Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1810: The Biggest Bargaining Misconceptions

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter discuss MLB’s approach to promoting sports betting and concerns about the integrity of games, then go over some of the most common misconceptions and flawed arguments about MLB labor relations, economics, and competitive balance (plus a postscript about listener nominations for potential […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1810 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Not too bad. Good. And we are also joined today by Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter. Hello, Joe. Hey, man. Good to finally talk to you.

Yeah, good to talk to you too. Thanks for joining us. How's your walkout going? You know, just, I did not, I think, so we did a thing on Slack, everybody guessing the date, throwing out their number. And I said February 25th. And until fairly recently, until the mediator, you know, news cycle, I still thought that was possible. And now I, well, don't.

We're recording this on Friday and, you know, we'll see what happens on Saturday with the offer. I'm not terribly optimistic, but I now believe we're probably going to lose a chunk of spring training and maybe even some games. I underestimated the owner's resolve to win, despite there not being very much on the table at this time. Yeah, I think that they may have underestimated the player's resolve also. Right. Yeah. So I wanted to have you on because we've been watching you process the lockout in real time via Twitter.

And your newsletters often at the bottom will list some target subscriber count where you can quit Twitter forever. We'll list some target subscriber count where you can quit Twitter forever. And I guess you're not quite there because you have been tweeting a lot lately and you've been putting yourself through the try to educate the masses on there. But it seems like there are certain talking points that you have been writing about and talking about for years. And I'm sure you're getting through to some people, but perhaps not everyone out there. Not everyone out there. So we figured, well, let's just have Joe on and we'll just run down some of the worst lockout related or baseball labor related arguments. And it'll just be a nice handy dandy podcast primer and we'll put them all in one place. And then we will be able to banish those arguments forever. And Twitter will be a paradise of refined and enlightened discourse.

I'm on a mission to civilize, a reference that my fellow Sorkinites will get. But yeah, I don't want to be on there as much as I am, but I do feel like when you think about all of the bad information that gets processed, and it's better now than it was in 81 or 94, 2002, I do feel a certain obligation to put better information out there.

I know it sounds self-aggrandizing and there's no way around it, but I think the only way you beat bad information is with good information. So I like to think I'm providing better information. Before we get into that information, should we talk about one of our other favorite topics around here? Sports betting and multiple models of baseball, because that's something else you addressed this week, Joe. And we talked about this a bit when we had Bradford William Davis on with Meredith Wills to talk about their work that revealed the multiple

models of baseball that were in use last season, just the gambling implications of that, not being able to count on which baseball is in use at any particular time. And you're more pro sports betting than we are, or I don't know if we're anti it existing, but we're anti having to know and care about it, I guess, is where we are, which it seems like based on your most recent tweet, you are sympathetic to that view. It's such a blitz, such a full court press with the gambling and the betting stuff lately that it's kind of a turnoff, even if philosophically, you're not necessarily opposed to it. Yeah. I mean, I grew up around it because sports betting was just something that was always around growing up, the parlay tickets. And I know my family had bookies and things like that. So I

kind of grew into it. So I don't have a trigger against it like some some people do and there's nothing wrong with that but you know baseball is the sport that has always been the most anti gambling you know dating to the scandals of the late 19th and early 20th century is culminating in the the 1919 Black Sox scandal baseball is the one that has the rule it says if you're involved at all gambling it's always positioned gambling as this evil thing all the way up through and you know it's impossible to not bring up pete rose in this was on a permanently ineligible list for his gambling activities as a uniform player and manager and on through as recently as 2018 you know the leagues

were lined up against the repeal of paspa, which was the law that was passed in 92 that prevented sports betting in all but a couple of states. When that was repealed, there was kind of this, OK, we got to figure out what the new universe looks like. And it feels like in 2021, they all did. All teams pretty much have a gaming partner now. The league itself has partners. Pretty much the content is now seeped into all channels, and that is alienating a group of fans that were told for 80 years, 90, 100 years, that this is bad. So a lot of fans have whiplash with this. And it's being presented in this hammer on your head way, that I think it's almost designed to alienate people. So now I have a lot of sympathy for people who don't want the chocolate and their peanut butter because I think baseball has more of them

and more people who really believed in the idea that gambling is bad than any other sport. So whatever's out of the box at this point, I don't think you can turn it around, but baseball is doing a lot of damage to itself. I mean, prop bets during the World Series broadcast? Are you kidding me? Joe Buck and John Smoltz out here

shilling for who's going to hit the next home run? I thought that was ridiculous. And like I said, I don't think there's a way out of it. But I know you guys, I think, feel similarly, at least as far as the implementation. Well, and I think that part of it for me is that there are, you know, just by the nature of the sport, there are vulnerabilities within it to abuse, right? the sport, there are vulnerabilities within it to abuse, right? I think that you don't have to be Pete Rose to be in a position, and particularly given some of the prop bets and the minute moments that you're able to gamble on, where there might be a vulnerability to corruption,

right? And it doesn't feel as if... I wonder if my reaction to it, I guess I should say, would have been different if in the implementation of all of this, there had been, you know, real space given to some of those vulnerabilities by the league. And they had actually talked about the ways in which they're both sensitive to their existence and are trying to mitigate some of them, right? Like, you know, I've heard people talk about wanting to bet on minor league baseball. And I'm like, you have an underpaid workforce and you're going to bet. So how are you going to ensure that some kid who is worried about, you know, where his next month's car payment is coming from isn't going to like throw some of these prop bets for you, right?

And I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen, but it maybe would have hit me different if they had said said yeah we we understand some of the places where we might be vulnerable to the competitive integrity of the sport being undermined here are the steps we're taking to prevent that stuff and that's before you even get to like them maybe thinking for a moment about what it would mean for someone to have the ability to bet on everything just on their phone and the damage that might do to people not to moralize on it too much but it's like you don't even have to go to the sports book anymore you can just pull up the app on your phone so it's just like there was

there was this like you said this long stretch where they were so worried and then they didn't even talk about any of that stuff when they start announcing mgm as their official gambling partner and you know, they're putting a sports book in Wrigley and all this stuff. So it just seems like the cart has gone so far before the horse. And now we have to think about all these things. And how are we ever going to pull it back given all the money that's involved? It's just a mess. Well, your point about the minor league baseball is great because it's minor league football and basketball where we've had the greatest scandals.

We've seen examples of this. You go back to City College in the 1950s with the basketball. We talk about Arizona State and Northwestern player shaving points in the 80s and 90s. We have examples of this. That's where the vulnerability is because as you point out, that's where the players aren't making a whole lot of money. I'm not as concerned with player scandals where the players aren't making a whole lot of money i'm not as concerned With player scandals at the major league level in any of these sports because it's so hard

