With Major League Baseball's winter meetings scheduled to start in less than a week, sources say club officials are aware of the possibility that teams won't participate if there is not sufficient progress in the on-going collective bargaining discussions.
The current agreement expires Dec. 1, and the two sides are in negotiations in Dallas. The conversations have been far from seamless, and though sources on both sides believe the unsettled issues are not of such gravity that they threaten the integrity of the upcoming season, talks have progressed slowly.
If the owners take the formal step of locking out the players once the current agreement expires, teams likely would not send representatives to the winter meetings in Washington, D.C.
Much of the work done at the annual winter meetings is based on the rules of the collective bargaining agreement, and without rules in place, the business of baseball would largely screech to a halt.
A lot of player agents and club evaluators believe the recent slowdown in the typical offseason movement is directly related to the growing uncertainty about the outcome and possible timing of the CBA discussions.
"I think everybody is just waiting to see what happens," one player representative said.
The strategy of both leaderships may well be revealed Tuesday or Wednesday. The owners signaled flexibility in the issue of the international draft before, and now they have reportedly backed off the request. But sources familiar with the negotiations say this shift didn't jump-start the talks in the way the management side had hoped, and as of Monday evening, there was still a lot of progress needed.