Last Friday, Major League Baseball officially announced the postponement of spring training games through the fifth of March. While this announcement was certainly not a surprise given how CBA negotiations have reportedly gone thus far, its lack of shock factor does not void it of meaning.
With this delay, the 2022 season is now officially the second season in the last three to feature a significant disruption to spring training. In 2020, after just a few days of action, spring training was officially cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March. Things returned to some semblance of normalcy in 2021, when the league was able to pull off a full slate of spring training games.