To make it worthwhile for players Given the amount of money that's involved if you were to suddenly see an enormous amount of action on some obscure Tennis has had this tennis has actually had markets shut down because there's been suspicions of max match fixing in games there's and that's again at a level where you can give a player enough money that that you can actually then get enough action down to kind of warrant the economics of it i don't think we're going to have that in u.s major sports my my concern and this kind of circles back i guess a little bit to the the davis uh article is in people who control the baseballs for the game who are generally not highly paid employees and people who maybe control

the humidor's at the ballparks i think your vulnerabilities come in off-field personnel you can make an argument about umpires although i i tend to believe umpires and while i feel like many of them are incompetent i I generally don't question their integrity. But no, I think you've got some vulnerabilities here. And I don't know that you get anywhere, of course, by talking about it. We talk about it because we're concerned about the game. But if you're MLB or if you're a gaming partner, it doesn't really do you a whole lot of good to say,

hey, this is where we could screw up and cost you money. To bring it around to the Davis and Wills article, this is where I think the league got itself in trouble. If you're going to invest this much time and effort in trying to turn your customers into bettors, you have to be, what's the line? Caesar's wife has to be above reproach. You can't then also have two baseballs in play. If I'm watching the Phillies pregame and they're telling me, oh, you know, these prop bets on Riz Hoskins to hit a home run. He's four to one to hit a home run tonight. But I don't know the caliber. I don't know the baseball that's in play. I don't know if they're

hitting nerfs or they're hitting titleists. You're giving me a bet prop and you're telling me to bet this without this critical piece of information. And this happened all the time last year. Every pregame had these segments. MLB itself had segments within MLB Tonight. MLB had a streaming show with all of these things. But MLB was holding back this information. So it's bad that MLB had two baseballs in play. And it's bad that MLB was telling all its fans, go out and bet, go out and bet, go out and bet. As you say, Meg, with an app in your hand, you don't have to go anywhere to do anything. So you have these two things that are bad, but we're putting them as you say, Meg, with an app in your hand, you don't have to go anywhere to do anything. Right. So you have these two things that are bad, but we're putting them together to say, hey,

go out and bet, but we're not going to give you this incredibly important piece of information. That to me, and this is the article I wrote this week, that to me was just the side of criminal. You've now saying we're rigging the game, but we're not telling you go ahead and bet. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Although after two plus months of lockout, I'd be happy to have any number of baseballs in play. Make it five or six models this season. Yeah, sure. Why not?

So I guess that leads us to our main topic for the day. And I asked you to come up with a few chestnuts that you find yourself seeing and responding to most often. And we could just kind of go down the list why they're such popular arguments, why they're misconceptions, how you attempt to refute them. So we can start wherever you want. And I should say, I value your perspective on these issues because A, you've been covering baseball for a while now, right? 25 years or so in various places. Thank you for calling me older. You are wise and experienced. And you have seen multiple rounds of bargaining and know a little bit about the history.

And you've gone back and you've read the literature from before then. And so you have the context, I think, that maybe younger writers, younger people who cover the game, sometimes us included, perhaps don't have just because you have seen more of the owner behavior, the player behavior over the years. And you don't necessarily always toe the party line when it comes to baseball Twitter. Not that baseball Twitter is a monolith necessarily, but there are certain things that people tend to be in lockstep about, and you are often, but not always, if there's something you disagree with. So I don't see you as someone who is just going to sort of support one side over the other purely because of some ideological bent.

I feel like you certainly have your leanings and your sympathies there, but you're trying to actually look at the facts and the data, which it doesn't seem like a lot of the people you're replying to are all that interested in doing all that often, which is why your crusade continues. So where would you like to begin? I guess the one that surprised me, seeing this idea that if the players make more money, it comes out of the fans' pockets. I thought we'd done a pretty good job of dismissing that over the last 25 years. We'll call it a prospectus error. And I'm seeing a lot of that, you know,

all you know, all these billionaires and billionaires and the fans end up paying. Well, I mean, there's just not that's just not so because that's not the way economics works. That's not the way pricing works. Pricing is set on anticipated demand. A team says we think we're gonna have a good team and we're gonna set set our prices this way. People are going to want to buy tickets, you know, no matter what. And it's not related to how much the players are making. There's correlation. If a young team gets better, the player, the team's payroll is likely to rise and ticket prices will go up because the team's getting better. There's more demand, but that's not the same as, you know, this guy makes $30 million. So I got to pay eight bucks for a beer and by the way i should note that ticket prices and

concession prices are two separate things ticket prices are largely set by demand because there are competing interests you know do you want to spend your money on a concert or going out with your family or going to great adventure or whatever once you're in the ballpark you're a captive audience so they can charge you nine dollars for you know 22 ounces of coke and 22 ounces of ice right that's always been an issue for me i don't know what the policies are in various ballparks now but i know that you know we used to take a couple of baloney sandwiches and a couple of you know cans of coke to the ballpark and i don't even know if you can do that anymore but that that's the concession prices. Ballparks are like airports where they

just, we're going to charge you $17 for a watered down rum and Coke and you're just going to take it, sir. Yeah. I don't know if you can take cans of Coke through the metal detectors outside. Well, and some of this stuff shifted around and it'll be interesting to see how it all reverts back. I know that for a while in Seattle, you could not take food in after being able to do that for a long time because of the pandemic question mark. The rationale there was sort of confusing, but I do think that that policy ended up getting reversed as the season wore on and more of the population was vaccinated. Although again, it was like, what are we pegging this to like what is the number

that makes it better for you to have to rummage through someone's bag versus not i don't know but yeah i think that when you look at the the experience that someone again rooting for a team like the mariners has like the the team being good or not has very little to do with the pricing of tickets and it's not like you you're getting in for 10 bucks because the team stinks you know that's just not the way that this stuff ever works. And the canonical example is college sports, right? Right. College players are unpaid or largely unpaid. And you don't see, you know, $5 tickets for Kansas basketball games. In fact, for most colleges, you have to pay twice, you have to pay the booster club for the rights to pay to buy the tickets, and you have to buy

the tickets themselves. So if if demand were set by the pay of the players on the field or the court, we'd see college sports be essentially free, and that's obviously not the case. Right. Yeah. I guess I do see how people come to this conclusion. Oh, sure. I mean, you would think that they would have been disabused of it at some point decades ago, maybe, but you can see how the salaries are very public and very visible. And certainly in other walks of life, expenses contribute to the pricing of things, right? If I am going to buy an Xbox or something, well, if the components that make up that Xbox cost more, then maybe that is passed on to the consumer to some extent. So I can see why people might think, oh, baseball players are

paid this much. If you pay them more, then you have to charge more in order to make money. But it just doesn't really work that way. It's different. And both have gone up. Both player salaries and prices have gone up, but prices for everything have gone up. Some of that is just time. You'll say, well, it was 10 bucks for a box seat when I was... I actually saw this. Somebody was talking about comparing prices to the Fenway and Wrigley both came up. Yeah, Wrigley's bleachers used to line up outside before the game. It's not like that anymore. All of those seats are sold in advance and they're a lot more expensive, but it's the nature of... Baseball is a lot

... We talk about baseball dying. Baseball's been dying since certainly as long as I've been alive. Yeah, 1882. Yeah. This is a lot more popular now. I mean, Ben, you're a little too young for this, but I remember going to Yankee games in the 80s, and there were 12,000, 14,000 people there.

And Yankees were actually a healthy franchise. And you go up, you go, and people just weren't going to the games. It was so strange for me to go back. I went college and i came back to new york and i went back but to go to games in the 90s and the 2000s at the old ballpark and just how different the experience it was when there were 45 50 000 people there every single night and again that that translated into a lot higher prices um payroll went up up, but the demand is really what drove those inclinations. You actually see this when a new ballpark opened. A team that was pretty bad and was having trouble selling tickets all of a sudden has higher prices, not because the team is any

better or the payroll has gone up, but because, hey, look, we've got this shiny new ballpark. And that effect washes out pretty quickly. But that's another thing where you can actually see it's not about the payroll. It's about the demand do you find any of the people who are blaming you know my trout's contract for the price of angels tickets persuadable are you able to lay out sort of the argument you just did and have them go oh yeah i guess that makes sense it happens i mean i'm not following up with all of these people so it's hard and there a, you know, certainly a silent majority that is just reading this stuff. Right. I will occasionally, I've actually had people in the, in this recent week say, you know, I, I thought X, and then I read you, or I got the newsletter, or I read your free stuff, or I saw you on Twitter. And oh, yeah,

