MLBPA unanimously rejects MLB’s final offer; league pushes Opening Day back

The MLB Players’ Association has officially rejected the league’s “final and best” offer and the two sides did not reach a deal before MLB’s self-imposed 5 p.m. ET deadline to preserve a March 31 Opening Day and 162-game regular season. Per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, one of the players on the union’s negotiating team called the league’s final offer “a slap in the face.”

As a result of the failure to complete a deal, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has officially cancelled the first two series of the season. Players will not be paid for those missed games.

League officials expressed optimism to the media last night that they were relatively close to a deal, but their final offer wasn’t all that different from what they’ve been offering all along. MLB held strong on its insistence that the competitive-balance threshold remain flat at $220 million for the first three years of the deal, with an increase to $224 million in 2024 and $230 million — less than the amount the players requested in the first year of the deal — in 2025.

The league did make small increases in its offers for a minimum salary, starting at $700,000 and increasing by $10,000 a year, and a bonus pool for pre-arbitration-eligible players, which would sit at $30 million a year for the length of the deal.

The league and union will continue negotiating back in New York, where meetings were held before shifting to Jupiter, Florida last week.