Category: Labor

Notes: Record stadium subsidy, John Henry speaks, gambling threats

The Rays are close to getting an admitted horrible deal for St. Petersburg, John Henry reminded people why he doesn’t give interviews anymore, and players are being threatened by gambling addicts.

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Usually the story told to cities and the public about stadium subsidies is that the new sports venue will be great for the local economy, it’ll pay for itself over time, etc. etc. So it’s kind of perversely funny that it’s already known that St. Petersburg’s nearly approved deal for a new Rays stadium will provide no revenue return to the city. City council member Richie Floyd, who is against the deal, has already said as much publicly: it didn’t even take some digging into the proposed deal from journalists to uncover that key piece of information.

What makes it even worse is that this is a $1.6 billion stadium subsidy, per Neil deMause’s calculations last month: the current record is Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, at $750 million, which means St. Pete is more than doubling that rate. Completely absurd, but just five of their eight city councilors are needed to approve the deal, anyway, and they’ve supposedly got the numbers for the July 11 final vote.

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Notes: Tax loophole, MLB realignment, Oakland sells Coliseum, NCAA settlement

More on the tax loophole, a couple of thoughts on realignment, Oakland’s stadium situation gets additional wrinkles, and the NCAA is primed for a major change.

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Lots to get through today, so let’s get to it.

I went in deeper on the billionaire sports owner tax loophole news for Baseball Prospectus earlier in the week, getting into the origins of the loophole, what it is, why it’s a problem, and why we should hope the IRS decided to remove or rewrite it. The shorter version of it is that it would keep, say, a team that costs $2 billion from pretending 80 percent of the team’s valuation is going to lose value instead of gaining it like what happens with sports franchises simply for existing, allowing them to avoid $650 million in taxes over the next 15 years that they really should have paid. The longer version, well, I wrote that for BP, and while you need a subscription for that, at the least, you could always read the ProPublica reporting from three years ago on the subject.

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Fanatics claims it owns your kids’ likeness rights, forever

Fanatics has their latest cost-cutting scheme, and it’s trying to get perpetual likeness rights from children and potential future minor leaguers years before they go pro.

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Thanks to some excellent reporting from Britt Ghiroli at The Athletic, we now know what the latest chapter in the “everything Fanatics touches is terrible in some way” saga is. Fanatics is partnering together with Perfect Game, the “world’s largest baseball scouting service” which serves as both a showcase for amateur players and a high-level competitive environment for amateur baseball, in order to create memorabilia for these kids. Sounds innocent enough, right? Of course there’s another layer to all of this.

Perfect Game already had kids giving up the rights to their likenesses, as agents have been warning parents for a couple of years now about the practice, but, as Scott Boras told Ghiroli, “They have now gotten into profit-taking on this.” Amateurs can’t have agents, but agents can advise them, and not signing is one thing they’re being advised about now.

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On the salaries of MLB’s ‘disposable pitchers’

A day in the majors isn’t worth what happens to the salary of this new class of churned-through pitcher.

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Last week, I shared a Baseball Prospectus story written by Jarrett Seidler and Rob Mains on the rise of the “disposable pitcher.” A trend has emerged, with teams calling up a pitcher — a not-really-a-prospect kind of pitcher — on the 40-man roster up from the minors for a very temporary stay in the majors, and then designating them for assignment after they’re done with them rather than optioning them back to the minors. This allows for them to, effectively, stream a 40-man roster spot for additional call-ups like this down the road, while also allowing them to avoid exposing any genuine prospects to the majors or the need to be optioned before they feel like those players are ready for the show.

As I wrote last Friday:

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Notes: Manfred speaks, the disposable pitcher, Diamond Holdings

Looks at the week that was.

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Forgive me for being a little behind here on the coverage dates, but my phone was undergoing a slow and then rapid death, which cuts into the whole keeping up with the news thing. So now, new and working phone in hand, we can hit some notes from around MLB, starting with the thing Rob Manfred recently opened his mouth about.

On May 6, Manfred spoke to (or spoke “at,” as Neil deMause put it) a gathering of editors at an Associated Press conference, with an emphasis on extolling the virtues of publicly financed stadium projects. It is incredibly Manfred for its… style. You know the one. That thing where he exaggerates and makes wild, indefensible claims without any proof to back them up, and would definitely get angry at a reporter or fans or sitting Congressperson for calling him out on it and asking for more details.

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Notes: Other teams unhappy with A’s, gambling, Scott Boras axed

Catching up on a week of news that wouldn’t stop.

