Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1818: Smile, You’re on Manfred Camera

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are joined by Evan Drellich, senior writer for The Athletic, to talk about the benefits and drawbacks of reporting from the scene of the CBA negotiations, the proper composition of photos of executives walking to meetings, not getting hoodwinked by sources, whether there really was optimism about a deal leading […]

It takes a sunrise, it takes a lot of cohesive scoops to make it alright. I know the world is full of you too. Tell me what you know now. Tell me what's in the bowl now I've found love is useless too Hello and welcome to episode 1818 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, if you have found yourself in Florida or Manhattan this week,

and somewhere on a sidewalk or in a parking lot, you came across a man taking pictures of people in polos and khakis, sometimes tweeting those photos and muttering to himself about the competitive balance tax, it may have been our guest today, Evan Drellick, a senior writer at The Athletic, and for my money, the best source for information on these frustrating CPA negotiations. Evan, hello, and how are you? I mean that in a very sincere sense, not just the routine, how are you, where you say okay and we move on, but really, how are you doing these days? I think some of them were wearing button-down shirts as well. I don't know if it was only polo shirts.

I'll have to go back and check the ample footage that you provided for us. Yeah, journalism, capital J right there. Parking lot videos. That's what's going on right now, people. We last had you on back in November, and so much has happened since then. And in another very real sense, so little has happened since then. And I had hoped that the next time we talked to you would be when there was a deal. But we couldn't wait that long because who knows how long that will be.

Maybe you have some suspicions and we will ask you about that. But I did want to ask you about the reporting process for this just because, full disclosure, we were scheduled to talk to you earlier in the day because you were not scheduled to be doing anything. And then your schedule changed. And I guess your schedule is completely out of your control these days because you go where bargaining is happening and when it's happening. And you don't necessarily know in advance. And then you stand around and hopefully you learn something. stand around and hopefully you learn something. And I'm very curious about the process. And if you can explain without giving away any tricks of the trade or anything, how important is it for you to be on the scene? Is it about putting in the face time so that people

know this is a serious reporter who's covering these talks and is sleeping outside on the sidewalk the longer you talk? Or are you actually gleaning information? Because I would think that especially if there's a whole gaggle of reporters, it would be tough to get an exclusive in the five seconds when someone is walking from one building to the other, right? So do you learn a lot or is it mostly just about putting in the time and hoping something big breaks? Yeah, you don't necessarily get or really, I guess, with any frequency, get any one-on-one time, but you do get information and ability to have a conversation that you wouldn't have otherwise.

And that is valuable. It's valuable. The FaceTime is valuable. I think at this point, the people involved in labor and baseball do know who I am. So it's not for me as much about that element of it. But yeah, look, it's kind of an old school training of, you know, I was an intern at Newsday in New York and I was taught very early, you know, you go to the event and you'd never know what's going to happen. You never know what you might see. You never know who you

might talk to. And you also have an element of playing defense. And that's frankly a large part of it is if I don't go to something, but one of my competitors does and I miss out on the story, well, you know, you should have gone, right? And it can create situations that I think could be rightly described as eyewash, as wastes of time, as loitering, but it is a large part of reporting,

certainly in baseball reporting, but I think in reporting in general, there can be a lot of waiting and standing around. And sometimes it pays off in small ways. And sometimes those small ways pay off over time. It's true. Both baseball and baseball reporting, standing around, pretty important. Well, and I'm curious. I mean, we've heard from both sides, I think, subsequent to the great Florida experience that they're a little less keen on the TikTok going forward, right? They want the individual sort of back and forth to be less heavily reported on. So what effect do you think all of that parking lot walking is going to have on the way that they conduct themselves going forward? Oh, it depends on the day of the week. One day of the week, they're cranky about how much attention they're getting. The next day

of the week, somebody's trying to seek, trying to give information on background without names, without attribution to drive their agenda. So yeah, look, are there moments where it is expressed to reporters from people on the inside that we don't think this is good for the process? OK, sure. But if you really kind of follow the day-to-day ebbs and flows, there are times when they are more restrictive of information. My plea, and I think most reporters' pleas, would be to do literally everything on the record.

Let's stop the background but you know as reporters we it's like it is what it is it is tricky i wish it wasn't this way but it is what it is maybe they're just out of like freshly laundered polos i'm worried you're gonna notice they've been wearing the same shirt two days in a row yeah four dollars at the west palm beach marriott for the laundry machines What have you learned about making Rob Manfred really pop on screen when he is striding across there? I have noticed like you at least have the right layout. Like there are reporters who will hold their phone vertically. You know, like you get the good cinematic angle on him, which I appreciate the aspect ratio there.

So that's good. And you get the panoramic view of him striding for four seconds instead of three seconds. So you're a natural. You've really taken to the videography aspect of the job, although it's probably- Let me acknowledge one thing about this because I wanted to, I appreciate that. I almost tweeted about this, but it does seem like I've gained a lot of Twitter followers recently. Not that I have that many, but the tweets are getting a lot of attention, which makes sense because the baseball world is paying attention. So I'm trying to be, believe it or not, actually judicious with what I tweet.

The parking lot stuff aside, I don't want to kind of tweet silly fun things right now. But I almost did tweet the other day. This is true. So I want to give a tiny shout out. My father is a cinematographer. He's not retired, but he's a cameraman who worked on movies and television shows. And so I texted him about I said, you know, dad, I'm getting some nice remarks about some of the videos. And he said, you know, you've always had a good sense of composition. So I like to think I've inherited some sort of filming capacity from my father. Yeah, definitely. I noticed that. That really came through because I had a number of options. There were many reporters on the scene who were tweeting almost identical images, but yours just looked a little bit better. It was noticeable. I trust the information I'm getting from you. I also trust the camera angles I'm getting from you.

