Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1779: The Show Must Go On

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the beginning of the lockout, which marks MLB’s ninth work stoppage and the first in 26 years. They also discuss a flurry of buzzer-beating transactions, including the Dodgers re-signing Chris Taylor, the Cubs signing Marcus Stroman, the Brewers and Red Sox swapping Jackie Bradley Jr. and Hunter Renfroe, […]

And I've been locked out, and I know it's true But I can't begin to face up to the truth I wait so long for the walls to crack But I know that I will one day have you back And the hills are as soft as a pillow And they cast a shadow on my face And the view when I look through my window Hello and welcome to episode 1779 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always

by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, the lockout is here. I'm trying to get used to the idea of a work stoppage. It has been a while. Yeah. We've been making this podcast for a zillion years, but this is the first Effectively Wild recorded during an MLB work stoppage of any sort. It's been 26 years, and I don't know about you, but I don't really have very specific memories of the strike. I was what, seven years old. We were seven or eight when that was going on and I had not really become a big baseball fan by that point. So I was at most peripherally aware of it. Now I am much more aware of it and we are hosting a baseball podcast during a baseball work stoppage, so that'll be interesting.

Yeah. What are we going to talk about? We'll figure it out. I'm sure we will. There was a period without baseball last year, and we podcasted on, so we'll figure it out. This is a baseball podcast. It is not exclusively a Major League Baseball podcast. And there will still be things to discuss about Major League Baseball during this time.

But we will find things to talk about. I already have a few things that I'm excited about for upcoming episodes. So thanks for making us your lockout companions. And this episode will mostly be about the lockout. But that will not be the case, I don't think, on a daily or weekly basis. It won't just be, so here's your lockout update. There's no update. End of episode. We'll figure out some interesting stuff to talk about and not drill down on the lockout over and over and over again until there's actually something new to discuss, but we will be discussing it today, and we will be bringing on professor

and Fangraphs contributor Nathaniel Groh, who has been covering the labor situation for Fangraphs, and he will fill us in on where things stand. But it is sort of surreal. In a way, it's almost a relief to me that things have come to a head. I mean, yeah, if they could have avoided this and both parties had been satisfied with some other resolution to avoid this, then that would have been nice. But we've been hearing about this and reading about this for years at this point.

Like, this has been looming on the horizon for a long time, and I don't know whether there will be sweeping changes or not, but the pressures that have led to this have been building for some time. And the fact that it's here now and here in early December as opposed to, say, April, maybe this is what has to happen for things to change, for the pressure to be released. be released. The continental drift is happening and the tectonic plates are grinding against each other. And at some point, there has to be a bit of an earthquake. So maybe this is what it will be. And earthquakes are scary and dangerous, but maybe afterwards there's a little less pressure. So that's one interpretation of what's happening here. I think I agree with the broad sentiment of your statements,

although as someone who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, which is seismically active, I maybe would take issue with your particular metaphor. Yeah, I think that it's useful for us to remember that, you know, however you end up framing this particular episode of labor conflict, like this is a system that is both inherently collaborative, but also necessarily adversarial, right? These are two sides that are trying to come to an agreement about how to, apart from anything else, divvy up the resources that are generated by

this very profitable and lucrative sport. And they, I think, understandably, each side wants to take home as much of that as they can. And in order to find an equilibrium that they can live with and deem fair, they're gonna go at each other. And I think particularly since the last CBA was one that saw the players make, I think, some concessions that they could have anticipated

perhaps going poorly and not being able to sort of arrest some trends that we have seen accelerate and shift over the years that this was always going to be, as you said, a difficult time for the sport. But I also think it's useful to remember that this is the system in a lot of ways working as designed. Now now we'll get in in our conversation with nathaniel about some aspects of this that have been presented from the league's perspective as necessary that are indeed tactics that they are employing and they could have employed different ones but there being strife if that strife results in a healthier sport and one that you know fairly compensates players for what they contribute

to it, like that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're not going to enjoy the process by which we get there. But, you know, we should think about the cost of labor piece. And sometimes that cost ends up being too high for individuals or a collective to bear. And us sorting that out and riding the ship on it is not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. And you made a good point on Twitter, which does occasionally happen. Thank you.

Someone will make a good point on Twitter. Thank you. And you did a little PSA about the coverage of the situation, right? Yeah. Which you've probably brought up before on the podcast, but maybe it makes sense to mention again now that this is all happening for real. Yeah. I just think that for our fellow media members who are listening to this podcast, this is a serious thing and this is something that is important for us to get right,

not just in our capacity as journalists and writers, but in our capacity as people, right? I think that labor issues are unfortunately not always incredibly well understood by the general public, even though it impacts the way that we all live our lives as human beings and citizens every day. And I think one of the really powerful things about sports is that it gives us an opportunity to, in a digestible way, that it gives us an opportunity to, in a digestible way, interact with and understand issues that are really important to society. And, you know, the MLBPA and the other professional sports league unions are the most visible unions we have in this country. And so getting the coverage right, helping your readers to understand what the stakes are and what the issues are and why the sport has gotten to where it is and, you know, what the owners want and why

the players are pushing back on that. That's really important work. And I think work that we hopefully will see people take really seriously. And so, you know, there have been, you know, people pop off on Twitter. So like, I don't want to make more of that than, than we necessarily need to, but I have seen some consternation expressed by some of our fellow media members about, you know, I don't know if Americans really have it in them to, to hear more about millionaires versus billionaires. And it's like, well, you're, you're a writer with a platform. Like that sounds like a call for you to go do some work, right? you're a writer with a platform. That sounds like a call for you to go do some work.

That's an opportunity for you to interact with your readership or your viewership or your listenership and take these questions seriously and help people understand them. I think that our listeners will not be perhaps surprised about where on the sympathy spectrum I fall between ownership and and and the players but I do think that there are some really important questions here that are going to alter the fabric of this sport that we care about for a long time and that are going to have a direct impact on a lot of people's lives in the interim and so we should take that responsibility seriously and do our best to critically engage with

both sides. You know, I think we've had our share of skepticism about the claims that ownership has made over the years, and I think we will continue to have that. And I think that we have also expressed disappointment at times with the union prioritizing the interests of more established membership over, say, minor leaguers or who they do not in fairness represent as part of their bargaining unit or with players who are earlier in their careers and have not yet gone through the arbitration process or reached free agency. So, you know, we should confront those facts as they are presented and have a skeptical and

rigorous approach to them and resist sort of easy narratives because it's going to be a long winter. So it's plenty of time to do good work, right? We have plenty of time to do good work. Yep, good point. And one of the odder aspects of the immediate implementation of this lockout by the owners is that if you were to go to mlp.com in the moments after the lockout started, you would get the impression that players had all just suddenly been raptured. They're no longer headshots. There's no longer coverage of active players. And we will ask Nathaniel about why that happened. But I saw some people make the point that even though there may have been legal considerations that made it make sense for MLB to do that,

it seems like the product is suddenly a lot less interesting and exciting without active players. It seems like people are almost in this thing because of the players. And we can continue to talk about the players here or potentially even talk to players while the MLB.com blackout is in place here. But I guess we do have some players to talk about today because just before we get to the lockout, we did get one last flurry of transactions for who knows how long. And this is the last time we'll be able to talk about fresh transactions for some time before we do that can i say one more thing about our current situation and then yes like you i promise we will not talk about this every single time but i do think that one um perspective that

has seemed to percolate as it often does when we have these conversations especially when people get into the sort of millionaires versus billionaires mindset is, you know, these guys make so much more money than, you know, than teachers or firefighters or, you know, you know, trash collectors or what have you. And I just would invite everyone as they're thinking through kind of how they interface with these negotiations and what arguments in the course of them they find compelling that like i am open to the idea of us as a society perhaps having a broader conversation about work and like what work we prioritize and reward and how much we do that and what the sort of degree of compensation looks like and i i think that that's a worthwhile conversation, even within

the context of someone like a professional athlete who is doing something that is so hard and so hyper-specialized and that such a small percentage of the population can do to that level. But I think that if that is a exercise, a thought exercise that is compelling to you, it's worth remembering that we probably, at the end of that conversation, don't end up with pro athletes being compensated, say, the way that teachers are now and still having billionaires, right? Like that is a broader systemic consideration that I think is a worthwhile one for us to have like as human beings who participate in society.

