When Major League Baseball (MLB) said on Tuesday that they would be delivering a counter-proposal for core-economic issues of the next collective bargaining agreement on Thursday, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) took them at their word and waited to hear the news. Then, around one p.m. PST, word came out from Evan Drellich on Twitter that MLB told the MLBPA that they won't be making an offer today…at all.

That obviously threw the MLBPA off of its course a bit as it seemed that things might be taking a slight turn towards the better. Then, this happens and we were all left wondering again what exactly the “endgame” for MLB actually is. Do they want to get every game played or are they more concerned with holding the players over a proverbial barrel? We got a little bit of an answer to that question less than an hour later when Jeff Passan reported on Twitter that MLB on Thursday asked for the immediate assistance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to help assist with the proceedings and end the lockout.

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That Tweet from Passan is huge because it shows that the teams are not interested in leveraging lost games against the players' asks. This shows that they are willing to meet somewhere in the middle, but, judging by the fact that they are the ones that asked for mediation and not the players, the owners are probably under the correct assumption that the mediator will rule closer to their side. Stay tuned because this is a developing story.