Major League Baseball and its players’ union are headed for a lockout. And the Tigers trading two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers just a few day before the trade deadline does nothing to change that stark fact.

The question is how long the lockout will last into the 2027 season before one side or the other blinks.

The main issue is a salary cap and floor proposed by the owners. It’s a non-starter for the players. It’s the North Star for the owners. As I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times during the All-Star break, the sides are locked into those positions. Nothing has changed in the weeks since then.

But it’s still early in the negotiations. The current Basic Agreement doesn’t expire until Dec. 1. That’s when the lockout will begin, halting all trades, free-agent signings and offseason business.

The players could strike before then, but they insist that’s not going to happen. If one judges from the pattern the last time this happened during collective bargaining in 2021, the real negotiations didn’t begin until spring training was shut down in 2022.

The two sides reached a deal on March 10, 2022, and the season began a little late that April 7. But none of the 162 games for all 30 clubs were missed. Of course, back then, the salary cap and floor were not on the table.

Rob Manfred And Bruce Meyers Met With Baseball Writers

Bruce Meyer, the new executive director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, and Rob Manfred, the MLB Commissioner, both elaborated on their positions in separate question and answer sessions with members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The chats occurred on........

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