How to solve the lockout in one easy column, how to screw up the minors even more than you already have, and how NOT to argue about the designated hitter.
Here's an idea to stop free agents moving...because we do lose something when a big name moves.
Idea: when a free agent is offered a contract by another team, the player can only provisionally accept. If he provisionally accepts, his old team is given the opportunity to offer a contract which is identical except that all the pay figures are multiplied by 95%. If the old team does that, then the other team's offer is also multiplied by 95%. Then the player chooses. But if the old team doesn't make a counter offer then the provisional acceptance is confirmed, as it stood, at 100%.
Apart from everything else, it would clarify excuses like "we made a great offer but he just wanted to leave" or "we wanted him to stay but he never even came back to us with a proposal".
Pre pandemic, I went to a craptonne of Gwinnett games and probably would have been to more than a handful last year but for a couple of surgeries for my wife and I. I'm having a hard time seeing how the Endeavor transaction risks making that somehow more corporate. The parent club owned the AAA franchise, as well as the AA and one of the A teams that were part of the announcement yesterday. Do I think that Endeavor's corporate management will somehow be more soulless than Liberty Media?
Before moving the the Atlanta suburbs two decades ago, I was a season ticket holder for the Montgomery Biscuits. I haven't followed that team at all since moving away, but at least back then, the owners also owned the Lansing Lugnuts and IIRC two other teams with similarly weird monikers. (Best name for a minor league club comes not from baseball, but hockey ... just south of Atlanta we used to have the Macon Whoopee team.) We are multiple generations removed from having small local business people owning the minor league clubs and running them like junior versions of Bill (or Mike) Veeck.
Regarding tech fixes for climate, I encourage more active hostility in place of ambivalence. More significant than the likely unintended consequences, none of the ideas are ready, scalable, or feasible enough to implement in sufficient quantities to at all move the needle on climate before it's far too late.
Due to the above, these ideas fundamentally serve the function of preserving the status quo. They tell us we don't need to actively change much because tech will passively, vaguely "save us" somehow. I made a Charlie Brown kicking football meme about this years ago.
There is no climate technology that is ready, cheap, or environmentally sustainability enough (think destructively mining minerals for EV batteries) to scale to planet-saving levels. And that doesn't even factor in climate justice either, which is somehow never mentioned in these tech discussions.
The only thing that can save most life on earth is the thing that is never really considered in popular discourse: a massive reduction in energy consumption.
My meta-argument for the DH, its nice to have unimportant things to argue passionately about. Maybe now that we can argue about shifts and openers, its not longer needed. My entertainment argument for the DH is its the closest thing we have in sports to seeing what it looks like when you let a regular person go up against major league talent. The world is a better place because we got to see Bartolo Colon bat.
Fun fact I was reminded of on the bird app yesterday, with with Jack Graney winning the BBHoF’s award for broadcasters.
The Canadian BBHoF has an award recognizing Canadian media members for their contribution to baseball in Canada, last won by Dan Shulman in 2020. It’s named the Jack Graney Award (Graney also being Canadian).
I will likely always root for the Angels, but I also root for Arte Moreno’s Trump-loving face to be stymied at every turn as he attempts to extract absurd value from the city of Anaheim to enrich himself.
I hate how substack doesn't save your long-ass comment when you accidentally click away. It's a QoL thing that I feel incredibly spoiled complaining about, but it's super common, which makes me wonder how hard it is to implement.
Anyway, too long, not writing again, here's the bullet points:
I hate how my interests as a fan increasingly look nothing like the interests of ownership.
Second wild card spot is great for all involved (except fans of the teams in the one-game playoff in the short term). I was super wrong about it.
Further playoff expansion could (will?) be a tragedy of the commons situation. I can't tell you the last time I watched an NBA 1 seed bump off an 8 seed. It's just so inconsequential. And the playoff chase doesn't really feel like it has stakes. You've got teams fighting to see who gets eliminated in the first round.
This newsletter has done a great job at highlighting the movement away from the ball club being the primary source of revenue. Thanks for that, and I'm happy to see it getting more mainstream (Jeff Passan was complaining about it a couple weeks ago. Great stuff).
Capitalism is awesome (I know, hot take here) because it does a good job at aligning everyone's interests.
