Thursday BP: The MLB lockout has begun

Good morning, baseball fans. So, uh, yeah. Let’s just go ahead and address the elephant in the room.

The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association has expired without a new agreement being put into place. Therefore we have now entered the dreaded lockout. Brady wrote a whole thing about this that you should definitely read, but I’ll give you an abridged version about what this lockout entails.

• A full shut-down of Major League transactions, which is basically the reason why the hot stove has been scorching hot over the last week, with teams and players trying to get agreements in place before this deadline.
• An almost full shutdown of team activities, with the exception of injured players, who can continue to use team facilities and staff for rehab purposes.
• Lastly, I’ll just quote Brady here as this is important so I don’t want to abridge it:

All dates that impact the Major League season will be pushed back, and take place when the lockout is resolved. The Rule 5 Draft, which is scheduled for December 8, will be postponed (assuming the lockout is still going), and take place following a resolution (there will, however, still be the Minor League portion of the draft). Spring Training will be pushed back if necessary, and games will be postponed or cancelled if the lockout extends that far.

Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far, but if past experience has taught me anything, it’s that the owners would rather gnaw off their own hands than do anything that is in the players’ best interests. And the players are pretty angry. So this could take a while.

Old, random MCC article for you to read

Post-game thread: Giants throw a Molotov cocktail at our soul (June 28th, 2010 - Grant Brisbee)

How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

Giants pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in only 77 days. Hopefully.