I have also been reading your replies on occasion, the replies to you. That is, speaking of silly stuff, this was something I have been thinking about for a few days now. This was late on Monday night after you and the two bargaining teams had been stuck in that area for 12 hours, I think, at that point. There were many more hours to go. But you tweeted a picture through a fence, it looked like, of a sign that said, make your best move. Yeah, right. And then my attention was drawn to an exchange among two of your followers right below that. One, whose handle was Derek, said, where do you poop after being there 12 hours behind a gate?

And then someone named Dylan responded to Derek and said there's obviously bathrooms there and then Derek responded to Dylan and said I'm talking about for Evan who cares if the owners poop half them now I so look this was not you know you can imagine a worse stakeout than this because this was at a spring training stadium where there is a workout. There is a work room that so happens to actually be just across the street from the stadium. Some would have them in the stadium. This one is across the street from the stadium. So we did have a little home base. And actually, kind of the fun part of it was we're competitors, but we're collegial, most

of us sometimes, depending with each other. We would take turns buying water, some of us more than others, but we would stock the fridge. We would order food. A prominent national writer who was not in Florida, who might work for ESPN, ordered pizza for us. There was some taking care of each other, and some people bought, what do we call them, camp chairs. And I didn't buy one. I just stole people's when they weren't in it. I figured there would be enough chairs that I could just play a game of musical chairs with the chairs.

That Pef Jasson, what a class act that guy is. Jeffrey, G-E-O-F-F, yeah. So you said it is what it is. I know that asking you to recap all of these proposals is something of a fool's errand. But if you could just give us a sense of the most important issues of bargaining yet to do, maybe we can start there and then we can look ahead to what might come next. CBT is very big right now. The tax rate seems to have been settled. They'll likely be status quo. But unions asking for, I believe, 238 was the last proposal they asked for.

And the league was at 220. And the league didn't change its numbers in the final day. The night before, when everything looked like it was kind of maybe going somewhere, kind of a little bit, the league went up to 220. and everything looked like it was kind of maybe going somewhere, kind of a little bit. The league went up to 220, and then the next day when they made that best last final offer, although it was a little bit of discrepancy as to whether it was really described that way, but the CBT rates did not change the tiers. So $18 million gap there. The pre-arbitration bonus pool, I think it's a gap of about $55 million, $30 to $85 if my memory is working right.

And I don't know if it is at this point. Minimum salary, just to my eyes, is just my read and speculation. It doesn't seem to be that far apart. It's starting at $700,000 for the league in the last offer and $725,000 for the players. So that one, you just kind of naturally feel like that's closing in. Just a basic observation. I actually feel like that's closing in, just a basic observation. Yeah, I think when Ben Clemens looked at this for us, he saw $760,000 difference per team per year in the minimum salary.

So the gap there seems pretty bridgeable. Yes, it is good to – some people know how to do math. I wish that was me, but that has never been my strong suit. But I think at the press conference, the union held after Manfred held his, if I'm remembering this right, Bruce Meyer said something to the effect of, there was a difference of about $90 to $100 million in the proposals for getting younger players paid more. So I think that was probably a combination of the bonus pool and the difference in the minimums by their calculations. But I would want to double check that quote. International draft is more of a sticking point than you would think. You know, they do seem to have some agreement on the 12-team postseason.

We'll see if that, I can't imagine that changes from here, but, you know, everything is contingent on the package deal getting done. I guess it's possible the players could go to 14, but they do seem to have legitimate concerns beyond posturing. At least it seems that way. It seems like they are, to the best one could parse, you know, are you being genuine or are you just trying to hold it back? It does seem like they really do have a competitive concern about 14 teams. I think that's the run of it. I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting. Service time manipulation. Honestly, we didn't hear a lot about

later in the week. It was more of an, if I'm remembering right, it was more of an earlier in the week thing. And I would have to refresh my, I'd have to look at my tweets to figure out what the last thing on that was because I don't remember right now. Yeah, I think that your sense is right that they were sort of converging on the specifics there. Is your sense that the objection to the international draft is to another draft being instituted at all or to the specific sort of form of the draft? Because if my memory serves, in the last CBA, they actually ended up, obviously, they didn't institute an international draft, but even just concerning

the domestic draft, the specifics of some of the changes there got punted until later in the summer. They were just like, let's get this deal done, and then we'll figure out the domestic draft later. So is there issue that the union doesn't want an international draft full stop, Or are there particular aspects of the league's proposal that they found objectionable? I think a little bit of both. I think in general at the union, there is a philosophical opposition to drafts. You know, I've heard a, you know, I think in a perfect world, if you were to ask people on the player's side, in a perfect world, does an amateur draft exist to them? Their perfect world, they would say no. Right.

But obviously it does. So there is a general opposition to it. But I think probably more salient is what do the Latin players and the international amateurs want? How does that population feel about it? and the international amateurs want? How does that population feel about it? And the international amateur market as it is now is such a mess, rife with corruption and really unsavory practices.

