MLB cancels more spring-training games, pushing the schedule back to at least March 18
More games are lost as the MLB dispute drags on.
Three days after nixing the first week of the regular season, with collective bargaining talks on pause, Major League Baseball on Friday canceled another batch of spring-training games.
Teams won’t begin playing exhibition games until March 18, at the earliest, according to scheduling updates made by the league. That’s 21 days later than the first spring-training games were supposed to be played and one day after the Phillies were scheduled to host their annual St. Patrick’s Day game at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater, Fla.
It’s unclear when talks will resume between MLB and the Players Association. Negotiators for the owners and players met informally for 90 minutes Thursday in New York to discuss most core economic issues but didn’t set a date for their next bargaining session.
ESPN.com reported Friday that the players may be willing to reopen talks about the 14-team playoff format that is desired by the owners. The sides agreed this week on a framework for expanding the postseason to 12 teams, which would seem to satisfy the players’ concerns about maximizing competitive integrity.
But New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, a leader in the union, said this week that the players’ objection to a 14-team format was MLB’s proposed format, which gave a bye to only the top team in each league rather than all six division winners.
“We didn’t see that solely home-field advantage [in the first round] was going to be the necessary piece to go out there to win your division,” Scherzer said.
A 14-team postseason would bring in $100 million per year from ESPN. The New York Post reported this week that a 12-team field would bring in approximately $85 million. If the playoffs are able to get the formatting tweaks that they want for a 14-team postseaon, it’s possible they could use it as leverage to make gains on the luxury-tax threshold or the bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, issues where they remain far apart from the owners.
Meanwhile, the Players Association announced Friday that it will start a $1 million fund, administered by the AFL-CIO, to help stadium workers and others affected by the owners’ lockout. MLB intends to establish a similar fund, though details have not yet been announced.