Notes: Orioles sale gets initial approval, A’s renderings sure do exist

The Orioles move one step closer to their sale, the A’s revealed a stadium they can’t build or won’t do what they say it will, and a note on other people’s coverage.

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Per the Baltimore Sun, Major League Baseball’s ownership committee voted to approve the sale of the Baltimore Orioles to David Rubenstein, which is not the same thing as the sale of the team being approved. For that to happen, at least 23 of the owners would need to vote in favor, but it’s also difficult to imagine any reason why this particular deal would be shot down. Well, alright, maybe a bunch of small-market owners would be upset about another owner coming in to spend more than the current O’s owners do, but this same-ish group of men also let Steve Cohen buy the Mets, so they don’t get too worked up over that sort of thing. Outside of trying to keep Mark Cuban out of their club, anyway.

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It feels like MLB is trying to force a signing deadline

MLB can’t get a salary cap, but they’ve got other ideas for artificially depressing free agent spending.

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It’s March 6. Major League Baseball is weeks into spring training now, and yet, some of the top free agents are still sitting there by the phone, waiting to be signed. It’s a real problem, but what the problem is, exactly, is not something that the league and the Players Association agree on.

MLB wants to institute a signing deadline, for all free agent activity, that’ll create “flurried,” short-term activity in the offseason. They’ve even proposed such a deadline to the union, which was not interested in that kind of arrangement, and have since brought up the fact they proposed it as if it would have been a true solution to the issue. Alden Gonzalez recently wrote about all of this for ESPN:

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Notes: Manfred’s legacy, uniforms, ‘collusion’

What will we remember Rob Manfred for, plus the latest on the pants, and the use of the “c-word”

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For Baseball Prospectus this week, I covered what commissioner Rob Manfred’s legacy could be (paid subscription required). It’s not a simple question, really, for two reasons: one, by the time Manfred leaves the role after the 2028 season, he’ll have been commissioner for nearly a decade-and-a-half, and two, there seems to be some new embarrassing thing he’s yelling about pretty much constantly.

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Notes: Rafael Devers speaks up, White Sox stadium, expansion

The Red Sox aren’t spending enough, the White Sox want to spend more public money than anyone ever, and expansion is in the news, again.

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Rafael Devers watched as Mookie Betts was traded to the Dodgers for salary relief. He saw the Red Sox bungle negotiations with Xander Bogaerts, who then left for the Padres. He can be forgiven for deciding to speak his mind on the current direction of the Red Sox, which, with spring training now open, he did at the first opportunity. Per Jen McCaffrey at The Athletic:

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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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