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Because the CBA expired and they are on strike now. I bet we see some nice HR numbers next year. Even one cycle can get some guys over a hump to become All-Stars.

I wonder if there even will be a season in 2022 and if so, will it be a condensed one?   Spring Training is supposed to start in less than week and the two sides aren't even close to a deal.

i'll re-iterate my position that baseball is a boring sport that doesn't deserve to be designated a "major" .. i'd rather see soccer as a way less boring alternative

^^^^

People go to games to pass time.  That's why it's called our national pastime.   It's been around way longer than football, basketball or hockey.  All those sports were invented in the early 1900s.   Baseball was invented in the early 1800s.

Soccer could be bigger in America but MLS sucks and the flopping is the #1 killer in the sports lack of popularity. It's just something that we can't get over and FIFA has no interest in penalizing or stopping.

There isn't really flopping in hockey and it has a similar ceiling in popularity here.
I think the lack of scoring is a much bigger factor than the flopping.  The 0-0 tie jokes don't end.

As for baseball, if they have a strike, it will just resume the trend that would have taken hold in '94 if not for the steroid craze.  Baseball hasn't been the premier sport in American mindshare since at least the '80s, and a strike will probably push it to a solid third place.

Hockey's issue is it's accessibility for children, where the popularity takes hold. Wanna play baseball? Bat, glove, stick and go anywhere. Football? A ball. Basketball? Ball and a hoop. Hockey? Skates, Stick, puck at the bare minimum. Want your child to play in a league? That's gonna run you a few bucks for pads, jerseys and you need a local rink to play.

Soccer is literally a ball and your foot so it should be more popular but the low scoring definitely has something to do with it. That, and it's very hard to bet on. The NFL is #1 due to gambling, can't really bet on soccer due to low score.

Hockey is an issue because much of the country doesn't have ice outside and many of the rest only have it in spurts. Most kids can play basketball, football, or baseball in their own neighborhood.

Soccer is getting more popular in this country but to be an elite player in the US you have to have money or the backing of people with money. In all honesty it's a rich person's sport in this country. Few kids can develop the skills needed to play at a higher level without a lot of serious training ... and that takes money. Unless the MLS teams start their own free training academies like the rest of the world it will be left up to soccer moms and dads.

I think the closed system of the MLS prevents the training academies .. if training up JR players for contract resale was a cornerstone of financial stability like it is in other countries, then it would be more of an option.

Also the lack of promotion / relegation hampers any sort of minor league in the US from developing. Currently it's the USL and that's really just an informal feeder system for MLS expansion.

Furthermore, the size of the US makes a national soccer league prohibitive. 4-6 regional leagues would make more sense that then feed top 2/3 teams into a national champions league type tournament would make alot more sense and drive rivalries alot better.

If you want to see modern US soccer rivalries, look at Portland VS Seattle .. that's a rivalry.

Not really.   The reason soccer is the number one sport in the world is even in the slums of a third world country all you need is a relatively flat piece of land and a ball and you have a game.  Need less equipment than literally any other sport.  The stars of Brazil's 2034 World Cup team is not in some 5-star training academy but kicking a ball barefoot on some lot in a slum.     

It is also super easy to have a game.  I could take a dozen 3 year-olds that have never played soccer and in 10 minutes having them playing something that resembled soccer.  It wouldn't be good soccer, but it would be soccer.  You can't do that with football, basketball, hockey or baseball. 

The reason why soccer is the US is behind football by a quarter mile today is because it was behind football by 25 miles 50 years ago.  MLS was founded in 1993.  NFL in 1920. First major league baseball team 1869. 

Soccer is growing faster than other sports.  But prior to the 1994 World Cup it was only slightly more significant to the USA sport landscape as cricket. 

The primary reason the USA is behind other countries in soccer is not a lack of training, but that the talent pool is greatly diluted.  In almost every other country in the world if you are a great athlete you first choice (and for many only choice) for a kid is to become a soccer player. In the US only a small number of them choose soccer with many picking football, baseball, basketball or hockey as their preferred sport.  If freaks like Randy Moss, Michael Jorden, Jim Thorpe, Bo Jackson, etc had one only only one viable option of sport growing up and that only option was soccer that the US would have a stronger soccer program. 

Christian Renaldo is the most famous of Portugese players. He's been playing for professional clubs since he was 7. This is how the highest kids learn their trade. they get into an academy of a professional club. It's almost impossible to learn to be a dynamic player on a sand lot. Sure you can play but you will be severely limited in your growth. This isn't the days of Pele. There's a reason why Americans aren't very good on a national level and it has more to do with pay to play effects than athleticism. You play Charlie if he is the fastest because you need to score goals and win. Meanwhile in Barcelona they don't even keep score until the kids are much older because they want them to try new things and grow rather than being socre oriented. You can't do that if mom and dad are paying thousands of dollars so you end up with a fast kid with limited balls skills.

I have a friend who used to coach with Ajax. He really opened my eyes to the limits of our American kids.

Cristiano Ronaldo was signed by SCP (Sporting) from lisbon, he grew up in the azores islands, he was found playing in the equivalent of PeeWee leagues. Sporting basically turned soccer into his education, he went to school and soccer practice. Sporting basically put his single mother up in an apartment with him in lisbon and dedicated thousands of euros into his development.

Their goal wasn't altruism, it was to sell his contract when older to turn thousands of euros of investment into millions .. when hw was 17 he played against Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United in a pre-season game and they were so impressed they decided to pay Sporting 15 million euros to sign him.

Teams all over the world do this all the time. They invest in youth players, In fact Soccer "teams" in europe are rarely just soccer teams. My team for example FC. Porto fields teams in all kinds of different sports, Soccer, Basketball, Team Handball, Roller Hockey, Bowling, Billiards, Track and Field, Swimming, Volleyball, etc... For soccer, they have youth teams, you can actually go to the youth fields on a Saturday morning and watch kids from 8 to teenagers play in all kinds of organized games. This all takes money, money from developing and selling players.

Just as an example, this is the FC Porto youth development field in Porto, I've been there, this is what investing into growing players looks like, his is just for youth players, adult players have other training fields.

(https://www.estc.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/072519f74a95ea36f571d1e83f1c23bd.jpg)

Baseball needs to shorten their season.  There are too many options for people's time nowadays to support such a long season, so people (at least I do) lose interest in how their team is doing.  Baseball should be ending about the time Football is starting, so the World Series should wrap up about the end of September.

Now some will complain about records, but there have been plenty of changes to baseball over the years that makes comparing one generation to another hard to justify.  Early in the sports history they played 140 games, this increased to 154 in the 1920's, and to the current 162 in 1961.

I'm sure teams are worried about lost revenue from fewer games, but most weekly games the stands are empty in some stadiums.  Having fewer games might even result in higher overall annual attendance due to lower supply.

The irony is that the other leagues originally set their schedules to have minimal overlap with the juggernaut that was baseball, which now results in the NBA and NHL now going head-to-head with the NFL for most of their season.

The NHL in the winter makes sense for logistical reasons, but the NBA should not be playing a single game before Christmas, and the Finals should be taking place in July or August.  They had a perfect opportunity to make this move after the bubble, but they passed for some reason.

People are indoors more in the winter and will watch more games? Other than that, I got nothing.

July and August would be bad for ratings for NBA finals.  And I suspect (without any evidence to back it up) that the finals generate a lions share of revenue and a decrease in postseason viewing would not be worth the increase in regular season.