I get it. That does happen. I just don't know what percentage of the larger audience this is. I'll certainly see people that are just pounding the table for an idea that is demonstrably wrong. Certainly on some of these other topics we're going to get to, it's probably more visible. But no, I think, as I said, I do think that this, if it was, if 95% of sports fans believe that, you know, player salaries drove ticket prices higher in 1994, you know, maybe it's 60% now. We're making progress. I'm just not going to live long enough to see that become the dominant idea. player talking point, and the data certainly supports the idea, and Travis Satchik and others have shown the numbers, and we've talked a ton on this podcast about just how many major league

players now are basically bit players who are rotating in and out of the back of a bullpen, and they're barely getting any service time, and they're just kind of interchangeable. So it is certainly true. On the other hand, I think whenever people see what the minimum salary is, and it's much more than they are making, even though it hasn't really increased all that much and arguably is too low, I think people's brains just kind of turn off and they say, oh, well, okay, they're not making 20 million, but as long as they're in the majors, they're making much more than I could dream of making in a year. So I don't know if you are engaging in the millionaires versus billionaires argument and instead you're saying,

well, that's 100,000 heirs. It's like people kind of conflate the number of zeros in these things. I think if it's more zeros than they have, it doesn't really, I don't think the scale of the vast difference between a million and a billion necessarily resonates. And I don't know whether the difference between someone who's making the league minimum and doesn't have a cushy, steady job, I don't know whether that's landing either. But I think those usage patterns, that's one of the big changes. And I think that is one of the big things that's driving the players' positions here. I don't think there's a way around that. Because, yeah, the argument that, no, you don't understand.

60% of them are making less than a million dollars. Like it registered logic. I mean, I can make that logically because I can separate myself from it. But I don't know that I can blame a person for not really emotionally connecting with that. Right. I mean, there's a strain of you're doing a lot better than my i am shut up yes which is fine but you know three billion people in the world are not doing as well as you are sir so maybe you should shut up i mean i don't

everybody's got somebody you can point to right but yeah i just don't know that you can if the person wants to engage intellectually with the idea that there's no... The way I put it is there's no amount of money at which you give up your rights as a laborer. I think baseball players have a right to a free market. They have a right to a proper share of the spoils of their product. Most players don't get that. The vast majority of players are underpaid for what they produce. Major league players. You and I are eventually going to... you're going to have me on and we're going to talk

about minority compensation because I'm, when Ben was talking earlier about- That's one of the areas where you're- Yeah. Yes. Oh, we'll get on when I'm ready to have people hate me for a year. But no, I do think that you kind of almost have to, you can't just keep yelling at those people. And there was a time where I would have said that.

No, you have to acknowledge these guys have unique skills in a marketplace. They're the top 0.001% of baseball players on the planet. The industry brings in $11 billion a year. They're just asking for a fair shot. But yeah, if you're making $50,000, $75,000, $80,000, $30,000, whatever, if you're making less than $100,000, it's really hard to generate sympathy for the guy whose minimum salary in his job is, what is it, $585,000 last year, even if the people that they're fighting against all made tens of millions of dollars last year. The part that is frustrating is like, well,

you're mad. You don't want to support these people who made $585,000 last year. So by default, you're supporting the people who made $585 million last year. Right by default, you're supporting the people who made 585 million. Right. They made that much yesterday. I just, I've decided I don't want to yell at those people. Well, and I always find that, that line of argumentation so interesting because like, I'm open to the idea, you know, I, I agree with you about how much players should be made. And I think that the sort of finite number of people who can do what they do to the level they do obviously puts that skill set in pretty rarefied air. I'm open to the idea that as a society, we would benefit from a conversation about how we value different kinds of work relative to one another. But I don't know how we have that conversation and at the end of it have like Mookie Betts making a

lot less, but have the owner of his team still a billionaire. Right. Like that that conversation is a sweeping one that probably implicates the billionaire owners to a much greater degree than it than it implicates, you like, well, okay. If you want Mookie Betts to make what a teacher does, fine, but you're still having a billionaire own his team at the end of the day? That doesn't make sense. That's not a consistent application of a reconsideration of what work should mean and how we should compensate it as a society. I'm never moved by that. I'm like, extend the analysis further. Just wait till you hear about the billionaire at the end. Well, wasn't it Sanders who went after, said something like, if we can pay a shortstop $20 million, we can do, we can pay teachers, whatever. I'm like, sir, the shortstop making $20 million isn't actually your problem here. Right. It's the guy paying it.

Right, exactly. Yeah, and I do understand. I mean, we're people whose economic prosperity ourselves has been tied to baseball, and we're writing about baseball, and we're podcasting and editing baseball stuff every week. And so obviously we're thinking about these issues, whereas someone who just casually likes baseball and it's just a escapist diversion for them and their main interest is, hey, is baseball going to be on on April 1st or not? I don't expect them to dive as deep into the issues as we would. And I also would say, look, if you have to spend your intellectual and emotional capital on some injustice in the world, you know, there are people whose plight is worse than that of the ninth guy in the bullpen, right? So I do

accept that there are greater injustices in the world and that not everyone should be fretting about baseball players all day. But I guess it almost has to be kind of a high-minded abstract argument about just what is fair or right or trying to tie it back into people's personal lives in their own industries and put yourself in that position. I guess the problem with that, if you say, hey, put yourself in the position of the eighth guy in the bullpen, then that person says, woo, I'm in the majors. I'm making 600,000. This is my dream country. I would play for free. Nobody would watch me, sir. Yeah, exactly. Right. But if you could try to tie it to, well, what do you do in your job? And is there something analogous here that we could kind of compare it to? And then you can see how it sort

of makes sense. But it is an uphill battle, I suppose. I struggle to have the sympathy you do largely because I, this is, this is, and I readily admit this is probably a flaw on my own, but I feel like if you're going to engage on a topic, like if you're going to seek me out to yell at me, you really need to be more informed than you are. That's true. I don't have a lot of patience for that. Well, you just say, well, I believe this. Well, great. Just go believe it somewhere in somebody else's feed. Go tag Ben Lindbergh.

Yeah. No, thank you. But yes, that's true. If you're not going to take the time to form the educated opinion about it, then also don't yell at Joe, I guess. All right. So what is next on the list of things that people yell at Joe? You're speaking to me as if I have that email that I sent you with a couple of notes in front

of you. That's so cute. Okay. Salary cap, competitive balance. So this has been a big one for me because there's no amount of data I can throw at this that's going to convince people that baseball has better competitive balance than the NFL and NBA, even though it so obviously does. than the NFL and NBA even though it so obviously does. If you measure it by range of record, you know, the best teams versus the worst teams, how good are they? If you measure it by teams in the playoffs, if you measure it by teams to reach the championship series, if you measure it by teams that win a championship, there's no actual measure of competitive balance by which baseball doesn't come out ahead of the NFL and the NBA. And what's happened is, through years of just brainwashing and media coverage,

fans have come to simply connect a payroll cap with competitive balance. It's just, if a league has a payroll cap, it must have good competitive balance. Regardless of what the actual competitive balance is. I did a big piece in September on this, and I've written about this before, but there's just no measure no actual measure of competitive balance and what you get is people essentially making the argument that it doesn't matter what the actual competitive balance is which again is going to just drive a data person crazy. But really it does come down to people

believe that if you have a payroll cap you have competitive balance and the payroll caps in the three major US sports are inversely coordinated with having a competitive balance. It's incredibly frustrating and I used to write about this. I wasn't, was it Dane Perry? Dane Perry I think was the first person to do this. He's at CBS now and essentially say if you had a 16 game MLB season, MLB's competitive balance would look like the NFL's. It's impossible to fall out of a race except maybe the Seahawks this year. Wow. In the NFL season. But even then, I don't know when the Seahawks were actually eliminated, but it was definitely

with like only like three games to go in the season. Like there were maybe five and nine and they still had a mathematical check. Yeah, it took a while for the full weight of Russell's broken hand to make itself felt. So everybody has hope deep into the season, whereas a baseball team can fall out of the race in the middle of that. Right. And you just don't have that. And so the NFL MLB thing, you know, Dane wrote about it. I've been writing about it for a while. It's almost entirely the function of a 16 slash 17 game season. The NBA, people touting the NBA's competitive balance makes me want to jump out a window i mean they've had what four champions in