But it's useful to remember that like this is a system that is highly lucrative for all of the parties concerned, certainly in recent years much more lucrative for ownership than it is for the players. But you don't really end up with a complete reconsideration of how we think about work and also still have Steve Cohen able to float the Mets. So it's just a thing to think about anyway. Yeah. able to float the mets so it's just a thing to think about anyway yeah well speaking of a few players who will be making more than teachers next season if there is a next season we think there will be a next season yeah we do there there were some interesting signings during this last gasp here of transaction activity before the lockout and we won't talk about all of them and maybe at some point we'll

be desperate and we'll get into withdrawal and we'll return to the phillies signing cory or something on like january 15th because hey we never talked about that but there were a few headliners here and by my count 28 of the mlb tradeors top 50 free agents have signed. So there's still some big names that are out there dangling. Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Chris Bryant, Trevor Story, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, Carlos Rodon, Clayton Kershaw, Michael Conforto, Kenley Jensen, Seiya Suzuki, all still without employers now. And I guess there's going to be another flurry presumably when and if this is resolved I know Travis Sawchik just went back and did a little retrospective on what happened in

April 1995 before that season started and he found that 140 free agents with major league experience signed contracts between April 3rd and April 26th of 1995, six contracts per day. So depending on when this is resolved and the lockout ends, then there may be a similar burst then. But still some big names out there, but a couple of big names that are no longer out there, Marcus Stroman and Chris Taylor. And there were aspects of these signings that surprised me. I think with Taylor, maybe we can start with him because that's a little less surprising perhaps, but he signed for four years and 60 million. Really, I guess it's four years and 56 with a bonus that he would get or a buyout on a club option for 2026. And he went back to the Dodgers and it seemed like

he wanted to stay with the Dodgers and they wanted to keep him. And he is just the epitome of a Dodgers style player in recent years in that they were able to get more out of him than his previous organization. And he has now fit this mold or made this mold of the multi-position player who can just slot in all over the field and play good defense and also hit i gotta say the terms of this i would have expected slightly more yeah for chris taylor which sets this apart from some of the other signings that we've discussed which were where i would have expected or higher than i would have expected this one like relative to some of the other contracts that were signed like if you're going to tell me that abyssal garcia is a four years and 53 million dollar player then is chris

taylor at four years and 60 million dollar player i probably would go higher if that's kind of what the market is paying for outfielders and Chris Taylor is not just an outfielder he's in everything so he's a really good player and he is what 31 years old a young 31 and he can kind of do it all and I know he sort of had a rough second half before he righted things in the postseason but maybe this is just a product of this fit between the player and the team have worked so well and he really seemed to want to stay. And I know that there were other teams interested and one would imagine many even team-friendly terms for Chris Taylor just given what he has accomplished over the past several seasons yeah I would agree with that I I expected him to do a bit better even with a return to Los Angeles especially given how the

rest of that market had moved and sort of where he stood in relation to you know he's he's a more versatile defender than than like Correa or Story although he is not as good a defender at one position as as Carlos Correa is obviously but yeah I was a little surprised that it was light but it does sound like he just really wanted to go back to LA and I think that they utilize him not that other teams couldn't utilize him in a similar way but I think as as Ben Clemens noted when he wrote up this deal for us at Van Graffs it's it's the perfect marriage of what Chris Taylor can do and how the Dodgers can utilize him but because the depth of their roster and the quality of their roster at the other spots allows him to really be sort of maximally valuable in

that versatile sort of flexible role in a way that is special because the rest of that Dodgers roster is special even without Seager right so I kind of get the logic of that and I think that you know if you really want to return to a place, there is value beyond the dollar amount that he might be realizing there. And, you know, he might have just said, like, this is enough for me. Like, imagine you're Chris Taylor, right? You're Chris Taylor the day you're traded to the Dodgers.

You are probably not expecting to be able to sign a $60 million contract. Now, I don't say that as if like, well, then he should be grateful to take anything, right? And he has to sort of live in the moment of being traded because the Dodgers helped him get better, but he got a lot better, right? He is a much better player than he is now. But maybe you say like, this is enough for me. I get to be in the place that I want to be.

I get to be utilized in a way that I find beneficial. I know the team appreciates. I want to kind of get another run at a ring. And I think I can help this team do it. And sometimes it comes down to that for guys. Sometimes that's enough. I think he had the option to make more money, it sounds like, than he has elected to. And so this seems like what he wanted.

And that's okay. If you want to surf and drink beers with your bros and you get to make at least $60 million with the option for more, I don't know, that's a good life. He seems like a guy who, I don't say simple, I don't mean that in an unkind way. He's just a guy who knows what he likes and he's able to do what he wants to with this and that's great. I kind of hoped he'd go back to Seattle. There would have been something very poetic about him being the Swiss army knife piece, the glue guy that really helps Seattle move forward. There would have been something really cool about that. But yeah,'t know I think that sometimes it is useful for us to remember that

as as well as we are able to value players now and understand the full extent of their talents and as good as teams are at that and as much as we I think rightly think that that tends to be the big driving factor in free agency like there are just idiosyncratic things about individual people that drive them to make choices that are right for them. And as long as the number isn't insulting, and I don't think this one is, like that's okay. Yep. So with Trey Turner presumably sliding over to replace Corey Seeger at shortstop, I assume

Taylor will split time at second with Gavin Lux and then spell all the outfielders and rove around as he does. And we talked last time about, hey, the Dodgers really haven't done much and Max Scherzer has left and now the pressure is kind of on them. Seager has left too. So they were probably feeling that a little bit and Dodgers fans, I'm sure, are feeling a little bit better about the state of the roster, given that they brought back one of their big free agents before things shut down. Clayton Kershaw, though, still twisting in the wind. So we will see. the best remaining starting pitcher, free agent starting pitcher on the market, went to the Cubs, of all places, on a three-year deal, of all things. Three years and $71 million with an opt-out after the second season.

So cannot say I expected the Cubs to be the big bidders on, well, anyone at this point. And also cannot say I expected Marcus Stroman to settle if he was settling for a three-year deal, given some of the other longer-term deals that we have seen handed out to comparable pitchers. I mean, if Robbie Ray and Kevin Gossman are going to get more years and Marcus Stroman, he's 30 years old. He's roughly the same age. And you look at his track record and he gets there in a different way, but he has gotten there. He has been a pretty durable and dependable performer. Obviously he opted out of the 2020 season, but he was quite good in 2019, quite good again in 2021. so cannot say i saw this coming and of course he

broke the news himself because yeah no one is on twitter more than marcus stroman is on twitter so he was first with the news there are times when you're like marcus maybe you could log off i don't know that i should be very clear i don't know that there's anyone on Twitter where I don't say, wouldn't you be better off logging off some of the time? Including yourself. Including me, I know. It's a real love-hate relationship I get with that platform. More to one end than the other.