It's a situation that should be addressed. The question becomes, does the league use the unsavory practices to kind of leverage getting what it wants economically? Well, this is bad and so this is the way to fix it or or could there actually be some sort of positive game in that direction from a draft and that these are very entirely separate discussions long discussions you could have about about that element of it but but i think basically the players who've come up

as international amateurs don't particularly want it. I think that's the general consensus. And from there, if you were to give it up, if you're the union and the players, you have to be getting something, I think, of real significance back. It's not the kind of thing you trade if you even were willing to do so lightly. And so you put all those factors together, it seems unlikely but not impossible that you would see an international draft in the CBA. And the frequent refrain in most circles in recent days and weeks has been, it's just money. It's just about money now. And of course, CPA negotiations are almost always about money if you boil it down, right? Even if you're talking about really complex

structural changes, you're ultimately talking about the division of revenue in sport. But when people say that, they mean that changes to free agency are off the table other than, I guess, draft pick compensation and changes to which players are eligible for arbitration and when those things are off the table. And mostly now it's agreeing on basically preserving most of the structures from the previous CPA and just changing the numbers around. There are some exceptions to that, but it doesn't seem like there are any vast gulfs at this stage in actual fundamental changes to the sport and the way that it's operated in recent CPAs. Do you agree with that? And are you basically on board with the idea that the gap just isn't that big now, that it's not big enough to support actually missing a meaningful number of games? Because while the difference may be a lot of money for us, it's not a ton when you look at it as a percentage of overall revenue in MLB. I agree that it does seem like the framework is in place that you're right, that probably you're

not going to see a lot of what would you call it, system changes at this point. The union, I think it's an interesting sidebar of should the strategy have been to go after more almost philosophical types of changes, right? If they had made their platform, we are going to expand arbitration eligibility. That is the way we are going to do it. What would the cost of that have been? Probably a missed season, right? It's the kind of topic that is truly a work stoppage topic is trying to expand arbitration.

And you've seen now that they've backed off backed off on it which frankly isn't that surprising at the same time the gap does seem to be quite large when you hear them talk about it and you know i i tweeted the more i think it was like 5 a.m the the marathon night the 16 and a half hour night you know right before i was going to bed you know just we already heard the union describe the deal, the offer at that point is not that great. And so knowing how they felt about it, but also just looking at the numbers myself and thinking about the last five years and really even before that, it just didn't seem like that great an offer. And I do think there is a burden on the union and the players here that if, you know, if you get a mediocre

deal, people are going to call it a mediocre deal. You've talked a lot for a long time about the need for real substantive change, you know, and $10 million jump in the CBT, is that it? Is an average of $1 million per team and a pre-arbitration bonus pool at 30 million total, is that it? So, if you are staying in that framework, and it does seem like they will, the draft is going to change and we'll see how significantly. That's not nothing. That could be, I guess we'll see. We have to see what the final mechanisms are.

Yeah. And the longer you sort of stick with the status quo, the more entrenched it becomes, right? And so the more difficult it is to then overturn that in the next round of bargaining several years down the road, because then it's, hey, we've had this system for three CBAs now, and suddenly you want to change it, right? It becomes sort of cemented. So there's almost a pressure to break that cycle now, it seems like, if you're ever going to. You're saying change the framework now? That if you were going to change the framework now is the time to do it? Yeah. I mean if you live with another CBA where the CBT barely changes, right?

And it's like Manfred said in his press conference the other day, like this is consistent with what we've had in the recent CBA, right? And so if you go another CBA where it becomes institutionalized, yeah, the CBT threshold just doesn't really increase. That's just the way that it works now. Then you probably maybe have to make more concessions to change that in the future potentially. Yeah. And, you know, I can't remember if we talked about this last time or not, but I think historically it's been borne out that major changes are not typically matters of concession. They are matters of, I'm not going to go to work unless you change. Right.

I do think there's, I don't want to call it misperception, but people often say, well, what does a union have to give up? What they have is whether or not they're going to sign a deal and go back to work. And that was true on the other side in 94, 95 when the owners were pushing for a salary cap. We're not going to agree to it. It runs in both directions. And it is what ends up making change, I think, particularly major change, is whether you're willing to show up for work.

I think what is notable to me is you are seeing how difficult it is when you would talk for years about, well, players should have done this, the players should have done that in 16. And there are things they should have done. But it really all does come back to how prepared to fight and miss games are you? Because you're seeing what the response is, right? And you could sit there and go, well, the players are asking for a lot. Sure. That is true. It is a lot relative to what they had.

Whether it is a lot relative to what they should have is a different question right I one point wrote in a story that the the players are asking for miles when the owners are willing to move feet night people going after me not many but a few people about how you're saying they're asking for miles relative to where they are it is miles I don't think that they shouldn't be asking for miles but it that that is the assessment it is significant change that doesn't mean it's not deserved to change totally different question. I don't know where I was going with that. But the point is to make gains in bargaining.

And this kind of reflects back on the mistakes the players made in the past because it did seem like they gave away some things maybe a little more easily than they should have. But, you know, again, if the owners threatened things and say, look, this is a work stoppage issue for you, for us in the 11 deal, the 16 deal, and you're not willing to fight, well, you're just going to concede. And so it just shows how tough collective bargaining is and what you have to go through to get what you want. I feel like we have a very good sense of where the players are relative to one another because they are using their platform on social media. They're appearing at press conferences. They are among the people walking back and forth in parking lots, right? It is much less clear to us where the

consensus lies among the ownership group. And so I'm curious what your sense is of how sort of united or divided they are around particular issues. I know Andy Martino reported earlier today that there were four owners who said that any raise in the CBT is just a non-starter for them. And that might telegraph bad things about future negotiations. But how much consensus do you think that there is among the 30 ownership groups right now? And where are the pain points for them? Yeah, you know, it is. I've said it on podcasts over time when people ask.

I do think it is the hardest thing to put your finger on and consistently put your finger on and identify. And you hear different things. I have also been told and I think plan to report in some capacity at some point on the there was the four owners who did prior to as I understand it wasn't the last offer it was the second to last offer it was the marathon night because that's when the CBT last changed it wasn't the final day it was it was the day before but you know there have been others who have suggested that they're simply more small market teams and the small market teams are really the ones driving the boat in general. I talked to somebody tonight who said that they really't spending it the way they're supposed to.

