The MLB Lockout Is Over. Now the Chaos Begins.

Get ready for a free-agent frenzy, a mad dash of trades and spring training games. The next month is going to be baseball like you’ve never seen it before.

Congratulations, baseball fans: You have made it through the long, cold winter of your discontent. After a 99-day lockout, plenty of contentious debates and more than a few blown deadlines, MLB and the MLBPA have finally settled on the structure for a new collective bargaining agreement to last through 2026. The deal will be official once it’s been formally ratified by both sides—perhaps as soon as Thursday night. After that, the league will be prepared to pull off a full season, with 162 games workable with just a few tweaks and Opening Day scheduled for April 7.

All of which means that baseball is about to be back open for business—all the business, all at the same time, all as soon as possible. Get ready for a whirlwind of activity unlike anything baseball has seen in recent memory. Here’s a guide for what to expect:

Will Freddie Freeman re-sign with the Braves? We’ll know soon enough! :: Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated

Free Agency

Remember the chaos of late November? With Max Scherzer, Javy Báez, Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and more all flying off the market in the space of just a few days? Be prepared to experience all of that mayhem again, just bigger, faster and with more. Teams will be able to start signing players as soon as the deal is ratified—which is to say: Thursday evening!—and you should expect them to dive in as soon as they can. If you need a refresher on which players secured a new deal and who’s still available, here’s SI’s list of the top 50 free agents from the beginning of November, updated with details on who has already signed, and here’s the list of just the top 25 remaining here in March.

The biggest name here is still, of course, Carlos Correa. (Red Sox? Yankees? Someone else?) But there’s much more to unpack here, too. Is Freddie Freeman going to return to the Braves? Where will Kris Bryant end up? How will the introduction of the universal DH affect the market of a player like Nick Castellanos? Expect all of these questions to be answered quickly.

… Which Includes International Free Agents

Japanese outfielder Seiya Suzuki is one of the better position players left on the market. If you’re familiar with the “posting” system for free agents coming from Nippon Professional Baseball, you’ll recall that players have just a 30-day window to talk with potential suitors in MLB, and 30 days was obviously up here a long time ago. But NPB and MLB agreed to pause the clock in this case: Suzuki has a few more weeks to negotiate with teams. And he’s still very much interested: “Seiya is 100% committed to playing in MLB this year. He’s shown remarkable patience and resolve,” his agent told The Athletic at the beginning of March.

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Plus Trades!

The incoming rush of free agency will be joined by a similar one of trade activity. During the lockout, front offices were not supposed to communicate with each other about players, and there’s lots of demand pent up. Which could yield some unusual activity. There’s normally a natural cadence to the trade calendar. The big, star-swapping ones might happen at any time, yes. But the sort of material that represents a more typical trade … A team might chase what it wants in free agency, look at the margins around the salaries that are being determined in arbitration, and finally decide that, yes, it does need one more starter, or a fourth outfielder, or a little bit of bullpen depth. Now? Teams will be trying to figure out where they stand all at once. Expect it to get messy.

Arbitration

Then there’s the far less sexy work of roster management—arbitration. There are more than 100 players eligible for salary arbitration; that process, and any necessary hearings, typically take place before spring training. But this year is (you guessed it!) different. Instead, teams and players will exchange salary information over the next two weeks, and hearings will take place afterward, stretching into the season.

Arbitration exchange date (teams, players making salary requests) will be March 25. Hearings will take place during season.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 10, 2022

Spring Training

And as all of the front-office activity is going down, players will be reporting to spring training as soon as possible. Like—Friday. The players reportedly must be at camp by Sunday. (If you’re curious about international players who need help with visas—similar to what happened when baseball resumed after its COVID-19 pause in 2020, they’ll probably receive whatever accommodations or extra wiggle room that might be needed and just report as quickly as they can.) Once everyone is in camp, it won’t take long to dive straight into action: March 17, give or take a day or two, is when spring games should begin.

That may seem fast, but players have already been working out and ramping up on their own. (And for any important questions around that, with the lockout over, they’ll finally be able to talk to training staff again!) All of which will lead up to the moment they’ve been waiting for: On April 7, a week after it was originally scheduled but for a season that will be just as full, they’ll get to Opening Day. Play ball.