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Per the Athletic’s Evan Drellich, the collective bargaining agreement has been altered by MLB and the Players Association, as a reaction to the current issues in the regional broadcasting landscape. It’s not something that every team will have access to, since not every team is struggling with their RSN, but it’s meant to assist the clubs that are dealing with any of that fallout. As Drellich put it:
Teams “whose local media revenue declined from the year prior (2023) or from the two years prior (2022)” are eligible for what’s being called a “media disruption distribution,” largely intended to deal with the problems of the Bally-branded regional sports networks and RSNs formerly operated by Warner Bros.-Discovery. The arrangement is good for one year, and is the product of months of negotiations, after MLB approached the MLBPA about the idea early in the year. The union agreed to it on the belief that teams will now spend more on players.
A team who qualifies could receive up to $15 million to help them out, with overall spending of this discretionary fund maybe capped at $75 million. The money is coming from the penalties paid by teams who spend above the luxury tax threshold, which means it’s not limitless, and the “discretionary” part involves commissioner Rob Manfred deciding whether or not a team in question requires a financial boost.
As Drellich stated, the union’s agreement is based on the idea that teams will now “spend more on players,” which, we’ll see. They might do that! They might also put the money away for “flexibility” or “more cash to distribute among investors when the time comes,” so… no guarantees the PA gets what they want there, is the thing. But there’s also really no harm in them saying yes here, either, since this is already league money that is already distributed, and the only real change is that it’s boosted a discretionary fund to help clubs dealing with problematic RSNs get through that stage, until whatever comes next for broadcasting. If anything, teams deciding not to use the discretionary funds to sign more players could end up being a useful point of attack for the union when the next CBA does come up.
My latest for Baseball Prospectus attempted to answer a question that people have been asking: why hasn’t MLB done anything about the embarrassment that is A’s owner John Fisher? It requires a subscription to read, but here’s an excerpt:
The other owners, as united as they are these days, are not going to oust Fisher for merely being embarrassing. They will do so if he’s also messing with their money. And not “pocketing revenue-sharing” levels of money, either. More like “failing to actually get the new stadium they have been working toward for longer than some of these guys have even owned their teams,” and “failing to get the new stadium that the owners agreed to give the A’s revenue-sharing eligibility for again while they finished up negotiations this time they’ll do it for sure, promise.” Bridges with Oakland have been outright nuked from orbit. They’re going to be the Sacramento A’s in practice, but not in name, until such time they can become the Las Vegas A’s. Which might be never. That would get the other owners’ attention; that would make Fisher not worth it any longer, no matter how helpful he’s been in selling the idea of the pitiful small-market team to the press in the past. Because then you’re stuck with a guy who has created a fiasco, and one that’s costing the league money.
I dipped into some recent history to expand on this idea, contrasting the sagas of the Wilpons of the Mets with the McCourts’ time with the Dodgers. The Wilpons lost $700 million to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and they had to chop the Mets’ payroll down and borrow from other owners to make even that lessened payroll, but they paid their debts and made it through. Selling to minority owner Steve Cohen at the end of the 2020 season had more to do with an old man making an exit from the game rather than being forced out by the league. Frank McCourt, on the other hand… well, the ownership control saga of the Dodgers from 2011-2012 has its own Wikipedia page, so. It was kind of a mess.
Fisher isn’t at the McCourt stage yet. He’s still a Wilpon, for now. If he starts missing important deadlines, though — not deadlines for stadium renderings, but ones where money are involved — his piece on the board will slide away from the Wilpon zone and closer to that of McCourt. And then maybe Manfred won’t be silencing Bay Area buyers looking to purchase the A’s.
Saddened to hear the news that Billy Bean passed away at just 60 years old. He was MLB’s senior vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the second openly gay player in the league’s history, after Glenn Burke.
He had a tough job, considering the environment: MLB isn’t exactly at the same place as the rest of society when it comes to being accepting of the LGBTQIA+ community — the Rangers still do not even have a Pride Night, and there are players who publicly bristle and whine whenever their teams introduce a Pride Night or host one — so while Bean’s whole deal about just wanting to have conversations to advance the cause might have seemed a little too slow and not aggressive enough from the outside, internally… well, we are talking about a league where players feel the need to highlight their belief and faith in God as if it stands in opposition to the existence of the people for whom these Pride Nights are for, so. It’s still a big deal whenever players are openly supportive of these Pride Night events! Maybe some quiet one-on-one time from an exec every time one of these jokers opens their mouth was a good thing as a start.
I’m a bit curious as to what MLB will do with the position now that Bean has passed, and how they’ll honor his passing, but there’s time to think of that later. For now, rest in peace, Billy Bean, hopefully you felt that you left things better than you found them in your own playing career.
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