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5:21pm: Two team executives, Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams and Brewers president of baseball ops David Stearns, expressed optimism Wednesday that the owners and players will hammer something out. Williams told Jim Day of Fox Sports Ohio that “both sides want to play,” interestingly adding that he believes an agreement’s “very close” (via C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic). Stearns said, “I firmly believe we are going to have baseball this season” (per Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

3:43pm: The two sides are seeing eye to eye on expanded playoffs and the universal DH, Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweets. They’re also “close to agreeing on the all-important health protocols,” Heyman writes, but season length could still stand in the way of a deal.

2:45pm: One possible point of leverage for the MLBPA, per Rosenthal and Drellich (subscription required), is that the March agreement offers rather concrete language indicating that MLB cannot simply impose an expanded postseason format without agreement from the union. A May report from USA Today’s Bob Nightengale suggested that expanding the postseason to the oft-floated 14-team setup would increase projected television revenue from $777MM to roughly $1 billion.

Meanwhile, The Athletic’s Jayson Stark tweets that he’s heard some talk of pushing the potential start date back from the July 4 weekend to July 15, as the league and union continue their interminable staredown.

1:00pm: The latest, widely expected step in the exhausting back-and-forth between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association became official today, as the league has formally rejected the union’s proposal for a 114-game season with prorated salaries, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets. Moreover, the league has no plans to even extend a counter-proposal. The commissioner’s office has begun speaking with owners about implementing a shortened season, Rosenthal adds, and hopes to have similar talks with the union (rather than a negotiation regarding season length).

Owners contend that ommissioner Rob Manfred can seek to unilaterally impose a shortened season if the union won’t budge from its prorated salary demands, and it appears that’s where they’re leaning, per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman. Either a 48- to 54-game season with fully prorated salaries or an 82-game season at less than prorated salaries are under consideration.

The union can still push back on that, however; Rosenthal and Drellich wrote over the weekend that the MLBPA could point to a clause in the March agreement which states the league will make its “best efforts to play as many games as possible” as a point of contention against a league-implemented short schedule. Union chief Tony Clark could conceivably point to his side’s 114-game proposal as an effort to honor that language while contending that the league simply has not done so. As for any chances of the MLBPA accepting a 48- or 54-game season, those seem minuscule. The union wasn’t pleased with an 82-game schedule; nearly halving that hardly seems like a palatable alternative. Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets that one player described those proposed lengths to him as a “joke” and “absurd.”

All of this aligns with an ominous sentiment tweeted by SNY’s Andy Martino this morning, wherein he reported that there “has not been much dialogue” between the league and the players union. Sherman adds to that, noting that he’s “heard greater pessimism today” from both sides than at any point since these negotiation began.

There’s a bit more optimism on the health and safety guidelines, it seems; Martino writes in a full column that the two sides have made progress and believe an agreement can be reached. Might some productive talks in another area finally help facilitate a breakthrough in terms of player salary? Some speculate that to be the case, but it’s hard to be overly optimistic when neither side appears willing to give an inch.

[Related: HoopsRumors — NBA Expected to Approve 22-Team Return-to-Play Format]

The next chapter in this interminable saga unfolds against the backdrop of the NBA’s impending vote on its own return-to-play scenario. A vote to ratify that plan will come tomorrow and would bring basketball back on July 31. MLB seemed to have the opportunity to come back in early July and be the first major sport to give starved fans across North America some of the entertainment they’ve desperately craved. On the surface, doing so seemed like an opportunity to perhaps broaden the sport’s fanbase by attracting new fans (or luring old ones back into the fold) as the only game in town, so to speak. Instead, there’s increased doubt as to whether a season will be played at all.

At this point, the “good faith” negotiations that were oft-referenced in the March agreement are a distant memory. Both sides have issued proposals they knew to be nonstarters — twice, in the league’s case, although the revenue-sharing plan was a strategic leak rather than a formal proposal. Now, ownership appears intent on driving home the point that play will only resume under its terms.

This afternoon, the MLB Players Association presented the league with its counter-proposal about how to launch the 2020 season, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports (Twitter links).  Details of the proposal included a 114-game regular season that would end on Halloween, an opt-out clause that would allow any player to sit out the season, and a potential deferral of 2020 salaries if the postseason was canceled.  Evan Drellich of The Athletic (Twitter links) has further updates, specifying that the 114-game season would begin on June 30, and that an expanded playoff structure would be in place for both the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Players would also receive a $100MM salary advance during whatever type of training camp takes place this summer, as some ramp-up time is inevitably required in advance of the season getting underway.  This $100MM payment is similar to the $170MM advance payment that players received this past March as an advance on their 2020 salaries.  As per the March agreement, that $170MM in salary would be all the players would receive in the event of a canceled 2020 season.  Since both payments are an advance, the total $270MM would be factored into salaries received during any 2020 regular-season games.