I am surprised by this, not just because of the particulars of the deal, although I suppose that perhaps he is, you know viewing placing a good amount of value on that opt out after the second season and the ability to sort of re-enter the market but i find this to be a kind of interesting and weird fit uh from a roster perspective not because marcus strowman isn't good because marcus strowman is quite good i don't think that he's like a perennial cy young contender or anything like that but like he stroman is quite good i don't think that he's like a perennial cy young contender or anything like that but like he is he is a good pitcher who will give you quality innings and a lot of them at a time when that is not something you necessarily see all the

time but he isn't like a like the cubs defense is not good right no i don't think so like the cubs infield defense is not good and he is not like a big strikeout guy and so i could just see there being potential for like frustration at times when you match his particular set of skills with the um infield that he's gonna play in front of so like that's an interesting fit to me i don't know about that part but he's a really good pitcher so there you go yeah Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I guess over his past two seasons, he probably has a higher war than Robbie Ray's past two seasons

or Kevin Gossman's past two seasons. I mean, I'm talking full seasons here, skipping over 2020. And so he does have that dependability, and he doesn't get there with the extremely high strikeout rates that teams tend to prize and for good reason. But maybe there's some skepticism there because of that or he is more dependent on his defenses. But ultimately, he has done a pretty good job of controlling the factors that he can control and having pretty good control. controlling the factors that he can control and having pretty good control and I guess eliciting weak enough contact that he is able to get out on those ground balls and so it's been a formula that has worked well for him and when he has been playing he has made his starts generally and you

can count on him taking the ball and so I'm sure there were a lot of teams you would think that would have had interest in Marcus Stroman I mean I look at the Angels and talked last time about their seemingly strict stance against signing free agent starters to multi-year deals over almost a decade at this point. And if I were an Angels fan, I'd probably be thinking, well, we couldn't match that for Marcus Stroman. I mean, I know they just brought back Rysel Iglesias on a four-year deal, and he was a very important part of their pitching staff, but still could use some starters. So kind of surprised that there wasn't a team that would beat that, or that Stroman would not choose another team that did offer him a higher offer, or really that the Cubs would be the high bidders on anyone at this point

because I'm kind of used to the Cubs saying no we're not going to be we could be but we're going to get rid of our good players we're going to trade you Darvish we're going to trade away everyone who was a cornerstone of our championship team and we're not going to be the big players in free agency so just on a timeline basis like if this is just hey we think marcus stroman's pretty good and we thought there was a deal there and we don't want to be truly terrible and we want to give our fans the enjoyment of watching marcus stroman that's good i guess but why i wonder because the timeline doesn't seem to match up that well here unless the Cubs think they are very close to turning things around and to completing whatever they're calling their rebuild like if this is a three-year deal and potentially a two-year deal if there's an opt-out like I don't know if this was done with an eye toward a trade potentially or what

because otherwise you wouldn't think that the Cubs window really lines up with this signing exactly. Yeah, that part of it is interesting. And I want to make clear, I'm not like, I don't mean to overstate his reliance on a good defense behind him. He is a good pitcher. It's not like he's one of these guys with like a dramatic split between his ERA and his FIP.

It's just the roster fit is weird from that perspective for me. And yeah, I agree. They're not like a couple of guys away you know they're at least a couple of guys away so it's a and it's not like the seager semien signings where yeah the rangers are are still quite a few guys away but these are long-term seven-year ten-year deals exactly exactly right i i think that you know when you look at those signings, it's like you make that move in part because you're, you know, sort of making a statement about what future moves you might make, but also because you look around and you're like, well, you know, Corey Seager and Marcus Simeon aren't going to be free agents next year. If we want those guys three years from now, we need to sign them today because they're not going to be around

for us to sign them later. Like that's part of why you end up doing that stuff and so for a deal of this length with a pitcher it it doesn't align quite in the same way for the Cubs so yeah it's an odd one I mean I'm I'm happy for Cubs fans because they get to watch a good pitcher on a team that I think is going to be otherwise like pretty boring yeah pretty boring now granted Chicago might surprise us and do other stuff when we're back from the lockout, but I would be surprised if they had like a big impact signing ahead of them, just given how they have talked about their own payroll going forward. So I don't know. It's a bit of a head scratcher, but Stroman seems psyched about it.

So that's good too, I suppose. And then the only other big one that was also kind of confounding, not nearly as big. I don't know if you have a take on this one, but the Brewers Red Sox trade in which the Red Sox reacquired Jackie Bradley Jr. And also two Brewers prospects and sent Hunter Renfro to Milwaukee as a replacement for Abisail Garcia. And I think some people were a bit perplexed by this. Is this the Red Sox absorbing a contract in order to acquire prospects? Are they banking on a JBJ bounce back? Did you have an opinion on the motivations here? I think it can be both, right? I think that they can look at jackie bradley jr and think that there's potential for him to sort of rally from what he did last year and also you know be willing

to take on a bit of payroll in order to get a couple of prospects that they're excited about i really get it from from milwaukee's end like i think that hunter run fro helps them to address a a need maybe next year when i get excited about their starting pitching there will actually be hitting to back it up in the postseason wouldn't that be nice but no i don't have a super developed opinion beyond that i don't know it's kind of fun to run it back i guess i don't know i feel badly because jackie bradley jr like the defense has really slipped so it's like the value is is uh it's kind of dependent on him either looking a lot better in the field or the bat rallying in a way that i don't know that's

kind of but they got some prospects and now hunter renfro gets to be a a brewer so that's fine yeah the red sox reunion i was even more interested in, of course, was the Red Sox brought back Rich Hill yet again for, I think, his fourth tour of duty with the Red Sox organization. So, of course, thrilled that Rich Hill will presumably still be in uniform at age 42 in his 18th major league season, and it will be a familiar uniform. So still going strong or strong enough i mean rich hill pitched almost 160 innings in 2021 who saw that coming that's like you can almost win a cy young award with that number of innings so he is still pretty effective when he pitches so this is a one year five million dollar deal and the red sox uh also signed a favorite of yours right james paxton so yeah they are uh supplementing their rotation with a couple

of oft injured lefties yeah hopefully they will not be often injured and they've both been mostly effective when they are not injured i guess with the exception of some of paxton's most recent work yeah it's it's interesting i think that um you know this year they were really bolstered by a rotation that was remarkably healthy you know obviously they didn't get sale back until later but apart from that like their guys stayed healthy for a lot of the year. Some of them are guys with their own question marks in terms of health. It's like they're trying to run that back with another set of oft-injured but good when healthy guys.

I don't know. It's not getting the same band back together again, but you're trying to play the hits once more. I don't know. I think that if that stuff works out for them, if those guys are able to stay healthy, if later into the year when he's fully recovered from Tommy John, Paxton is able to pitch,

that's a nice boost going into the postseason, assuming that he looks like the good version or some version of the good version of himself. But yeah, I don't know. It would be so cool if Rich Hill was amazing. That would be so cool if he was amazing for them. Rich Hill is always amazing. There's no hypothetical there.

He will be amazing. I don't know whether he'll pitch well, but he'll be amazing. He'll always be himself, and that is amazing. Yes. All right. So hopefully you all savored the transactions while they were there because they're going to have to last you a while. You've squirreled away these signings for the winter.

And now we will go some period of time without any signings or trades or anything. But we will have plenty of podcasts for you. And after we take a quick break, we'll be back with Nathaniel Groh to talk about the labor situation and what to expect with the lockout is here, and so is our guest for today, Nathaniel Groh. He is an associate professor of business law and ethics and the Yormark Family Director of the Sports Industry Workshop at the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University. He has been and will be covering the lockout and the labor situation for Fangraphs. Hey, Nathaniel.