You know, there are some names. I haven't reported them yet, so I don't want to go into it here of which owners might be hardliners. Give us an exclusive. I don't think it's –'s you know if you think back to 2020 arty moreno for example is one name that was out there and that's you know a name you hear again here but you get different opinions on it and and you know there's 30 of them there's 1200 players it can be easier to report on the player community than it can be on the owner community and some of it does get out,

but I don't think I'm... Yeah, I think you got to be realistic about the difficulty of reporting on ownership. And God bless John Hellyer for Lords of the Realm, because the sourcing there seems pretty incredible. So you get some of it, but it is not as consistently easy to do. In the Players Association statement on Tuesday, they described the lockout as the culmination of a decades-long attempt by owners to break our player fraternity. That is one side of the story, but from afar, it is not an implausible interpretation of events. What does your reporting say about that? Would you characterize that as an accurate read or not? Yeah, you know, I asked two questions at the press conference. I think that was the first one of the two I asked was to Andrew Miller and Max Scherzer was why do they feel that way and what has shown that to them?

Because it stood out to me in that statement that the union put out is a very strong assertion, right? That's not small fish. the union put out is a very strong assertion, right? That's not small fish. And both pointed to kind of the longstanding behavior of the clubs. And I have trouble myself on where I fall on this. I imagine it is certainly possible that some of those who were around in 1994, 1995, including the commissioner, including Jerry Reinsdorf, including, you know, go down the list of figures who were, I don't know. You don't know what people feel in their hearts, right? I don't know what Stan Kasten feels in his heart. I don't. But it is not impossible to imagine, you know, residual resentment from 25 years ago or in the time since. And that, look, the owners have made gains for 10 years,

right? So I guess it depends what you mean by break the union. Do they want to effectively guess it depends what you mean by break the union. Do they want to effectively discourage players from fighting for things that they want in the future? Yeah. I think how insidious a goal that is, I think would be in the eye of the beholder. But I think that's often what a management group's desire would be is you don't want to have to give up things to your employees and you want to keep the money for yourself. So, yeah. Do they literally want the union to disband? Maybe. I guess it depends on how you define break the union.

I know there are absolutely – the union is on the record, right? So, you know there are people inside the union, including players, who feel it. And players in general, we know and see and hear and have heard for years, feel like there's a real disregard for them as people and in the way they're treated in general, you know, that there's a lot of unhappiness there. And so I don't think it is far-fetched. I think the question is, could it just be that, as one might say, it's not even that deep. It might just be that the owners just want to keep the money, right? Sure.

And if discouraging players from fighting for money is a means to doing that, great. You know, it's a question of how much nefarious plotting there is. But yeah, I think there are people at MLB, owners, commissioner's office, who probably would not mind stepping on the union. And I don't think that would actually be that surprising. Probably would not mind stepping on the union. And I don't think that would actually be that surprising. Is your sense that the league, whether it's individual owners or Manfred or what have you,

do you think that they properly estimated the amount of solidarity that existed between the players? Because some of their behavior early suggested that they thought these guys are just going to roll over. And now, you know, we're at a point where the first two series of the season have been canceled. So have they struck you as being kind of surprised that they weren't able to get a deal done by this point? I think there is a, at times, large sense of frustration and a flabbergast that might exist inside commissioner's office over how this is gone. I think it's from the outside. I sit there and go, why are you surprised it's gone this way? I think most people, not all, but most people have this kind of innate sense of fairness. Well, if a pendulum swings in one direction, then it's like you're taught as a kid. Well, then should it probably go back to

the other? I don't know if kids are being taught the word pendulum, but it should go back the other way, right? Like if one person's getting, you know, more crayons and maybe eventually, you know, the crayons go back to the other person. And so I think that a lot of people do probably proceed from it from there. You know, I try to be pretty clear-eyed about like, you can say you want a fair deal. At the end of the day, it's really not about fairness. It's about what are you willing to fight for and for how long and can you stay unified.

And that is what drives labor negotiations. Yeah. It's pretty borne out over time. You know, look, I mentioned in a story, MLB went out and hired a former political campaign advisor, a former political spokesperson to essentially, certainly to handle the media relations side of this. And I think to an extent, run a campaign for them. And so certainly they were conscious of the need to combat narratives going into this. I don't know whether they would say they feel they've done a great job with it to this point. I mean, I think if you look at the

totality of coverage and opinion pieces, but there's time left. We'll see what happens here. But it doesn't seem to me, I think objectively, the league has not sufficiently or probably to its satisfaction drawn public favor. How's that? what turned out to be a false sense of optimism that the sides might be coming closer, coming to an agreement. And that seemed to be driven by some reports, some tweets that were out there that suggested as much. And you notably were not one of the people who were putting that message out there at that time, which gave me pause as I was trying to develop some optimism of my own. But you, over the weekend, had published a piece with the headline, Opening Day Never Had a Chance. I saw some people publish pieces with that kind of headline on Tuesday or Wednesday, but you were ahead of the game.

That was even before all of the deadline talks on Monday and Tuesday. So clearly you were not optimistic. Did you ever at any point have a sense that, hey, this might actually happen? And if not, where was that coming from? Was it, as some players subsequently suggested, that that was just being leaked by the ownership side in order to make the players look bad? And if that sort of thing is going on, how do you avoid falling into that pitfall yourself as a reporter? Is it just as simple as sending a second text to the other side to say, hey, they just told me

that they're optimistic. Are you optimistic? Yeah. You know, I have trust issues and I think that actually makes me a pretty good reporter. We were to try to reverse engineer the psychology of a reporter. Yeah. Look, I, you know, I said it to, I said it, Ken Rosenthal and I talk constantly every day. I've said it to a multiple, I say it to a lot of people. You know, my filter is very high, and Ken's is too, and it has to be when covering this stuff. You really have to be, it is politics, or much closer to politics

than a lot of what else you would run into in baseball. Maybe outside of, you know, agents trying to stir up a market for their clients. You know, there can be a little bit of like reading between the – you should always be reading between the lines as a reporter, but this stuff requires a lot of it. But, you know, that night, I'll be honest, I don't think I'm revealing too much here. I had talked with Ken. Ken is not my editor, but we collaborate. And I told him I was thinking about writing in days previous too. And he was rightly cautioning me against not leaving myself

an out on whether opening day would be canceled. I finally got to a point where I did pretty high up say like, look, you can never definitively predict the future. Something can change. And that was true. And I wanted to make sure I wrote that. But, you know, I'd been covering this for two years. Everything I had seen, everything was telling me it doesn't make sense. There's no way this is going to flip on a dime like that. It doesn't add up to everything I knew. But then when you, so I write the column, felt good about it. You know, and I'd be lying to you if I said at some point in that night, I told people around me, I think I'm going crazy. Everything I thought I knew and understood just disappeared.

