Something pretty unusual has happened to the major league baseball website. In a staggeringly petty move, MLB has removed the pictures of all of the players from each team’s individual site. The 2016 agreement between major league baseball and the MLB players association expired at midnight last Wednesday, and the owners locked out the players in what is basically a reverse strike.
During this period, clubs can have no contact with players, and players are banned from team facilities. Unless there is some kind of resolution, there will be no spring training and no games this summer.
But is that likely to happen? How will the negotiation process work? What are the key issues behind the impasse, and how does the current situation fit into the long history of labor issues in baseball? PC local Tommy Tanzer represented some 130 players in 28 active years as a baseball player agent.