You may recall that the offseason between the 2021 and 2022 Major League Baseball seasons was a contentious one. The previous Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the league and the players expired at the end of November with no revised update yet reached, and the players were effectively locked out from December 2nd until an agreement was finally reached on March 10th.
That pushed the start of the season back by over a week. While transactions were in an effective freeze for the four months of negotiations, it didn’t take the Cincinnati Reds long to continue their latest reboot, resurface, rebuild - on March 13th, just days after they were allowed to resume trade talks, they dealt former ace Sonny Gray to the Minnesota Twins with the revised Opening Day less than four weeks away.