How's it going? I'm good. How are you guys? We're doing okay. So we talked a few weeks ago to Evan Drellick and previewed some of these issues, and I know you've written about it for Fangraphs, but just as a refresher for what a lockout is and why this is happening I know Rob Manfred in his lengthy letter to fans that was posted early on Thursday morning he portrayed it as MLB being forced to commence a lockout of major league players, which as I understand it is not technically true,

although it is also with plenty of precedent that other sports leagues have done similar things in recent years. So what's a lockout and why did MLB decide to implement it? Yeah, sure. So the lockout is kind of like I said on a recent piece on Fangraphs, it's basically the ownership equivalent of a strike, right? So everybody's probably familiar with the strike. Players say we're not going to work until the owners relent to our demands and, you know, agree to a satisfactory new CBA. Owners have the right to lock the players out so the players can't show up to team facilities once the season starts. If the lockout's still in place, they won't get paid. There won't be games. It's basically the ownership way to put pressure on the players to try to get them to relent and reach a deal on favorable terms. owners weren't required to do this. I am a little sympathetic to Rob Manfred's position from the

perspective of the owners were really in a position where they could either just not do a lockout and wait for the players to go on strike or to try to move the work stoppage up into the offseason. So they've obviously chosen to try to have this fight now. And I think the hope is that it just gets resolved before, if not before spring training, before the start of the regular season. Is it advantageous in some other way? Is it just, well, if we do this now, then we won't be doing it on opening day and there will be less of a chance of losing games? Or is there something else about it that makes it more beneficial for owners to do this as opposed to just kind of continuing under the current CBA. I know that the teams have kind of had this coordinated message seemingly where they've been calling it

a defensive lockout, quote unquote. I don't know if you can explain what they mean by that. Obviously, each side is sort of spinning things from their perspective, as one would expect. Yeah. I mean, I think that the benefits from the owners are kind of all of the above of what you listed. So I think the biggest thing is the worst, it's almost like the opposite of the worst case scenario, right? The worst case scenario for the owners would be kind of like in 1994, for those that are old enough to remember that the players and the owners just went without a new CBA. They went into a season, kept negotiating, kept negotiating. And all of a sudden in August, the players said, well, we're out, we're on strike at the worst possible moment for the owners in terms of revenue, the playoffs, all that stuff. And so,

you know, from the ownership's perspective, I think probably the number one benefit of a lockout is to hopefully avoid that scenario where the players dictate the timing, you know, and sacrifice potentially, you know, the playoff chase and the playoffs themselves. Otherwise, I think like right now, I don't really think it matters for the next month or so. Yeah, there's those guys who are current free agents, people who are just non-tendered, guys who are going in for, you know, arbitration eligibility who are kind of in limbo. But for the most part, it's not going to really kick in until February. And in February, once the players can't report, once the players, again, aren't going to be able to sign contracts, once they're not going to start getting paid, I think from the ownership's perspective,

the hope is that that starts to fracture the players a little bit, that you get some division amongst the players and maybe a significant enough percentage of them push to get things restarted that they take a less favorable deal from the player's perspective than they might have otherwise. So you wrote about this at a great length for us at FanGraphs, but for the folks who haven't had a chance to read your recent piece, now that the lockout has been instituted, what are the choices sort of before the Major League Baseball Players Association in terms of how they can proceed with the negotiations as they currently stand? Sure. So the players basically are in a position where they have two, in big picture,

strategy-wise, they have two options. They can continue the status quo, which is they remain a union, they negotiate, they try to reach a deal with the owners, they hopefully start to make some headway and whether it's next month or February or whenever we reach a deal. The other option is to, which I don't want to say nuclear, but a more aggressive option at least would be to dissolve the players' union and basically say, we are no longer going to operate as a unionized group of employees. And we can get in more to the ins and outs of that. But basically, the benefit of that from the players' perspective is that they then can file litigation. They can challenge the lockout in court. They can allege that it violates the

federal antitrust laws. And that potentially recalibrates the leverage a little bit. It shakes things up and it gives the players some more leverage over the owners. And so far as now, they've got a lawsuit with a variety of different remedies that might be in play that could, again, persuade the owners to maybe give in a little bit more than they are otherwise motivated to do. And there's some precedent in other of the major four men's North American Sports League for decertifying the union and moving forward. How has that played out in other leagues? Has that been to the players' benefit or has it sort of resolved against their favor? So also a good question. It depends on what time frame you're looking at and kind of whose position you take. But I would say overall,

the biggest win in that regard was definitely for the NFL players back in the 80s. The whole reason that they have free agency is because the players in the late 80s decertified their union. They took an antitrust lawsuit against the owners, and eventually that forced the owners to give them the right to free agency. And so that's definitely the big shining hallmark victory of that strategy from the player's side. More recently, in 2011 and 2012, you saw the other three main leagues, the NFL, NBA, and NHL, all go through lockouts similar at the know, the start of the, you know, the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement during the off season. And all three of those cases, the players decertified their unions. And ultimately, this is where, you know, reasonable minds could disagree. But my read on it is that the players were by doing so were able

to secure modest additional benefits so that the deal that they reached was not significantly maybe, but slightly more advantageous than it appeared to the direction that they were headed in before they took that step. So this is the first action like this in the internet era in MLB. It's been quite a while and things are different now in a number of ways. And one of those differences really manifested right after the clock struck midnight, I guess it was, when suddenly player likenesses disappeared from all MLP online platforms and stories about active players were wiped from MLP.com

and player-centric promotions were replaced with generic descriptions of players instead of the actual players' names, and this was just a sweeping change that clearly had been prepared in advance, and petty action by MLB. Not that they're not capable of doing those things, but this is a legal matter, right? So what does MLB have to do essentially to be compliant with this current situation? current situation? So that's a really good question. And I know Rob Manfred said that it was legally driven. I don't know that it is, and I don't know that it isn't. I haven't looked into it. So I mean, I'm guessing that MLB's position would be that once we're no longer in a collective bargaining agreement and that that then affects our rights to use the players' names and images and likenesses on our website. But I'm not sure that that's necessarily accurate, but it doesn't seem like the players were particularly happy about it. So it doesn't seem like that's something that the players would have pushed. But again, I can't speak to the actual

ins and outs of whether that was legally mandated or not. I don't believe that the other leagues did that back in 2011, to the best of my recollection, kind of to that point, but I might be wrong on that. Beyond that particular question, perhaps you can help to clarify this for our listeners. Sort of what are the obligations of each side in a proceeding like this where they are trying to reach a collectively bargained agreement? What are the sort of terms of engagement for them and what are their obligations under federal law? are the sort of terms of engagement for them and what are their obligations under federal law? Yep. So they both have to negotiate in good faith, which is like this vague standard in terms of,

you know, who decides what's good faith, right? And, you know, one person's good faith, it's another person's bad faith and all that stuff, as you kind of saw from the Manfred letter and the union response, right? But, you know, each side kind of thinks that they're each engaging in different levels of good faith, I think. But the general idea is you have to be open to further discussions. You can't just say, you know, forget this. We're not talking to you anymore. That would be bad faith negotiations. You have to maintain a dialogue, discuss proposals with the other side. When they raise them, you have to, again, this is where it gets vaguer, but keep an open mind to that. And basically, a third party looking from the outside, in this case, probably the National Labor Relations Board would have to say, we think that the parties, even though they have not reached an agreement yet, are still doing their best to try to eventually reach one.

