Major League Baseball cancels second week of season after discussions fail to produce CBA

Major League Baseball canceled the second week of the regular season Wednesday after days of discussion with the MLB Players Association failed to generate a new collective-bargaining agreement.

The international draft, long part of negotiations but not until recently a central issue, scuttled talks Wednesday afternoon. A day earlier, the league had proposed tying an international draft that would cover amateurs from Latin America and Asia to the removal of direct draft-pick compensation, in which teams are penalized draft picks for signing top free agents.

Players balked at the idea, rejected proposals from the league to address it and sent a counteroffer. The league then canceled another week of games.

The fallout could be enormous. The league had tied a deal this week to playing a 162-game schedule with full pay and full service time for players. The MLBPA has said that if the league refuses to agree to full pay and service time, it will remove expanded playoffs — a key to a new basic agreement for MLB — from its proposal. With the sides already unable to agree on core economic issues, the potential removal of a vital gain for the league and an additional item to bargain for the union — full service time is paramount — would add even more difficulty to the already-terse discussions.

On the 98th day of MLB's lockout, an already-problematic situation, sources said, worsened.

Talks on the international draft bled from the late hours of Tuesday into Wednesday and picked back up Wednesday morning. Though financial gaps had been bridged enough to bring a deal within range, players balked at the international draft. A large contingent of the rank-and-file from Latin America opposes it, and player leadership, sources said,