53 years or something the history of the nba is just dynasty after dynasty after dynasty and it's also you know teams like the kings and the knicks just being bad for 20 years at a club so getting getting through on this issue which kind of became a hobby horse for me over the last couple well it was the end of last season um has really been a big deal. And I don't necessarily know how you fix it because the leagues have convinced fans that a payroll cap, which is entirely a cartel deciding that we're only going to compete this hard for labor, that's all it is, it's all a payroll cap ever is,

it's we're only going to compete this hard for labor, has somehow convinced fans that this is essential to the running of a league. And it's incredibly frustrating. It's funny. I would say more than half of the objection I get to this comes from Pittsburgh, which on one hand should be a really good labor town, right? But on the other hand, the success of their local teams, the Penguins and Steelers, have

come in a capped league. They're one of the smallest markets in sports. have come in a capped league. They're one of the smallest markets in sports. One of the most preeminent writers is one of the most vocal adherents to a payroll cap. I believe he said, you know, baseball should just lock out the players for a couple of years and break the union

until it gets payroll cap. So Pittsburgh really believes this. But again, if you look at the actual evidence and the actual data, even look at baseball history, I'm fond of saying that the most competitive period in baseball history was the one with the fewest restrictions on anything. If you go back to the, from when free agency began in 76 to the strike in 94 was the most competitive period in baseball history. It was the most successful period for teams in non-major markets. Oakland won, St. Louis won, Cincinnati won, Kansas City won. Milwaukee was in the World Series.

It was a great, great period for non-large markets. And there were no payroll caps. There was very little revenue sharing. It was just pure competition. I would never advocate for that now because the gap in the size of the local cable deals warrants from revenue sharing. But I think we need as few restrictions on the actual competition as possible. Yeah, this is another area where I'm trying to put myself in the position of people who think this and say, how do they get to this? And I get it, right, because you look at the payroll disparities and you say, well, how could there be competitive balance if this team is spending three times more than that team, right?

if this team is spending three times more than that team, right? And I guess the disparities maybe are smaller than they were at one time just because you have a soft cap in essence, but you still have some pretty big differences there. And so maybe you look at the Dodgers or someone and then you look at the Rays and you say, well, how could this be fair? But then you look at the actual results and, well, the Rays are just as good as anyone right so it's i guess the nature of baseball is the way to explain it to people we had rob means on after he did his excellent series and he showed that there just really isn't

any correlation between market size and between actual records and results and i think that's something that's hard for people to get their heads around because in, again, it's kind of like going back to the, well, why don't higher salaries lead to higher ticket prices? That kind of relationship is true in other arenas. And you would think that it would be true in baseball and the same thing here, right? If you can outspend the other person by a huge degree, well, then how could that system not be unfair? How could it not be rigged? But then you look at the actual results, and I guess it's what you were saying just about the nature of baseball as opposed to football and basketball and the lengths of those seasons compared to the baseball season, etc.

But it's also baseball having its own minor leagues such that you have this base of talent that will be underpaid relative to its performance for the first up to seven seasons of its career is really the great leveler. So that if you can develop talent, if you can come up with, and I'll give you this one back because I picked on you a little bit, Meg. If you can come up with Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez and pay them a fraction of what they're worth, that's an enormous leveler. even beyond that, if you're the raising, you can say, you can develop Wander Franco and then say, we can pay you for the next 12 years. And we're going to pay you a lot of money, but we don't have to pay you what the market would pay you. If Wander Franco was a

free agent this winter, you know, 12 for 184 or whatever it ended up being, wouldn't even be a starting bid. So there are controls built into baseball that mitigate against the free agency issue. If you had true free agency, if you had full sites, you come to the majors, you have a one-year contract with a one-year renewal clause, and then you become a free agent, yeah, we might have things be different. But there's also playing time issues. Right. Only nine guys at a time. It's not football where 22 guys start. It's only nine guys and a couple of starting pitchers.

People are going to want to play. This has been my argument about against the draft. Set aside the moral issues. I don't believe that if you didn't have a draft in baseball, you'd suddenly have like four or five teams sucking up all the talent because players want to play. Right. Players are going to want to go where they can play. So anyway, I'm kind of rambling here,

but no, baseball's competitive balance is fantastic. I don't know how, like the idea that baseball has bad competitive balance largely comes from the league itself lying about its competitive balance in order to get more payroll restrictions. Well, and it strikes me that, you know, some of this is sort of a, we're weirdly punting and sort of conceding the argument on ownership capacity to spend, right? Like there, you look at Pittsburgh and I'm not, like you said, like regional TV deals do differ. It isn't as if, you know, they're all equally as profitable as being in the New York media market or LA or whatever. Although our understanding of which media markets are actually major now needs like a radical uptake because people are very

confused about where people actually live in the US anymore. But there seems to be this seating of the point on the part of fans that you should just be able to own a baseball team and passively receive revenue sharing and not have to invest in the product because the system allows that. and not have to invest in the product because the system allows that. And you just get to forever and ever, right? And I don't know why we concede that point. Like, these are limited franchises. There are only 30 of them.

Like, I think that as fans, you could say, you know what, if you don't have the capacity as a billionaire to invest in your club, maybe you don't deserve to own a baseball team anymore. Like, why are we letting these guys be perpetual owners? You know, I know that we can't really do anything about it. But it's weird to me that fans are not like, sell the team if you can't afford this stuff. There are plenty of people who want to buy one. I would have two follow ups to that. One would be, this is an entirely new thing in baseball history. This is the first era in baseball history where you could lose and make money. Right. It's just never happened before.

So we're still kind of getting our hands around that. Yeah, I guess that's fair. The other is that under Bud Selig, we selected for this type of owner. They would never let Ted Turner into the club. Owners that just want like Steve Cohen. If you look at the two large market teams that were bought and kind of have driven their payroll up, you look at the Dodgers with Guggenheim Partners, you look at the Mets with Cohen, both of those were kind of sales under duress, right? We have to get this team away from this bad owner.

And we're just going to live with what we end up. Like, I was a little surprised they let Cohen into the club. Yeah. And I was a little surprised Cohen did what he did this winter. Because if you look at the first winter, he didn't go crazy. And my argument was that they never let him into the club if they think he's going to be stymied. And this winter, he's kind of acted that way. They never let him into the club if they think he's going to be Steinway. And this winter he's kind of acted that way.

Meg, this is on a base level. You've hit the real key point here, which is we have owners who don't care if they win or not. And for most of sports history, that hasn't been the case. You've had owners who said, I want to buy this team so I can win and they'll stop my name from the fricking rooftops. And for some reason, well, I don't want to say something weird. Under Bud Seelig, we basically changed the model of ownership where it was, you're going to come in.

You're not going to upset the apple cart. You're not going to spend a lot of money on players. You're going to make a profit because we're going to set the rules in a way that you make a profit. We're going to be bringing so much money. You're going to make money. But we need you to not compete so hard. And that, I mean, we talk about all the other stuff, but Meg, I think you hit it completely. The problem is the owners. So we kind of conflated a few of the arguments there that you had emailed me, the

salary cap equals competitive balance argument, the baseball has bad competitive balance argument, the small market teams can't compete argument, the do it the way the NFL does argument, which is something that you wrote about not too long ago. Do you want to explain that one? I'll get a lot of, you know, baseball should share revenue the way the NFL does. Well, they do. If you look at the two systems, they bring in whatever they bring in nationally, national TV contracts, online rights in the case of, you know, for baseball, you've got the streaming rights. All that money gets distributed equally.