That's the big thing. There's more in the weeds. There's stuff like exchanging financial documents and stuff like that. But the big picture for the union and the owners right now is that they have to remain willing to engage in the negotiating process. And so I think that's why you saw Rob Manfred during his press conference talking about, we're ready to negotiate whenever the players want to, that both sides are going to try to maintain that position that they're working, both for PR, but also legally, that they're working to resolve this on a timely basis. And there's not really supposed to be any contact now between team personnel and players, right? Baseball writers were advised that team employees had been told not to talk about players on a 40-man roster with reporters, and they are not supposed to talk to those players either, as I understand it. So in what ways could this be

disruptive for players in the short term? Obviously, some of them are not signed and do not currently have an employer, and there is a transaction freeze that is in place now, so they can't sign until this is resolved in some way but you also have rehabbing players who maybe couldn't work with coaches that they were working with i suppose and i guess pay is not an immediate issue but i don't know whether benefits come into play or whether there are certain things that players might not have access to that they typically would during an offseason so is there anything that stands out to you about how this would be different, let's say, for a player who is already under contract? Yeah, I think that you hit on a lot of it. I think the big, again, if you're injured

or you just want to be, you know, training in the offseason, you've got to do that on your own. Now you can't be you can't be doing it at the team facility. I guess that's good news for like driveline and stuff. But, you know, so you've got to find your own second, you know, your own external, you know, gym and all that stuff and trainers. The health insurance, I forget exactly when it cuts off, but I do think that that's something that at some point down the road is likely to cut out. And again, there's little, I think it's, you know, little things in terms of you can't

have that relationship with your coaches or managers. Like you're not going to be texting them and calling them as much. That sort of thing. You're not going to have an open dialogue with your GM. Your agents aren't at least. And so I think, you know, again, right now, I don't think it's, I'm not a baseball player, so it's easy for me to say it. But I don't think it's going to be a huge, significant deal for the next two months. Because for the most part, these guys are relatively disengaged from that world, so to speak, in terms of day-to-day contact.

So I really do. And the other thing to keep in mind is that the union's been preparing for this for the better part of three years now. They've got a huge war chest. They've taken all licensing revenue from baseball cards and all that stuff and pumped it into this war chest to be able to pay out to players to keep them going through the offseason. So in terms of stuff like health insurance, and once we get into the playing season, it won't be full paychecks, but stipends to keep the players afloat financially. I think that they will be, at least for the short term, a pretty good position overall. Ben mentioned how baseball writers were advised that we should not be expecting team personnel

to talk to us, at least about 40-man players. You made mention of this in your piece, and I'm curious your take on it. What are your expectations in terms of how much we will hear about the particulars of the proposals that are exchanged or the caucus meetings that the league has with the Players Association? Because last summer, it felt like it had only been a matter of moments before a proposal had been exchanged when we had the full details of it as the public. But what do you think we will actually hear about the

particulars of negotiation here? It's interesting. I think in a best case scenario, from a not having the season delayed standpoint, the less you hear, the better, because it means that the sides are trying to honor the process and keep this stuff off the record. And it's a greater sign of that good faith effort to try to reach an agreement rather than litigate this in the media. That having been said, now that things have become more contentious, I mean, you saw Rob Manfred's letter laid out point by point a lot of the bargaining positions they'd taken. So it's possible that things start to loosen up a little bit in terms of more stuff leaks out. But I think, again, the less you hear is probably the better because it's a sign that both sides are trying to reach an agreement instead of spinning it in the media for PR benefits. Yeah, we've heard in the past from some people that spinning things in the media, that public perception doesn't matter all that much, that ultimately it just comes down to what is said and done at the table and the stakeholders there. it does seem as if both sides do make a considerable effort to try to spin things their way and put out announcements and press release and try to curry favor in various ways.

How do you see that breaking down, I guess, in terms of how beneficial it actually is to each side to get people on their side who are not directly involved in the negotiations? Yeah, I think it's probably not. Well, I've never been in the room, so I'm speculating here. I would defer to someone who has, but my gut tells me that it's not really that important in this grand scheme of things. If this is, again, a two-month lockout where hardcore baseball fans are upset about it, but overall the average fan barely notices and we're back in play, you know, in spring training in March. I don't think anybody's really going to be, you know, holding grudges from the public's vantage point, regardless of how it's spun PR wise. I do think it's almost

probably more internally driven, right? But both of these two sides are, have a lot of potential fractures amongst them. You know, the owners have not historically always been on the same page. The players, there's a lot of different tensions and you could view their interests, you know, diverging in different respects. So I think in some ways it's probably even more internal PR optics, right? Of like, we are on the right side. This is, you know, we got to stick together. That, I might guess, is probably as much of a motivating factor for those types of releases as, you know, the public relations benefit of it. You laid out a couple of weeks ago some of the key issues that are in play for both sides in this negotiation and the process by which we arrived at this particular juncture. But I'm curious, and obviously this is going to require you to speculate a little bit because we'll just end up seeing what the end results of these negotiations is when we do. But given some of the issues that are at play here, which are pretty weighty, and some of

them, at least from an economic perspective, are pretty fundamental to the way that the league will conduct itself going forward, how much actual change from the current sort of status quo do you anticipate we will actually end up seeing when the dust has settled and we have a new CBA? Yeah, that's the big question. Can't you solve it all for us, Nathaniel, and tell us what to expect come March? If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'd be in Vegas right now.

But, you know, maybe I'm skeptical, but I don't think it'll end up being that much different. I think it's going to be, I don't want to just say window dressing, but I think it's gonna be more modest changes, not, you know, grand overhaul of the system. Because, you know, from the owner's perspective, the system's working pretty well. Why would they give, you know, they're not just going to give away billions of dollars in revenue to the players for nothing, right? The players, there's things that they can offer up, but I don't know that it's going to be things that move the needle quite as much as for the players to get, you know, their full wishlist of everything they want. And people will look at the free agent off, you know, spending spree leading up to the lockout differently. But

it also, that does show in some ways that the owners do kind of have a point that for the free agents, which is what the MLBPA has always been most concerned about, that the system was, it's not perfect, but they were getting a lot of money, right? So again, are the players willing to give up those big picture paychecks at the end of the day to prioritize the benefits that are going to the mid-tier and more entry-level players. I think that's one big question is just how committed is the union to trying to see meaningful change to redirect a more favorable share of revenues towards younger players. My guess is that at the end of the day, you see something,

towards younger players. My guess is that at the end of the day, you see something, you know, there'll be tweaks to the system, right? Rob Manfred pointed out today that they were willing to get rid of free agents compensation in terms of draft pick compensation. So that would be something that, you know, I would expect might eventually end up in the deal. You'll see, you know, probably raise the minimum player salary. There might be some negotiation around arbitration. There'll probably be some, you know, deal in terms of raising the luxury tax threshold. But the other problem that the players have, to be honest, is a lot of the stuff that they're trying to get is things that they gave up originally. And it's a lot harder to claw that back after you've already, you know, given it up. So, you. So the two-year arbitration eligibility, the failure to increase

the luxury tax threshold substantially enough over previous CBAs, I think that the players are going to find themselves boxed in a little bit due to some of the decisions that were made in prior rounds of the bargaining. Yeah. In his letter, Rob Minford tries to portray the players as the ones who were rocking the boat. And he's saying, you know, we have not proposed anything that would change the fundamentals. So he's basically saying, we like the status quo. It's the players who are coming in here and trying to change things. And there is some truth to that, certainly, that the players, I guess, are proposing more significant changes to certain things that have been entrenched in the economic

system for some time, which, of course, one would think is what they should be trying to do. And it only stands to reason that if one side has sort of had the upper hand lately and things are working out better for them, then the other side would be the side that is trying to change that more actively. But I guess, as you say, you know, if you are trying to change things that you have previously agreed to, I mean, it doesn't mean that those things are necessarily more just or anything, but it does maybe mean that it is just harder to get what you want, I guess. Whereas MLB is like, well, we already have what we want. We just kind of want to keep it. Exactly.

