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’s early collective bargaining sessions might just be theater
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If what Evan Drellich has reported at The Athletic is any indication, we should be expecting little to no progress from Major League Baseball and the Players Associations two-years-early collective bargaining sessions. The short of it is that MLB claims they’re still awaiting any meaningful proposal from the MLBPA, while the players’ side doesn’t seem to believe MLB is here to do anything but tell people that they tried to start a dialogue.
From Drellich:
In his opening statement Tuesday in an annual media session before the All-Star Game, Clark listed off the primary talking points for the players: A desire for greater competitiveness amongst teams, improvements to free agency, and so on.
Then Clark quickly suggested that the league will not engage substantively on any of these fronts at this point, because the league doesn’t want to change its economics. A charge, in essence, that the league is willing to listen, but not act meaningfully.
If you’ve ever been involved in collective bargaining or even as part of a union listening to what your bargaining committee is reporting back, then you know this feeling all too well. MLB could very well be presenting a sympathetic face to the media and fans, so that if things come crashing down in the future, they can always point back to this moment and say they tried. If it weren’t for those pesky players, you know?
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The Mariners’ owner is all about flexibility and my eyes hurt from all the rolling
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
The Rays two-city plan is a scam, and they know it
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Those Tampa Bay Rays truly are innovators. Most franchises? Well, most franchises would be satisfied screwing over taxpayers in just one major city in order to finance a new ballpark, but the Rays, they’re aiming for two major cities.
The latest stadium “plan” out of the Rays’ ownership group boils down to this: asking Tampa (or St. Petersburg) to finance a smaller, $600 million stadium without a dome, for baseball use in the earlier part of the season. The rest of the season would be played in Montreal, which, by the way, would also have to build a new stadium for the Rays. The idea here is apparently that the Rays could play baseball in Tampa Bay when it’s relatively cooler, earlier in the year, and then the mixed-use stadium would be free for other events when it’s too hot for baseball and also unprotected from central Florida’s torrential downpours.
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The media isn’t helping
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For some reason, The Ringer published a podcast featuring special guest Ben Shapiro on Thursday. Yes, that Ben Shapiro, the only Ben Shapiro, the one adored by the right wing and mass murderers, as Deadspin reminds. Shapiro was a guest on Larry Wilmore’s podcast, because Larry Wilmore was at one time a guest on Shapiro’s podcast, and I guess we learned nothing from like, Jon Stewart going on Tucker Carlson’s show and how little damage trying to clown on him and his bow tie while having a discussion with him did to his stances and career.
How’d it go? Well, let’s take this bit from Deadspin’s piece, and you’ll understand in a hurry (you should also read that piece in full for the full context, if you’re unaware of who this goblin is):
Sports betting is a labor issue, especially in MiLB
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 teams are more likely to Mets than use exciting loopholes in the draft
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
Mailbag: MLB and the climate, bargaining wedge issues
Let’s mailbag!
It seems like the climate crisis is breaking through into popular culture — the Lil Dicky Song, the HBO documentary narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio — any indication an MLB player might weigh in? — Keith
I can’t tell you which MLB player would speak up for the climate, but now would be a pretty good time, considering what the Padres did (and will continue to do) out in San Diego. This past Sunday, bees showed up at Petco Park. The Padres’ response was to murder all of them, which [checks notes] is not standard procedure at sporting events.
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Drafts are indefensible, unless you’re a team owner
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The NBA Draft lottery occurred earlier this week, and with it came the usual fanfare. In addition, there was also criticism of the NBA Draft, and sports drafts in general, from various commentators like Bomani Jones and Joe Sheehan, whose Twitter thoughts on the matter I’ll share below:
“Just a reminder that Zion Williamson should get to pick where he works, like the rest of us do, rather than have his employer picked for him and his salary dictated to him. Sports drafts are indefensible.”
Jones, in response to Sheehan:
“I say this every year and people act like it’s the craziest thing ever. Drafts are so baked into sports that people can’t even consider the idea they are fundamentally unfair.”
Sheehan is wrong about one thing: drafts are defensible, so long as you happen to be working in or for one of the leagues operating one. As Bomani Jones implies, fans are brainwashed into thinking drafts are necessary, when they very much are not. Drafts, like pretty much every other policy put forward by owners in sports leagues, exist in order to control labor and limit their earnings. In a league with a salary cap like the NBA, this becomes even more obvious: 29 of the NBA’s 30 teams spent the 2018-2019 season right below or right over the $109 million salary cap (the latter allowed by a series of complicated exemptions for additional spending). No one in the NBA can hoard talent in the absence of a draft, as roster limitations, the salary cap, and the lack of an organized minor league that’s comparable to what Major League Baseball has in play make that impossible.
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Red Sox White House visit illuminates larger MLB-wide problem
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The defending World Series champion Red Sox should never have gone to the White House to visit President Donald Trump. That’s the beginning and end of the story, or, at least, it should have been the end. Instead, the Red Sox did go to the White House — the white Red Sox, anyway — and now we’ve got denials of any kind of clubhouse divide, non-white players put into public positions they never should have been forced to have to take, and Trump taking credit for the Sox’ recent resurgence because they were able to absorb his aura or whatever via soggy and cold McDonald’s lunch ritual.
Even the Washington Post, which is certainly not some bastion of progressive thinking, says the racial divide shown by who went and who did not is “impossible to ignore.” Yahoo’s Hannah Keyser has the right idea, too, writing that if the Red Sox wanted to remain apolitical, the organization never should have put players in a position to choose going or not:
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