Category: Management Bullshit

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: 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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Notes: Latest on the A’s, Reinsdorf’s Nashville gambit, WNBPA opts out of CBA

John Fisher is good for the money, he promises, also could someone please wildly overpay for a stake in the A’s, and soon? Also, Jerry Reinsdorf’s attempt to create leverage from the ether intensifies, and the WNBA players opt out.

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On Wednesday, Baseball Prospectus published a piece of mine updating their readers on what’s going on with the A’s and their quest to move to Las Vegas. I’ll give you the short version here: sources close to the A’s have been saying that there’s a plan “in place” for the private funds needed to cover the over $1 billion the A’s are on the hook for to build a stadium in Vegas, but no one is allowed to see the plan, there is no set date for revealing the plan despite a ticking clock, and oh, also the plan isn’t actually finished or in place, and is still mostly a hypothetical about things owner John Fisher could do if he wanted or needed to, I guess.

I bring this up here not just to point you in the direction of related writings elsewhere, but also because, later that same say, the New York Post published an “exclusive” story about the A’s and their quest to sell 25 percent of the team for $500 million, which some simple math tells us means they’re valuing the franchise at $2 billion. Two things: first, those same figures were reported nearly a year ago by the Los Angeles Times, and second, this doesn’t mean the Post is necessarily behind the times or the Times, so much as that it’s like Fisher simply isn’t moving off of this amount of money for this amount of ownership, and the calls for it are just getting louder given the aforementioned ticking clock.

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Rockies plan to cut payroll after losing 100 games again

The Rockies’ decisions are emblematic of a deeper issue in MLB.

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In 2021, the Rockies last 87 games. In 2022, they dropped 94. The 2023 season saw them take the L 103 times, and in 2024, they improved their record for the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 forced them to lose fewer games than they had the prior year, by losing “just” 101. Oh, right, and in 2019, before that 60-game season, Colorado lost 91 games. Don’t worry, in 2020, they were still on pace for 92 defeats, this was an unbroken string of failure.

How do the Rockies plan on fixing things for 2025? They’re once again hoping their youth movement does the trick, and also, they’re planning to cut payroll again. And this goes beyond just not spending the money that the end of Charlie Blackmon’s career frees up, as well, according to Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. They’ll be attempting to trade late-stage arbitration-eligible players to free up additional salary, players like Brendan Rogers, Cal Quantrill, and Austin Gomber.

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Phillies, A’s open up about spending, could not be more different

The Phillies and A’s both talked recently about the need for spending, but for some weird reason it’s a lot easier to believe one of them than the other about actually doing it.

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The Philadelphia Phillies are in the postseason, preparing to head to Citi Field to take on the Mets in their home after evening up the NLDS 1-1 on Sunday. Before the series began, Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein ran a story on the team and its owner, John Middleton, saying that he provides “an unsparing blueprint for his peers.”

The gist of the feature is that Middleton not only spends on payroll at a higher rate than most of the league — and does so consistently, with the team ranking fourth in opening day payroll in each of the last four seasons — but that he’ll invest in the players off the field, too. The food the players want? That’s what the team chefs make. When J.T. Realmuto said the team’s jet was behind the times enough that even the lowly Marlins had a better one? The Phillies got a new, much fancier aircraft. Clubhouse accoutrements, better equipment, an entire hibachi spread when Kyle Schwarber mentioned having a craving for that — if the Phillies want it, Middleton lets them have it, with Dave Dombrowski feeling confident enough in not even going up the ladder for the stuff that isn’t jet-sized to just authorize it himself.

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What was Ken Kendrick trying to do, exactly?

Ken Kendrick took the blame for signing Jordan Montgomery by talking about how bad of a decision it was to sign Jordan Montgomery. Oh boy.

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Jordan Montgomery’s 2024 season didn’t exactly go as planned, either for Montgomery or the team that signed him, the Diamondbacks. Montgomery was real good for the Cardinals in 2023 before a midseason trade shipped him to the Rangers, where he was a revelation, and a significant part of their first-ever World Series championship — a title they won for besting the Diamondbacks. This year, though, Montgomery made just 21 starts (and 25 appearances), totaling 117 innings, and produced an ERA+ of 67 in the process.

Given an ERA+ of 100 is supposed to represent an average performance, Montgomery was awful. Throw in that he managed a 136 mark in the stat in 2023, and entered 2024 at 116 for his career, and that 67, somehow, looks even worse. It’s not an entirely unexpected outcome, however. Montgomery, despite his strong 2023 and years of above-average work, sat on the sidelines as a free agent for the entire offseason, and then some. He didn’t agree to a deal with the Diamondbacks until March 29 — not only was this after the start of spring training, it was after the start of the actual regular season, which had begun the day before.

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The Oakland A’s are no more, and here’s why

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We’ve known this was coming for some time, of course, but it’s official: the Oakland A’s have played their final games in that city, as they’ll close out the 2024 season on the road. The next time they play a home game, it will be in Sacramento… assuming that park does end up with the necessary renovations to appease the Players Association, anyway.

The shock of this has, unsurprisingly, hit hard, both for people who have known this day was coming and for those who were sort of forced to recognize what’s been going on for the better part of the last two years. I wanted to address something Buster Olney posted on Twitter, though, since it feels like a too-common sentiment both for some media and fans who haven’t been locked in on this whole saga.

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Dick Moss, MLBPA legend, passes away at 93

One of the union pillars that helped banish MLB’s reserve clause passed away over the weekend.

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The names you so often hear associated with the end of Major League Baseball’s reserve clause are players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, as well as MLB Players Association executive director Marvin Miller, for encouraging this challenge to be made in the first place. Those players didn’t argue their own case in front of an arbitrator, however: that job went to Dick Moss, who had been hired by Miller as the union’s general counsel in 1967, and won his most famous and vital case eight years later, representing Messersmith and McNally, but in reality, far more players than just those two. His is a name worth remembering, too.

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Notes: A’s and Las Vegas timeline, Reinsdorf’s stadium gambit, incompetency

The more things change? No, just the more things stay the same.

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You will be shocked, but the A’s are in the news again for their planned move to Las Vegas. You will be even more surprised by this, but it’s more like “news” where information we’ve already had access to is being presented as if it’s new, in such a way that makes it seem if progress is being made. Ah, well, nevertheless.

Here’s an Oakland Fox affiliate, KTVU, doing that very thing earlier this week:

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