It was bizarre. And look, I've followed the bargaining before, but I've never covered it before. So it's possible I simply, I considered the possibility that, well, you just don't know what happens till the very last minute. But it was also pretty clear to me that it would be league strategy to try to do something at the last minute. And that's happened in the past. There is an element of the league.

Look, if you put out, whether directly or through proxies, that a deal is close, it gets players excited. It gets agents excited. Then if a deal falls apart, it can be easy to kind of paint the other side as a bit of a boogeyman. And so, yeah, there is a management-specific incentive to say a deal is close because it gets people excited that it's coming. And so, you know, it worked out. I looked broken clock twice a day, right?

I looked smart. I was – but yeah, in that night, I – Can't go wrong by betting that there won't be a deal, at least so far. Right. Yeah. I did think, but by the next morning, when I kind of had a little time to assess everything, it just became pretty clear to me that no, no, I saw this properly. Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken. Yeah. It must be odd because I assume that you are standing in close proximity to other reporters who are tweeting things that maybe run contrary to the sense that you're getting. Maybe you're sitting in the same lawn chairs with some of those people and grabbing a slice from the same pizza.

But I guess especially if you're not working for the same outlet, you can't compare notes and sources and such. And so you just have to hope that you're right, which in this case, you turned out to be. And another question about that, I think a lot of people have seen the eye-catching quote by Ross Stripling, former Effectively Wild guest and player rep of the Blue Jays, who said that MLB essentially tried to pull a fast one. That was the gist of his quote, that they got to after midnight on Monday into Tuesday and then suddenly tried to sneak a bunch of stuff by them, the tired, sleepy players that they had never seen or agreed on before. Have you corroborated anything that he said there? Do you think that that is accurate? Yeah. Actually, if you were to look back, the strip of code is great. I think that was Shy and Ben Nicholson-Smith who got – I think it was a combination story if I'm right. Great job by them. If you look back at the story I ended up writing at whatever, 4 or 5 AM, it's like a short little story. It does have some line in there,

a third or fourth graph about new language arriving at the player's desk at midnight and them needing to vet it and discuss it. It wasn't quite as strong as, or really nearly as strong as Stripling saying, what do they think we're dumb? But the notion of it, yes, was something I can corroborate and had in fact written in that story. So yeah yeah that is certainly how the players took it now you know management can can go well you know deals change you know language is gonna change well you know what do you expect you think language is always gonna stay the same you know so what it becomes a lot of times is a fight over characterization you know you know no this wasn't this wasn't a malevolent a malevolent thing this is you know we were trying to move the cbt in

in their direction but this language isn't you know the argument would be that the totality of what the league was doing was in the player's direction you know it doesn't defeat ross stripling's feeling and the player feeling right the other side can try and say well they shouldn't have felt that way yeah well they did and you know i i And I think objectively – I've been dealing with people involved in this for a while. The thing that strikes me is I found in this negotiation more often than player assertions, management assertions have often assumed that the listener or the recipient of those assertions frankly is dumb. And it's – even from a media perspective, that has been there. And look, I think it's, again, it kind of goes back to the crayons, right? You know, when one side has the crayons and if people have this innate sense of things,

people understand the labor dynamics of baseball, I think, a lot more than they used to 25 years ago and in the time in between. Do you mean to tell me that there's money to be made in baseball, Evan? Because you could blow me over with that assertion. I'm trying to minimize my snark because it's not always productive to a good interview. Today we saw Dan Halem and Bruce Meyer meet, among others. What comes next in this process? We are interested baseball fans. We are interested

baseball people. So what comes next? What is your expectation of when real negotiations will resume between these sides? I think it depends on what you define as real. I think they're going to be talking here now steadily. I don't think it's, you know, we're not going to see 43 days without a proposal or document sliding back and forth. It's more a question of when do you see movement? And the piece I am working on now, and I don't know when this publishes, maybe it'll be out by the time this podcast is out, is basically saying like, nobody thinks this is going to move quickly. That can change, but both sides are really dug in. And it's really the same operating principle that got you here, which is it's all about leverage. And what brings the leverage and what brings the pressure?

It's the calendar because the calendar costs you money. And so if you kind of work on that premise that they're not going to move until there is pain, well, three games, six games, 15 games, that might not be enough pain to bring them to a midpoint or to make one side move, whatever it ends up being. The theory is it's going to take some time and some lost money until they're at a point where they do that. The thing you can't predict is whether there's a change of heart and whether one side sooner says, you know what, I've had enough of this and makes a different move. But if they both stay dug in, you're really relying on the calendar. I can imagine the calendar also complicating things because the union has

said that they will seek pay for games that are lost, right? They plan to negotiate that. They don't take the cancellation as an admission of sort of lost salary on their part. So how does the union's desire to make guys whole potentially complicate things? Because I could imagine them saying in the interest of getting going, those first two series, we'll call it even. But as we saw in 2020, the deeper into a stoppage we get, the more money is lost on the player side. So how does that potentially complicate a return? is lost on the player side. So how does that potentially complicate a return? I think, look, both sides can fight for what they want to fight for, right? If the owners want to sit there and say, we're not going to pay you for, it's going to be prorated. It just depends how dug in they want to get.