The Mariners, sorry, haven't played in the playoffs for the last 20 years, but they get one thirtieth of the money that comes into the national contracts. The Diamondbacks, the Marlins, the Royals, the Brewers, these incredibly small market teams that don't have a lot of visibility, that never show up on ESPN or Fox or whatever, are getting one thirtth of that month in the same way that the Lions and the Cardinals and the Jaguars get 1 32nd of the NFL's national month. The difference is that MLB's local revenue is a much larger than the NFL's local revenue, both in the park and outside of it. I believe the NFL leader in attendance is typically 700, and outside of it. I believe the NFL leader in attendance is typically 700, 800,000 people a year. We point and laugh at teams that sell 700, 800,000 tickets a year. We call them the Marlins

and the Rays. So attendance isn't nearly the factor that it is in baseball. And of course, the local TV markets. Baseball has to put, what is it? If you take out the national games, it's 73, 74 teams games a year on local television you don't have a national model for that you can't have the league the nfl sells 272 games a year mlb has almost 10 times that at the time that the this model began it was more than 10 times that so you have to have local revenue but things mlb has addressed that it there's a lot and god guys the one i I opened my door every day. Well, I'm kind of a homebody. I open my door every other every other

day. And I hope that there's a blank envelope. The one piece of information I would desperately like to have is revenue sharing transfers. Now we have estimates ever drolic, I want to say had a piece couple years ago that he had the top of the Yankees, the the red sox the dodgers push about 70 to 80 million dollars a year into the you know their net is minus that and teams like the pirates uh the royals collect maybe you know 90 percent of that so in the 60 70 the distribution is a perfect bell curve but i would that's the information i think is missing from this conversation is how much money the large market teams are actually pushing into the pockets of the small market

Teams and again if you're listening if you ever just want to drop a blank envelope with absolutely no return information I would I would be grateful But I think that information in this conversation would be helpful to see just how much The Pirates owners the Marlins owners etc are actually taking out of this system and not putting it back on the field But to kind of get back to the NFL point, you can't just share revenue, all the revenue, the way the NFL does, because the Yankees are not going to give $300 million a year to the rest of the league. They'll start a new league before they do that. I mean, as it is right now, I think we're on the edge of what I call confiscatory revenue sharing.

Because remember, those teams at the top of the local revenue pool are also the ones driving the value of the national television contracts so you already have this what I call hidden revenue share you know if the if the all the TV contracts I think they're gonna push 60 billion dollars sixty million dollars a year to every team next year if you look at just the just the national TBS Fox Fox, ESPN deals. But the value of those teams isn't equal within that umbrella. So already you have implied revenue sharing there. Now you also have those teams giving up actual money

that they generate at Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Dodger Stadium, and through YES, and whatever the LA thing is called, and Marquee, and Nessun. There's a lot of money being transferred right now. And I don't think we talk enough about that. And this idea that we would have to share that money equally, that just by existing, Bob Nutting should get $250 million a year from those teams, is just an utterly ridiculous position.

You're never going to get to that level of revenue sharing in baseball. And I didn't put this in the email, and I think it's probably a little too much for a podcast today, but eventually baseball's gonna have to deal with the fact that how long can we continue to keep these teams in places that were metropolises 130 years ago?

I don't think this problem's gonna get any easier as more and more people go to New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Chicago and away from places like Cincinnati and Cleveland and Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. I think that's a complicated problem. Well, and you know, we should also like reckon with the media markets that we have that were smaller and are much bigger now. The Phoenix metro area is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. Like the fact that we think of that as a small market team, given how many people live in the valley is crazy. 10 years ago, people referred to Houston as a small market team, given how many people live in the Valley, is crazy.

Ten years ago, people referred to Houston as a small market. Right. Which even then was ridiculous. Right. It's what, the fourth biggest media market in the U.S. now? I have to update my priorities. Like Detroit has slipped a bit. Yeah. Like you kind of got to go in and look and say, okay, what's an actual small market anymore? I mean, there are, there's our, if you say, well, why don't you put another team in New York?

Well, New York had three teams and didn't work very well. Now, granted, that was 60 years ago. But this idea that you're just going to put a team in Newark or Hartford or Brooklyn to pick random places in the area, I mean, it takes a generation to build that up. And I'd have never seen that as some kind of solution. People say, well, put a team in the Inland Empire outside of LA. Well, first of all, that's a fairly not rich area. So you're starting there and you've got to figure out who's going to watch the team. It's a generation. So no, this is a little, again, this is a little outside our thing today, but I think baseball's got distribution of teams issues that have to be worked on in part because baseball needs local support more than the other sports.

Now, the other solution is let's just play a 17-game season only on Sundays, only in the afternoon, and only have national television contracts. Poof, I've created the NFL. Right. I think one misconception that you didn't list but that you have mentioned at times and that we've mentioned and that I see surfacing often is the idea that the commissioner is some sort of neutral arbiter, right? Is looking out for the best interest of the game. There just seems to be a, still a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what the role of the commissioner actually is and what it has been for a long, long time. And I don't know whether that comes from people going back to the Black Sox scandal and Kennesaw Landis and the owners calling in this person who was supposed to restore the integrity

of the game and also keep all the black players out and all the other things he did. But I don't know whether that is the origin story, this myth of the commissioner as the person who has the best interests of baseball at heart, as opposed to a proxy for the owners who is doing exactly what he is hired and employed to do. I think you're absolutely right. And it goes back to that initial image, this guy with this great name, you know, banning all the gamblers from the game. all the gamblers from the game. And again, I think that certainly in his time, there was less concern about the color line. And we look back at that and say,

well, that was one of the great crimes of the century, the baseball crimes of our game. And so then it took until 1947 to correct that, certainly as a stain on Landis. And if you actually look past Landis, I mean, baseball had an extended period of bad commissioners, but all of them had one thing in common. The players had absolutely no say in who they were. The players have never had a say in the selection of the commissioner. And even, I think if you're my age, you kind of remember that run of A. Bartlett,

Giamatti, and then Faye Vincent, which really the last time the commissioner actually tried to be a commissioner. Peter Ubaroth did too, and that gave us collusion. So this isn't always a good thing. But you have this idea that the commissioner stands above the game but one of the things that happened with butt sealer taking over is it made it really should have made it more clear what the commissioner actually is which is the representative owner himself an actual owner himself and in seal case an owner who really tried to represent the interests of a fairly small cadre of owners you know the small market ones he's he tried a lot of what we have today, and ceiling is another topic you probably don't want to get me started on, is a game built in the image of a small market owner.

How do we make this work for Milwaukee, regardless of how it might work for everybody else? But that should have done it. When they elevated and owned, and like I say, there's an image of ceiling that is disconnected from the reality of the things that Bud Selig did. And I may never be able to bridge that gap. The man is in the Hall of Fame. But that should have done it. And then when they elevated a hawkish labor lawyer to the job, that really should have been the ending. Rob Manfred takes a lot of grief. And I think Rob Manfred has been Peter Principled into this job and he's not really qualified for the job, but he's doing exactly what they wanted him to do. This idea that Rob Manfred is failing into this job, and he's not really qualified for the job. But he's doing exactly what they wanted him to do. This idea that Rob Manfred is failing at his job.

No, Rob Manfred is doing his job, and that is terrible for the fans. I think we can look back and say, you know, maybe he did this thing wrong or that thing wrong. People should have mad him about the Astros, but I really don't know what he could have done there. He gave the players immunity. Once you do that, that's it. You can't go back and take back immunity because they say things you don't like. But people are just mad at Manfred. Once you do that, that's it. You can't go back and take back immunity because they say things you don't like. But people are just mad at Manfred.

