The world according to Jim, (non) spring training edition: 

• It is frustrating enough that spring training will not begin on time, with the first week of games now wiped out through March 4, thanks to an owners’ negotiating strategy that seems contingent on players’ surrender. News flash: It’s not happening, and a reported 15-minute negotiating session Thursday, as well as previous indications that one side seems willing to compromise on core economic proposals and one side isn’t, suggests that the owners’ Cheapskate Lobby is driving the negotiations. More on that below. …

• That opening day over/under of April 20 I mentioned last week? Take the over. In fact, longtime commentator Keith Olbermann suggested Thursday that he wouldn’t be surprised if the owners gutted the entire 2022 season. …

I covered my first MLB labor talks in 1980. I was on the ’81 strike so long, when it started I was in radio; when it ended I was on CNN. I covered the ’82 NFL talks for 8 months.

This is why I think not only is Baseball’s Opening Day delayed, but the whole SEASON is at risk:

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 17, 2022

• The minor leagues at least will operate in 2022, and the circuit formerly known as the California League will begin its schedule April 8. But minor league players are also about to become collateral damage if some owners get their way. Management  embedded in its proposals an attempt to further emaciate the minors, specifically a proposal that the “domestic reserve list,” the number of players in an organization’s farm system, be slashed from 180 to as few as 150.

It was included as a recommendation, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, with the option to do so beginning in 2023 but supposedly no plans to do so immediately. But why propose it if you’re not planning on doing it? …

• Reading between the lines, this suggests that the tone for MLB’s negotiating stance is being set not necessarily by Rob Manfred but by the cabal of owners who keep their payrolls low, spend their revenue-sharing money on anything but player salaries, are perennially rebuilding (i.e., tanking), and treat their minor-leaguers like dirt. …

• Not to cast any specific aspersions, but Colorado’s Dick Manafort is chairman of the owners’ Labor Policy Committee. His team’s projected $96.6 million opening day payroll – if there is an opening day – is projected as 20th out of 30 teams according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. And he’s joined by the owners from Milwaukee (17th), Texas (13th), Minnesota (21st), the Yankees (third), Padres (fourth) and Red Sox (fifth).

(Let’s pause for a moment to consider the delicious irony of San Diego being wedged right between New York and Boston at the top of that list. The Padres have four players scheduled to make more than $20 million in 2022, according to Cot’s spreadsheets, and Fernando Tatis Jr. isn’t one of them. The Red Sox and Yankees have two apiece.)

The low-payroll teams, as you can tell, are the majority. How on earth did the owners of the Pirates ($34.4 million), Orioles ($40.4 million), Cleveland Guardians ($46.6 million) and Marlins ($65 million), Nos. 27-30, not get invited to join?  …

″ This is reminiscent of the large market/small market divide that led to the last major work stoppage, the 1994 strike that wiped out the World Series (and probably sounded the death knell for baseball in Montréal). That drumbeat had begun two years before when Brewers owner Bud Selig and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf led a coup that ousted commissioner Fay Vincent, specifically because Vincent practiced neutrality – imagine that – in a 1990 labor issue and used his authority to reopen spring training camps after owners had attempted a lockout.

And that, folks, is how Bud Lite became commissioner, and how the commissioner’s office morphed from acting for the “good of the game” to “whatever it takes to get the owners to renew my contract.” …

• Baseball rebounded from the 1994 strike because of Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak and performances fueled by steroids. Would there be any coming back from a prolonged stoppage now? …

• The economics are different because revenue sharing has theoretically reduced the disparity between large and small markets, but it assumes that teams receiving that money put it back into the product. Today’s dividing line often is whether your team’s billionaire owner chooses to try to compete or not. …

• But back to the minor leagues: The proposal to reduce the workforce follows this past season’s “restructuring” from 162 teams to 120, ripping minor league baseball away from lots of cities (including Lancaster). Now it sounds like the Cheapskates want to further dumb down the system and reduce more ambitious clubs to their level. …

• Also, given the furor over the often-squalid living conditions faced by players in lower classifications, the idea may be that if they have to upgrade they’ll just thin the herd to save money. As it is, if they upgrade minor leaguers’ pay (which is often below minimum wage), housing and quality of meals, it’ll be at the point of a bayonet.

Just last week an MLB lawyer argued in federal court, in response to a class-action lawsuit over minor league compensation, that those players shouldn’t be paid in spring training because they’re “trainees.” Previously the argument apparently was that players gained “greatly beneficial life skills” from their time in the minors.

Yeah, take those life skills to the grocery store and see if they’ll be accepted in lieu of payment. …

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• And consider: Until the Friday morning announcement, MLB had yet to concede publicly that spring training games were in jeopardy, but Bob Nightengale from USA Today reported that MLB negotiators told those for the players that Feb. 28 was the cutoff date for an agreement to preserve the scheduled opening day of March 31.

If you’ve already bought tickets for 2022 games … well, remember the issues people had getting refunds in 2020 for games not played because of the pandemic? You’ve been warned.

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