On some level, I think my instinct, which could be wrong, is that if they can sort out the issues that have gotten you here, you probably don't want to get hung up too far on new stuff. They will use the new stuff as leverage and things to swing the deal in their favor. But if there is a point at which they really do want to get back on the field, probably they find a way to amicably resolve that. Probably. In 2020, they didn't that was a little i think a more unique set of circumstances where the revenues in the sport were clearly going to be

affected because they're going to be people in the stands it was also 60 games at this point we're not looking at 60 games you know i i think naturally an argument for players to say i you know we want a full 162 of pay will make sense the more games that are actually played. If they play 100 games season, I think most people would sit there and go, players asking for 162 days of pay, that might not be a reasonable request. I would assume most people would objectively assess it that way. I can't say that the players wouldn't still fight for that, but I'd be surprised, wouldn't you? You know, so, you know, if it's a week of games that are missed and they still, they're

fighting for 162, that's a little more understandable than saying you're paying us 162 games worth for 100. So it'll be the same thing with service time. I can't see the players not getting service time. I feel like to strike a new CBA that would effectively delay everyone's free agency a year, that wouldn't make sense to me. That doesn't mean it won't be part of the negotiation. Right. So I don't know that I'm right about my read on that. I just I don't see it being the thing.

I could be wrong. As I think it was Jeff Fletcher noted, it might take only 15 days for the Angels to get another year of control over Shohei Otani because of where his service time is. Although, again, that is something that maybe could be bargained and players could demand to get all of the service time. But that is a consideration, right, because he is right on the cusp. And I think maybe Pete Alonso is close to that boat, too. And so it might have some effect on some pretty notable players. But I think it was your colleague, Ken Rosenthal, maybe among others, who noted that there will come a point where teams will have to refund

RSNs, right? And that that could come at around the 25 game mark. It might vary by market and by RSN. But if that's the point where owners might actually start having to hand over money as opposed to making less of it, do you see that being a potential pressure point? Yes. Look, I was talking about this with people today and Ken and I were talking about it and people in the industry have been talking about it. I wish I had those individual contracts in front of me. I don't. Everyone is probably different and there also could be some commonality between them. It might be 135 games, 140 games, 145 games. One of the points that was made to me is that it might depend upon whether the RSN has to – what is the RSN's arrangement

with the distributor? If the RSN has to give the distributor like – if YES has to pay Time Warner Cable back some money, that might – it's a different situation because the Yankees and YES have the same ownership. So that might not be a great example. But it could all be individualized. But the answer, I talked to somebody in management about this, is yeah, they pay attention to when those games are the thing, the singular thing, I'm not totally – I don't think I have enough evidence to say that yet, but that it is significant, yes, I have confidence that it is significant. Red's job security, because he has become an object and a subject of derision on the part of fans, on the part of many national columnists, although he still has his fans. But among the owners, do they view him as having done a good job with this? Do you anticipate that a protracted stoppage could jeopardize his future as commissioner? Through all his mistakes and gaffes and the PR problems, kind of the image issues that he's brought on himself,

the one thing, the one feather that's always been in his cap is he's gotten good labor deals for the owners. And what do good labor deals amount to? It's money. You do mix in some of the other business moves the sale bam you know kind of go down the line of his one baseball consolidation efforts probably the change in the minor leagues would fit into this from an ownership perspective even though it's brought a lot of acrimony publicly you know i i think from a business standpoint it is probably the case that the owners have felt relatively good about him, that it's worth the warts that you have. So it is speculative. But if you have this one thing that you're supposed to be really good at and then you don't succeed at it, and it depends on

the definition of success, I imagine that would work against him. Then it becomes a bit of a question of an alternative. Do they have somebody they think would actually be better? It's very hard to go back to the point about owners. It's hard to know what necessarily motivates them. Do they care about their public image? Do they care simply about the dollars? What about the owners who might be on the older side? What makes them tick? What are they looking for in a deal? Do they care about the public perception at all? I think people can operate from a baseline of assuming that, well, they care what they say about the commissioner and the owners.

Do they care? Some might. Some really might not. And I wonder to myself sometimes, how much does Rob Manfred care about his legacy? sometimes how much does Rob Manfred care about his legacy you know I talked to him at night not a great length but I think we talked for like 35 minutes back in 2020 and we talked a bit about this and I asked him about his legacy in November in Chicago at the owners meetings and I think it's human nature to care about your own perception in this world you know but at the same time

he's been with was it one of you who who used the phrase meat shield somebody used that phrase with me today you know that i wish i had yeah you know that's part of his job i almost wonder every time he talks about how poorly the business does whether that's he might well know that the reaction that's going to get and he might do it because there are some owners who might actually feel that way based on an you based on an operating basis that they don't make their money that much necessarily in a given year and that it's not until you sell. For some of those teams, I don't want to say it's true. I'm sure they can make the books look like that.

But there's a lot of other factors that the ballpark villages and things like that. But it's a really interesting question. Is Rob Manfred doing exactly what the owners want him to do? I think there are definitely owners at times who are frustrated with him, who don't think that he's been the face of baseball that you need. But at the end of the day, do they want the face or do they want the money? And as long as the commissioner is delivering the money, not to be too cynical, they probably don't mind keeping him around. One thing we have noted on recent episodes is the change in the tone of a lot of the coverage, I think, where we're seeing a lot less both sides-ing, a lot less, hey, they

just have to figure it out and get it together, and a lot more pinning the blame on one side, that side being the owners. And that includes a lot of your colleagues at The Athletic. I'm just looking at Ken's column right after things fell apart on Tuesday or failed to come together. And I'm sure he didn't write the head in the deck here, but it says MLB's owners had every advantage and still it wasn't enough for them. Subhead, how dare Commissioner Rob Manfred and the baseball owners treat their players and their fans like this? And it seems like the vast majority of the national coverage of this was, hey, this is on the owners or mostly on the owners.

