The owner lockout that's grounded MLB's offseason to a halt drags on, and two sides — players and team owners — haven't discussed the major issues since the labor stoppage commenced. Now, however, there's hope that discussions will begin again this monthand address the economic issues that are driving the current standoff. The Athletic's Evan Drellich reports: 

Major League Baseball is preparing new core economic proposals to deliver to the Players Association. When they're presented, likely this month, core economic talks in the sport will have restarted for the first time since owners initiated a lockout on Dec. 2, marking a positive development.

Those economic issues don't figure to be easily resolved. From the players' standpoint, they'd like to address their shrinking share of those league revenues (indicated in part by the declining average player salary), the occasional practice of service-time manipulation (i.e., when teams hold back a clearly ready prospect in order to delay his free agency and arbitration eligibility for a full year), and the "tanking" problem, among other matters.