MLB Lockout: Answering The 4 Most Important Questions

For starters, all player transactions are officially halted.

That means that teams can't sign recently posted international players like Seiya Suzuki. It also means that teams can't reach out to players to try and sign them, nor they can trade any of the players under their control.

That's why the league decided to move the deadline for tendered players so they wouldn't be 'locked out' by a team that didn't want them.

All transactions can resume as soon as both parties reach an agreement.

Simply put, the players want the owners to give up control, at least to some extent.

They demand that players are eligible for arbitration after two years instead of three.

They also want that all players can become free agents when they turn 29.5 years old and have five years of service, or when they have six years of MLB service, whatever happens first.

That means negotiating contracts earlier and hitting free agency earlier, which would translate to more money for underpaid players.

In reality, both parties have leverage here. The owners can't afford another shortened season after the COVID-19 season in 2020.

The players can't afford to go through a months-long stand-off and face massive pay cuts once they decide to resume play.

Right now, the owners are in control of the situation but that could drastically change as the season approaches if the players decide to sit out the season.

In reality, they're likely going to meet in the middle sooner rather than later.

This isn't the first time this happens and this situation, while long overdue, was quite predictable.

The league canceled Winter Meetings and it's unlikely that there is any major news over the next couple of months.

“It’s going to be weeks before we see any reasonable progress,” former MLB executive Marty Conway told NBC Sports.

Most analysts predict that February will be the real deadline for negotiations to get some traction before the start of Spring Training.

For now, we'll just have to wait and see.