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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Lock Out the Lockout
Vol. 18, No. 98
November 10, 2026
We’re three weeks away from the expiration of the 2022-26 Collective Bargaining Agreement. That document was signed after a 99-day owners’ lockout that delayed and shortened spring training and delayed the start of the season. In the end, the current CBA left the prior CBA in place with some changes around the margins. We got a pay-for-performance scheme for young players, the expansion of the postseason, a draft lottery, and an agreement that MLB could change gameplay rules without players’ approval. The larger structures built up around revenue and player compensation stayed the same -- split-pool revenue sharing, six-year free agency, significant penalties for spending past a certain point on players.
The owners’ representative, Rob Manfred -- surely we can leave behind any illusions about the “commissioner” title -- took from that process that an offseason lockout is a good thing. As he told Evan Drellich in 2025, “In a bizarre way, it’s actually a positive. There is leverage associated with an offseason lockout and the process of collective bargaining under the [National Labor Relations Act] works based on leverage. The great thing about offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists gets applied [equally] between the bargaining parties.”
This isn’t true. The players don’t get paid in the offseason, while owners bring in revenue from payments on season-ticket renewals. MLB’s TV partners usually continue paying the league during a lockout, though MLB may have to repay the networks if games are missed. The owners also are more likely to receive non-baseball income. Many players are unemployed during the offseason, and a lockout means they can’t find new employers. Players are also cut off from team doctors whose care they may need as they recover from injuries suffered during the season. Lockouts are designed to leverage those pressure points to force labor into an agreement.
Manfred knows this, of course. From the Drellich piece:
Manfred drew a distinction. Compared to an in-season work stoppage, he said the offseason variety is “like using a .22 (caliber firearm), as opposed to a shotgun or a nuclear weapon.”
Once you’re comparing labor tactics to weaponry, specifics don’t matter. You’ve declared war.
Throughout this year, Manfred has seemed eager to pull his .22, sounding gleeful at times about the pending lockout. He knows the league won the last round of bargaining by using a lockout. Manfred knows the players, in the end, approved the current CBA over the objections of its executive committee. He knows the teams are five years better at exploiting the holes in the current compensation structure, knows life for mid-tier baseball players is, because of that exploitation, even worse. MLB does not need to tie necessary CBA changes to a payroll cap, but by doing so, MLB may achieve the owners’ Holy Grail: a legal agreement to limit competition for labor. Manfred, in his role as the owners’ chief negotiator, is positioned to press his perceived advantage.
Against that backdrop, then, MLB’s latest offer to the players is interesting. Oh, it still involves a payroll cap, and as I have said many times, as long as that is the case, there is no middle ground on which to meet. A cap is binary; either there is one or there isn’t. The two sides aren’t on the same axis right now, so there isn’t much for them to negotiate.
Within that offer, though, may have been an off-ramp. MLB is proposing that an agreed-upon cap system be delayed until 2028, with the 2027 season played under the current rule set. Revenue sharing and the payroll-tax system would stay in place through next season. This may be less a concession to the players than to reality. Unlike in all negotiations since 1994, MLB is proposing a radical change to the entire compensation structure, and to do that in one offseason -- in fact, in just part of one offseason -- would be impossible. MLB’s latest offer included a payroll minimum of $180 million, and it’s not realistic to expect teams at the bottom of the scale to reach that figure in one offseason. There’s not enough talent in the market or on their own rosters.
Once you’ve conceded that 2027 can be played under the same rules as 2026, you’ve removed much of the need for a lockout this winter. Oh, there are other changes that might be negotiated into the next CBA and take effect immediately, but the main issue here is payroll cap or not. That’s a fight that now doesn’t have to be resolved this winter. Remember, a lockout is voluntary; as was the case in 1994, baseball can continue under the terms of the current CBA until a new one is agreed upon.
It’s not entirely that simple. There’s a sunset clause in the current CBA, a poison pill of sorts, that reads, “There shall be no Competitive Balance Tax in place following the 2026 championship season.” Obviously, most owners will not want to play the 2027 season allowing high-payroll teams a freeroll. That is something that can be negotiated, however. Think of it as the baseball version of a continuing resolution. To get to a CR, both sides have to want it. At last month’s World Series, both Manfred and MLPBA leader Bruce Meyer seemed to reject the notion.
That 1994 dispute ended in a players’ strike in August, one that led to the cancellation of the World Series. The players, at the time, sensed the owners would lock them out in the offseason and implement a cap system. The players struck to prevent that from happening, and in the hopes a deal would be reached in time for the playoffs. That did not happen, of course, and the sequence served to illustrate the gap in leverage each side has. If the owners agree to not lock out the players this winter, they may want a no-strike/no-lockout agreement that covers the 2027 season. Now, most unions will never concede their right to strike. Given I don’t think the current MLBPA can hold a successful strike, and may not even vote to approve a walkout, a no-strike/no-lockout agreement that covers ’27 may be their best path through this.
Owners want a new CBA sooner rather than later so they can get on with negotiating new national-TV deals from a position of labor peace. The current suite of deals all expire after the 2028 season. That still leaves a lot of time to get to a new CBA over the next year without a lockout and negotiate those new deals. MLB is eager to divide its 2430 games into 243 small packages requiring you to pay $9.95 a month to watch three games on each one. (The position MLB has taken, that it’s pursuing a payroll cap because it’s what the fans want, is laughable when set against the current and future baseball media landscape, which is as anti-consumer as you could design.)
This MLB proposal is the first step towards buying time, time both sides need, time that may be enough for them to avoid the kind of spiral from which there is no recovery. MLB wants new TV deals, wants new teams, wants new ballparks, wants cities and states fighting to cough up billions, wants fans signing up for AppleFlix Premium+ to watch two exclusive games a month. The path to all those things does not run through a fractured season that alienates everyone who might be lining up with open wallets. I say again that this isn’t 1994. Few of the elements that existed then, ones that helped the game get off the mat following a canceled World Series, exist today.
There is no crisis that mandates a change in the rules. Most teams are making money, with the league as a whole up to $12 billion in revenue. Sale prices for teams continue to rise. Competitive balance is good. To the extent MLB has problems, they’re more about the game on the field than off of it. Another year under the current CBA rules, with agreements to modify the sunset clause and perhaps a no-strike/no-lockout agreement, wouldn’t hurt anyone.
This all kicks the can down the road, but face it, this is a can that looks much better down the road. With MLB acknowledging that a cap can’t be put into effect in one offseason, they should withdraw their lockout threat and work out a deal with the MLBPA to continue under the current CBA for one more year.
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