After a lackluster overtime session on Tuesday (“it was not a particularly productive day”), baseball commissioner Rob Manfred officially cancelled the first two series of baseball’s regular season, keeping spring training closed at least through March 8.
Manfred met with reporters in Jupiter, Fla. after the league’s imposed 5:00 p.m. ET deadline ran out, admitting that “negotiations are deadlocked right now” and acknowledging that the MLBPA brass was headed back to New York with “no[new sessions] scheduled right now.”
Manfred made it clear that those first two series of the season were not merely postponed but cancelled, as full-season interleague play makes it impossible for AL-NL matchups to be realistically made up later in the season on off-days or as doubleheaders.