MLB and players will resume negotiations

NEW YORK — Major League Baseball’s negotiations to salvage the start of the regular season restart Monday at a new venue: Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida.

Colorado Rockies general manager Dick Monfort, chairman of the labor policy committee, was expected to join the management delegation that includes Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem, the teams’ lead negotiator.

Bruce Meyer, the players’ union’s chief negotiator, could be accompanied by players. The site where the negotiations will take place is about three miles from the pitcher’s home Max Scherzerof the New York Mets, one of eight players who make up the union’s executive subcommittee.

The ballpark that is usually used as the home of the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals on spring fields this time of year, but work did not start Wednesday due to baseball’s ninth work stoppage, the first since 1995.

Monday’s session will be just the seventh on the central economy since the lockout began on December 2, and the parties have met on consecutive days only once, on January 24-25. MLB said Friday that it plans to hold meetings with the union daily for the next week.

Monday will mark 82 days of employer strike. On Friday, Major League Baseball canceled preseason games between February 26 and March 4.

While the owners and the players have participated in virtual meetings via Zoom, the only ones to attend the session in person have been Monfort and the free agent reliever Andrew Milleron January 24.

So far, the walkout talks have been held in New York, at the offices of MLB and the players’ union.

MLB told the union that February 28 is the last possible day to reach an agreement that allows opening games to be held on March 31, given the desire for four weeks of training and the additional time to ratify an agreement and that the players be report to camps in Florida and Arizona.

But the sides agreed to less training time after interrupted spring training in 1990, 1995 and 2020.