Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1821: Lockout Lifted, Spirits Lifted

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

After 99 days of lockout, the voice of the turtle speaks up, and the season is saved. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley exuberantly respond to the news of a new CBA, breaking down the major on-field and off-field provisions in the deal and discussing the worst-cast scenario averted, the imminent prospect of spring training and […]

Let's Play Ball Hello and welcome to episode 1821 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, baseball, baseball is back. Play ball. Wow. I'm impressed by that. I'm really bad at impressions. Was that an impression? I don't know. Just a generic umpire. I don't do voices well, put it that way. I don't know if that counts as a voice. I just said play ball, but I'm happy to say it. What a day. Oh, we have waited so long. It's true. There's a deal.

The lockout has been lifted. A great weight has been lifted. It's been, what, 99 days, including or not including the many months of low-key dread leading up to those 99 days and wondering how many days it would be. And finally, we have a CBA signed, or at least ratified. And it's like, you know, always winter, never Christmas in Narnia. It's like winter was lifted with a snap of the fingers. I know it took a lot more than a snap of the fingers, but suddenly the transaction freeze has thawed and player photos are back on MLB.com, no longer semi-exclusive to Fangraphs, I'm sorry to say, or I'm happy to say. And it's like we're back to normal. I mean, not at all, because it's been many months of labor conflict

and discussion and negotiation. And also it is well past the time when spring training was supposed to have started. And we are going to have a wild few weeks here. And who's even to say if this is a good deal or a fair deal or an equitable deal? We can talk about that. And we'll probably be talking about that for days and weeks and maybe months and years to come. But the headline is that Major League Baseball is back. And that seemed far from a certainty at times. And just the thought of watching Shohei Otani on a Major League mound in a few weeks, April 7th, is intoxicating and

the endorphins are flowing for me. Does this mean we have to eat Turkish Delight? Do they have that in Narnia? You know, you try it and then you're like, I mean, I'm sure that some people like it. It wasn't for me and I was really disappointed because I was like, surely this will tempt me to, I don't know, betray Christ. Isn't that what that book's about?

Anyway. La cajole! That was, the witch was the one handing out the Turkish delights, I think. That's what Rob Manfred distributes at the negotiations. She wants you to betray Aslan. Yeah. It wasn't a subtle metaphor that he was going for there. Anyway, that's not the purpose of this podcast.

I think that, yes, the devil is in the details. And we have the broad strokes of those devilish details, right? We know the places where the players move toward the league. That happened a lot. we know the places where the players move toward the league that happened a lot we know the places where the league moved toward the players that did happen some we know some of the weird bits and bobs that have emerged i you know if if the last couple of weeks are our evandrelic super bowl getting getting my hands on the full CBA, that's mine because I'm fun at parties. So I can't wait to really dig in on that. But yeah, it takes a little bit of time to assess these things.

I mean, we can run through some of the stuff we know is coming, I guess. Yeah, it's all kind of trickling. We're recording here a little after 7 Eastern on Thursday, and the details are still coming out. And I guess the lockout has only been lifted for a few minutes officially as we speak. So I'm having trouble keeping track of everything just because it's coming out in dribs and drabs and many disconnected tweets. And I'm sure we've both been busy with reacting to this news and doing other things as well. And so I don't feel like I fully have a handle on it. And I don't know when I will, because it takes years sometimes to appreciate the impact of a CBA. And maybe it

won't take as long this time because we've all been thinking about it so much. Maybe we weren't thinking about it often enough before. But sometimes, I mean, you have some rule that's on the books and it seems innocuous initially. And then one side or the other, let's pretend that it's just one side or the other, learns how to exploit it some way. And then it turns out to be bad in some way you never anticipated or maybe good in some way. I'll try to be optimistic today of all days. But I think it takes a while even once you have that on paper. And once we are actually able to see it and read it and parse it, it'll take some time to figure out how things are actually applied. But it is weird because it's just a wild swing in my emotions where for the past few months it's just been, OK, what's the CBT threshold add and what's the minimum salary and how big is the pre-arb bonus pool?

