As Major League Baseball and its locked-out players moved as close as they’ve been on even the thorniest economic issues, any momentum in their drawn-out collective bargaining talks stalled Wednesday over the reintroduction of an international amateur draft.
The result: Two more regular-season series per team were “removed from the schedule,” Commissioner Rob Manfred announced, pushing opening day until at least April 14 and making it all but impossible to play a full season.
In a statement released shortly before 6:30 p.m., Manfred referred to MLB’s “last-ditch effort to preserve a 162-game season,” a proposal that linked an international draft with management’s offer to drop free-agent qualifying offers and draft-pick compensation.
