Having reached an agreement that suited them, Major League Baseball owners voted Thursday to lift their lockout of players and allow the sport to resume operations.
Just one day after negotiations hit another impasse and MLB announced the removal of a second week of games from the schedule, the league reached agreement with the players union on a new, five-year collective bargaining agreement Tuesday afternoon. Both sides voted to ratify the deal Tuesday, the owners unanimously and the players association executive committee 26-12.
With the owners lifting their 99-day lockout, Spring Training is set to begin Sunday followed by a full 162-game regular season on April 7 — just one week later than the original March 31 date. That is a reversal from baseball’s posture on Wednesday night, when commissioner Rob Manfred said the season would begin no earlier than April 14.
As part of the new CBA, the owners won an expanded, 12-team postseason that will mean increased rights fees from ESPN, which acquired exclusive rights to any expanded postseason field in its new media rights deal that kicks in this season. The league originally wanted a 14-team postseason. The owners have also been given the greenlight to put advertising on the uniforms, joining the NBA and NHL in so doing.
That MLB will stage a full, 162-game season is something of an upset given the acrimonious relationship between the league and union. Two years ago, when the start of the season was delayed in the early days of COVID-19, MLB ended up playing only 60 games per team after the sides failed to come to an agreement on how much players would make in a shortened season.
The MLB lockout was the first work stoppage in Major League Baseball since the 1994-95 players strike that resulted in the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the shortening of the 1995 season. It was the eighth work stoppage in the four major sports since that 1994 strike, all of them owner-imposed lockouts.
