Baseball fans are an impatient lot. I mean, let’s be honest here – what true baseball fan wasn’t already looking forward to the day that pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training 2022 within minutes (or seconds) of the final out of the 2021 World Series being recorded … especially if their favorite team wasn’t in it? Chances are exceptional good that if you aren’t already counting down the days until P&C, you know somebody who is.

That’s the bad news.

The worse news it that with the current Major League Baseball/MLB Players Association Collective Bargaining Agreement set to expire at 11:59 p.m. (EST) on December 1, 2021, and overwhelming indications that there will be an MLB lockout, it is doubtful that pitchers and catchers – or any players – will be reporting for Spring Training 2022 on time … if at all.

For the first time since a work stoppage (i.e., baseball strike) canceled the 1994 World Series, the expectation is that MLB owners will immediately lock players out when the clock strikes midnight on December 2. Such a lockout would immediately freeze all transactions until a new CBA is in place – period. It will also undoubtedly force the cancellation of the annual Winter Meetings which are scheduled for December 5-9 in Orlando, FL, excluding the minor leagues, which are not a part of the MLBPA or governed by the MLB/MLBPA CBA.

Although no one ever knows exactly how long these sorts of things will last, the sooner it’s resolved and a new CBA is in place, the less danger there is that it will disrupt (or cancel) the 2022 season, which is currently scheduled to begin on March 31, 2022.

“We’ve been down this path,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred recently told reporters. “We locked out in’ 89-’90. I don’t think ’94 worked out too great for anybody. I think when you look at other sports, the pattern has become to control the timing of the labor dispute and try to minimize the prospect of actual disruption of the season. That’s what it’s about. It’s avoiding doing damage to the season.”

Right, Rob.

Manfred, whose very legacy is at stake here, is already among the least popular commissioners in the storied soon-to-be 153-year history of the game.

So, what does all of this mean for Dodgers fans and for Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman, who is considered by many to be the very best in the business, you ask?

Well, in a nutshell, pretty much everything. Fans who have been anxiously (and perhaps impatiently) waiting for Friedman to re-sign his rather large corps of free agents – most notably shortstop Corey Seager, right-hander Max Scherzer, left-hander Clayton Kershaw, and fan-favorite utility infielder/outfielder Chris Taylor – it is definitely ‘hurry up and wait’ time, with no foreseeable end in sight. I mean, if you are super baseball agent Scott Boras, why on earth would you even consider negotiating a new contract(s) with MLB owners when the entire playing field (no pun intended) moving forward could – and probably will – look very different; especially with arbitration and free agency term limits being two of the biggest sticking points for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement?

Stay tuned.

…and ‘Hurry Up and Wait.’

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