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Last week, Buster Olney tweeted out something that made the whole internet groan. Not at Olney — not this time — but at pretty much all of MLB. You can probably figure out why just from reading what was said:

Within other organizations, there is a lot of disgust with how the A’s have handled the ballpark situation — especially when there’s no actual ballpark plan settled in Las Vegas. And there is an assumption the A’s will tank in the next few years, because their revenue stream will be down to a trickle. “This makes us all look bad,” said one person.

This was met with a chorus of “why did they approve the A’s move, then?!” which, understandable. A few things I’ve been thinking about, though, that should get a mention. For one, Olney doesn’t clarify whether this is from an owner, or an executive who happens to work for one, who had nothing to do with the move being allowed. It would be helpful if we knew: my guess is that it’s an executive who knows how bad of a look this is, and not one of the owners, who by and large are too removed from humanity to ever consider how something will make them “look” to people at large.

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Notes: MLBPA, Orioles ownership change, A’s boycott

A normal week, a change of hands via loophole, and John Fisher getting embarrassed. A busy Friday, really.

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As promised, my latest for Baseball Prospectus is a reaction to the news that there is a whole lot of internal grumbling going on in the Players Association — grumbling that, for a brief time, made it look as if there was going to be major leadership turnover in the form of lead negotiator and deputy director Bruce Meyer and executive director Tony Clark losing their jobs.

That time has passed, however, the worst possible damage from the storm now evaded. However, that storm is not quite finished. Luckily, as I get into, everything left is honestly just normal business: the kind of behaviors that you’d expect from a union that is nearly six times the size now as it was when it signed the 2022 MLB collective bargaining agreement, thanks to the addition of 5,400 minor leaguers as a sub-unit under the PA’s umbrella.

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Peter Angelos was an MLB owner from another time

Peter Angelos, 94, passed away this weekend, shortly before a sale of the team he’s owned for decades takes place.

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Given you’re reading a newsletter dedicated to sports labor, and especially in baseball, chances are good that you’re aware that Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos, who passed away over the weekend at the age of 94, refused to use scabbing replacement players during spring training in 1995. It’s been mentioned in every obituary and reflection on his professional life that’s come out since, but that’s because it’s still worth pointing out — especially in today’s climate, where it’s unlikely you could find an owner willing to go against the majority on practically anything, never mind something that was anti-labor and pro-ownership.

The thing is, this wasn’t some random act by Angelos. And not even in the sense that Angelos was a union and personal injury lawyer whose practice made a point of representing “working men and women since 1961.” Angelos purchased the Orioles in 1993, and then made enemies of practically every other owner in the course of a year. Here’s the Washington Post on Angelos, from February 5, 1995:

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Notes: J.D. Davis, MLBPA’s ‘coup’ attempt

Loopholes and growing pains.

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My latest for Baseball Prospectus published on Thursday, and it covered the J.D. Davis/Giants saga. Davis was awarded a $6.9 million salary in arbitration for the 2024 season, and then the Giants signed free agent Matt Chapman. Davis was shopped around for a trade, placed on waivers for anyone willing to take him and the $6.9 million for ’24, and then, when no one bit on either method of acquisition, San Francisco cut him.

They did so using what was described as a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement, but as I got into for BP, that’s not an entirely accurate way to explain what went down. What the Giants did was not great, in the sense they made a move they needed to make in a way that is only technically correct if you’re willing to grant them a whole lot of leeway on the spirit of that rule. Like, to the point of it being a different rule entirely: Davis was not cut because of a sudden injury or decline in his skills, but because the team signed a better player, and only after his arbitration hearing had already come and gone.

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The 2024 season begins in 10 days. Snell, Montgomery are still free agents

What are we even doing here?

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The reigning NL Cy Young award winner, Blake Snell, is still a free agent. The midseason trade pickup that helped propel the Rangers to their first-ever World Series championship, Jordan Montgomery, is also still a free agent. The 2024 Major League Baseball season kicks off on March 28, 10 days from this writing, and yet, the preceding two sentences can exist.

Some hesitation regarding Snell’s future is understandable, given that yes, he did win the Cy Young, but he also did this by allowing the fewest hits per nine of any NL starter — which isn’t exactly something you can bet on repeating to that degree — and his 180 innings is the most he’s thrown since 2018, when he managed two-thirds of a frame more than that en route to his first Cy Young award. It’s not that 180 innings is terrible in this day and age when starters aren’t allowed to pitch deep into games, it’s that Snell’s low inning totals come from a combination of high pitch counts and injuries. He made 32 starts in 2023, and threw at least 100 pitches in 18 of those, so it’s not like he was getting constantly pulled early in his day.

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