While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Category: Management Bullshit
Unlock with PatreonMLB failed its first real coronavirus test
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Sports aren’t taking coronavirus resources from the public, unless they are
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We have been assured, again and again, that there are enough coronavirus tests available that athletes being continually tested throughout the return of sports won’t be taking away tests from the public. This is a point I have a hard time believing on its face, because no one has bothered to show the math on that yet, but I’m willing to acknowledge that it might be the truth. The thing is, though, that this line, that there are enough tests to go around and resources aren’t being taken away from the public in order to test and retest and retest athletes yet again, is still misleading. Because even if there are enough tests, it’s clear there aren’t enough or robust enough labs to analyze all of the tests: it doesn’t matter if you have enough tests if you lack the machines or technicians to analyze them all in a timely fashion.
Priority is being given to athletes over regular people, and that is where the resource issue is.
Continue reading “Sports aren’t taking coronavirus resources from the public, unless they are”
Taxi Squad concerns, and nearly half of MLB isn’t paying MiLB players in July
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
On ‘when and where’ and MLB’s latest proposal drama
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It’s been a wild few days for those watching the negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association. Last week, MLB stopped whispering and started yelling that they could impose a 48-game season on the PA, and, in one of those moments where people in power say their opponent is doing the thing they themselves are guilty of, accused the union of negotiating in bad faith. The PA responded by telling MLB to go ahead and set a schedule — “tell us when and where” to play — and MLB suddenly changed their tune upon realizing what was happening. The Players Association had backed MLB into a corner, which is not a place the owners have found themselves in for at least a couple of decades now.
Continue reading “On ‘when and where’ and MLB’s latest proposal drama”
Please stop both-sidesing the MLB labor battle
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With MLB commissioner Rob Manfred now saying he can’t 100 percent guarantee that there will be Major League Baseball games played in 2020, we’re about to witness a flood of “if only the two sides, equally at fault, would work together” sentiments. This was a take I was marinating even before Buster Olney woke up this morning and decided to both-sides what have very clearly been bad faith negotiations by the league:
There's no chance '20 baseball happens unless the two sides collaborate and try to make it work in the face of unprecedented circumstances. And both sides probably cannot get there unless they introduce new brokers to the conversation — likely impossible given time constraints.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) June 16, 2020
Olney, at this point, is either willfully ignorant of reality, or incapable of comprehending what’s going on. It doesn’t matter which it is: the material damage is the same.
Continue reading “Please stop both-sidesing the MLB labor battle”
Is having a season or harming the union more important to MLB’s owners?
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Do Major League Baseball’s owners actually want to have a 2020 season? It’s a fair question to ask, especially given their behavior surrounding the negotiations with the Players Association on how to go about actually hosting a 2020 campaign. As Craig Calcaterra pointed out, all of the movement has been one-sided: the players keep making adjustments in their proposals, while MLB keeps repackaging the same proposal over and over with slightly different looks that change none of its material purpose, then going to the media to complain about the players. A media, in many cases, that is all too willing to repeat what they’re told by the league.
The owners claim having a season where the players are paid their full salaries — where “full” is “prorated salaries equivalent to the number of games played,” not “their full guaranteed salaries laid out in their contracts” — will bring financial ruin to the league. The players, not interested in taking a second pay cut after agreeing to the first one, asked for proof of the owners’ claims, for ownership to open up the books and show some receipts. The owners did not give them said proof: as Ken Rosenthal reported, the answers the PA did get back, according to a union attorney, were “so heavily redacted as to be essentially meaningless.”
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Leagues speaking up about Black lives rings hollow
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New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees deserves to be derided for somehow still not understanding what the protests that saw Colin Kaepernick blacklisted from the National Football League were even about, but he’s far from alone in who we should be judging in this moment in time. The various sports leagues themselves have released statements that read like they knew everyone was expecting them to say something about the protests against police brutality of Black Americans, but wanted to make sure they said as little of substance as possible in the process.
This compulsory form of statement-releasing and posting is essentially a call of “Please Like Me” to a wide array of fans. These teams, leagues, and even some of the athletes within them want to be recognized as not explicitly racist or tone deaf, but they also don’t want to actually do anything besides collect on that acknowledgement. Take a look at the NFL’s statement, signed by commissioner Roger Goodell, for instance:
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MLB, MLBPA moving closer on compensation, but what about safety?
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MLB expected to cut 1,000 minor leaguers, while A’s won’t even pay the ones they kept
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As of this writing, it’s May 30. The last day of pay for Minor League Baseball players facing a postponed — and potentially canceled — season is May 31. Around half of Major League Baseball’s teams have stepped up to extend that pay a month, or through the rest of what would be the regular season for MiLB, but that’s not a universal solution. Baseball America has a continually updating story on just which teams have agreed to pay their players $400 per week beyond May 31, and while it’s a growing list, it’s not as long as it should be.
Some background: Minor League players, after initially being sent home without any direction from teams besides “stay in game shape without financial assistance from us,” were given $400 per week from the scheduled start of the Minor League season in early April through May 31. That $400 per week was, embarrassingly, a significant raise for low-level players, and an even more significant pay cut for those who had already escaped the tremendous indignity of the lower minors and were used to being a little better off thanks to the the wages of the high minors, which nearly approach the poverty line instead of sitting miles below it. As of a week ago, there had been no word from any teams about how they were going to handle the post-May 31 pay situation. Reports trickled out during the week, with some clubs extending things through June, others through August, but still, around half of the league has remained silent, and we’re one day from the final day of the initial promise.