Baseball is back! During a meeting March 10, 2022, Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) agreed to a new labor deal ending the lockout.

    “I look at it as a tug of war,” said former MLB Executive Marty Conway.

    The MLB and MLBPA couldn’t reach a bargaining agreement, which started the lockout Dec. 2, 2021. This was because the players’ salaries kept decreasing in cost and the players wanted higher minimum pay. One problem with this is the owners and players can’t seem to trust each other, so that played a role in the lockout going into effect. 

    “Since MLB chose to lock us out, I’m not able to work with our amazing team physical therapists who have been leading my post surgery care/progression. Now that I’m in charge of my own PT- what should my first order of business be? I’m thinking I’m done with this boot. It can go,” said New York Yankees pitcher Jameson Taillon.

    Many of the players were very frustrated with the lockout and the inability to come to an agreement. Many other players went to twitter to show their feelings about the lockout by posting memes, changing their avatar’s and bio’s. 

    “We worked hard to avoid an outcome that’s bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs. Our failure to reach an agreement was not due to lack of effort by either party,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. 

    After the months of stalled discussions, the two parties had several meetings trying to negotiate. They kept getting closer to getting the deal done, but still hadn’t. As the season got closer, the opening week of games were canceled and then the second week canceled as well.

    March 10, 2022 the lockout finally came to an end as the MLB and MLBPA reached a new labor deal, which started spring training and kicked off a free agency frenzy. 

    “I am genuinely thrilled to say Major League Baseball is back and we’re going to play 162 games,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. 

    The new minimum salary increases from $570,00 to 700,000. With that said, the deal includes bringing some rule changes to the league. The new rules are there is now a universal designated hitter (DH), a 12-team playoff that includes no runner starting on second base during extra innings, new draft lottery to discourage tanking and a limited amount of times a player can be pointed to and from the minor leagues. Teams will also be allowed advertising on the uniforms, 2023 shifts will be banned, pitch clocks will be used, bases will be larger, there will be automatic strikes zones and every team in the league will face each other at least once.