Month: November 2024

Notes: Diamond, the catcher market, Rays’ stadium deal dead or dying

Catching up on the week of holiday news, before the winter meetings shift.

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My latest at Baseball Prospectus (subscription required) published a week ago, but I hadn’t had a chance to share it in this space until now. It’s meant to, now that we’ve got clarity on the Diamond bankruptcy situation, point out how we could see this moment in time coming a few years ago as the players were locked out by the owners during collective bargaining, and that we’re not going to see the full effects of the league’s transition from primarily cable broadcast to primarily streaming happen without another CBA battle.

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The A’s are already failing at free agency

Sacramento has already cost the A’s a free agent pitcher that made sense for them.

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The A’s can say that they don’t want to be known as the Sacramento A’s all they want, but the thing is, that’s where their home games are. And the players that they might want to sign know this, and on top of the A’s not being a very good team and not offering competitive contracts to basically anyone for years and years now, it’s going to impact their player acquisition.

In fact, it already has. Walker Buehler, a free agent for the first time after seven seasons and eight years with the Dodgers, would have been the perfect fit for a team like the A’s on a short-term deal. Buehler missed 2023 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and pitched pretty poorly in 75 regular season innings after returning, allowing nearly two homers per nine innings while posting an ERA of 5.38. He was better in the postseason, but we’re also talking about 15 innings there: he had plenty left to prove, especially with his 2022 just being a league-average campaign.

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The Fair Ball Act would close an exploitable loophole

A collective bargaining agreement between MLB and its minor leaguers only goes as far as federal and state exemptions allow it to.

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Minor league baseball players might have unionized in the fall of 2022, leading to their first-ever collective bargaining agreement early the next year, but that alone isn’t enough. This was obvious at the time, as, even while MLB was at the bargaining table with the Players Association, the former was trying to support an exemption that would allow them to a CBA workaround in Florida — one that would have let them avoid adhering to the state’s minimum wage laws.

Here’s what I said at the time about that, in March of 2023:

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St. Petersburg, Oakland, and public subsidies

A reminder that cities, counties, and states giving up hundreds of millions of dollars (or even over $1 billion) in public subsidies to stadiums can hurt those places far more than a new stadium can help.

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We’ve spent a whole lot of 2024 talking about the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland A’s, as well as how the former was set to stay that way while the latter wormed their way into just being the A’s, no hometown, for a few years. Those stories aren’t just covered because they involve the obscenely wealthy casually and easily lying in order to avoid spending their money as much as possible, but also because the thing they’re going for is public subsidies.

These subsidies don’t exist in a vacuum. If they go to a stadium, they aren’t going to something else. This is why Schools Over Stadiums formed in Nevada after state, county, and city politicians got into bed with the A’s: Nevada’s public schools were in desperate need of financial assistance, and, once again, everyone with the power to give those funds to a billionaire for a new stadium wanted to do that instead. As Chris Daly, the Deputy Executive Director of Government Relations for the Nevada State Education Association, told me last September:

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Notes: Diamond’s plan approved, MLBPA licensing change, Rays have 2025 home

Diamond isn’t going anywhere for the next few years, but the Rays are.

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Thanks to the judge’s decision on Thursday, Diamond will emerge from bankruptcy court with a plan to keep their regional sports broadcasting business going. There are quite a few details to go over, with more to come, but I’d like a little more time to mull over What It All Means before diving into all of that. So, today, let’s just look at some basics.

Diamond will continue to broadcast seven MLB teams, far fewer than it used to, and all on deals that were restructured to varying degrees. The Cardinals, for instance, worked out a new deal, but will see about a 25 percent drop in annual revenue compared to where they were before. Part of that likely had to do with their severe drop in viewership over the past couple of seasons, though, we’ve already discussed one solution for that. The Braves stayed on the same deal, but granted streaming rights to Diamond. The Royals could still rejoin Diamond, but at this point the two sides are still negotiating.

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Notes: Giants to cut payroll, Trop won’t be fixed for 2025

The Giants plan to cut costs, and we get answers to two of the three key Tropicana roof questions.

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We’ve already seen a few teams plan to cut payroll for the 2025 season, despite their performances in 2024 suggesting maybe some spending would help things. The White Sox leaked that info before the summer’s record-setting disaster had even come to a close, and the Rockies, another 100-game loser, followed suit in October. Then you’ve got clubs like the Cubs, who aren’t actively slashing, but they also are avoiding doing super obvious things they could afford to do and should do like attempting to sign 26-year-old free agent Juan Soto. You know, because of financial flexibility. What good is financial flexibility if having it precludes you from acquiring literally Juan Soto? An important question the people espousing its usefulness do not want you to ask.

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Notes: Cubs already giving up, Pride Nights, Dodgers and Trout

The Cubs, at best, think you’re stupid. And more from the week that was.

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Free agency has already started, in the sense that players are declaring their free agency, qualifying offers have been sent out, and all of that happy stuff that kicks off the period. Free agency hasn’t really truly gotten moving, though, even if players are able to sign already. There hasn’t been a ton of movement yet, just like there never is right at the beginning of what is a slow-burn process (that seems to move a little slower every year, too).

And yet, the Cubs have already quit on bringing in either the top free agent hitter or pitcher available, according to The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney:

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The Juan Soto sweepstakes begins

And there is no basically no excuse for the Yankees to not come out on top.

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Juan Soto is going to get paid. That much is known. Which team will be paying him is a bit more up in the air, as Jon Heyman reminded everyone before the weekend with a report that 11 teams had already checked in on him the second they could post-World Series.

Heyman mentions that Soto is looking for $700 million, and not deferred like with Shohei Ohtani’s major deal. The chances of Soto actually getting $700 million are basically nil, sure, but you ask for $700 million and negotiate down to what a team will give you. If you start with what a team will give you, you’re still going to end up negotiating down. That’s just how these things work, which is a lesson a lot of folks seem to need to relearn every November.

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