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.

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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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Mailbag: MLBPA members, licensing, and scabs

A question on why scabs were even allowed into the league in the first place.

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Mailbag time!

One of the things that has come up in our internal [organization] discussions lately is how if we are able to successfully unionize where I work, every employee that falls under the proper umbrellas is required to be a member of the union (that may be a California-specific thing, but I can’t remember). That got me thinking about some baseball players who I know historically were not part of the MLBPA. Barry Bonds and Kevin Millar (aka Jon Dowd and Anthony Friese) are the two big guys that came to mind. Under what circumstances was it okay for non-union members to participate in the league though? Couldn’t those guys have signed contracts that undermine things the MLBPA was doing? Wouldn’t the union have wanted to stop those non-union guys from signing into the league?

-HB

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The state of the Padres’ financials is still unclear (for now)

The Padres are trying to get under the luxury tax, but reportedly aren’t saying they have to be there: 2024 might end up clearing up quite a bit of what we don’t know yet.

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The Padres have been, and still are, cutting payroll. It’s a bit of a cause for alarm, when paired with the news that they took out a $50 million loan back in September — and wanted an even larger one than that — but there are also reasons to believe that maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. What we really need at this point is some clarity, and we maybe got a little bit of it over the weekend. Emphasis on maybe.

Per a report from The Athletic’s Dennis Lin, the Padres would “prefer” to get their payroll under $200 million in 2024, which would allow them to reset their luxury tax state, avoid penalties, and keep from stacking up further ones with repeated threshold crossings. However, “prefer” is not the same as “will,” and the team is apparently leaving open the possibility of crossing the threshold again, anyway:

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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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A new series investigates the Braves’ publicly traded business

The Braves have to file quarterly financial reports now, giving us some insight into their operations, and by extension that of the rest of the league. And now Rob Mains is on that beat.

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Last November, the Braves’ ownership changed hands. Well, sort of. They’re still owned by Liberty Media, but now the Braves are their own company, known as Atlanta Braves Holdings, LLC, with their own publicly traded stock. Which means they have to create detailed reports that other Major League Baseball clubs do not, as a window into their financial successes and failures.

Sure, they can still bend the truth or only show it through a lens that will trick you into seeing something that isn’t there — being publicly traded doesn’t suddenly make you ethical or moral or honest — but there’s a bit more reason for the Braves to be, at the least, more honest than the other 29 clubs, since they’re in the interest of attracting investors who are, comparatively, expecting things to be on the up and up. As Rob Mains explained for Baseball Prospectus:

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Red Sox job postings reminder of benefits of unionizing

Expectations for what teams have to feed to minor-league players keep changing, for the better.

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Before minor leaguers unionized under the MLB Players Association umbrella, MLB teams were reluctant to spend pretty much anything on them. The pursestrings loosened in recent years, sure, with player housing and raises and such becoming part of the norm, but all of that was done in an attempt to stave off public relations issues and the “danger” of player organizing. That was more of an investment in maintaining as much of the status quo as possible than it was in the players themselves.

Things are a bit different now with the collective bargaining agreement in place, however. (Some things are the same, because this is MLB, but hey.) For instance, the Red Sox have put up some job postings of late, looking for a dietician for each of their minor-league affiliates, as well as a roving nutrition coordinator. The dieticians are likely a pseudo-requirement, as the CBA states that teams must provide “high-quality” meals both before and after games for players, but these clubs could also just order better catering. Having a dietician planning out these meals will help ensure that they actually are “high-quality” instead of merely “not garbage,” which is significant.

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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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