Capitalism has gotten a lot less awesome because there's been a "cult of business" that believes those are the only interests that matter, which, no. This has manifested in both government actions that decouple business interests from workers' interests and the public good, and a drop-off in voluntary alignment, which was never guaranteed, but was nice while it lasted. But because of above, we're not able to implement some compensating controls to increase that alignment, because the mixed economy that drove America's success is Literally Socialism, and needs to be stopped (unless CEOs pander to Democrats, in which case the entire industry needs to be re-educated on their responsibility to only serve True Patriots)
I wonder what possessed the union negotiators to accept an agreement that just barely addressed the concerns of the rank and file. Sounds to me like they need new negotiators. Anyway, two months ago I emailed the union and they were not calling for boycott then. I am sure that is going to change, but so far there is nothing on their website saying as much.
And I am happy to say that my wife is now a member of an union in her new job.
I was sort of impressed that Rosenthal was at least trying to find a middle ground since he's often just a voice for the owners. I think that to a very large degree, even such mouthpieces know that things are out of whack. Which isn't to say that I expect more pro-union coverage from most sites.
I don't agree with Craig on much: but that the owners are greedy and screwing the players is one of them. I do want to briefly say one thing about revenue sharing: I think if MLB is going to have a monopoly, and it's going to have one, they should act like they're one business. The Yankees would not exist, or be as profitable, if they did not have the small market teams (and vice versa). So some form of revenue sharing makes sense.
That being said the small revenue clubs are clearly abusing it. The Rays, Brewers and Guardians are clearly at least TRYING to win and build a club, but the Pirates, Reds and Marlins are clearly not trying at all. Something must be done to prevent those teams from pocketing millions on an annual basis.
"(b) the claim that pitchers only started truly sucking at hitting after the DH came on the scene."
I missed the great DH debate of 12/8, so maybe this was brought up already, but I've never understood this stance that pitchers would be better hitters if they simply practiced more. Pitching and hitting are two wildly different skill sets that have nothing to do with each other. They'll say, oh, but they were able to hit in high school. Yes, of course. Lots of people can hit high school pitching but still, somehow, can't hit major league pitching.
How many active pitchers today do we think could have made it professionally if they couldn't pitch? And why don't we expect the reverse? Anthony Rizzo struck out Freddie Freeman, so he's got the foundation. Do we think if he just focused more on pitching, he'd be a serviceable major league arm? These two skill sets are not interchangeable.
Excellent choice of song to finish on. David Byrne is a personal favourite artist, both with Talking Heads and solo stuff.
If Ruly Carpenter hadn't gone fishing one August afternoon in 1980 (or if cell phones were a thing then) the NL might've had the DH starting in 1982:
https://www.sportscasting.com/a-fishing-trip-cost-the-national-league-the-designated-hitter-rule/
Here's an idea to stop free agents moving...because we do lose something when a big name moves.
Idea: when a free agent is offered a contract by another team, the player can only provisionally accept. If he provisionally accepts, his old team is given the opportunity to offer a contract which is identical except that all the pay figures are multiplied by 95%. If the old team does that, then the other team's offer is also multiplied by 95%. Then the player chooses. But if the old team doesn't make a counter offer then the provisional acceptance is confirmed, as it stood, at 100%.
Apart from everything else, it would clarify excuses like "we made a great offer but he just wanted to leave" or "we wanted him to stay but he never even came back to us with a proposal".
Pre pandemic, I went to a craptonne of Gwinnett games and probably would have been to more than a handful last year but for a couple of surgeries for my wife and I. I'm having a hard time seeing how the Endeavor transaction risks making that somehow more corporate. The parent club owned the AAA franchise, as well as the AA and one of the A teams that were part of the announcement yesterday. Do I think that Endeavor's corporate management will somehow be more soulless than Liberty Media?
Before moving the the Atlanta suburbs two decades ago, I was a season ticket holder for the Montgomery Biscuits. I haven't followed that team at all since moving away, but at least back then, the owners also owned the Lansing Lugnuts and IIRC two other teams with similarly weird monikers. (Best name for a minor league club comes not from baseball, but hockey ... just south of Atlanta we used to have the Macon Whoopee team.) We are multiple generations removed from having small local business people owning the minor league clubs and running them like junior versions of Bill (or Mike) Veeck.
Regarding tech fixes for climate, I encourage more active hostility in place of ambivalence. More significant than the likely unintended consequences, none of the ideas are ready, scalable, or feasible enough to implement in sufficient quantities to at all move the needle on climate before it's far too late.
Due to the above, these ideas fundamentally serve the function of preserving the status quo. They tell us we don't need to actively change much because tech will passively, vaguely "save us" somehow. I made a Charlie Brown kicking football meme about this years ago.
There is no climate technology that is ready, cheap, or environmentally sustainability enough (think destructively mining minerals for EV batteries) to scale to planet-saving levels. And that doesn't even factor in climate justice either, which is somehow never mentioned in these tech discussions.
