Category: COVID-19

Mailbag request!

Not a mailbag, but a request for things to put in one.

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Time for a mailbag? No! Time to ask for questions to put in (and then take out of) the mailbag? That’s the one. January is a pretty quiet month in the realm of baseball labor stories, when the players and the league aren’t in open war, at least. So what better time to put out a request for questions from you, the reader, than now?

This is how the mailbag usually works. If I receive a few smaller questions, I can bundle the answers together into a response article or two. If I get some questions requiring larger and more complex answers, though, those end up as standalone responses. So, feel free to go big, small, or anything in between: ask what’s on your mind, whether it’s topical or historical or just something that’s been nagging at you and related to the scope of this newsletter.

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Notes: Twins could sell soon, Rays write another letter

The Twins might have new owners soon, the Rays write another off-base letter, and there’s a fight among Padres owners that’s now in court.

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A real ownership-based version of the notes column today. Back in mid-October, it was reported that the Minnesota Twins were looking to sell, finally freeing the league from the Pohlads, a family that at one time was the wealthiest in the league — yes, even wealthier than George Steinbrenner back when he owned the Yankees — and has spent its decades in the game pretending that’s not true.

It’s just a few months later, but hey look at that, the Twins might even be sold by Opening Day in 2025, according to Dan Hayes at The Athletic. There’s a “robust market” per that report, so there are no concerns a deal can’t be put in place in the next few months. Which is funny, since if you ask a bunch of MLB owners about the business of owning a team, they’ll tell you that it’s not a good investment and not a place to make money. Famously, the wealthiest people around love to spend money on things that won’t make them a profit, so this is a confusing turn of events for those of us without critical thinking skills or a shred of skepticism to cling to.

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Notes: Diamond isn’t Diamond now, an A’s reminder, Best of BP

A little holiday round-up to start the new year.

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Happy New Year! Sure, that was a couple of days back, but this is the first Marvin Miller’s Mustache of 2025, so it’s fitting all the same. (Sometimes I forget that’s what I ended up naming this newsletter, too, so please enjoy this reminder if you’d forgotten about that change from last year.)

Let’s kick things off with some notes from the holiday break.

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Notes: 2028 and beyond, Rays get their bonds, holiday sign-off

My latest at Baseball Prospectus (and reasons to subscribe to BP), the Rays get their way in the end, and saying goodbye to 2024.

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I said I’d get my thoughts organized here for use in a feature down the road, and that’s just what I did. My latest for Baseball Prospectus — titled “Baseball in the Future, Tense” by the wonderfully witty editors I work with over there — published on Thursday.

Within, I give some background on how things stood in the league, regarding spending in relation to the luxury tax threshold, back before the 2019 season, and where it stands now. Which is all a build up to show that there’s a growing divide between the teams willing to spend — which barely existed six years ago, in the runup to what MLB and its owners knew would be a defining labor battle with the Players Association over the new CBA — and those who are not. One that’s only going to worsen for sure as the new broadcasting arrangement comes into play in 2028 and requires a heavier revenue-sharing load for the “big” market teams to carry in order to subsidize the “small” market ones, and might worsen further depending on the ability — or lack thereof — of Rob Manfred’s successor as commissioner to keep everyone unified despite said growing divide.

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The A’s have to spend now, or else

The A’s have to spend, due to increased revenue-sharing, and oh, they also aren’t projected to spend more than they did in 2024, so maybe relax the “dawn of a new era” reactions.

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The A’s publicly said, quite awhile ago, that they planned on increasing their payroll in the future. They also stated that the expectation was that this would begin in the 2024-2025 offseason — it was clear that signing players might be difficult for them, given convincing anyone to intentionally play for them in a minor-league stadium in Sacramento for a few years was going to be a tough sell, but trades were always an option, too.

They’ve recently added a couple of expensive — for them — players onto the roster, which of course implies that it truly was Oakland holding them back, or that their ways have changed, or whatever positive interpretation they hope you take away from this for their benefit; MLB’s own website is of course happy to promote a “new direction” for the franchise. The truth of the matter is much simpler, however: the A’s have to spend, or else a grievance will be filed against them.

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Time skip

More teams are spending the resources they have even as others run in place, the next CBA is Manfred’s last, with his final major act likely being a landscape-altering broadcasting deal. Pieces are starting to come together that will still be in play at the end of the decade.

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The Juan Soto deal has me thinking about the future a bit. Not Soto’s future, but what’s going on in MLB. You’ll have to excuse me for using this space to get some thoughts down and further organize them, but it’ll end up resulting in another piece or two down the line once that’s all done.

Event: The Dodgers spend and spend some more, deferring even more money, and are projected for a $279 million Opening Day payroll after kicking off 2024 at $267 million — please recall that Shohei Ohtani was paid just $2 million in 2024, with the other $68 million in the deal deferred until the playing time portion of the contract expires for 2034. The Dodgers ranked third in payroll, but second for luxury tax implications, as more of Ohtani’s deal counts towards that figure in the present than in the figure calculated with actual dollars.

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Juan Soto, the Mets, Dodgers, and spending

Even if only the Mets could get Juan Soto because Steve Cohen would do anything to get him, there’s plenty to learn from the signing on what this says about the rest of the league and their spending habits.

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Earlier in the offseason, there was an entire cycle of outrage at the Dodgers, for their decision to keep adding good baseball players who cost money to their team, that won a championship in 2024. The deferrals were a particular sticking point, but also just the idea that a team had resources and was using them was another. Let’s prepare ourselves for the same thing happening now, with the Mets, as they signed Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract — and one without deferrals, too, to really show off how much owner Steve Cohen has more money than anyone else in the league.

You’re going to hear people complain about a salary cap, or the fact that the Mets spending like this isn’t fair because not every team has this kind of money. Conveniently enough, I already covered the aforementioned outrage cycle for the Dodgers over at Baseball Prospectus, and quite a bit of it overlaps here with the Mets — to the degree that I already used Juan Soto as an example for points I was making within. So, I’ll just share some of that now:

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Climate change, new stadiums, and the Rays

The Trop is likely no more. The Rays’ new stadium deal might also be no more. A hurricane spawned by a warming Atlantic caused both of these issues, and there are more hurricanes to come.

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The Rays aren’t going to play in Tropicana again — the damage caused to both the roof and the inside of the domed stadium, and the no vote by the county commission to cover the costs of repairs confirmed that — but they also might not play in St. Petersburg again. To a degree, that’s about the upcoming vote on selling the bonds necessary for Pinellas county to fund the construction of a new stadium, but it’s also about what destroyed the Trop in the first place: a hurricane.

Florida is no stranger to hurricanes, but the intensity of the ones that make landfall, and the length of the hurricane season, are both growing. The Trop was built to withstand the hurricanes of a different era — the Rays began playing there in 1998, yes, but it was actually completed in 1990, when it was known as the Florida Suncoast Dome, and $70 million in renovations were made on a stadium that had cost $130 million to build less than a decade before.

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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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