(NEW YORK) — Despite an extended deadline, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association were not able to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement on Tuesday.
After more than 16 hours at the negotiating table Monday, the league pushed the deadline to Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET in the hopes of reaching a deal. But players rejected the league’s final proposal before time ran out.
Without a new CBA, MLB will not begin its regular season as planned on March 31. Instead, the league announced that each team’s first two series of the regular season will not be played and that Spring Training games will begin no earlier than March 12.
“I had hoped against hope that I would not have to be in the position of canceling games,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a letter to baseball fans. “We worked hard to avoid an outcome that is bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs.”
“I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort on the part of either party. The Players came here for nine days, worked hard and tried to make a deal. I appreciate their effort,” he added.
Manfred said the league is “prepared to continue negotiations.”
“We have been informed that the MLBPA is headed back to New York meaning that no agreement is possible until at least Thursday,” he noted.
He added, “The Clubs and our owners fully understand just how important it is to our millions of fans that we get the game on the field as soon as possible. To that end, we want to bargain and we want a deal with the Players Association as quickly as possible.”
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