Major League Baseball (MLB) has postponed opening day until April 14 after Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) failed once again to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). After MLB’s Commissioner, Rob Manfred announced on March 1 that the first two series of the regular season would be canceled, he has now canceled another two series after another attempt to save the 162 game season failed. 

According to ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, the MLB gave the players association three options to save the 162 game season. 

• 1. Sign the CBA, including eliminating draft pick compensation, and some time to examine the international draft. If the players union doesn’t implement within a couple of years, the MLB will re-open the CBA by 2024
• 2. Do the entire package without the draft, which includes without draft pick compensation.
• 3. Take the original deal. League gets the international draft, and draft pick compensation is eliminated.

The players association rejected all three options, which led to the MLB canceling two more series to postpone opening day until April 14. 

The MLB has said that the four canceled series will not be made up, and the players will not be paid for the lost games. The longer this lockout lasts, the uglier it will get for both the MLB and the MLBPA. Players will be faced with the challenge of potentially losing service time toward salary arbitration and free agency. The players will also lose a combined $20.5 million a day for each game not played. The union plans to fight to be paid an entire season while also ensuring no service time is lost. 

After core economics was the talk of these negotiations, the international draft became the latest topic to prevent MLB and MLBPA from striking a deal. According to ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, future Hall of Famer, David Ortiz, said, “The system in the Dominican [Republic] is not ready to have a draft next year. The Dominican is not the U.S. You can’t snap a finger, and everything lines up to operate the right way. We’ve got a new president who’s trying to improve things. We need to do this slowly.” The international market is crucial as about forty percent of the MLB players are from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Cuba. 

According to Passan, the MLB proposed a draft system that would begin in 2024 and would place teams in pods of either seven or eight and eventually rotate their draft positions so that the organizations would be an even-handed position for the top amateur player. The international free agents are free to sign with any team but are hit with a hard cap which means that the team cannot spend over a certain amount of money on a player. The MLB says that the draft system would guarantee more money. The highest paid signees earned $6.26 million for eight different teams, while the lowest was $4.64 million for other teams. According to Passan, the international draft picks would be tradable and feature twenty rounds with 600 hard slotted picks. The undrafted international players could sign for a maximum of $20,000.

The MLBPA has been firmly against the international draft for over a year. They believe it will affect baseball development in their countries and believe that the current process without a draft should continue. As a result, the MLB has included the international draft in all of their proposals, but the MLBPA has rejected the draft in each proposal presented to them. 

According to MLB Network insider Jon Heyman, The MLB and MLBPA plan to meet in the morning on Thursday, March 9, hoping to settle the international draft. There is hope from the players union that the qualifying offer goes away if the international draft is settled.