Major League Baseball owners haven't yet locked out players from participating in the 2027 season, but the doomsayers are already predicting an armageddon-like scenario. Count Bryce Harper as the latest to join the chorus. The Philadelphia Phillies star wrote on his TikTok account that the current offseason will run from March through October.
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the MLB Players' Association expires Dec. 1. While collective bargaining negotiations continue, the players are not mandated to go on strike; neither are the owners mandated to ban players from competing in games. Yet Harper isn't alone in bracing for the worst.
"The owners are so certain about getting a salary cap this time around that if, in fact, through a logjam of negotiations we lose the first couple months" of the 2027 season, ESPN's Buster Olney said on the Baseball Tonight podcast, "the owners' perspective might be, like, 'You know what? We've already lost so much money this year in 2027 we're not going to change our position. If we lose the year we're going to wait 'em out.' They might just go into a bunker.
It certainly doesn't look good." More news: Brewers End Historic Drought, Defeat Rays For First World Series Title "I can think back to (the players' strike in) '94-95 and there were the outlier owners who disagreed with some of the policies," Olney continued. "Like Peter Angelos wouldn't use replacement players — the owner of the Orioles — in the spring of '95. That fragmented the owners to some degree.
You don't see that as much now." Even the New York Yankees' chairman, Hal Steinbrenner, recently voiced his support for a hard salary cap. Limiting team payrolls in the cap-and-floor system proposed by owners would only make it harder for big-budget teams in large markets to spend more for the best players in free agency. More news: Brewers Executive Dismisses MLB’s Economic Concerns in Blunt Answer Yet with players and owners headed for what could be an extended work stoppage, the owner of baseball's most valuable team is in favor of voluntarily limiting his spending power.
In other words, Harper's ominous prediction didn't come out of nowhere. And he, unlike most, actually has a seat at the bargaining table. For more MLB news, visit Newsweek Sports.
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