Blue Jays fans must savor 2026 season after latest MLB lockout-shifting bombshell

It hasn't been a good couple of days for the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). MLBPA executive director Tony Clark has resigned. These are not the best circumstances to surround a union that is about to go into a bargaining battle and thus, baseball fans, including fans of the Toronto Blue Jays, may need to savor every moment that 2026 brings.

Blue Jays fans must savor 2026 season after latest MLB lockout-shifting bombshell

The player's union is currently scrambling to figure out what to do about their leadership group that will lead them into their next round of talks surrounding the Collective Bargaining Agreement. But it won't be Clark who was asked to step down. The calls for his resignation came as he was facing a federal investigation by the Eastern District of New York for his handling of union finances. Clark and others within the union's leadership are alleged to have improperly used funds to create roles for family members.

This is bad timing all around as the current CBA is set to expire on Dec. 1 and it feels like the MLBPA and the owners of the MLB teams are extremely far apart in coming to an agreement on what either side wants out of the next deal and neither side can agree internally on what they want either. It speaks to the huge disparity between the top earners, and the rest of the field. For instance, The Athletic reported that basically every other owner is fuming at the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets for a couple of deals they made this past off-season.

The Dodgers four-year, $240-million deal for Kyle Tucker and the Mets three-year, $126-million deal for Bo Bichette has ticked them off so much that some, or maybe even a majority, of the other owners are going to push for a salary cap. Meantime, the players are also at an impass. Not all of them are going to ever have a chance at making that kind of money. The majority of them just want to be able to stick around the league long-enough to get to arbitration and maybe earn more than the league minimum once in their career.

But depending on the limitations of a salary cap, or a salary floor, that might not work in favour of the players who are at the highest end of the earning spectrum. Recently, Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres and Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies were asked about the Dodgers' deal with Tucker and both players spoke in favor of seeing teams spend that kind of cash.

It's going to be an ugly fight over the next year, and the MLBPA needs to get a strong leadership group in place so that they can go into the negotiations with a unified voice. And even then, it still won't be enough to get all the owners to be on the same page with each other either.

So between the World Baseball Classic kicking off on March 5 and up until the final out of the 2026 World Series, baseball fans will just have to enjoy everything the season throws at them because it could be a while before it returns.