The Launch Angle

Welcome to the stretch run, when baseball starts to separate the contenders and pretenders. Somehow, someway, the Houston Astros find themselves in the thick of the playoff picture, with the chance to clinch a division and host games (pay no attention to the current 7-game home playoff game losing streak). High drama in the regular season awaits, with everything this side of the NL West up for grabs, to say nothing of the lottery crucible that is the postseason. 

Yet, even while all of that takes up most of our attention, there is the shadow of the offseason. While the offseason is normally a time when teams can look to reload, retool and jettison deadweight, and for Houston, there is a lot to fix, this offseason offers an extra plotline: the end of the CBA and a possible lockout by the owners. We last faced this dilemma at the end of the 2021 season, when the owners locked out the players to try to update the CBA. The lockout stretched into spring training and did disrupt the schedule, with the first week of games got rescheduled into the season. However, no games were missed and the world moved forward. The last time labor cost baseball any actual games was back in 1994, when nearly the last two months of the season, along with the World Series, got wiped out. 

There is reason to expect that MLB won’t allow its burgeoning momentum to get upended. Reforms to the game as well as embracing top players and teams are bringing in more people, and more money. Baseball is seeing remarkable success with its Sunday Night Games on Peacock and recent postseason ratings have shown upward growth. The promise of new broadcast rights deals in 2028 looks to fill the coffers of players and teams, which after the fall of the regional sports networks, is a huge deal for MLB writ large. Additionally, much of the news coming out of MLB and the MLBPA can be read as bluster and PR standing. Typically, labor deals don’t get done unless a deadline is staring the parties in the face, and that deadline is not even close. The 2021-2022 lockout merely turned into a footnote. No “real” games got cancelled and baseball moved forward.

And yet….and yet…no organization excels more at self-sabotage than the MLB. The idea of the salary cap is almost hard-wired into every single interview given by Commissioner Manfred, and the players sense that too, with little to no sign they will actually sign on for a salary cap. Think that MLB wouldn’t be so dumb as to sabotage a great upward trend in the game to see it falter due to labor issues? Let us briefly go back to 1994. That season was shaping up as perhaps one of the greatest in MLB history. The then home run record of Roger Maris (61) was under assault by multiple players from both the AL and NL. Players from Ken Griffey Jr to Matt Williams were mashing dingers and driving sports headlines in the chase to top 61. Along with the HR record, you had multiple players chasing the just as mythical Triple Crown in both leagues. Guys like Williams and Griffey led that charge, along with the eventual NL MVP Astros 1B Jeff Bagwell. You had Tony Gwynn, who was batting .394 at the time of the strike, in the best challenge to Ted Williams and the .400 barrier to date.

Then, you also had the standings drama. The Wild Card was making its debut, so more teams had a chance for postseason glory. The Atlanta Braves were in the mix, but even they were looking up at the Montreal Expos, whose team of future All-Stars/Hall of Famers was dominating the standings (kids, ask your parents about the idea of a team in Montreal). You had the Yankees, who had been stuck in a 14-year purgatory, back in playoff contention. The Astros were setting up for their first postseason run since the legendary 1986 season (yes, you had the unfortunate Bagwell injury a couple of weeks before the strike, but even then, they were contenders). You even had the AL West led by by the Texas Rangers, who sat 10 games under .500. You had a perfect game (Rangers’ Kenny Rogers) and oh so many other fun things that baseball hadn’t seen in years. 

Point is that baseball was dominating the sports pages to a degree it hadn’t in years. A stellar regular season seemed to auger an incredible postseason, one that would see MLB ride the momentum to heights not seen since the pre-Super Bowl era. However, it all came to naught due to labor drama. The owners, with the-then reigning CBA ending after the 1993 season, saw this as a chance to enact their long-desired salary cap. The players, sensing that if they did not act, they would lose significant leverage in the upcoming labor negotiations, called for a strike in early August. August 12th, the lights went out across all of MLB’s stadiums. They would not turn back on that season. All those chases for the records were roads to nowhere. By mid-September, Commissioner Bug Selig called the season off, and for only the second time in the World Series era, baseball ended without a World Series. Yet, the labor battles continued, with the 1995 season under massive threat. Games were lost for that season. It would take a Federal Judge, now-Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, to rule that the labor impasse was illegal and that both the owners and players had to return to the field under the terms of the old CBA. 

Baseball picked back up, but it struggled. Attendance was down across the board, as were ratings. Basketball, with Michael Jordan leading the way, moved firmly into the #2 spot for American sports. The game of baseball still had its moments, mainly with Cal Ripken Jr setting the consecutive games streak. However, it would be years before the game recovered its standing, and much of that came with the Faustian bargain of the home run chase of Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds. Just as painful to think about was the lost potential. If the momentum from 1994 had continued sans strike, it is likely that baseball could be in a better spot now with bigger broadcast and sponsor deals. Likely the juiced home-run chase dampens some of the vibes of baseball, but armed with a season like 1994, MLB might have been firmly entrenched as the #2 sport behind the NFL. 

So, it is clear that MLB would never let things get to the level of 1994, right? You might think history plus the all-important negotiations upcoming for broadcast deals would serve as a logical check. In the end, it might be just like the 2021-22 lockout, with little lasting damage. Just don’t underestimate how stupid MLB can get in such matters.