The MLB playoffs are front and center right now, but there’s a serious potential lockout hanging over everything, and the league is already prepping for the worst. Evan Drellich of The Athletic reported Wednesday that Dan Halem, who’s the second-in-command under commissioner Rob Manfred, sent out a confidential, 34-page memo to team owners and top executives. This thing lays out exactly what needs to happen if we end up with a lockout.
The Game Goes Dark: No Trades, No Talks, No Holiday Cards
Forget your normal offseason buzz. This memo spells out a hardcore “no contact” policy if a work stoppage hits. First off, teams and players on 40-man rosters can’t do any business. That means no new trades, no signings, nothing like we’d see in a regular offseason. But it gets wilder: team officials are told they must try to avoid player interactions “to the greatest extent possible.” Seriously. If they bump into a player in public, they can be “cordial,” sure, but absolutely no business talk, even if they’re at a player’s wedding. The guidance even goes as far as telling teams to skip sending holiday cards to players during a lockout. Can you believe that? The league isn’t going to stop players from heading overseas to play in other professional leagues, like in Japan, which is something. But Halem did stress that the focus is still on avoiding a lockout entirely. He wrote, “Our commitment has been and remains to exhaust every realistic option to achieve our goal of reaching an agreement with the Players Association. However, clubs need to be prepared for the possibility that an agreement will not be reached by then and the clubs are left with no realistic alternative but to implement a lockout of major league players.”
Scrubbing the Sites and Watching Every Word
If a lockout happens, fans won’t even be able to get their baseball fix from official team or league websites. The memo instructs teams to “scrub” player images and videos, just like they did during the 2021-22 lockout. Poof, gone. However, there’s a loophole for your merch game. Teams can still sell jerseys and gear with player names and images because those rights come from outside business deals, not the collective bargaining agreement. So, you can still rep your favorite guys, even if their faces are erased from the websites. There’s also the messy bit about agents. Some communication between teams and agents is unavoidable since agents represent minor league players too. But the memo is clear: “the scope of any agent communications must be monitored and strictly controlled.” They don’t want any backdoor talk about players on the 40-man roster.
For now, everyone’s attention is supposed to be on hammering out a new collective bargaining agreement. But let’s be real: these detailed preparations for a potential lockout have already begun, and it’s a stark reminder of what could be around the corner. We need this deal done, pronto.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Bleacher Report.
Leave a Reply