MLB Owners, Players Face Dec. 1 Deadline on New Labor Deal

Baseball's collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 1. If no new deal is in place by then, owners plan to lock out players, barring team staff from communicating with them and pulling player head shots from MLB.com.

Owners are seeking a salary cap to control what any one team spends on player salaries. Their early proposals set a cap at $245.3 million and a floor at $171.2 million, and would limit the value of individual contracts. Last season, 12 teams fell short of the minimum payroll and eight exceeded the maximum.

Owners also offered to raise the minimum salary, let some players enter arbitration earlier and let others reach free agency faster, and give players 50 percent of baseball-related revenue. That revenue figure excludes money from sources such as real estate development around ballparks. For the 2029 season, owners proposed cutting the regular season to 154 games to expand the Division Series from five games to seven.

Players oppose a cap as a red line for the union and have proposed a salary floor without a cap, a 100 percent increase in the major league minimum salary, earlier free agency for some players, and higher bonuses in the amateur draft. Players do not receive paychecks until the regular season begins, so signing bonuses on new deals are expected to be contested.

The 2021 negotiations followed a similar arc. The sides did not meet formally until Jan. 13, 2022, traded barbs through March, and reached agreement on March 10, 2022. Players ratified the deal 26-12 and owners approved it 30-0. Spring training began days later and the season opened April 7, about 10 days later than usual, with all 162 games played through added doubleheaders and a compressed playoff schedule.

If more than 60 games are lost, most national broadcast deals scheduled to run through 2028 will add another year, according to the source. MLB earns a bit more than $2 billion annually from those deals, compared with just under $7 billion for the NBA and just over $11 billion for the NFL. Reaching 102 games would require a deal by May.

Team employees must refrain from contacting players during a lockout, including group texts, conversations at weddings and holiday cards. Players under contract must set training and rehabilitation procedures without staff contact.