MLB lockout officially delays start of spring training

Now spring training officially has been postponed.

Major League Baseball announced Friday that its exhibition schedule, originally slated to begin on Feb. 26, will be delayed for at least a week due to the labor turbulence emanating from commissioner Rob Manfred’s lockout. All 30 teams will make full refunds available, the league said.

“We regret that, without a collective bargaining agreement in place, we must postpone the start of Spring Training games until no earlier than Saturday, March 5th,” MLB’s statement read.

Pitchers and catchers normally would be in camp by now, but clubs never announced reporting dates, as is tradition, due to the lockout, which went into effect on Dec. 2. That enabled MLB to kick the can a few more days on the public-relations front, even though all knowledgeable fans already knew what they knew.

Yet with little progress in collective bargaining — Thursday’s session at the MLB Players Association’s headquarters in Manhattan lasted about 15 minutes — and Feb. 26 lurking, the owners conceded the obvious. They also vowed to intensify their efforts, with Feb. 28 sitting as a common-sense deadline to finish the new deal in order to hold Opening Day on its original date of March 31.

“We are committed to reaching an agreement that is fair to each side,” the league said in a statement. “On Monday, members of the owners’ bargaining committee will join an in-person meeting with the Players Association and remain every day next week to negotiate and work hard towards starting the season on time.”

Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner is among the owners on that committee.

Manfred said last week that the owners would like to run a camp lasting at least four weeks, and that about three days would be required to open spring training if and when a deal gets done. Hence the simple calculation that a new collective bargaining agreement would need to be finished by the end of this month to run the 162-game schedule as planned.

The MLBPA replied in a statement: “MLB announced today that it ‘must’ postpone the start of spring training games. This is false. Nothing requires the league to delay the start of spring training, much like nothing required the league’s decision to implement the lockout in the first place. Despite these decisions by the league, Players remain committed to the negotiating process.”

The players’ Executive Subcommittee includes two Mets, new co-ace Max Scherzer and shortstop Francisco Lindor, as well as Yankees pitchers Gerrit Cole and Zack Britton.

The two sides remain far apart on virtually every core economic issue, from the luxury tax to revenue sharing to arbitration eligibility to methods to police service-time manipulation and tanking to the players’ minimum salary.

The only two areas on which they have found agreement, areas that won’t become official until the whole deal gets ratified, are expansion of the designated hitter to the National League and the elimination of direct compensation for free agents signed by other clubs.