Did the players just increase their demands? The MLB lockout marches on, and Locked On Giants host Ben Kaspick has the very latest.

Ben explores the MLBPA's latest proposal to owners, in which they increased the amount of the pre-arbitration bonus pool from $100M to $115M. On first glace it may appear to be a bigger ask, but the devil is in the details. As Ben describes, the fact that the union is reducing its ask in terms of when players reach arbitration, this is actually a modest concession. The players had been asking for players to reach arbitration after two years of service, but in today's proposal they change it to the top 80 percent of players between two and three years of service (as it is now, the top 22 percent reach arbitration). Ben's quick math reveals that this is at least a $15M per year concession by the players.

Ben also discusses the latest with the competitive balance tax, aka the luxury tax. The league is proposing major changes to the penalties for teams exceeding various tiers above the threshold. Ben explains why these are such major changes, and why it's obvious that the players are not on board. The players are proposing a substantially increased threshold; the owners are proposing a slight increase that doesn't even keep up with rates of inflation or increased revenues. Essentially, MLB is proposing something that would effectively become a hard cap.

Finally, Ben gets into ESPN/Kiley McDaniel's Top 100 prospects list, which came out yesterday. He discusses the rankings for Marco Luciano, Luis Matos, Kyle Harrison, and Joey Bart. Overall it's a mixed bag. These are relatively disappointing rankings for Luciano and Bart, but relatively optimistic rankings for Matos and Harrison. Thankfully, the Minor Leagues aren't affected by the MLB lockout, so Minor League Spring Training and the Minor League season will proceed as normal.

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