And, you know, I see both sides of it. I don't want to come off like not sympathetic to the players, but, you know, in a lot of respects, the players kind of made the bed that they find themselves in. Some of it was circumstances that aren't necessarily within their control, like, you know, the rise of analytics and, you know, the increased emphasis on, you know, efficiency and, you know, the value that you can extract from cost-controlled players. But you could also argue some of that stuff is things that they should have anticipated back in 2016. And now they're kind of trying to catch up from behind the curve and try to deal with some of this stuff once the circumstances have kind of gotten out of their control. You know, if you look back, if you take the long view of 30, 40,

50 years of labor relations in baseball, it really is pretty striking how different things are, how much things have shifted, right? Like in the 90s and the 80s, the owners trying to be the ones who are getting concessions from the players, right? As we want a salary cap, we want this, we want that. And the players were just holding their ground, whether it was a sinister masterminded plan or just the way it worked out. The owners have just kind of let, you know, things develop over the last two or three CBAs and the tables have definitely turned on the players in that respect. I think one of the trends that we have seen in recent years that was not fully anticipated in the last CBA certainly and probably not in the couple prior, was

the role that sort of ancillary revenues that are related to the baseball team, but aren't necessarily the direct result of the baseball team, right? Stuff like real estate holdings, some of the media rights that teams share either through their own games being broadcast or through centralized entities like BAM, sort of some of the other revenue streams that teams have access to now. I wonder if there are equivalents to that in other sports that we might look to from a CBA negotiation perspective to sort of see how players have responded to the existence of those things when trying to figure out what piece of the pie they're going to have going forward. Because I think you're right that they probably should have been able to anticipate some of

the changes that have resulted in players being sort of assessed differently from the team side. But some of these things, like the Cubs deciding to be real estate giants, that probably was a little harder to see. And I wonder if there are parallels in other sports that might help us understand how players have dealt with stuff like that in the past. Yeah, a good question and the short answer is yes there are parallels but no i don't know if it's particularly instructive because the dip the big difference is that there is no salary cap and there is no salary floor right and so the the players to their

credit and over you know historically whether it's still in their best interest today or not, reasonable minds could disagree, but they don't want to have any sort of floor or limit on salary. They want it fully determined by the pseudo-free market that is Major League Baseball. In the NBA and the NFL, the same issues have come up in terms of how do we deal with gambling related revenue or how do we deal with you know a team owning a business district right next to the stadium but there you have as part of the negotiations there's going to be a one of the big terms that's going to be hammered out is what is going to be considered quote-unquote basketball related income or what is football related income and what basically what is in the pie and what's not in the pie. And that's something that you would then hash out through collective bargaining because

that basketball related income number is then going to be what the salary cap is going to be determined off of. Right. And so from the player's perspective, I totally understand why they don't want to go down that road. But the benefit from the player's perspective of a salary cap is that it gives them a guaranteed percentage of revenue and that revenue, then they can have a say in what parts of those ancillary revenue streams should we get a cut of, which ones should they not get

a cut of. That can all then be negotiated in collective bargaining. I do think that it definitely is in the atmospherics of what we definitely is in the, you know, the atmospherics of what we're seeing right now, right? That the owners are getting richer, the franchise values are skyrocketing. There's all this other money, you know, floating out there, but it's just harder for the players to make a direct case that you need to share more of that with us when the player's position has always been, we just want the market to dictate the value that the share of revenues that's going to the players through you know free market competition for services yeah so if that

share of revenue for the players has been slipping recently a part of that has been the stagnation of salaries that has come from a variety of reasons really but one part of it just seemed to be a decreased willingness to hand out contracts to free agents after a certain age. And so this past week of frantic activity was a definite change from the past few off seasons when things really started slowly. And Rob Manfred made a point of mentioning that in his letter. While we have heard repeatedly that free agency is quote-unquote broken, in the month of November, $1.7 billion was committed to free agents smashing the prior record by nearly four times. Now, this is something Meg and I talked about on our last episode. Does that big burst of spending change anything in terms of this negotiation, or is there anything behind it? I mean, do you think that the fact that Ron Manfred is bragging about this,

hey, how could free agency be in trouble? Because look at the last week and, you know, don't pay attention to the few off seasons before that, I guess. But do you think there was any ulterior motive there? Like was MLB telling owners, hey, spend a bunch right now so that we can brag about how much we just spent on free agents and make the players look unreasonable? Or was that something that just happened because of the incentives of

the players and the individual teams involved? That's funny. I mean, it's like almost the anti-collusion, right? Like, let's collude to spend even more money than we would have otherwise. Yeah, I can't speculate whether that was coordinated or not. I know that other people are going to disagree on this. I think it helps the owners' public posturing, though, because to the average fan, they're seeing the Rangers handing can take that public posture to the extent that the PR matters, it definitely helps the owners in that respect. But my, my intuition is also, is just kind of a confluence of factors. I haven't gone back to refresh my recollection on the exact strength of each free agent class, but I mean, definitely correct me if I'm wrong, but from like a short stop perspective, at least it seems like this class is stronger than it has been in the last couple of years. And then you've got the expedited timetable, you know, having that firm deadline, deadlines cause, you know, both sides to, you know, make final decisions and it kind of forces the action a little bit. So I think it was probably a lot going into it, but from the

owner's perspective, I don't know if they're necessarily upset about the timing of it, because it helps, you know, on the margins in terms of the look of it all in some respects, but other people might think it makes it even crazier, they're locking them out in the current circumstances. So when do you anticipate that we will see actual meaningful movement here? And I know that asking that question that way sort of assumes that we will reach a meaningful movement here? And I know that asking that question that way sort of assumes that we will reach a conclusion to this process that allows us to start relatively on time. But given that we are in the lockout now and when the start of spring training is, when do you think that we're going to start to hear, for instance, about sort of meaningful

exchanges of economic proposals between the two sides? February. That'd be my guess. I mean, you know, maybe before then there'll be, you know, but I don't see the players aren't, if the player, from the player's perspective, if they start caving right now, that's going to look really bad, right? Like from the negotiating posture standpoint, you can't start caving immediately. It's week one of the lockout, right? Like from the negotiating posture standpoint, you can't start caving immediately week one of the lockout, right? So they're going to have to dig in a little bit from the owner's perspective. Why would they have a two month runway to try to get this thing, you know, that they're just sitting on their hands anyway, for the most part. So there's not really any strong reason for either side to really start pushing the action until February. Now, if they

think that there's a real deal to be cut before spring training, but that they need three or four or five weeks of run up to get it done rather than just like a week or two of final negotiations and maybe like late January, you start to see it thaw out a little bit more. But I think it's going to be a two-month freeze and then probably some action in February. I might be wrong. There's probably a 20% chance that this drags out into the season. But I think overall, I'm not a professional gambler, so don't take this literally, but my money would be on that it delays spring training, but that overall, it's done sometime in late February, early March. Yeah, we're a long way away from this coming into play, but the specter of replacement players, which is something that own prospects, I guess, in the majors.