But Manfred's job is for them to be the guy the fans get mad at. So they're not getting mad at Jerry Reinsdorf and Charlie Monfort. Well, be mad at Charlie Monfort for a thousand reasons. But they're not being mad at the owner. So do I think he's a good commissioner? No, but I don't think there's such a thing anymore as a good commissioner because the commissioner is just the owner's representative. And I need to get back to actually calling him that. The fact that we created this job in 1920, 20, 21, 20, and kind of had this whole mythology built up around the commissioner of baseball, we really got to get away from that in our reporting and call the commissioner what he is, the owner's representative. Yeah. And you do see sometimes people advocating for that platonic ideal of a commissioner, right? Like we don't have that currently.

If I can stay in New York, I'll take the job. Yeah. Well, you do hear people say, well, what we need is this like a baseball ombudsman basically, right? Just someone who is above the fray, right? And can just kind of come in and neutrally and coolly and objectively and dispassionately evaluate everything and then hand down their ruling or something. Right. Faye Vincent got fired. The last commission I tried to do that got fired, that was Faye Vincent in 92, where he overruled the realignment plan or he tried to implement a realignment plan that actually had teams in the east, in the east, and in the west, in the west.

Crazy SOB. And he ended up getting railroaded. Selig actually was the guy who cashiered them. And again, please, folks, read Lords of the Realm by John Hellyer. I think it might be out of print, but find it. It is essential for everything up until 1993. A lot of what I'm telling you

is stuff that John Hellyer had thought of. But no, Ben, I don't know how we... You'll hear people talk about Theo Epstein for this job, and this job is well below Theo Epstein's pay grade. Theo Epstein should run for president, or I don't know, fry cook on Venus or something. I don't actually know, but Theo Epstein is wildly overqualified for this job. And the suggestions that you hear for this job tend to be people who I think would make things worse. Look, I know Bob Costas has his fans, but Bob Costas would ruin baseball in less than time. It's really hard to find somebody who would be like, who do you think the players and owners could actually get agree on? Can you name five people who the players and owners would actually agree on for this type of role?

No. Right. No, because who's going to represent both of their interests? They have diametrically opposed interests in a lot of cases. And also the populist argument, I don't realize. Somebody has to represent the fans. No. When General Motors is negotiating with its labor unions, they're not thinking about the customers either.

The fans don't have a voice. The fans' voice in this is, you pay your money and it takes your chances. If the league and if the game itself isn't good enough for the fans anymore, you vote with your wallet. What we've seen historically is the fans have always come back and this might be a good place to close on. I'm worried that we, and I've never, I promise you, I've never been the baseball is dying guy. Literally, I've always said, look at the history. Baseball's fine. I don't know that baseball is dying. I think baseball is driving drunk right now. And I think there's some real risk involved. If you have this on top of 2000, because people didn't take away from 2000. It was a pandemic. Things happened. People

took away from 2000. These idiots couldn't get it together. If we have another fractured season in 2022 on top of 2000, I really do think it'll be the first time in baseball history baseball loses people and can't get back. Well, and I wondered after the response to the pandemic if that was maybe the first time that Manfred was potentially in hot water with the owners, either because they were frustrated that things took as long as they did

or because he had mis-sort of gauged what the resolve of the players were in that things took as long as they did or because he had miss sort of gauged what the resolve of the players were in that moment too right like i think that that was a pretty galvanizing moment for a lot of the union membership in terms of you know what they were willing to take from ownership versus what they were willing to push back on and i was pretty surprised and impressed with with what solidarity and resolve they showed that year because i was you know i wasn't particularly optimistic and i think it was illuminating for a lot of those guys like this is who you're dealing with and this is what matters to them you know my concern with the players is that they don't have they weren't going to be

strong enough because none of them have been through this before right um barely in 2002 was nasty the owners and their media partners literally held September 11th over the players. That was an ugly fight and it ended without a work salvage. And very few players even remember that anymore. There's leadership in the union, non-playing leadership, that still remembers 02 and 94 and even goes back as far as the 80s. But you know, no players have that. And I didn't know what they could hold up. And Meg, I certainly underestimated 2020's effect. It sounds like you really saw that as a galvanizing moment. I know I underestimated it. And I think that the effect of 2020 is driving

what we're seeing now. It was a big thing for the players. You mentioned Manfred. I don't think the owners were in position to cashier Manfred in the middle of a crisis a year in advance of a labor salvage. There was just not enough time to go through that. I think a lot of people, and I'm coming around to this too, once we get an agreement, I think four months later, we'll see, oh, we're going to search for a new commissioner. I don't think Manfred is the commissioner in 2024. well that would be a hopeful note i guess although but what i mean look at that look at this dan halem becomes commissioner meet the new boss same as the old boss probably but yeah i was just going to mention because you you made the comp to general motors a minute ago and pointed out well maybe the the fans don't get a direct seat at the table because it's a business. On the other hand, you have made the case and have written recently that it's not just

any business, right? And that is an argument that you hear from people, it's a business and you got to maximize your profits at all times and all of that. But that's the myth I forgot to write down. Yes. Okay. Well, go ahead then. But baseball's not a business.

I mean, there was a time in the middle of the century when there wasn't as much money in the game. And yeah, these guys did have to eke out a profit. They were just, I mean, they were rich relative to the population. Certainly the players were doing well, but teams could lose money. No team ever went under, but certainly teams were closer to it than anything we've seen in our lifetime. But now, and I even go back and this was the conversation we never had. When I started doing this, everybody was operating much closer to the edge because there wasn't the central fund money that there was. Again, all team owners were generally rich, but a lot of them, their value was tied up in what the team made in a given year.

We don't have that anymore. Everybody who owns a team bought it for a zillion dollars because they made two zillion dollars in their other businesses none of these guys all of them now run the team you know the team should be a hobby baseball because baseball teams also wrap themselves in the flag they go to the city and say we're a big part of this of the fabric of this city you have to give us a bunch of money for a ballpark they're're the big flags at the postseason games and the flyovers, covering themselves in hot apple pie or whatever metaphor you want to use. Baseball's not a business. And this idea that it has to be treated like the corner grocery, that you have to be in the red

every quarter. What would actually happen if every team in baseball lost $20 million this year? What would the actual effect be on any of these guys? Absolutely none. It would be a tax write-off for a lot of them. So once you take that out of question, if teams lost $10 million every single year, they'd make it up on the sale. And by the way, if you were losing that much money, you should sell your team. And as we've seen, the Marlins went for a billion the royals went for a billion they're gonna eventually if they can figure out where to put them have expansion teams that you know get signed out for a billion dollars this idea that baseball teams are unprofitable and if they're unprofitable it matters is ridiculous and like

i say you get all of these these theseSchool 101 bros coming out of the woodwork and like, well, you know, they're running a business and they got to make money. Oh, shut up, man. They ran a business. They ran a business that enabled them to buy a baseball team. And by the way, if you had ever said to them when they were running their other business, oh, you know, what you got to do is take $200 million of your profits and give it to the store in Pittsburgh. They would have laughed you out of the room. So these guys who are incredible capitalists are now coming to baseball and they turn into socialists. Oh my God, this stuff drives me crazy. But no, baseball is not a business, man. Look, baseball is healthy. And even if it wasn't, who cares? The idea is that you win.

If you're not buying a baseball team to win, if you're buying a baseball team to try to squeeze out 1% a quarter, man, get the hell out. And again, this gets back to, you know, Meg, what we were talking about before. We just have the wrong guys on the team. We need more Steve Coens who say, I don't care if I lose $10 million this year. I have $10 million to lose. I want to win. We need 30 guys like that. We need guys who want the next win more than they want the next dollar. And we just don't have anywhere near the number of those that we have. But baseball, it's not a business. Baseball is the thing you buy after you've already made money in business. Last thing I wanted to bring up is that there are some basic factual misunderstandings about,

say, lockout versus strike, right? Who initiated this and who has dragged their feet more or refused to move more or decline to make counter proposals more, et cetera, et cetera. And again, we are recording this a day before Saturday, so we will see what the owners come up with. But I think that leads to some pointing out that there aren't two sides about some of these things, right? I think you tweeted something to that effect the other day in response to probably some writer who made this, the science can't agree.

