MLB, players talk for 17 hours, recess at 3 a.m., with ‘big issues’ remaining as league threatens to cancel more games

If it was Tuesday, it must have been Meet The Deadline.

For a second Tuesday in a row, Major League Baseball gave the locked-out players a take-it-or-leave-it deadline in collective bargaining talks. Either take the league’s latest proposal or leave a week’s worth of regular-season games on the chopping block.

Last Tuesday, after nine consecutive days of talks in Jupiter, Fla., the Players Association rejected an offer that it said the league presented as “best and final,” and watched commissioner Rob Manfred cancel the first week of the season. This Tuesday, after MLB raised its position on the luxury tax and delivered a new proposal in writing, union leaders huddled with lawyers and economists deep into the night before drafting a counteroffer.

As the baseball world stayed up to the wee hours again to see if white smoke would billow, this time from MLBPA headquarters in midtown Manhattan, a source familiar with the talks cautioned against assuming from the late hour and the intensity of negotiations that a deal was close.

Finally, at 3 a.m., after nearly 17 hours of bargaining, a league official said the union asked for a recess to meet with its player leaders by the light of day. The deadline would be extended, and a second source said there were “big issues” that remained. Among them: the league’s proposal of an international draft, a longstanding no-go for the players. MLB also proposed offsets to the luxury-tax increases..

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This Tuesday’s deadline, which came on the 97th day of the owners’ lockout, carried an added caveat: MLB was expected to propose that the previously erased first two regular-season series — five games for the Phillies — would be rescheduled and the players’ full-season pay and service time reinstated. But if the union turned down the offer, more games — likely two more series — would be canceled.

If that sounded more like a negotiating tactic, well, that’s how the players viewed last week’s deadline, which MLB maintained was necessary to preserve a 162-game season after a four-week spring training. Regardless, the players weren’t pressured into taking a deal then and appeared resolved to get the best possible deal now, too.

Details of MLB’s most recent offer were difficult to ascertain, with the sides keeping a tighter lid on leaks. Multiple reports suggested MLB moved toward the players on the luxury-tax threshold, the central economic issue in the negotiations.

According to The Athletic, MLB nudged its initial luxury-tax threshold to $230 million, up from $220 million in its previous offer and only $8 million shy of the players’ last offer. But a source confirmed that MLB pushed for a fourth luxury-tax tier to severely penalize big-market owners for spending lavishly on their payroll. (The New York Mets’ Steve Cohen, for instance.)

That represented a major concern for the players, who already view the luxury tax as a de facto salary cap.

The annual rate of increase in the tax thresholds also remained an issue. The Athletic reported that MLB’s new offer bumped the threshold to $242 million by 2026, the end point of the five-year agreement. The players were seeking a $263 million threshold in 2026.

But any significant upward movement by the owners on the luxury tax figures to push the players closer to a deal. Many teams, including the Phillies, have recently spent to the threshold but stopped short of clearing it. Manfred admitted last week that it effectively serves as a check on what small-market owners perceive as runaway spending by their big-market counterparts.

“The competitive-balance tax is the only mechanism in our agreement that protects some semblance of a level playing field among the clubs,” Manfred said.

MLB needs 23 of the 30 owners to ratify an agreement. Four owners reportedly rejected the league’s proposed $220 million threshold for 2022 last week.

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It was also unclear what the owners requested as a trade-off for the movement on the luxury tax.

In a proposal Sunday, the players stuck to their preferred luxury-tax thresholds in exchange for offering to let MLB hasten the implementation of three on-field rule changes (a pitch clock, larger bases, limits to defensive shifts). That stipulation is likely in MLB’s latest proposal.

It’s also possible the owners renewed their desire for 14-team expanded playoffs. The sides agreed last week to a 12-team field based on the players’ concerns that a 14-team format wouldn’t properly reward division winners. But Mets ace Max Scherzer, a leader in the union, indicated that a change to the structure may prompt the players to revisit the 14-team format.

If a deal were to be reached, players likely would report to spring training by the end of the week. A four-week camp would push opening day from March 31 to the second full week of April. It’s unclear when the previously canceled games would be played.

But if MLB’s latest deadline passed without an agreement, it would become increasingly difficult to salvage 162 games, although the players believe the length of the schedule is negotiable. They also contend they should be paid for a full season regardless of how many games are played because they are being locked out by the owners.

When Tuesday dawned, gaps still existed between the sides on many core economic issues, including a $50 million difference in the bonus pool for pre-arbitration (entry-level) players. But the tenor of the talks, which had turned decidedly negative Sunday evening, seemed to be changing.

After the players made their proposal Sunday, league spokesman Glen Caplin blasted the union for moving the process “backwards” with “a proposal that was worse” than last week’s and described the talks as “deadlocked.” The union disputed that characterization.

But the sides agreed to tamp down the rhetoric this week. They met more surreptitiously Monday, opting to neither alert the media nor leak blow-by-blow details as soon as they adjourned. They seemed to make progress, too, with MLB making its move on the luxury tax.

By Tuesday night, with another deadline looming, the union was trying to decide whether MLB’s new proposal was good enough.