MLB Saves Itself at the Buzzer With New CBA and a 162-Game Season

AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File

After just about 100 days, Major League Baseball’s lockout is finally going, going…gone. And with it, a whole new world order within the sport has arrived.

After months of negotiations that were rarely anything other than tense, MLB and the MLB Players Association finally bridged their differences and reached a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday.

As a result, all of the things that baseball had been putting off are now back on.

That includes the remainder of the 2021-22 offseason, most notably the free-agent sweepstakes of superstars like Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Kris Bryant and Clayton Kershaw. It’s also been about a month since spring training was originally set to open in February. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, players can finally start reporting on Friday.

And even though MLB ostensibly canceled games on March 1 and again on Wednesday, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that there will indeed be a full 162-game season and that it will begin on April 7 in lieu of March 31:

So after all of that—i.e., 99 days filled with either no news or bad news—Major League Baseball only had to push Opening Day back by a week.

Ridiculous? Well, yes. But also a huge gosh darn relief? Yeah. That, too. And at least at first glance, the wait seems to have been worth it.

What’s Changed?

If you want to know exactly how the league and the union arrived at Thursday’s deal, you’ll need to be patient. There’s bound to be books written about the process, which was frankly filled with enough drama to make even the Marvel Cinematic Universe blush.

What matters now is how this new CBA differs from previous agreements, for which MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand has the key need-to-know details:

The new bonus pool is an all-new feature that will ensure that young standouts like 2021 American League MVP runner-up Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Rookies of the Year Randy Arozarena and Jonathan India don’t have to wait for arbitration to start cashing bigger checks. Between that and the increased minimum salary, Travis Sawchik of The Score notes that pre-arbitration players stand to make an extra $115 million in 2022.

Further, the actual road to arbitration should get shorter for the game’s elite prospects. Because according to Passan, the new CBA also includes draft-pick compensation for teams as a means to discourage indulging in service-time manipulation.

The first competitive balance tax threshold, meanwhile, represents a 9 percent hike over what it was in 2021. Per MLB Trade Rumors, the last CBA only provided a 1 percent boost over the prior CBT threshold. So even though new penalties on overages could sting big spenders like the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and New York Mets, the players have effectively raised the sport’s de facto salary cap.

These things arguably amount to the biggest win in collective bargaining negotiations that the players have scored in decades. A good thing for them, obviously, but it must not be underestimated as a win for baseball in general. If it all evens out a revenue split that had gotten skewed in favor of the owners, baseball could be in for a lengthy era of labor peace.

Otherwise, your eyes do not deceive you. The designated hitter is indeed now universal, and there will indeed be two more teams in the playoffs and an NBA-style draft lottery.

The thought of pitchers no longer hitting for themselves in National League parks is bound to make some weep, but it’s an inevitable change that should introduce more action into games. For its part, the draft lottery gives rebuilding teams at least one thing to be wary of before they decide to go full-tank. 

As for how the expanded playoffs will work, Travis Sawchik of The Score reports that it will take a page from the NFL:

As such, gaining home-field advantage in the Division Series round is no longer the only incentive for elite teams in either league to chase the top record. And whereas lesser teams previously faced the prospect of going one-and-done in the Wild Card Game under the 10-team format, any club that makes the playoffs will now be guaranteed at least two games.

When viewed through cynical goggles, the 12-team playoff is merely a means for the owners to recoup some of the dollars they’ve conceded to the players. For that matter, the same goes for the advertisements that will now be featured on the latter’s uniforms.

If all goes well, though, the draft lottery and the expanded playoff field will incentivize owners to invest more in their rosters. That, in turn, would create more competition. That would right a wrong that’s cropped up in recent years, and would also be…well, fun.

What Isn’t New?

If it’s rule changes you want, that’s another thing you’ll have to wait on. Save for the universal DH, the actual game figures to look largely the same in 2022.

As reported by Evan Drellich of The Athletic, however, the league now has the latitude to quickly implement new rules in the future:

What kind of rule changes, you ask? Lots. Or, at least four that Feinsand alluded to: a ban on defensive shifts, a pitch clock, larger bases and an automated strike zone.

All four of these would have the potential to change the game for the better. Larger bases could allow for more infield hits and stolen bases attempts, and also cut down on the risk of injury for infielders. As we discussed in depth, a shift ban would allow for more hits and possibly reinvigorate the need for athleticism on the infield.

A pitch clock certainly sounds sacrilege, and it’s easy to theorize that it could pose an injury risk to pitchers who’ve grown accustomed to taking their time. But it’s also baseball’s best hope for getting the average game time back below three hours, and it could even help reduce strikeouts if it breaks the relationship between slow pacing and higher velocity.

As various experiments with it have revealed real problems, the league will have to be more careful with an automated strike zone. Ideally, though, it’s the best possible means for making calls like this one a thing of the past:

All this is to say that nobody need despair over the fact that the new CBA will do little to change the game itself in 2022. It’s not that MLB and the MLBPA don’t see the problems that the game has. They do and, and there’s clearly some resolve to fix them.

If they follow through, we’ll be able to look back on the agreement as a literal game-changer.

In Any Case, Thank Goodness That’s Over

If you’re a baseball fan—and you presumably are if you’re reading this—you don’t need us to tell just how much the last three months sucked.

Given that it came on the heels of one of the most exciting free-agent signing frenzies in recent memory, the arrival of the lockout on Dec. 2 was akin to rounding a corner and walking into a brick wall. Only this wall also had spikes on it, and the bricks were sentient and only speaking to hurl accusations of bad faith at each other. Occasionally fires would break out, but the only available extinguishers were filled with kerosene and wielded by arsonists.

But now that it’s finally over, it’s fair to say it could have been worse.

True, this was one of the longest work stoppages in the sport’s history. Yet in addition to steps in the right direction, it resulted in not a single game lost. Some games will have to be made up, sure, but even those will be made up under normal, pre-pandemic rules:

There’s therefore no comparing what baseball has been through over the last few months to what happened in 1994-95, when the players went on a 232-day strike and Commissioner Bud Selig canceled the 1994 World Series.

Once attendance dropped by 20 percent upon the sport’s return in 1995, baseball came face-to-face with the damage that its tomfoolery had done to its fanbase. It took years to recover, and surely would have taken longer if not for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Though Mac and Sammy won’t be walking through that door to save baseball again, no such heroes may be needed this time around.

Once Correa, Freeman and the other top free agents find new homes, baseball’s good-news mojo will keep going. Then the season will be here in a heartbeat, and it’ll be time for baseball fans to get reacquainted with the sport’s extraordinary cast of characters.

Think Shohei Ohtani, who makes Babe Ruth look like a chump. Think Juan Soto, who’s the best young hitter since Ted Williams. Think the three-headed Jr. monster of Guerrero, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuna Jr., who have talent and swagger in equal measure. Think Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, who are now a decade into careers that seem ticketed for Cooperstown. Think Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera, who are well on their way to that same destination.

Rather than take another 20-percent dive, attendance in 2022 at least figures to clear the low bar (i.e., 18,651 on average) that was set amid lingering pandemic-related precautions in 2021. If the new CBA improves competition and the game as well as it might, attendance might even start going back up again after declining in the latter half of the 2010s.

It is, of course, possible that the future could reveal baseball’s new normal to be no better than the old normal. Heck, maybe even worse.

But now’s not the time to worry about that. Now is for hope. Or at least, for baseball fans to breathe easy for the first time in 99 days.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.

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