The only thing that can save most life on earth is the thing that is never really considered in popular discourse: a massive reduction in energy consumption.
My meta-argument for the DH, its nice to have unimportant things to argue passionately about. Maybe now that we can argue about shifts and openers, its not longer needed. My entertainment argument for the DH is its the closest thing we have in sports to seeing what it looks like when you let a regular person go up against major league talent. The world is a better place because we got to see Bartolo Colon bat.
Fun fact I was reminded of on the bird app yesterday, with with Jack Graney winning the BBHoF’s award for broadcasters.
The Canadian BBHoF has an award recognizing Canadian media members for their contribution to baseball in Canada, last won by Dan Shulman in 2020. It’s named the Jack Graney Award (Graney also being Canadian).
I will likely always root for the Angels, but I also root for Arte Moreno’s Trump-loving face to be stymied at every turn as he attempts to extract absurd value from the city of Anaheim to enrich himself.
Thank goodness my ‘Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch’ is made by General Mills. It’s a fantastically delicious cereal if you haven’t already partaken.
I hate how substack doesn't save your long-ass comment when you accidentally click away. It's a QoL thing that I feel incredibly spoiled complaining about, but it's super common, which makes me wonder how hard it is to implement.
Anyway, too long, not writing again, here's the bullet points:
I hate how my interests as a fan increasingly look nothing like the interests of ownership.
Second wild card spot is great for all involved (except fans of the teams in the one-game playoff in the short term). I was super wrong about it.
Further playoff expansion could (will?) be a tragedy of the commons situation. I can't tell you the last time I watched an NBA 1 seed bump off an 8 seed. It's just so inconsequential. And the playoff chase doesn't really feel like it has stakes. You've got teams fighting to see who gets eliminated in the first round.
This newsletter has done a great job at highlighting the movement away from the ball club being the primary source of revenue. Thanks for that, and I'm happy to see it getting more mainstream (Jeff Passan was complaining about it a couple weeks ago. Great stuff).
Capitalism is awesome (I know, hot take here) because it does a good job at aligning everyone's interests.
Capitalism has gotten a lot less awesome because there's been a "cult of business" that believes those are the only interests that matter, which, no. This has manifested in both government actions that decouple business interests from workers' interests and the public good, and a drop-off in voluntary alignment, which was never guaranteed, but was nice while it lasted. But because of above, we're not able to implement some compensating controls to increase that alignment, because the mixed economy that drove America's success is Literally Socialism, and needs to be stopped (unless CEOs pander to Democrats, in which case the entire industry needs to be re-educated on their responsibility to only serve True Patriots)
I wonder what possessed the union negotiators to accept an agreement that just barely addressed the concerns of the rank and file. Sounds to me like they need new negotiators. Anyway, two months ago I emailed the union and they were not calling for boycott then. I am sure that is going to change, but so far there is nothing on their website saying as much.
And I am happy to say that my wife is now a member of an union in her new job.
I was sort of impressed that Rosenthal was at least trying to find a middle ground since he's often just a voice for the owners. I think that to a very large degree, even such mouthpieces know that things are out of whack. Which isn't to say that I expect more pro-union coverage from most sites.
Don't leave me stranded here...I can't get used to this lifestyle!
I don't agree with Craig on much: but that the owners are greedy and screwing the players is one of them. I do want to briefly say one thing about revenue sharing: I think if MLB is going to have a monopoly, and it's going to have one, they should act like they're one business. The Yankees would not exist, or be as profitable, if they did not have the small market teams (and vice versa). So some form of revenue sharing makes sense.
That being said the small revenue clubs are clearly abusing it. The Rays, Brewers and Guardians are clearly at least TRYING to win and build a club, but the Pirates, Reds and Marlins are clearly not trying at all. Something must be done to prevent those teams from pocketing millions on an annual basis.
"(b) the claim that pitchers only started truly sucking at hitting after the DH came on the scene."
I missed the great DH debate of 12/8, so maybe this was brought up already, but I've never understood this stance that pitchers would be better hitters if they simply practiced more. Pitching and hitting are two wildly different skill sets that have nothing to do with each other. They'll say, oh, but they were able to hit in high school. Yes, of course. Lots of people can hit high school pitching but still, somehow, can't hit major league pitching.
How many active pitchers today do we think could have made it professionally if they couldn't pitch? And why don't we expect the reverse? Anthony Rizzo struck out Freddie Freeman, so he's got the foundation. Do we think if he just focused more on pitching, he'd be a serviceable major league arm? These two skill sets are not interchangeable.
I am in my early 40's and I could no sooner stay out partying until 4:00 am than I could grow wings and fly to Mars.