And generally, they tried not to risk their prospects. But players, I think MLB players can play in other leagues. They can play in winter leagues, et cetera. And minor leaguers are not covered by the MLBPA. So their games will, in theory, go on regardless of what happens to MLB games. But what would have to happen for replacement players to be a conversation that comes up? So you'd have to see substantial changes because once the owners implement a lockout, they really can't rely on replacement players. Since they're the ones who took this step to implement the labor stoppage, they cannot replace the players.

They need to wait. Last time was a strike. Exactly. So in order to have that happen, the owners would have to lift the lockout, go into the season, have the players then strike, and then at that point, you could replace them. So in other words, highly unlikely at this point, but I guess in a doomsday scenario, you never know what could happen. But that's probably not on the table this time around. I think that you're right that the union's taking the position that the players can play in the Dominican or wherever else over the winter, and you will see minor league games going forward next year. But yeah,

from a replacement player standpoint, I don't think that's going to be in the cards this time around. One interesting tidbit from Rob Manford's press conference on Thursday, he was asked about on-field changes, rules changes that could come up that have been discussed or tested in the minors maybe. And he said, we did make a proposal early on about a joint process with respect to on-field changes. We did not make any specific rule change proposals. We are in the process of still evaluating changes. And frankly, based on the discussions at the table, we saw it as another contentious issue and tried to put it to one side in an effort to get to an agreement on the theory that we could deal with it midterm of the next agreement. So I guess that's good news for anti-Robo-Umps people. It doesn't sound as if that's imminent, that they might just table that and try to figure out some of the other immediate issues.

But in general, do you start with the tough stuff and then move to the easy stuff? Or do you start with the easy stuff and then move to the tough stuff? What's your sense of how they have been proceeding? Because obviously there have been proposals on both sides, and it seems like they are furthest apart on the economic issues. And those are the huge sticking points. Yeah, I think it's kind of a combination. I think usually you would start kind of in waves of let's gauge where everybody's at. Is there anything in the old, the old CBA is what, 200 and something pages long, right? So there's a lot of that stuff, the nitty gritty details that aren't going to really change, right?

So what can we just agree to roll over? So let's just get all that off the table of things that are just going to stay the same. And then where are things that we want to change? What are the positions on that? You start to kind of feel that out. If there's things that one side doesn't feel strongly about

or that there's some mutual consensus on, then you might try to resolve that. At the same time, you're trying to get at your handles on the bigger picture issues. And then when it comes to economics versus on-field, it's probably a lot of that calculus probably also just came down to we can't wrestle with both of these huge, you know, issues at the same time. So let's just focus on, you know, from both sides' perspectives, they probably thought the economics were more important than the on-field stuff. So they probably just made a strategic decision to let's just punt on that. But if the owners had cared enough about it, if they said, no, we're really going to go to the mat for robo-umps or a pitch clock or whatever it might be, then that would have definitely played out differently.

I guess I have sort of a related question. There's a lot of emphasis in the days leading up to the lockout placed on sort of how the negotiating team for the Players Association has shifted over time. I think that there was a sense after the last CBA, like you said, that the players had made concessions that sort of put them on their back foot going forward, and the PA has changed some of their staffing, including their lead negotiator for this. And I'm curious, you know, it's not that that stuff doesn't matter. Obviously, it does right? And that's not really how these negotiations are playing out in the room. They have a team of lawyers, they have lead negotiators that work on their behalf. So how much does the staffing matter in these sorts of things? Good question. I think it matters. So that in a couple of potential different ways, one, I think everything you said is right. One thing, one way that matters is just

the more of a longstanding relationship that there is between the principles, the, you know, the better, more likely things are to go smoothly. Whereas, you know, if there's new parties and institute into the middle of it, then you start to have to feel each other out a little bit more and get to know each other. So, you know, that might have slowed things down a little bit. things down a little bit theoretically. I think the other thing is just kind of big picture strategy wise about how, you know, what we're going to prioritize and what posture we're going to take, that there's people who approach these negotiations with a, you know, much more compromise oriented mindset. There's going to be people who are going to approach these negotiations with a much more cutthroat, you know, perspective. And I can't speak enough to, you know, Bruce Meyer and how he, his demeanor, you know, compares or contrasts with the,

you know, people who are leading the negotiations last time around, but that's a different area where it won't so much like on a day-to-day basis, you know, but Oh, big picture, the strategy might change. If you have someone who's more prepared to go for the jugular or to ride this thing out for a long time, dig in their heels or theoretically dissolve the union, do stuff like that. That gets a lot more aggressive. And there's some people who are just going to be more incrementalist in their process versus other people who are going to be more willing to, I don't want to say burn it all down, but be more aggressive in that respect. And I think it remains to be seen, at least as far as I've been able to tell, where the MLBPA's new negotiating leadership falls in that respect. We talked earlier about MLB taking away all the headshots and unlinking all the highlight videos and everything. So that's one byproduct of the internet era during a work stoppage in sports.

Another, I guess, is that social media exists now. And so every member of the union has the option to go out and broadcast their thoughts at any time via many avenues, I guess. Of course, during the strike, a player always could have called up a reporter and sometimes did, but it is important to get your messaging tell their players or how important is that to kind of get everyone on the same page when there's more potential than ever for players to go off script and and maybe in positive ways too to get public support on their side yeah i think it's a huge challenge you know you've got so many guys again their interests are going to diverge right the entry level you know rookie level player versus the mid-tier free agents who've gotten hammered over the last few years to the, you know, the high to all our value free agent type players. There's so many divergent interests and there's going to be

so many different perspectives. And from the owner's position, you've only got 30 main voices and they're not for the other, you know, maybe other than Steve Cohen, they're not really, you know, on social media that actively and stuff. So you're going to, it's going to be much more reserved and, you know, conservative from their standpoint. Whereas from the union side, if you start to see fractures emerging, that's probably not just going to happen behind closed doors. It's going to start to happen publicly. And the owners are going to be able to feed in on that. And they're going to get smell blood in the water a little bit, so to to speak and try to make the most out of it so i think from the union's perspective you just want to try to maintain that unified you need to be reaching out to the players and in

you know in regular contact with them so that they understand what's happening and they understand why it's happening and the importance of staying on script and all that stuff but on the flip side you know the fact that the players are going to have divergent interests and, you know, while the union leadership probably doesn't want that advertised, the union leadership might not always be taking all those perspectives into account. So it might make the union, you know, leadership a little bit more accountable to the whole membership rather than just, you know, those players who have the loudest voices in the room. And, you know, maybe in some respects that's beneficial, but from an overall standpoint, it's probably not a positive development in terms of maintaining a cohesive bargaining posture against the owners. Okay. I have one more question for you

that is unrelated or maybe loosely related. You wrote the book literally on baseball's antitrust exemption, Baseball on Trial, the origin of baseball's antitrust Exemption, Baseball on Trial, The Origin of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, we just got a question that is specifically tailored to you from one of our Patreon supporters who's wondering about the antitrust exemption today. And he, Bob Bryan, writes, given the Supreme Court's mix, generalizing here of pro-free market conservatives and pro-labor liberals, would it be a good time for the MLBPA to potentially revisit Flood v. Kuhn or challenge MLB's antitrust exemption again? Could they, maybe via challenging an arbitration ruling like Chris Bryant's or even through the grievance over

