Category: Management Bullshit

Notes: White Sox stadium rumors, changing free agency, Diamond

Jerry Reinsdorf is doing it doing, changes are needed to get players to free agency sooner, and Diamond has a deal, maybe.

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Remember back during the winter meetings, when Jerry Reinsdorf went and had lunch with the mayor of Nashville? With the idea being that it was solely to help build up some leverage for some stadium demands in Chicago? Last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the White Sox were in “serious talks” to build a stadium, following a meeting between Reinsdorf and Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson.

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Red Sox explain ‘no, not like that’ in response to broken ‘full-throttle’ promise

The Red Sox said one thing and did another. Can you believe it?

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Back on November 2, when the Red Sox introduced their new executive — chief baseball officer Craig Breslow — at a press conference, one of the Fenway Sports Group owners, Tom Werner, made a comment that suggested things were going to change in Boston:

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Winning requires ‘more than just player payroll,’ but you also need that

Payroll isn’t everything when building a competitive team, but that doesn’t mean you can outright ignore it like the Pirates plan to.

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The Pirates had their annual fan fest — PiratesFest — over the weekend, and made a point of saying that the questions weren’t pre-screened. The answer to one, about payroll, stuck out in a way that I think requires a little bit more analysis. Here’s the TribLive story it lives in:

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Notes: A’s stadium renderings, crawl of free agency

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When last I checked in on the A’s and the Las Vegas stadium discussions, it was for a piece at Baseball Prospectus titled, “The A’s Move to Vegas is Approved, Not Assured.” It was basically a laundry list of all the things that could still, very realistically, go wrong with the A’s move out of Oakland and into Las Vegas, and concluded with this:

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Notes: Shohei Ohtani, gambling, Camden lease

Shohei Ohtani’s deferrals, betting lines moving because of MLB employees, and chaos in Baltimore.

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Shohei Ohtani is a Dodger for the next 10 years, but he’s going to be paid by them for much longer than that. The $700 million contract—the largest in not just MLB’s history, but in North American pro sports history—that the two parties agreed to is going to be “mostly” deferred, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, which will significantly decrease the luxury tax hit his contract will have on the Dodgers each season. Teams are allowed to use deferrals like this, to create a “discount” on the luxury tax hit, and the Dodgers are apparently utilizing that idea to its fullest. Ohtani will still get paid a significant amount of cash each year, but he’ll also be collecting paychecks from the Dodgers well after he’s retired. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

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You don’t have to buy what Jerry Reinsdorf is selling

Jerry Reinsdorf loves to lie so much that he’s bragged about it in print, and yet!

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One bit of news from this year’s MLB winter meetings that flew under the radar amid all the Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto rumors only sort of involved the winter meetings. White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly met with the mayor of Nashville — the host city for the meetings — about… something. The what is undisclosed, but it also doesn’t matter, because the only thing happening here is that Reinsdorf is trying to drum up concern back in Chicago that something that does matter could have been discussed.

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The Orioles have the cash and the prospects to improve. So why aren’t they?

The Orioles look like they might “we tried” their way through another offseason.

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The Orioles appear to be close to signing free agent reliever Craig Kimbrel to help out a bullpen that’s missing the injured Felix Bautista, who is out for the 2024 season following Tommy John surgery this year. That’s good, that they’re being proactive. The Orioles’ problem hasn’t been that they make no moves, though: it’s that they aren’t making enough of them. And the non-Kimbrel parts of this offseason so far are a good reminder that this issue remains.

On November 29, Jon Meoli, writing for the Baltimore Banner, discussed that the pitchers who could help the Orioles’ rotation were already coming off the board, and once they were gone, that was going to be that. Options still remain and all, but the Orioles haven’t exactly shown a willingness to go out and get them if it’s going to cost money — recall that Kyle Gibson was thought to be maybe just the start of something last winter, especially when the Orioles went after him so quickly, but that didn’t turn out to be the case at all.

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US Senators ask Rob Manfred and MLB to explain this spring’s anti-labor action

MLB’s support of a wage-suppressing exemption to a state law in Florida hasn’t gone unnoticed by the federal government.

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With the unionization of minor leaguers voluntarily recognized by Major League Baseball this past spring, the federal government seemed to slow down its questioning of the league and its motives with regards to labor and potential abuse of their antitrust exemption. The questions aren’t completely gone, however, as three senators — Richards Durbin and Blumenthal, as well as John Hickenlooper — sent a letter to the league seeking clarification on why MLB would say one thing and do another.

The issue in question is the league’s support for an exemption to Florida’s state wage and hour laws. Which, if you’ll recall, is something MLB put in for back in March even as they were voluntarily recognizing the union (original reporting by Jason Garcia). These three senators want to know why MLB is pursuing laws that “appear to significantly undermine the agreement,” where the agreement is the collective bargaining agreement ratified by both the Major League Baseball Players Association and the league itself.

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MLB owners meetings begin Tuesday, Oakland mayor requests ‘no’ vote on A’s relocation

The Las Vegas A’s story will complete one more chapter this week, one way or the other.

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The annual MLB owners meetings begin in Arlington, Texas on Tuesday, November 13, and will run for three days. Assuming no gastrointestinal virus rips through them like happened with the canceled GM meetings, anyway. Among the many points under discussion is the Oakland Athletics, and whether they should become the Las Vegas A’s, or whatever it is they’d change their name to if forced.

The city of Oakland hasn’t fully given up on the A’s yet, with the current mayor, Sheng Thao, submitting a letter to 15 of MLB’s owners, asking them to vote no on the relocation of the club. Not all 15 would need to be convinced in order to halt the relocation, either: this kind of move requires 23 of the 30 owners to vote yes. If it does get the required number of votes, you can be sure a revote would be cast to make it seem as if it’s a unanimous decision, but before that false front is presented to the public, earning those 23 yays is the goal.

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Schools Over Stadium loses lawsuit over petition, but plans to start over

Schools Over Stadium has been slowed down, but they aren’t giving up on cutting off the A’s stadium funding in Las Vegas.

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Let’s rewind to September for a moment. The A’s and the state of Nevada pushed ahead with plans for a publicly financed stadium, and the state’s educators pushed back with the filing of a petition meant to cut off said public finances. The plan was to get the petition its required signatures and put it on the ballot in 2024, so that the citizens of Nevada could decide if they wanted their tax dollars to go towards yet another new stadium, or if those funds should instead be put toward anything else. Like, say, the educational system that desperately needed them.

I wrote about that issue at Baseball Prospectus (no subscription required) after speaking with the Nevada State Educators Association:

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