I just don't see how you can separate this year from the past. It's the story of American capitalism, really: the profits are privatized, the losses are socialized. Player salaries went down year after year despite record-breaking profits. Public money was injected in every single stadium that was built over the years. Franchises' value multiplied.
Those profits and equity gains were not shared with the players, they were not given back to communities. They were pocketed by private actors. So why should labor now accept that losses should be socialized?
And we haven't even gotten into the claim that the franchises are losing money to play the game.
It's utterly unbelievable.
I think the interpretation of what's happening is really simple. MLB did not expect the players' reaction to be as firm as it was, and felt they could use the pandemic to extract yet more value from players (not only for this year but beyond, like getting players to agree on expanded playoffs in exchange for nothing). Now that it has backfired, they have no clue about how to move on from here.
While it's easy to think of the Stantons or Coles or Harpers or Trouts who make millions, the same is not true for the majority of MLB players (without even going into the minor leagues, which are becoming something close to servitude):
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-money-do-mlb-players-really-make/
