Category: MLB

Oakland isn’t going to just let the A’s extend their lease

Watch as the A’s try to extract something they need from a city they’ve been openly and unfairly criticizing for months and months.

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If you’ve been following along with the Athletics’ search for a stadium to play baseball in during the years where the (supposed, hypothetical) Las Vegas stadium is being built, then you already know that it is not going well. As I wrote for Baseball Prospectus earlier this month, John Fisher’s A’s no longer have a lease with the city of Oakland after the 2024 season, and then, playing outside the Bay Area until 2028, when the (supposed, hypothetical) Vegas stadium is finished and ready for baseball will cost them their regional television contract, which pays them $67 million per year.

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Is it Rob Manfred’s last term as commissioner?

A comment made by the current MLB commissioner makes it sound as if this current contract is his last one.

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MLB’s owners had their annual preseason meetings last week, and The Athletic’s Evan Drellich covered quite a bit of what commissioner Rob Manfred had to say after them. Lots of it is important to consider for different reasons, but this one stuck out first:

“In times of uncertainty, it’s hard to talk about additional change. Having said that, look, I got five (years as commissioner) left, this year and four more. Those teams, even if I push the issue, they won’t be playing by the time I’m done.”

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Notes: The A’s don’t seem more Vegas-bound yet, Diamond’s future

The A’s aren’t clarifying how this relocation is going to work over time. Instead, it’s only being further muddled.

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On November 30, Baseball Prospectus published a piece of mine titled “The A’s Move to Vegas is Approved, Not Assured.” The idea being that MLB had given permission for the Athletics to vacate Oakland and head to Las Vegas, but beyond that, all that was in place was Vegas allowing it to happen, too. There were a number of ways this relocation could fall apart, and the two-plus months since this piece ran have not reduced that number, either.

On top of that, 2024 kicked off with a look at how the A’s still haven’t provided the stadium renderings that they had promised in early December, and the excuses they used for the delay, both directly and indirectly, no longer exist. So what gives?

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Orioles reportedly selling, raking in public funds while avoiding paying taxes

The wealthy get all kinds of exceptions, like not having to pay taxes on money they make, and being able to lie to the government to secure even more money.

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Orioles’ ownership are reportedly selling the team for $1.725 billion, ending the reign of control person John Angelos. I’ll pause a moment for fans of the team to applaud. It can’t just be a straightforward deal, though, since this is the Orioles and Angelos we’re talking about. No, this is complicated, with multiple steps in the process, and oh, John Angelos and the rest of the family aren’t actually going anywhere yet. They’re merely selling a significant chunk of the team and handing over the day-to-day control to a new owner, billionaire David Rubenstein (who is buying the team alongside another wealthy individual, Michael Arougheti, and, per the Baltimore Banner, O’s legend Cal Ripken Jr. is part of the group as well).

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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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On MLB’s rejection of the Amazon/Diamond streaming proposal

MLB’s rejection is also them showing their hand on their preference for the future of broadcasting.

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You saw the headline, now let’s get to some background. From me on December 22, at Baseball Prospectus:

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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: MLB broadcasting and Amazon, Tinyletter

The latest on the Diamond broadcasting issue, as well as some newsletter housekeeping notes.

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Here we go, the final newsletter for 2023. Thanks for reading through what has been a year that involved a lot more stadiums and a lot less labor-specific news than expected. But don’t worry, MLB deciding to mess with workers of one kind or another is a tradition they don’t plan on leaving behind forever.

***

Earlier this week, it was reported that Diamond Sports Group, which runs the Bally regional sports networks, was seeking a way back to the kind of profit they were hoping for by negotiating a partnership with Amazon. This would allow them to rely less on the shrinking cable market, and by moving onto one of the streaming video platforms with the most subscribers. Amazon Prime Video has 200 million subscribers, with Netflix (247 million) having more, Disney+ behind at 150 million, Paramount Plus at 63 million, Hulu at 48 million, Peacock 28 million, ESPN+ 26 million, Apple TV 25 million. Amazon Prime Video is massive, is the point, with only the original streamer ahead (and also the only one not tied mostly to their own original content). If Diamond is going to partner with anyone in the space, Amazon makes the most sense, especially since they’ve already successfully partnered with the NFL for Thursday Night Football.

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