MLB lockout is over, but question marks over the games' direction remain

And we’re back.

Following negotiations, negotiations and more negotiations, the players union have voted to accept Major League Baseball’s latest offer for a new labor deal. The lockout ends on day 99. Baseball is back. Hours upon hours of dribbled words, disagreements and, above all else, lost time. As the days of March grow older those sun-kissed ballparks in Arizona and Florida would typically hear the soothing tones of bat hitting ball, knees sliding toward white bases in the rich dirt. Soon it will return. A 162-game season has been salvaged. The fields are waiting; the fans are hungry. Opening Day is on the horizon.

But before last night’s agreement the 2022 Baseball season hung in the balance. The reason? A convoluted clutter of confusion. It stemmed from an ongoing dispute between owners and players, MLB vs MLBPA. A lockout blanketed the sport, prohibiting all activity. Ultimately it was a financial disagreement (surprising, indeed) revolving around the owner’s implementation of a “soft” salary cap that forces franchises with a payroll over a certain amount to pay a fraction of that payroll as a “tax” to the league *wakes up reader*. It was in the owner’s interest to make it even more expensive for teams to go over the threshold. As a result, this makes the salary cap “harder”.

Still with us? Well, this was, among a few other factors, the leading crux for conflict. Until 8pm(ish) on Thursday evening were players and owners a fair distance away from where they wanted the threshold to lie. In recent decades the sport has seen a reduction in competitive balance. Inequalities are rife. Big markets flourish whilst the smaller markets suffer. Yes, there are exceptions: Tampa Bay, Oakland - ingenious builds from within, yet despite their guile they appear an increasing distance behind the likes of the Dodgers, Braves, Astros.

A fundamental cause for the player’s angst is that the owner’s aspirations reduces this already tilted ‘balance’. Richer and poorer teams keep their costs down as a result of this balance tax. Sounds promising. But there’s a catch: the revenue-sharing as a direct result subsidises those franchises that yield fewer dollars. Narrow the threshold, and we continue to have some sort of level-playing field. But now it reached the precipice. Legs dangling from the edge; it was a first season in major crisis since 1994.

In today’s semi-democratic world professional baseball players have a voice. They are vastly competitive humans who feel aggrieved that the owners make money without the want to compete. Manfred’s words speak just as loud. For a commissioner who from the exterior appeared contented with prolonging the lockout, this is not news wrapped in silvery hope. It’s regularly discussed — playfully or not — that baseball is a dying sport. That’s an extreme, and a likely fallacious argument.

Yet viewership has sunk in the years of late. An average of 22.9M tuned into to watch the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians (Guardians at heart). Compare that to the 11.7m of the recent Braves triumph, or the 9.79M the year before, and the audience numbers are wavering. That’s not to suggest the sport will be lying solemnly in the dirt in a decade’s time, viewing figures fluctuate consistently, but this fresh lockout unequivocally poses numerous concerns for the direction of a game that cannot afford to lose time.

Such distinct discrepancy between two imperative components leaves many a groove in dire need of ironing. Issues of a similar gravy were whisked before the first pitches of last season, but these were resolved with a tinge more swiftness. Who is to say these differences don't spill over into future years? Nothing is a certainty. A surety is that players can now return to spring-training camps, Opening Day is scheduled for April 7 - only a smidgen over a week later than first planned. And that's all followers care for. A once inconceivable thought is now a glimmering reality. Final vote from the eight on the executive subcommittee and thirty player representatives: 26-12 in favour of new labour agreement. That’ll do it. Play ball.

And with this approaching season arrives a smattering of changes to jazz up the sport. The National League are to finally adopt the designated hitter rule; a draft lottery to discourage tanking; inducements to dampen appetite for service-time manipulation; and possible new rules including pitch clocks and larger bases in the future. Playoffs, too, have been expanded to twelve teams and the automatic runner on second base in extra innings has been dissolved. Changes the fans wanted. Changes the players wanted. Belatedly the great resurrection has been witnessed.

Optimism again showers down on the thirty diamonds of the United States (…and Toronto). The future remains a tumultuous uphill battle but, for the fans who in some golden dreams yearned for that smell of the freshly mowed glistening grass; that sound of the clean crack of bat smacking leather, and that sight of a pearly-white ball soaring high into the stands, their deepest desires are soon to become an iridescent reality.