the 60-game season, which there hasn't been an outcome of, the current court seems willing to reconsider prior decisions and the relatively close vote in the flood case, plus the fact that the court in that case, per Wiki, quote, admitted the original grounds for the antitrust exemption were tenuous atuch cited federal baseball and Toulson in his concurrence as one of the precedential islands that manages to survive indefinitely even when surrounded by a sea of contrary law that would never expand but would, if anything, wash away with the tides of time. would never expand but would if anything wash away with the tides of time obviously running counter to this is the general anti-union strain of the conservative justices and the general vibe that they would find more in common with owners than with players but it seems given the economic issues the relative pr strength of the players versus the past 20 years the string of losses the union has suffered on economic questions since 94 and the court makeup. This could be a time for a challenge again. So that was a long question, a lot of background and context there, but what do you think? I think that's like a full community post for fangraphs for Megs right there. Yes and

no would be my, this is one man's opinion, I would say yes and no. So the MLBPA is not going to challenge Flood v. Kuhn because they would not have any standing to challenge, in a legal sense, they would not have any legal basis to challenge the antitrust exemption because it's already been repealed as it applies to Major League Baseball players, current MLB players. And so anyone who's a member of the union can already file an antitrust lawsuit against the league thanks to the Curt Flood Act of 1998 after the fallout of the 1994-95 player strike. So from the union's perspective and the current MLB players' perspective, there would not be any real motivation to do so. And there wouldn't really be a claim because it doesn't apply to any case that they might bring against the owners anyway uh now that might that would be different for minor league players who are not part of the 40-man roster but that's we can talk about that in a second the bigger picture question of whether that decision would be you know ripe for review by the court i think you can read the

tea leaves either way in the alston versusston versus NCAA decision from over this past summer, there was some suggestion that the court, you know, again, citing the federal baseball case disapprovingly, that there was some suggestion that they might, a majority of the court might not approve of that decision anymore and the precedent. You also, I mean, just in the news the last day or so with the rehearing of Roe versus Wade, you know, there's clearly a conservative majority that is skeptical of, you know, the value of precedential decisions for better or for worse. Not to get too in the weeds, but the court also tends to look at constitutional precedents differently than statutory precedents. than statutory precedents. If it's interpreting a piece of legislation, Congress can always change it, whereas the Constitution is the Constitution, so it's up to the court to figure out what the proper interpretation of that is. Long story short, I would not be surprised if someone tried

to file a challenge given the recent leanings of the court and everything. Whether it's successful or not, I don't know, because once you get into the merits of that issue, and I've always thought that I'm in the minority on this, admittedly, but the Flood v. Kuhn case, it seems crazy on the one hand, but on the other hand, it's kind of reasonable because if the court repeals baseball's antitrust exemption. And if you do it retroactively, then the league has been built, you know, $10 billion institution has been built on the expectation that they are not subject to these laws. If you just pull that back, then anyone over the last X number of years who can allege that they've been adversely affected by the Major League Baseball could now file an antitrust lawsuit. They could seek triple damages. I don't know if it would necessarily bankrupt the league, but it could be pretty significant. And I think in 72, when the flood court ruled, they were concerned about that. And they said,

look, this is something better for Congress to do. Congress can say starting next year on January 1st, baseball's no longer, two years from now or three years from now, give them a longer runway. Baseball's no longer exempt and they can restructure their activities accordingly. Whether the court this time around would be willing to overlook that consideration and overrule it. You know, it's definitely more likely than in recent time, recent history, but I don't necessarily know that I would bet money on it either way. I think I could see it going either way, just depending on how concerned the courts are about the perspective versus retroactive effect. But that might've been totally nerdy in the weeds

and way too legalistic. If so, I apologize. I think that's what the questioner wanted and that's what you delivered. So thank you. We always appreciate your insights and I guess you will be busy over the next few months or maybe not if nothing happens

and no news comes out at all. So if you have any advice of how to conduct a baseball podcast during a lockout, we're happy to have it, but you can find Nathaniel's existing work on Fangraphs. It will be linked on the show page and look out for any future

pieces on further developments. Thank you, as always, Nathaniel. Thank you both. Have a happy holiday. All right, that will do it for today. Just a few PSAs. First, this is a little later than usual, but sign-ups for the Effectively Wild Secret Santa are now open. For those of you who haven't participated before, one of our listeners, Zach Wendkos, organizes this every year. Effectively Wild listeners in the Facebook group or in the Discord group or in neither group who hear about this on the podcast, sign up to take part in Effectively Wild Secret

Santa. You will get matched with another Effectively Wild listener, and then you will send a gift to your Secret Santa recipient, and someone will send a gift to you. And these are baseball-themed gifts, inexpensive, recommended $20 maximum, just something nice and baseball-themed. And we could all use a little pick-me-up these days, especially during the lockout. So if you are in or want to be in the holiday spirit and want to blend that with baseball, check out Effectively Wild Secret Santa. It will be linked on the show page.

And thanks, as always, to Zach for organizing that. I've always enjoyed participating myself, and I have received multiple Shohei Otani-themed items, as one might imagine. Also, just want to say thank you to everyone who sent us tweets this week. Some of you Spotify users are sharing your Spotify-wrapped end-of-year listening stats. And a lot of people had Effectively Wild as their number one podcast of 2021 or one of their top five. And so Meg and I and the podcast Twitter account were tagged many times. And it turns out that a lot of you have spent a ton of time listening to this podcast in the past year. Some of you were at 10,000 minutes or more. That's like a full week, 2% of your year basically spent listening to this podcast. I know we make a lot of episodes and our episodes are sometimes long and we have a big back catalog. So I guess it's easier for us to end up at the top of a Spotify list than some other podcasts. But nevertheless, really appreciate all of you who have spent time listening to the show this year. It was heartwarming to see those stats.

And I'll leave you with a couple of recommendations. Last time, Meg and I discussed Kevin Gossman and Robbie Ray and their respective signings on similar terms. So Gossman signed a $110 million five-year deal with the Blue Jays, while Robbie Ray, ex-Blue Jay, signed with the Mariners on a five-year $115 million deal. Almost identical terms on the surface. And so we wondered, well, why did the Blue Jays choose Gossman over Ray, and which one we'd we rather have over the next five years? Shai Davidi of Sportsnet wrote a pair of articles devoted to that topic and explored why the Jays might have preferred Gossman over Ray, or why the market might have valued them slightly differently. As he noted, although the terms are very similar, the financial gap may be a bit bigger than it appears because Ray had as an opt-out after three years, and the Blue Jays get a draft pick for his departure,

and there are different taxes between Washington state and Ontario. So those all may have been factors, but it may also have been an organizational preference. Interesting reading, as is another Travis Sotchick study on Scott Boris, or not specifically on Scott Boris, but on which agents or agencies tend to get their clients the most money relative to Zips projected contracts or Fangraph's fans estimates. And it turns out that as we all suspected, Scott Boris is still quite good at his job. He seems to get his clients more money than projected pretty consistently and even more so than other agencies that have a lot of clients. I'm not going to say it is because of the bad puns and analogies and metaphors,

but at the very least, his wordplay, if you can call it that, doesn't seem to be hurting his clients' earnings any. Or who knows, maybe they'd be doing even better if he weren't constantly comparing them to boats. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. There you can sign up to pledge some monthly or annual amount to help keep the podcast going and keep it ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners, Jason Crosby, Tyler Clark, Bruce Larson, Lauren Farrar Cartwright, and Wesley Klepfer. Thanks to all of you. Our first Patreon-exclusive bonus podcast is available now. You can also access the Effectively Wild Discord group and get many other extras.

And even non-Patreon supporters can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can all rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastoffangrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will rely on your questions to get through this lockout. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There is an Effectively Wild subreddit. And thank you, as always, to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then. Run them up on me The show must go on