After MLB‘s owners and players could not come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement ahead of the league‘s Tuesday afternoon deadline, commissioner Rob Manfred announced he would be canceling the first week of regular season games. Unsurprisingly, players from around the league did not hold back their frustration.
Many big-name players took to social media to rip Manfred and the league for allowing the standoff to reach this point. After nine days of meeting in Florida, the players have since left the state, and it‘s unclear when the two sides will meet again to continue negotiations.
”We worked hard to avoid an outcome that‘s bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs,” Manfred said. ”I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort by either party.”
Manfred‘s words and the owners' negotiation strategies have clearly only caused the rift between the league and its players to grow, casting a pall over the immediate and long-term future of the sport. Check out some of the standout responses from the baseball world around social media.