And I wonder whether you've observed that and how you think about that in your own work, because, of course, you are trying to provide the most accurate information here. because, of course, you are trying to provide the most accurate information here, and you'd be doing a disservice to your readers if you stuck to some ideal of journalistic objectivity and just said, well, this side says this and that side says that. On the other hand, if you come out spitting fire and you sound like a partisan figure, then maybe that makes people doubt your reporting a little less, or maybe it makes it harder for you to do some types of reporting because some sources might not talk to you. Although I guess depending on the source, maybe you'd have more accurate information if they

didn't talk to you. But I wonder how you all have thought or talked about that in recent days, because it does seem like a pretty notable change. Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts on this. days because it does seem like a pretty notable change yeah i've got a lot a lot of thoughts on this certainly i don't think good journalism is joe says the sky is blue jill says the sky is purple and you print jill's comment without context or elaboration it is trickier when joe and jill aren't always saying things on the record you know if it's easier to you know if you have a background point that is false or potentially demonstrably false You know, if it's easier to, you know, if you have a background point that is false or potentially demonstrably false, you can kind of, it's a question of whether you introduce an idea

that you know might not be quite right. And do you then knock it down or do you not introduce it at all? And, you know, I feel pretty clear-eyed about my coverage. You know, I do occasionally write columns. It's not very often, but if it's got like my last name in front of it, Drella, colon something, that is meant to denote an opinion piece, right? Something that is more, here's how I see it rather than kind of a more straight news or news analysis piece, which is what I do more of. But even when I do those pieces,

what I've tried to stay away from is making the moral judgment on what either side should be going after. Because I kind of respect the right of either side to bargain for what it wants. So, you know, I will acknowledge that there are people who will say, well, this is what it should be or, you know, it's about fairness. But I kind of default back to like the process is not about fairness. The process is about what you can get out of the process, kind of a different vantage. You know, you can write about labor from, you see people writing about it from different vantages. You have people who will take the fan perspective, and you can argue this is what it should be.

They, you know, simply the goal should be getting the game back, right? And there are people who will write about that. And I try to be clear about it if I'm going to bring that perspective into it. Like, if the question is, are they getting anywhere? The answer is no. I'm not telling you whether they should be getting somewhere. I'm not telling you whether there should be blame on both sides. I'm just telling you they're not getting anywhere right now, right? And people could take that as a both sides thing or not. But yeah, look, I try to stay away from arguments that I think are disingenuous, false, can be very easily dismantled, you know, and it's something I think a lot about and have

to deal with very often. You want to be fair, you want to represent views, but they have to be views that aren't intentionally misleading. You know's that's the one thing i won't do i'll give you an example of one okay oftentimes there's a management argument well the players are the best of the the best set of circumstances of all the four major men's sports right you'll hear that a lot if i were to introduce that idea i would point out several things one that just because it might be ostensibly better than others does not mean that A measures up to a bar of fairness, right? What is your standard? Is it a relative standard to the other sports or is it a standard to what revenues you're producing in your sport?

Different question. And, you know, at the same time, well then, do you then make that same argument for, say, the minimum salary when the minimum salary in all the other sports is higher than in baseball? You know, it's certainly a cherry-picked argument. Well, you know, the other sports are like this. Only when you want it to be as a management side argument. And you can say, well, there's different roster sizes in the other sports. And, yeah, sure, it's apples and oranges, which is why we shouldn't be doing it in the first place. You should be talking about the specifics of the baseball argument.

So there's just a lot of sifting through things that I would describe as obfuscation. And I try hard to do that fairly and to check with both sides on things. And, you know, like, look, the question of breaking the union I wrote in this story the other day. That is the kind of thing that can be embellished as a rallying cry, right? They are trying to break the union. All right, well, that's why I asked about the evidence because that's a very strong assertion and it's the kind of thing that tugs on a heartstring. But can you demonstrate that? And so I do try to apply it to both sides.

You know, the player unity is so great right now. I believe it is great. I do believe it is great. At the. You know, the player unity is so great right now. I believe it is great. I do believe it is great. At the same time, would you ever hear differently at this stage? You know, I guess you could already have some dissent, but would you have the – it's not that you would never hear differently. Would you have the four figures at the forefront? Would you have Andrew Miller or Max Scherzer sit on a podium and tell you, you know what?

I don't think we're really on the same page here, guys. You's end this press conference. That's what they're going to tell you. So you're always sifting through the posturing. And there is posturing on both sides. So I will both side you on that. But look, as I said earlier, I do think that the facts of the negotiation and the facts of what have happened in baseball the last 10 years are pretty clear. There's been more crayons shifted to one side than another. It's the eye of the beholder whether you think those crayons should or should not go somewhere. For me, a lot of times, it's really not about should. It's about covering the process that determines whether or not they do end up shifting. And that's the end of my rant. Thank you for your rant. And last thing I think is that one thing you hear a lot is, oh, the fans are the real losers here. However, this comes out right because the fans don't have a seat at the table. And I obviously don't think that the fans should have a literal seat at the table.

