Trea Turner, Dodgers players join in endorsing scathing Jeff Passan take

The Los Angeles Dodgers will not be playing organized baseball for a very long time due to the MLB Lockout the league’s owners have installed.

Trea Turner and about 25 other MLB stars (at least) really want the fans to know that, especially as the cancellation of 2022 games becomes realer by the day.

Monday, Feb. 28 was MLB’s self-imposed deadline for getting a deal done and salvaging the 2022 regular season as we know it. Everyone on the outside looking in, though, immediately registered the urgency of that “deadline” as a PR stunt, especially as both sides remained perilously far apart for the entire week of face-to-face bargaining.

Was it a nice gesture to converse daily? Sure. But if base-level connections were being made during this late February surge, imagine what a good place we’d be in if the league hadn’t kept entirely silent for 43 days in December and January after locking the players out?

No, the fault here lies with ownership as everything falls apart, something ESPN’s Jeff Passan laid bare this week in a column retweeted by Dodgers like Turner, Justin Bruihl and Michael Grove, as well as a large number of other prominent MLB players, who would love nothing more than to play.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan torched MLB owners Monday, and Trea Turner/other Dodgers were here for it.

Combine these retweets with Walker Buehler’s recent labor statements, and it’s clear the Dodgers players are on the right side of history.

But you knew that already, especially considering this ownership group appears to be playing an entirely different game from the rest of baseball in the name of winning.

Other MLB stars who a clever sleuth could theoretically find in that retweet pool include Mitch Haniger of the Mariners, familiar Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood, Yankees righty Jameson Taillon, and Giants thorn Evan Longoria, just to name a few.

For Bruihl and Grove to join the outspoken corps of front-facing major-leaguers says a lot, too; Grove has yet to establish himself at the MLB level and is theoretically risking reputational harm.

This just lends more credence to the idea that “Millionaires vs. Billionaires” is a reductive credo meant to harm the players’ case, as their repeated attempts to move the needle fall on deaf ears.

Sure, this fight includes Max Scherzer and Walker Buehler, as well as Trea Turner one year ahead of his extremely pivotal free agency. But Bruihl is here, too, a fringe major-leaguer entering his second season. So is Grove, who’s subsisted on minimums during these past few seasons of chasing the dream, along with thousands of his brothers in arms at the lower levels.

Sadly, the battle is just beginning, and retweets (which, in this case, do equal endorsements) are unlikely to close the gap.

3 trade calls Dodgers should make the day MLB Lockout ends

The second the MLB Lockout ends, Andrew Friedman and the Los Angeles Dodgers should call these 3 teams about immediate trades.