We can name him. It was Buster Aldrich. It wasn't. I couldn't remember whether it was him or others because there are multiple options, right? But yes, I framed this whole conversation as, well, here's what some randos are tweeting at you on Twitter. Well, often it is not coming from randos. It's coming from people with six-figure follower counts. But beyond that, I think that leads to this contention that, well, no, it's not a two-sides issue. There's one side that's more at fault here. I think that is certainly true. On the other hand, I think there is a strain of thinking that's just, hey, the owners could lift the lockout today. They could be in camps tomorrow, right?

And that maybe, for me at least, goes a bit too far in the other direction in making this a one-side issue because it is bargaining, right? There are technically two sides to that. to that. And as you have noted in your newsletter, there is a clause that was scheduled to sunset in the old CBA about the competitive balance tax that basically said, if this agreement expires without a new agreement, then that's not in effect anymore. So I guess there would be no competitive balance tax, which the owners, I suppose they could say we will play without one. But historically speaking, there's no way that they're going to do that. And it would be kind of naive to expect them to do that, right? Because this is bargaining and obviously they're going to look out for their interests. But what I'm getting at is, you know, if the owners were to say, OK, we'll run back the old CBA we had, the players probably would not go for that because they were unhappy,

understandably, with the status quo, right? So they are trying to change the status quo. I mean, it is to some extent a give and take. And if MLB did not exercise the lockout move that they had, then at some point there could have been, perhaps even still could be, a strike. So it's not as if the players are just, hey, we want to be out there and we'll agree to anything, nor should they be. But I think there is kind of a straight of argument that's almost like, you know, the owners are such villains, which in many respects they are, that it's almost like, hey, the players just want to get out there and they'll show up for business. And I think it's a little more complicated than that. There's a lot there. I mean, I come back to this. The lockout is a lever only the owners have.

Right. If the owners were to lift the lockout and the players would go on strike, that would be different. But right now, the players can't go to camps. The owners control that lever. There is a realistic expectation that they could do that, though, right? I don't think, in part because of the CBT thing. The CBT thing is what prevents the owners from really lifting the lockout. And to make this clear, under the CBA, the

competitive balance tax, I hate saying those words. It's a product investment tax. In any case, it sunsets at the end of the CBA. If the owners and players were to agree to play under the rules of the old CBA, as they did in 1984, there would be no tax and the Dodgers could sign Carlos Correa to a one-year $78 million deal. I don't think the owners want that. I have also asked Eugene Friedman about this. They can agree to a side agreement. In other words, they could say, look, we'll play under the current CBA. We'll extend the CBT from last year. We'll add $6 million to the threshold and keep the penalties the same. You could fix that problem. And I'm of the opinion that there are two things happening. Again, I mentioned earlier, I think that baseball's

risk profile right now is greater than it's been in a long time. I think there's a real urgency to play this season as a normal season. And a temporary agreement to get around to do that is worth it for both sides. I disagree with you, Ben. I think the players would agree to something like that to get past this particular crisis point. The other thing is, if you look at what's actually on the table, if the players were coming to the table with the offer I would have made, which really would have radically changed, it would have dramatically, probably I would have asked for a $2 million minimum salary just for starters. I think that would be a reason to lock the players out. I think the gap between the two sides would have been larger if I had been at the table instead of Bruce Meyer.

Under the current, if you look at the deals that are on the table right now, if you look at the differences in the minimum salary offers, if you look at the differences in the bonus pools, if you look at, we haven't seen the, I guess the players are asking for a $245 million threshold in the CBT. There's not enough on the table right now

between these two sides to warrant the lock-in. This isn't 81 where the owners were trying to break free agency, or 94 where they wanted to implement the lock-in. This isn't 81 where the owners were trying to break free agency or 94 where they wanted to implement the salary cap. Meg is agreeing with me, which really fills my heart. It is 72 kind of when it was just about a pension. Back then, a pension was a big deal because the players didn't make it. And the pension was the entire raison d'etre of the early union was the pension.

So to walk out for the pension was a big deal. Yeah. No, I mean, for the owners to make such a stink about the pension at that point. Yeah. Well, they just didn't want to give up any money. Of course. Yeah. But no, under these circumstances, I don't think, and this is, I want to see Saturday's offer, but I'm planning to write, I tweeted this yesterday and I plan to do a column about it but to actually risk the season over what the act what the differences are right now i don't mean the real differences like the real problems in the game that aren't going to be addressed here i mean the players offer and the owners offer it's like when teams go to arbitration over like seventy thousand dollars like the player files at

you know 1.2 and the team files at 1.25 yeah and the team's like well file and trial we got to go you're literally spending more building the case than you are in the difference between. That's where we are right now. We're going to war over a very small amount of money. So again, then you kind of asked a bunch of stuff there. But I would say that the owners are have the trigger hand. And I think there is a solution here that at least gets you past the crisis point and buys you seven warmups. Yeah, I think when Ben Clemens has broken down the various proposals at play, and there's some overlap with some of this stuff, and it depends what they ultimately end up with. But it's like, at least when you look at the stakes for the ARB and pre-ARB players, it's not even $500 million,

right? It's a fraction of the most recent playoff deal that they negotiated. And that's not even $500 million, right? Like it's a fraction of the most recent playoff deal that they negotiated. And that's not even taking into account the money that expanded playoffs would bring in, right? So the fact that they're willing to go to war over this stuff is kind of surprising given the stakes on the other side. So I don't know. Maybe if temperatures were warmer in April,

we'd be in a different spot. I wonder if part of this is just that the games that we are likely to lose are coming at the least profitable moment in the— You hit it. They learned two years ago that they don't need the first half of the season. And that's why I always thought spring training was the trick. The owners make money in spring training, and they have a lot of agreements with the different cities in Florida and Arizona. And if they punt spring training, they really have no reason to get back to the table until Memorial. So I think that's the risk here.

I always thought spring training would push the owners to the table. If that doesn't happen, we are in serious trouble here. I really think the owners have learned that as long as they have the playoffs, and mind you, if they have a shortened season, they'll probably make another case for a 16-team playoff. So they're making more money on the playoffs. Everything right now is pointing us towards the cliff. On that note... Look, I'll just say this, and I want to end this on a positive note. When we get the game back, I want people to focus on the fact that the best baseball players who have ever lived are on the field right now. It's a screwed up game

and there are gameplay issues and the off-field stuff is a nightmare, but pretty soon we're going to see Otani and Tatis and Franco and Scherzer, all of these incredible talents. And that's what's going to bring us back hopefully on March 31st, but even if it's May 31st, we are privileged right now to be fans of this game. Yeah. That's the thing that makes me mad, the thought of losing a single game of Otani. Prime Otani. We've been deprived of that long enough by his own injuries, et cetera, and the pandemic and everything. So while we have him and while he's healthy and at his peak, let us please have a full season.

That would be nice. But you have sent people home happy, thank thank you or as happy as they could after the previous hour push but okay yeah so we both subscribe to the joshian newsletter and we recommend that you all do as well you get this kind of content in your inbox every week a few times typically and it's not all labor coverage right now. He is doing a team-by-team series and sort of a season preview, which he is trying to navigate just as we are trying to figure out

how to do that, given that we don't know when the season's starting and it's too soon to actually tell who's going to be on a lot of teams. But you are making it work, I think. So everyone just go to joeshein.com, subscribe there,

follow Joe on Twitter at Joe underscore Sheehan. Although if enough of you subscribe, maybe he won't be tweeting as much sometime soon. 3,000 subscribers. That's my number. 3,000 subscribers. I'll never tweet again. Okay. Well, our audience has the power to make that happen right now.

