Clock ticks down to 1st work stoppage since ’95

IRVING, TEXAS » The clock ticked down Wednesday toward the expiration of Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement at 11:59 p.m. EST and a likely management lockout ending the sport’s labor peace at 9,740 days over 26 ½ years.

After successfully reaching four consecutive agreements without a stoppage, players and owners have appeared headed for a confrontation for more than two years.

“The lockout seemes like a very likely scenario,” pitcher Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive committee, said Wednesday.

Management negotiators left the union’s hotel about nine hours before the deal was set to expire, and there was no indication they planned to return.

The union demanded change following anger over a declining average salary, middle-class players forced out by teams concentrating payroll on the wealthy and veterans jettisoned in favor of lower-paid youth, especially among clubs tearing down their rosters to rebuild.

“As players we see major problems with it,” Scherzer said of the 2016 agreement. “First and foremost, we see a competition problem and how teams are behaving because of certain rules that are within that, and adjustments have to be made because of that in order to bring out the competition.”

Management, intent on preserving salary restraints gained in recent decades, rejected the union’s requests for what teams regarded as significant alterations to the sport’s economic structure, including lowering service time needed for free agency and salary arbitration.

Many clubs scrambled to add players ahead of a lockout and an expected signing freeze, committing more than $1.9 billion in new contracts. Among them were big deals for two of the eight members of the union’s executive subcommittee: Texas infielder Marcus Semien ($175 million) and Scherzer ($130 million).