Ask anyone who’s been paying attention, and they’ll tell you: there’s likely to be a work stoppage in the next year-plus in Major League Baseball. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the league and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) expires on Dec. 1, 2026, and the overwhelming likelihood is that owners will lock out the players on that date. That’s what they did on Dec. 1, 2021, when the last CBA expired, and they’ve telegraphed their intention to do it again.

Everyone agrees that a lockout is very likely. From there, many have extrapolated that the 2027 season itself is in some jeopardy—and more still have suggested that even if the season is played, it will be shortened by labor strife. I think everyone is probably right about a lockout coming next December. I think those who foresee lost games in the actual 2027 season are baselessly speculating, and that their baseless speculation will turn out to be wrong.

Tensions between the league and the union are high, though the degree to which they exceed where they were five or 10 years ago has been overstated by some. Because catastrophizing makes for better content, though, many who see that tension are jumping from that premise to the conclusion that the on-field product will be directly affected. For fans who lived through work stoppages in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, it’s impossible to imagine an expiration of the CBA that doesn’t come with either an immediate renewal or games being lost. Even if you were a sentient fan in 2002, you probably have that association in your head. That summer, the league nearly shut down again in late August, as the players and the owners again engaged in a fierce staredown.

Since then, though, these fights have been confined to offseasons. It wouldn’t automatically have to be that way. In 1994, the players began the season without a new contract, because the previous one expired on Dec. 31, 1993. They did so again in 2002, after the CBA expired on Halloween 2001. Since then, though, the union’s position has changed. They refuse to take the field without an active CBA, and when the last CBA expired on Dec. 1, 2021, the owners locked the players out to ensure that contracts wouldn’t be signed while a new deal was pending. The game of chicken that is a season played without a new agreement is over. Both sides ended it, without a formal agreement to do so, because the roughly quadrennial panic that a perfectly good season would grind to a halt over labor strife was untenable for all involved.

However, it’s only when at least some chance of lost games creeps into view that the stakes of a lockout or a strike rise enough to stir movement from either side. With neither side willing to proceed with their business without a signed deal in place, they’ve pushed the fight into the winter—but in the winter, it doesn’t get resolved quickly or reliably. We’ll probably experience another protracted lockout next winter, which will damage fan morale and prompt lots of hand-wringing over whether any games will be played the following summer—all for naught, really, because all 162 games will probably be played. 

There’s no perfect time on the calendar to have the CBA expire, and no perfect way to handle the fact that both sides are intransigent and greedy. There’s no easy solution to the eternal problem of labor strife in MLB. However, for the good of the game, each side might consider retreating a bit from the direction in which they’ve moved the fight over the last two decades. While they’ve shielded themselves from the disaster of lost games or a nixed postseason, they’ve also decreased the costs of brinksmanship. Each side can afford to be more rigid and more pugnacious, and that’s bad for everyone: the players, the owners, and the fans. Were these debates and these moments of near-crisis still happening in the summer, there would be much greater risks if things didn’t get done, but for that very reason, the deals would get done faster and with less posturing on each side. 

We’re not heading for Armageddon next winter. We’re just heading for a headache. For fans being squeezed for more of their dollars each year while the profits for both owners and players skyrocket, it’s obnoxious. It’s certainly unnecessary, given that the union isn’t even protecting their most vulnerable members or taking on some of the most important issues they should be addressing. The sides are fighting over money, and both sides already have too much money. They’re going to have a long staredown, because each side believes it’s the best way to maximize the slice of the pie they eventually get. Meanwhile, fans are all anxiety over a calamity that probably isn’t coming, and it’s just because this is the cycle of negotiations that is most comfortable for the already comfortable parties thereto. When we escaped the summer sweats over the danger of lost games, we lost something vital: the sense of urgency that gets the owners and the players to the table faster, in deal-making mode.