Jack Flaherty, Marcus Stroman and players angry at so-called ‘best’ offer from MLB

Plenty of players from around baseball aren’t happy with the owners lack of negotiating over the course of an entire week. Instead, the MLB season is likely to be delayed.

Players and owners met for an entire week hoping to reach an agreement on a new CBA to avoid postponing Opening Day. As you can tell based on the headline of this article, that did not go very well, and now the fans are left to suffer.

At this point, we’re all frustrated. Owners seem willing to miss games and lose money in the interim to break the unity of the players’ union, and hopefully (for their sake) make more gain in the long run. As for the players, they view this more as an opportunity to make a small sacrifice for the players still to come, in hopes they won’t have to battle for items they believe essential in their own development.

Plenty of MLB players, including the likes of Marcus Stroman and Jack Flaherty, reacted to the offer.

MLB lockout: Owners played psychological warfare with players

Owners used the media as a resource on Monday night, suggesting that a deal was close between the two sides when in reality the players didn’t feel nearly as much optimism. Rob Manfred took a play straight out of Gary Bettman’s lockout playbook. Back in the 2005 NHL lockout, Bettman made fans believe that a deal was inevitable when, in fact, it never stood a chance, thus making the players look bad.

Fans aren’t falling for it this time around, with plenty in the media admitting they’d been duped. The players realized this as well.

The details of MLB’s final offer included marginal increases, but protected small-market owners and offered little to no long-term security for players.

With this proposal promptly turned down by MLBPA, you can expect an Opening Day delay to soon follow.