For a second straight Tuesday, MLB and the MLB Players Association spent a long day of negotiating, and as of Tuesday night, did not have a deal.
With the MLB lockout into its fourth month, the owners gave the players another Tuesday deadline to try to preserve a 162-game schedule — after initially saying last week that the first two series of the season had been canceled.
If no deal was struck, MLB threatened another week of missed regular-season games.
Top negotiators for both sides met several times in Midtown trying to hammer out a deal, with the sides butting heads over several key areas — including the competitive balance tax, the pre-arbitration pool and minimum salary.
Progress had been made late Monday, when MLB raised its proposal for the first CBT tier from $220 million to $228 million, still short of the union’s request of $238 million.
They came closer on Tuesday, with the league proposing a deal that included a threshold beginning at $230 million, which would rise to $242 million, a source confirmed after the numbers were first reported by The Athletic.
The players have been at $238 million to start, with the threshold moving to $263 million over the length of the deal.
And MLB also wants a fourth tier of penalty when it comes to the CBT, in the hopes of cutting back at what the league calls “runaway spending.”
The league is also interested in introducing an international draft, long considered a non-starter by the union.
The owners also increased their offer for the pre-arbitration pool to $40 million per season, still short of the $80 million the players have sought. And the minimum salary in the owner’s proposal would go from $700,000 next season to $770,000 by the end of the collective bargaining agreement.
The talks came a week to the day after the two sides met for more than 16 hours in Jupiter, Fla., only to see the talks break down and lead to more animosity between the sides that continued through the weekend.
Since Monday, though, there’s been a more conciliatory tone in the discussions as the last gasp of a full season is in the offing.