaining agreement proposal to Major League Baseball. It was the first time both sides met since they left Florida early last week.

According to league spokesperson Glen Caplin, the Players Association went backwards on Sunday.

“We were hoping to see some movement in our direction to give us additional flexibility and get a deal done quickly,” Caplin said to reporters. “The Players Association chose to come back to us with a proposal that was worse than Monday night and was not designed to move the process forward. On some issues, they even went backwards. Simply put, we are deadlocked. We will try to figure out how to respond but nothing in this proposal makes it easy.”

For what it’s worth, an MLBPA official says the union strongly denies MLB’s assertion that the union moved backwards.

MLBPA’s proposal on Sunday included a $5 million reduction to the union’s last offer in a pre-arbitration bonus pool, now putting it at $80 million, which is still far off from MLB’s proposal of $30 million. It did not include any changes to its competitive balance tax proposal.

There was an agreement on Sunday, though. The union agreed to a league request to change the amount of time needed to implement rule changes. Previously, the league needed to give a year’s notice to the union in order to make rule changes. Now, they will only be required to give 45 days with those specific rules. The rules discussed were a pitch clock, the size of bases and the shift. The new timeline for rule changes will start in 2023.

There’s no word on when the next meeting will take place. If I were to guess, expect more regular season games to be cancelled this week.