A separate total of $100MM in salary would deferred in the event of a canceled 2020 postseason, with that $100MM coming from player contracts worth more than $10MM (before being prorated).  This money would be deferred into two payments, scheduled for November 2021 and November 2022.  Players making less than $10MM wouldn’t defer any salary, so in a sense, this proposal from the players’ union has some very minor resemblance to the sliding-scale pay plan floated in the owners’ first proposal, in that the game’s higher-paid players would be taking more of a financial hit than lower-paid players.  Of course, that is where the faint similarity ends, as the owners’ plan proposed that every player would take some type of a pay cut, whereas the players are still set on receiving all of their prorated salaries, if not immediately this year.

Players who are considered “high risk” candidates for COVID-19 would be able to opt out of playing this season while still receiving their entire prorated salaries.  Joel Sherman of the New York Post adds that the “high risk” designation also extends to players who have spouses, children, or other live-in family members with pre-existing health conditions.  For players who don’t face a “high-risk” situation but still don’t want to play in 2020, they will receive service time but no salary.

The early response to this proposal is apparently not positive from Major League Baseball’s point of view, as MLB Network’s Jon Heyman hears from an ownership source that the MLBPA’s offer is a “non-starter.”  The players similarly rejected the owners’ first proposal just as rapidly, so it isn’t a surprise that the league isn’t immediately jumping on board with the first counter-offer.

The two offers differ greatly enough that the only real common point of agreement is an expanded postseason.  The owners have been particularly keen on ensuring (and getting to) the playoffs as quickly as possible, due to the threat of a second COVID-19 wave and given how much of baseball’s national TV revenue is attached to postseason action.  The players’ offer to defer some money in the event of a canceled 2020 postseason is at least a nod to that possibility, though the league will surely balk at just pushing the financial burden into 2021 and 2022.

The players’ idea of extending the regular season through October also won’t be a welcome idea, as the playoffs wouldn’t be concluded until the end of November.  This also runs the risk of more of the baseball regular season and postseason conflicting with NFL games, which won’t bode well for Major League Baseball in terms of maximizing television ratings.  (Of course, this assumes the NFL season will also proceed as currently scheduled.)  One interesting wrinkle is that the players’ proposal includes a “willingness to consider” — as per Sherman — participation in such “revenue generator” events like the All-Star Game or a Home Run Derby, which could take place during the offseason or even the postseason.

As expected, the MLBPA is sticking to its stance that players should receive the prorated portions of their 2020 salaries over any sort of regular season.  With a 114-game plan on the table, that will mean more salary paid (roughly 70% of the original salaries) for more regular season games, which isn’t likely to sit well with owners who are already claiming to be facing $4 billion in losses if an 82-game season was played without fans in the stands.

The only nod towards salary reduction of any sort would be if a player opted to sit out for non-health related reasons, as that player then wouldn’t be paid.  While it stands to reason that most players want to get back on the field, it can’t be ruled out that a sizeable number of players might prefer to just remain at home.  Even if they or their loved ones aren’t facing any elevated risk of the coronavirus, it certainly doesn’t mean that no risk exists, especially since the simple act of gathering in any sort of larger group increases the chance of contracting the disease, no matter how many proposed health and safety protocols might be in place.

There has been “no evidence of progress” in the discussions between MLB and the MLBPA as the two sides negotiate the economic provisions of a potential 2020 season, reports Jon Heyman of MLB Network. As such, there’s no reason to believe the parties will reach an agreement ahead of the “soft” June 1 deadline.

That said, Heyman adds that there’s still hope to begin the season on the weekend of July 4 as intended, though for that to become a reality the two sides will need to come to an agreement in the next ten or so days. Heyman cites June 5-9 as the target dates for a deal.

In a later Tweet, Heyman states that despite the lack of progress in negotiations, there seems to be a prevailing sense of optimism that ultimately a deal will be reached; both players and owners recognize the steep consequences that a cancelled season could have for the sport. Frankly, there’s too much to lose if the parties can’t find common ground, and such an outcome would certainly cause considerable short- and long-term damage to MLB.

After the owners submitted their economic proposal on Tuesday, the players came away thoroughly dissatisfied with their side of the deal, namely taking issue with the sliding scale pay cuts that would further reduce player salaries. It’s also been reported that players are also in favor of a season with 100 games or more, up from the 82 proposed by MLB. However, given the league’s insistence on wrapping up the regular season by October 1 for various reasons—as reported by Heyman—that scenario seems far-fetched.

While it’s encouraging to hear that there’s optimism that the two sides can iron out their differences and arrive at a compromise, the fact remains that time is running out; if Independence Day is to remain a realistic target date, there’s just about a week to reach an agreement. After that point, the feasibility of a substantial season begins to decline.

Needless to say, both sides will need to make concessions in order to ensure a 2020 season is played. And with the negotiating parties still far apart, it might be a big ask to close that gap in short order. For the time being, we’ll wait with bated breath to see if the players and owners can find common ground.