Thursday marked the fourth consecutive day of bargaining between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players' Association. The two sides are meeting every day this week in Jupiter, Florida, in an effort to reach an agreement that will end the owner-initiated lockout. MLB says Opening Day will be delayed and regular season games will be canceled if there's no deal by Monday, Feb. 28.
The big takeaway from all the reports on site for Thursday's meetings would be that very little progress was made. Again.
More specifically, the players presented two prongs of a deal for a new CBA:
MLBPA, on the matter of service time manipulation, proposed granting service time to "fewer players than before, narrowing the scope of it," per Evan Drellich of The Athletic.
MLBPA made minor tweaks to their proposed seven-pick lottery (see below for more on that). They altered their proposal regarding the draft order to reduce penalties on small-market teams posting consecutive losing seasons, per Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post.
Presumably, the remainder of the players' asks remain the same.
Perhaps the biggest news was that the owners seemed wholly unimpressed or even angry, based upon sourcing from many different reporters at the meeting site (one report said the owners claim to "have run out of ideas.")