MLB lockout talks resume in Florida as openers threatened

Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports
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NEW YORK — Major League Baseball’s negotiations to salvage opening day resume at a new venue Monday: Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida.

Colorado Rockies CEO Dick Monfort, chairman of the owners’ labor policy committee, was expected to join a management delegation that includes Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem, the clubs’ lead negotiator.

Bruce Meyer, the union’s chief negotiator, was expected to be joined by players. The site of negotiations is about 3 miles from the home of New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, among the eight players on the union’s executive subcommittee.

The ballpark usually would be the spring training home of the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals at this time of year, but workouts failed to start on time last Wednesday due to baseball’s ninth work stoppage, its first since 1995.

Monday’s session will be just the seventh on core economics since the lockout started Dec. 2, and the sides have met on consecutive days just once, on Jan. 24 and 25. MLB said Friday that it intended to have meetings with the union every day in the coming week.

The lockout enters its 82nd day Monday. MLB on Friday canceled spring training games from Feb. 26 through March 4.

While owners and players have participated by Zoom, the only ones to attend a session in person have been Monfort and free-agent reliever Andrew Miller, on Jan. 24.

Until now, all talks during the lockout had been in New York at the offices of MLB and the players’ association.

MLB told the union that Feb. 28 is the last possible day to reach an agreement to allow openers on March 31, given the desire for four weeks of workouts and additional time to ratify an agreement and have players report to camps in Florida and Arizona.

But the sides agreed to less training time after disrupted spring trainings in 1990, 1995 and 2020.

Dodgers place pitcher Noah Syndergaard on injured list with no timetable for return

dodgers syndergaard
Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports
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CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers placed pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the 15-day injured list Thursday with a blister on the index finger of his right throwing hand.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the timetable for Syndergaard’s return is unknown despite the 15-day designation.

“The physical, the mental, the emotional part, as he’s talked about, has taken a toll on him,” Roberts said. “So, the ability to get him away from this. He left today to go back to Los Angeles to kind of get back to normalcy.”

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night, raising his ERA to 7.16.

Syndergaard (1-4) has surrendered at least five runs in three straight starts.

Syndergaard has been trying to return to the player he was before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the better part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Roberts said Syndergaard will need at least “a few weeks” to both heal and get away from baseball and “reset.”

“I think searching and not being comfortable with where he was at in the moment is certainly evident in performance,” Roberts said. “So hopefully this time away will provide more clarity on who he is right now as a pitcher.

“Trying to perform when you’re searching at this level is extremely difficult. I applaud him from not running from it, but it’s still very difficult. Hopefully it can be a tale of two stories, two halves when he does come back.”