With February rolling around, MLB negotiators need to get busy

Here we go, about to roll into the third month of baseball’s lockout, which is when things turn from just a boring winter into something downright retched.

The marketing slogan once, a long time ago was Baseball Fever: Catch it!

Now, more like: Comes with mild nausea and loss of interest.

We’d love to break down all the planks, platforms and issues the Players Association and MLB are negotiating — and at least they have been negotiating regularly for the last two weeks — but the truth is: Who cares?

As I’ve explained to those who’ve inquired over what exactly is at stake here, it’s the same as always: Players would like a little bit bigger share of the pie; owners would rather gorge on it.

As always, it’s a little more complicated than that. In some perverse twist, players have been forced to be the ones demanding competitive integrity. They’d like more incentivization to compete in the way of a draft lottery that doesn’t automatically reward tanking. Call it the Luhnow Proposal.

They’d like increased minimum salaries for prearbitration players, early entry to arbitration and for teams to stop manipulating service time that has often turned six years of team control into seven.

Save for expanding playoffs and maybe a sponsored patch or two on uniforms, owners are just fine with the way the system operates now. Both of those things have a common denominator: More revenue for owners. And why would they want to change anything? They drubbed the players in recent negotiations when the PA, apparently thinking the system was working, settled for some creature comforts as their gains. Then, owners went right to work exploiting loopholes that have led to players uniting in a way they haven’t in a quarter century.

There has been some progress in the last two weeks, per reports. But not a ton.

This goes without saying, but it doesn’t matter whose side you believe more. It’s not an ideal time to be arguing about splitting up more money. It never is. But especially because — gesturing wildly at everything in the world — of all this. There may be real principles here, but try explaining the theory to consumers, who deal with a completely different reality.

That said, to this point nothing has been lost. December was going to be about hibernation. And January was going to be about checking in. In the meantime, the NFL put together three of the greatest playoff weekends of all-time so that nobody even missed when ESPN.com’s navigation bar didn’t have an MLB page tab and you had to find it under an ellipse sandwiched between cricket and NBA G League.

Now things get real. And so do the consequences.

Most camps are supposed to open around Feb. 15. To do that, at the very least, conventional wisdom is a handshake agreement between the sides would have to be reached by Feb. 7 or 8. That would give players a week to get a deal ratified and give MLB time to start putting together the offseason details that have been left untended. Stuff like a not insignificant portion of free agency shopping, salary arbitration cases, the Rule 5 draft. A lot of stuff.

Not all of it could get done by Feb. 15. A lot would likely spill over into training camp. But that’s more inconvenience than anything. Players might have to scramble for some visas and some housing. Again, mostly details.

But, if it goes any longer than that you start cutting into the normal prep time for pitchers to build up for the regular season. That could lead to further limits on pitch counts to start a season and more risk for pitching injuries. Just what baseball needs: more injuries.

Go beyond Feb. 10 without a deal and you probably start losing some spring training games. Truth be told, there is probably a little bit of fat built into the spring schedule, but not a ton. With each day lost, the risk for pitching injuries rises. The Rangers are supposed to open their spring schedule on Feb. 26. Pitchers and players probably need a minimum of a week to get ready for games.

Get to that point and spring training facilities start to lose dollars. That is no way to treat municipalities all over Florida and Arizona that have bent over backward to accommodate the desires of MLB teams. The minute this spat starts to impact anybody outside of the negotiating room, it becomes a blight on the game’s reputation. MLB already has contracted a quarter of minor league teams, which may have been the right move for efficiency’s sake, but it also destroys a grassroots, small-town marketing asset.

Start upsetting the older generation and families, the two primary groups that attend spring training games and it’s strike two.

The regular season? That’s supposed to start for the Rangers on March 31 against the New York Yankees in Arlington. Figure you need at least four weeks of games to go into a season with your pitching prepared. Do the math: If this goes into March, it puts the start of the season at risk, too. We’re now a month away from that deadline.

The good news: Nothing seems to motivate baseball wonks more than a deadline. If March 1 is the deadline to save the season in full, it’s likely the sides will get more serious later in February.

This is the decision baseball and its players face: They can negotiate themselves right into obscurity, or they can start making real compromises.

The former is already at risk of happening. If baseball can’t address the latter, the question that’s going to start getting asked should be absolutely scary to all involved: Who cares?

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