Baseball owners impose lockout

Precisely one minute before midnight EST Wednesday night, the baseball world stopped spinning.

Just as most people in the sport had long feared, the collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Assn. expired without a new agreement in place, triggering baseball’s first official work stoppage in more than a quarter-century.

Minutes after Wednesday night’s deadline passed, Commissioner Rob Manfred announced in an open letter that the league had instituted a lockout — a move that will halt almost all offseason activity and, if it drags on long enough, potentially jeopardize the start of the season.

“We believe that an offseason lockout is the best mechanism to protect the 2022 season,” Manfred wrote. “We hope that the lockout will jumpstart the negotiations and get us to an agreement that will allow the season to start on time.”

MLB hadn’t had a lockout since 1990 and hadn’t had a work stoppage since players went on strike in 1994, causing that season to be canceled without crowning a World Series champion. In the 26 years since, baseball had been the only one of the four major American sports to not have a work stoppage.

The Boston Red Sox signed free agent left-handers Rich Hill and James Paxton, and reacquired outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. from Milwaukee in a trade that sent outfielder Hunter Renfroe to the Brewers.

In other signings before the expiration of the CBA: former Dodgers reliever Corey Knebel with the Philadelphia Phillies for $10 million for one year; right-hander Marcus Stroman to the Chicago Cubs for $71 million over three years; outfielder Avisail Garcia to the Miami Marlins for $53 million over four years; left-hander Alex Wood with the San Francisco Giants for $25 million over two years.