What if the lockout wipes out spring training and part of the 2027 season

This is a hypothetical, built on real numbers. The labor fight has been argued enough. The calendar has not. When the collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, a lockout is expected to follow, and every free agent still unsigned goes into a freezer with no end date.

The month that sets the market

Free agency has about a month of real business before the freeze. CBS Sports ranks Tarik Skubal as the clear No. 1 on this winter's list, ahead of Jazz Chisholm Jr., Adrian Morejon, Seiya Suzuki and Randy Arozarena. CBS also notes that some teams may spend aggressively in November while others wait for the labor picture to clear. That split is the whole story of the next four weeks. A club that waits gambles on rules it cannot see, because a salary cap is on the table and the union says it will not entertain one.

What the last lockout did

The 2021-22 lockout lasted 99 days. Before it began, 25 of the top 50 free agents signed, including nine of the top 13, among them Max Scherzer, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Javier Baez. The players left over, Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant, Freddie Freeman, Trevor Story and Nick Castellanos among them, had to sign in a rush once the doors reopened.

The spring paid for it. Every originally scheduled spring training game was canceled, and the league removed 184 regular-season games from the schedule in two rounds. Those games were made up, largely through doubleheaders, so the full 162-game season survived. Opening Day moved a week.

The version where it goes wrong

Now stretch that. Executives and agents quoted by Yahoo describe a range from a delay of a few weeks to no meaningful baseball until June or July, and both sides are called extremely dug in. ESPN puts the drop-dead point for losing regular-season games at early to mid-March. The Boston Globe projects talks failing through spring training and a stoppage running into July or August.

Suppose that happens. No spring games at all, and a season that starts after a long gap. The Globe says 60 missed games would push broadcast deals past their 2028 expiration, which gives both sides a financial reason to care about the count as well as the principle.

Free agents would feel it differently. A player who signs in November has a contract and a team when the freeze starts. A player who waits has neither, and arrives at a camp with no camp. Pitchers like Skubal, Michael King and Freddy Peralta would have to build up arm strength on their own while a shortened runway leaves little room for ramp-up. Teams that sat out the early market would then bid against each other in a compressed window, with rosters to fill and almost no time to evaluate them.

What to watch

Watch how many of the top ten names sign before Dec. 1. In the last cycle, half of the top 50 moved before the freeze. A number well below that would signal that clubs expect a cap fight to change what players are worth. A number near it would suggest the owners and agents both believe the 2021-22 template, a lockout that ends in time to save most of the schedule, still applies.