The collective bargaining agreement signed by MLB and the MLB Players Association earlier this month ensures five more seasons of labor peace, continuing the stretch of uninterrupted baseball that goes back to the 1994 strike and lockout threat that canceled the World Series and posted the greatest existential challenge to the industry since the 1919 Black Sox scandal. This is nearly all good news for fans of the sport, but the agreement itself includes some steps backward, many for the players, as it appears that the two sides at the table were focused on very different goals in a negotiation that didn’t really pick up until the final four days before the previous deal’s expiration.

Prior to the agreement we heard about macro issues, long-term questions about competitive balance and the ways baseball brings amateur players into the pro ranks, but the players turned out to be more concerned with short-term issues. While the union worried about working conditions for current players and the qualifying offer system, the league’s priorities involved proposing a draft for international free agents, altering revenue sharing and the competitive balance (luxury) tax, and tidying up the Rule 4 draft. From my conversations with people on both sides of the table, I got the distinct impression that the negotiations themselves took longer to produce an agreement because each came to the table with such vastly differing sets of priorities.

The differing philosophies made compromise more difficult, and it appears that the two sides had divergent strategies on negotiating practices that drew out the process, with the union more willing to push the resolution toward the deadline than the league was. The resulting concord certainly isn’t bad for players in the long term, but it didn’t accomplish all it could have for the next generation of players.