SB Nation Reacts: Lockout Thoughts

The negotiations so far to come to a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and players has, unsurprisingly, been unfruitful. The league imposed a lockout ostensibly to speed up negotiations, proceeded to wait six weeks from there to even submit a proposal, and things haven’t gotten much better from there. Today, Saturday, marks a big day in these negotiations as the pressure of spring training’s schedule start is now in play, and the two sides are set to meet. Ahead of this next step in negotiations, we sent a couple of poll questions regarding predictions for this lockout.

Will Opening Day be delayed?

Barring any significant movement today, this is now probably where the smart money is. I don’t know that we will necessarily miss games as I think maybe the start of the season will be delayed by a small enough period of time that they can just condense the schedule to still fit 162 games, but they need to get moving quickly to start the season on time. According to Rob Manfred, they’d need about a week to get spring training started, and then about four weeks of spring training to get players ready. That means, essentially, that they’d need to have a deal in place in roughly the next 10 days. I’m not super confident about that happening. But I hope I’m wrong!

Who will win?

I mean, if history is any indication, this is clearly right. There are some semantics at play too, I think, in that the owners are starting from an advantageous position just by winning the last few negotiations. Even if the players make strides in the right direction, the owners probably have the better end of the deal. So, who wins in that case? I’m genuinely asking. But really, my idealistic mind is saying that there shouldn’t be a winner and a loser, but rather just a fair deal in which the most important parties are appropriately compensated. It’d be neat if we lived in that world, but alas.