The first day of December exemplified the Janus face of MLB. Business was booming, as the flurry of free-agent spending demonstrated. Business could not go on, not like this, as the unilateral decision to shut down the sport made clear. It is confounding that the $11 billion behemoth that is MLB would implement a “defensive” lockout in order to go on the offensive against its most prominent workers, but that is what has happened, and that is what the entire industry must reckon with.

Commissioner Rob Manfred stood before reporters in Jupiter, Fla. “I had hoped against hope I would not have to have this particular press conference, in which I am going to cancel some regular-season games,” he said.

His appearance will likely be better remembered for something he did — unveiling a smile while bantering with a retiring reporter — than anything he said. But something he said stood out. Running a legal monopoly, he explained, is not as easy as it looks.

The dissonance of all this only heightened the confusion as the sport blundered toward its current state of peril, with Opening Day canceled, players furious and the public aghast.

What, exactly, is this lockout all about?

The simplest answer, as always, is money and power. The players believe they deserve more money. The owners believe they have the power to distribute that money as they see fit.
The more nuanced answer involves the competitive balance tax, the minimum salary and pre-arbitration bonus pools. The CBT effectively functions as a salary cap; the players want it to rise, and the owners would prefer it stagnate. While the owners are still willing to pay top dollar for elite free agents, they have squeezed the middle class and pocketed the remainder. The players asked for higher minimum salaries and access to bonuses for elite young players. That doesn’t guarantee that middle-tier free agents will flourish once more. If anything, they might only get squeezed worse. But raising the floor aids the entire labor force.

The players have framed this as a generational conflict, as something they must do, in the words of Angels superstar Mike Trout, “for our game, for our fans, and for every player who comes after us.” That is an epic way of saying they can’t get thumped as they did in the last CBA, but the man isn’t wrong.

Over the course of three grinding months of negotiations, the owners have taken baby steps toward the MLBPA. They agreed on a bonus pool. They upped the minimum salary. They stopped a strange gambit of attempting to make the CBT penalties more onerous, which was a non-starter for the union. But MLB has still not come close to making an offer good enough to satisfy the players, who have seen the average annual salary decline over the past four seasons despite a steady increase in revenue.

So, again, the short answer: Money and power.

Which makes the events immediately preceding the lockout all the more notable. It certainly looks like the ownership class had dollars to burn — until they decided they didn’t. MLB prioritized the wielding of power over the distribution of money. The union refused to capitulate. So here we are. How long the standoff lasts is anyone’s guess.

Let's just hope that it is sooner rather than later!