If enough of you close this episode and go to JoeSheehan.com, make it happen. Thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. I hope you'll have me back during the season and we can talk about some of the players that we're looking forward to seeing as opposed to all this nonsense. Yes, please. So I started our last episode by trying to come up with a comp for the Nets pre-Harden trade big three of Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant, who got to play only 16

games together because of injuries and anti-vax stances and so on. And they went 13-3 in those games, which was tantalizing, but they just rarely got them together on the court at the same time. Listener Vincent wrote in to say, just listen to the new Effectively Wild regarding super teams. There's a famous stat about the Mets' quote-unquote five aces, Syndergaard, DeGrom, Matz, Wheeler, Harvey, who could never quite get into a full rotation. And it's true, it finally happened in April of 2018. Those five starters pitched in a row, and the Mets won every game, 5-0. But it took years for it to happen.

Matz was the last of them to make his big league debut in June 2015, and so for almost three years they couldn't quite coincide because of injuries, Tommy John surgeries, etc. So finally, in the 421st game after it became a possibility, 34 months, the elusive five aces finally pitched in a rotation. Of course, by that time, Harvey was not an ace anymore, and he started only four games for the Mets that season and then got traded, and the Mets finished fourth. So it took too long for it to happen. But same sort of idea. So thanks to Vincent for the comp.

All right. I figured I could end the week here by reading some responses to our draft in episode 1808, where we picked MLB players we thought would be good at or would be fun to watch play other sports. Got a lot of responses and submissions. So let me run through them here. A couple people pointed out that when I drafted Javi Baez as a professional tag player, perhaps I should have taken Josh Harrison instead. Josh Harrison, of course, famous for his extended

pickles for being able to avoid tags, and it seems like avoiding tags is probably just as important as, if not more important, than making tags. Of course, Baez is good at avoiding tags is probably just as important as, if not more important than, making tags. Of course, Baez is good at avoiding tags too, but Josh Harrison, famous for that, probably a good pro tag player, thanks to Andrew and others for pointing that out. Brian says, I would draft Otani as a volleyball player. Japan's men are generally in or very close to the top 10 in the world in volleyball, but just like in soccer, they never really get into the elite ranks, partly because their players don't have the height of the top few countries in those sports. I can imagine Otani dominating volleyball if he trained strictly for that. Eric writes, Joey Votto should take his precision on the ice and take up curling. I think

Zach Granke was also suggested as a curler. Tim Lincecum and Mike Clevenger probably play hacky sack on the beach. Byron Buxton has the longest stride I've ever seen and would be perfect for either hurdles or speed skating. Zach Granke could hustle pool. Popular pick, Zach Granke. He was also mentioned as a potential darts whiz. Fernando Tatis Jr. would be a pass first, good defense point guard. Lastly, Itro would be a great archer. I could also see him running ultraramarathons. Logan says, Paul Goldschmidt, or any other gold glove first baseman, as a lacrosse goalie. Similar to Ben picking a catcher as a hockey goalie, but from a standing position. Cabrian Hayes playing handball. From what I know about handball, Logan says, not much.

The players are fast and need to jump and or contort their bodies to shoot the ball, not unlike a third baseman ranging into foul territory and making a jump throw to first. David Fletcher competing in saber or fencing. That's a good one. Saber is the fencing discipline that allows slashing in addition to stabbing, so baseball skills apply more than the other disciplines. Fletcher has a high contact rate, so he can hit moving openings, and he's fast, so he can dodge.

Good point. And Madison Bumgarner competes in equestrian, specifically three-day eventing. His height wouldn't be out of place in a sport where some of the men are up to 6'6", and even the women are 5'7"-5'10". We already know Bumgarner has rodeo skills, which should help with the cross-country

and show-jumping components of eventing. The last part is the fancy dressage, riding, so we would get all the joy of seeing Mad Bum in a top hat and coat as he pilots a dancing horse. Woodwatch. And lastly, Logan says, honorable mention, Vlad Guerrero Sr. plays cricket because we already know he has power even off of a bouncing ball. I suppose that goes for Pablo Sandoval too. Kieran says, the first thing that immediately popped into my head as soon as I heard the idea was Javi Baez, tennis star. He has a great power speed combo that allows him to be successful despite

too fundamental and presented here in wildly oversimplified form baseball specific flaws. Swing decisions. Well, in tennis, just swing every time the ball comes your way, like he's already used to doing. And swinging and missing by a centimeter. Huge problem with a bat, not so bad with a racket. I like this logic. Overall, it seems like there's kind of an art to tennis, understanding the flow of the point and making shots that I think would map well onto his El Mago soft factors. Everyone had a pitch for Baez. He's also mentioned as a dodgeball player, as was Fernando Tatis. A different Kieran writes, Matt Chapman would make an excellent hockey player. His lateral movement proves that his hip and core strength would be optimal for skating,

and he has soft mitts, as the hockey people would say. Though I guess he also had hip surgery. Matthew suggests that Javi Baez could be a soccer goalkeeper. He's maybe a touch too short, but great reflexes and leaping abilities are a must. Don't know if he'd be a good distributor, but I bet he'd be a good shot stopper. Insert your favorite fast twitch infielder in here instead of Baez. A couple of years ago it would have been Andrelton Simmons, of course, but he's no longer at the height of his powers.

And Matthew also suggests Jacob deGrom as a swimmer. Take this with a grain of salt. I've never been a good swimmer. I think that a swimming motion has some similarities to a pitching motion. Overhead action with the arms, coordinated movements and timing between arms and legs. So a super athletic pitcher who repeats his delivery might well make for a good swimmer. Maybe. Andrew says, I think those hand-eye coordination athletes Ben mentioned, like Astadillo, would be really good at archery. The best idea I had, though, was to get four of the corn-fed beef boys from the Yankees and have them form a bobsled

team. Bobsledding is a sport that relies heavily on the strength of the team at the start of the race. Bobsled is also a sport that commonly pulls football stars, Herschel Walker for example, and track stars to compete. There's obviously a bobsled market inefficiency in choosing baseball players to compete. Bonus points for one of the only two bobsled tracks in the country being in Lake Placid a few hours away

where they can all go in the winter and hang out and train. I think Meg mentioned via email that the Beef Boys might be good at volleyball too, although I guess maybe you'd want to take the very tallest pitchers you could find. Derek says, I think handball could be a pretty good fit from some left side of the infielders. It doesn't necessarily require the overwhelming athleticism that some sports do, and hand-eye coordination seems important. I think I'd nominate Manny Machado. Obviously, the arm strength is huge, but he's also pretty athletic and graceful for such a big dude.

Obviously, the arm strength is huge, but he's also pretty athletic and graceful for such a big dude. Carlos Correa might be another good fit. And lastly, Benjamin says Max Scherzer in any sort of extreme endurance sport. Ultra-marathoning, long-distance cross-country skiing, bicycle road racing, adventure racing, etc. He's the most competitive baseball player I've ever seen, and I think he would just keep competing until he physically collapsed. I guess the labor negotiations have turned into a bit of an extreme endurance sport and he's involved in those too. So thanks to everyone for those and other suggestions. That was a lot of fun.

To keep that fun coming, you can help support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and help us stay ad-free while getting yourself access to some perks, such as monthly bonus pods and access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, which is almost 500 members strong. Today's thank yous to our Patreon supporters go to Greg Loon, Leith McCandawar, David Whitcomb, Joseph Kappel, or Kappel, and Ray Sheen. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

Please keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon listing system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thank you, as always, to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the Super Bowl. Hopefully enjoy the owner's CBA proposal more so than some of the recent ones.

And we will be back to talk to you early next week. It's really, really, it's always in supply It's negativity, so listen to the guy Who wants to keep you down