But it is true that the fans' interests are not necessarily always represented by one side or the other. That's because they're advocating for themselves and as they should be. And this is a business and fans have a say in the sense that they can not buy tickets or not buy MLB TV or whatever it is. They don't have to show up at the ballpark, but they don't have a say in the sense that they are represented at bargaining sessions. They don't have a say in the sense that they are represented at bargaining sessions. But there are cases where, for instance, MLB owners want expanded playoffs because it means more money for them. Players, I don't know if they are entirely anti-expanded playoffs. I think obviously because they worry that it might minimize the desire to spend on the part of some teams. But also they are willing to concede that because they know it's

their big chip. And so it seems like a lot of fans don't want expanded playoffs. I don't want expanded playoffs, but inevitably it's become clear for a long time that we're going to get expanded playoffs just because of the labor dynamics here. And that's just the way that it has to work. Another thing you hear though, is that, well, the big problem with baseball that's not being addressed here is the game on the field and the aesthetics and the strikeouts and all of that. And it seemed like that was going to completely fall by the wayside there. And it had been reported earlier. It had been claimed at least that that was just tabled basically because it was just too tough to figure out or it wasn't considered one of the more important issues to discuss.

But that did come back to the fore just this week. And we know that both sides are seemingly agreed on a universal DH, but also things like the pitch clock. And I am pro pitch clock. I'm not necessarily pro the owner's ability to implement whatever change they want in 45 days or whatever it is. But I do sometimes wish the players would be a bit more amenable to changes like that but do you think that that is something that we are going to see slip away by the time that the deal is finally done or do you think that actually will be a priority that hey we have to do that or the shift which you know we're not anti-shift been the shift people around here but it's not even clear to me which side wants that more or whether either side is anti that. So is that going to be an area like the Universal DH where both sides are kind of on board or is that kind of thing coming more from one end of the on-field change is the reason you weren't going to see it involved or was kind of suggested

wouldn't be involved is because the players would like it to be part of the overall discussion and part of the thing that can get them more of what they're seeking economically right they basically want to trade it for money and whether you think that's right or wrong you know you can debate that you know players don't like to change their game they're stubborn types and there are things they want and it's a leverage point for them. And, you know, the league's original stance was we're not going to include it

because we don't want to trade you a non-economic thing for something economic. And so it is an interesting question whether as this unfolds here, you know, could the league take a mindset of, okay, maybe this will help us get a deal done. Yes, we have to give up some more money to them in XYZ area, but we'll get our rule changes. And maybe that gets – it would seem to be in the league's court in that regard.

I am skeptical the players would change their mind on it and just kind of make the changes the league wants for the on-field stuff without something going back their way. You know, so unless the player mindset on that changes, it would seem to be either it doesn't get done in this deal or it gets done as part of some sort of trade-off for the players. I don't think the players will grant the commissioner a ability to implement things earlier. It was not well-received, but the same operating logic on the on-field stuff that existed a few months ago, I think is still the case now. It's a question of, do you trade it for money if you're the league, basically? All right.

Well, unless there are any other important points that we haven't covered here that you want to make before we let you go, we can release you to work on your next column or your next tweet or get some sleep. This is abnormal. I have missed one, two, three, four, five, six. I missed seven calls. Oh, my God. While on this podcast. The CPA has been signed while we were doing this podcast.

You missed the story, Evan. This is not normal. X-tree, X-tree. That is not normal. And it's seven calls, but from three different people. So two people tried to call me multiple times. Anyway. All right. Well, if you're about to break some news that you missed while we were doing this podcast, give me a heads up and I'll mention it in the outro. I'm probably just going to get yelled at.

And part of me hopes that we can have you on again when the deal is done. And I will feel less guilty about that if a while transpires so that I'm not immediately asking you to come back. But I would like a deal to be done sooner rather than later. Just because it'd be nice to see some baseball. So I will swallow my pride and embarrassment and invite you back on soon if that's what it takes. But in the meantime, read Evan, read his wonderful colleagues at The Athletic, like Ken Rosenthal, like Britt Droley, like Andy McCullough. They're just firing out great takes and reports constantly over there. And you can find Evan on Twitter at Evan Drellick. Evan on Twitter at Evan Drellick. He does not tweet the most often of anyone, but he makes his tweets count and he makes his Manfred photos count. And if he is not tweeting about something,

then that should tell you something as well. So thank you for coming on again and hope to talk to you soon. Thank you both. Yay. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. And thanks again to Evan for his time. It does not seem that the CBA was signed while we were speaking to Evan. So the lockout goes on. However, the column that he referenced has been published and is linked on the show page for this episode. In it, Evan reported that the four MLB owners who objected to raising the competitive balance tax to the levels that the league proposed in its most recent offer were

Bob Castellini of the Reds, Chris Illich of the Tigers, Ken Kendrick of the Diamondbacks, and Artie Moreno of the Angels. Wonder what Mike Illich would have thought of his son voting against. Evan also reported that one of the league's efforts that irked the players was a proposal to incorporate meal money and the stipends players receive into the luxury tax calculations. MLB, in other words, wanted to count the amount of money players receive for food against the amount of money teams can spend before they are taxed. The luxury tax already includes some player benefit costs. It's not just a strict accounting of player salary, but players were angry, sources said. The league

would try to add something as fundamental as the cost of food as a reason to spend less on payroll. Maybe if they make the postgame spread smaller, they can afford free agents. Anyway, I won't read Evan's entire report to you now. I will link to it and you should go check it out. In the meantime, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and help us stay ad-free

while getting themselves access to some perks. Will O., John, John Marsh, Luis T., and Guy or Guy Tabachnik. Thanks to all of you. If you sign up for Patreon, you can get access to our monthly bonus episodes for Patreon supporters, one of access to our monthly bonus episodes for Patreon supporters, one of which we published earlier this week, as well as the Effectively Wild Discord

group just for Patreon people. Everyone else, and Patreon people too, can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. 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 podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. And we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then.

People you can't trust. People you can't trust. People you can't trust will always let you down. People you can't trust will always let you down. They will say just to me, but you see, they will let you down. They'll change you. Always wrong. Always wrong.

That's people you can't trust. They'll always let you down. People you can't trust. They'll always let you down.