But they will try to narrow that gap again Monday, starting earlier than they have in months of negotiating, with a 10 a.m. meeting time at Roger Dean Stadium. Exactly how long they have to complete a deal before MLB cancels regular season games isn’t clear. People involved in the negotiations on both sides have conveyed a sense that the sides will know whether a deal is near or not at some point Monday.
If it gets late in the day and negotiations are promising, the expectation among those involved is the sides will push toward a deal even if midnight comes and goes. If talks are not promising and a deal is not imminent, MLB probably will have to make an announcement of some kind, given it has set a deadline of the end of February.
A deal would represent a sharp turn from where the sides left things Saturday night, when the players made what they felt was a credible, multifaceted proposal and were furious when the owners brushed it aside as a non-starter. The players briefly considered spurning negotiations before deciding to return Sunday.
But Sunday’s negotiations were different from previous ones. Instead of the dozen or so players who had been present each day of the week, just three MLB Players Association executive subcommittee members were on hand: Max Scherzer, Marcus Semien and Andrew Miller.
Unlike during previous sessions, those players did not speak directly to owners or even to members of MLB’s negotiating team. Instead, Sunday’s meetings consisted mostly of a half-dozen one-on-one meetings between union lead negotiator Bruce Meyer and MLB lead Dan Halem, who returned to discuss matters with their cohorts at the end of each one.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was on hand to consult with the owners, while Scherzer, Miller and Semien consulted with the union’s team between meetings, according to a person familiar with the process. Other staff from both sides also conducted smaller meetings. Representatives on both sides said they discussed almost everything at some point or another during the course of the day.
But no concrete, on-paper proposals were exchanged, according to a person familiar with the day’s events. Exactly where that leaves each side on the major issues — competitive balance tax threshold and tax rates, draft format, arbitration qualification, bonus pool for pre-arbitration players — remains unclear.
What is clear is the sense that a deal Monday would represent something of a miracle, given that at no point in what has become the second-longest work stoppage in MLB history have the sides built anything resembling sustained momentum.
For example, when the negotiators finished Friday’s talks believing they were on the verge of an agreement on a new draft lottery format, the optimism dissipated quickly when the owners decided they would agree to the setup only if the players agreed to a 14-team playoff structure. The players have not been willing to include more than 12 teams and were frustrated by MLB’s sudden insistence that they do so to secure something on which they had already compromised.
Such is the reality of these negotiations since they started with frequency in January: At times, the sides seem to inch toward each other, only to frustrate each other before one gain can turn to two. If they were able to change that trend Sunday, no one involved was saying so. If they can’t change it Monday, a labor dispute probably will cut into the regular season schedule for the first time since 1994.