And now it's just my brain is going, baseball is back, baseball is back. Forget about the details. The details are still very important, though. And we can't just forget about them. And that whole labor fight for the past few months was for something. And there were principles at stake and the future of the sport at stake. So all of those things are very important. And I do not want to diminish that. But also Major baseball's back and that's pretty cool yeah yeah it is pretty cool i'm having it's such a we're gonna do a little bit of meg therapy hour on here like it's such a strange sensation that i'm having because on the one hand i i the part of my brain that is sort of constantly vigilant about how you know the the cba can go off the rails and

even parts of it that are entered into in totally good faith can be exploited to devious ends and you know like i i think that we have all sort of flexed and worked out that muscle over the last couple years and i think sadly it's a necessary one even in moments of elation like this but i'm also like really happy well i'm happy we're gonna not have another goofy freaking year of stat stuff so that's one thing i'm happy about i'm happy that i'm happy that like my website's probably gonna survive selfishly like pretty excellent news stoked about my ability to continue to pay rent in the future. We won't have to do nothing but email shows for the next several months. Oops, all email shows. I mean, that would be fun too, but yeah, we're going to have news to react to. So that's fantastic.

So much news probably in sometime soon. So yeah. Yeah. Should we? Going from cold turkey, no news, except somewhat depressing news to suddenly an onslaught, one imagine. So I'll be interested to see when will the first signing become official? When will the first trade happen? Will it be tonight? Will it be by the time people hear this episode? Will they all just drop in the coming days? I mean, it's still going to be weird for a while here. And what, the mandatory report date for spring training now is March 13th, right, next week. So pretty soon we're going to be back in the swing of things. And I don't know what the long-term effects of this late start to spring training and compressed spring training will be and the fact that there are so many free agents still out there. And what does that do to training and health and clubhouse chemistry and who knows what else? So there might be still some strange effects and maybe pitchers who will have to be building their arms up more slowly than usual. And so stats will be affected, but a lot

less than they might have been otherwise. And really, I never thought that the worst case scenario was going to happen at least months ago. I thought that they were going to get the full season in, but it really tested my faith and belief in that recently. And how many deadlines have been blown just since the last time we spoke? If we've learned anything from this process, it's how meaningless deadlines can sometimes be. But you just never know. Even when it seemed like the sides were inching closer and closer, there was always at least a remote prospect of everything completely falling apart and just blowing it all up and tabling discussions

for who knows how long and just totally sabotaging the season. So the fact that that didn't happen, how long and just totally sabotaging the season. So the fact that that didn't happen, the fact that even though multiple series of games were quote unquote canceled or removed from the schedule or whatever the terminology was, that we're going to have a full 162 game season and one that in a number of ways that we can probably talk about now will look a little bit more like baseball as we have known and loved it. It's a mix of things that I'm loving and things that I thought, thanks, I hate it about. So I guess no negotiation works out unless everyone is a little bit unhappy about things.

I don't know whether that means that this worked out or not, but there are certainly some things that I am just kind of facepalming about and other things that I think are wonderful, but it's all at least for the moment subsumed in, hey, Major League Baseball is about to be back. And considering the alternatives, that is pretty sweet and special. So yeah. Do you want to run through some of the big ticket bullet point items here? Sure. Yeah. I guess I'm going to start. I'm just going to proceed in the order that Jay Jaffe decided to proceed in order in his piece summarizing some,

although admittedly not all of the changes we are likely to see out of this. So let's start with the playoff structure, shall we? Yes, yes. The expanded postseason. Ben, it's here. It's here. It's here.

It's going to involve 12 teams with the top two division winners in each league getting buys and the other eight teams playing a best of three series. Those teams will not reseed. They will not enjoy a ghost win. The higher seeds won't. So yeah, this also means the end of not only the the single game wildcat format but also game 163 tiebreakers we are moving to an nfl style tiebreaker system where it will all be done formulaically so we didn't ever end up really getting a lot of tiebreaker games we definitely

had years where we had some and sometimes they were there were multiple and they were quite thrilling but they did often take a while to resolve themselves we had we had sort of ample uh team entropy opportunities and i will miss that yeah this falls into the thanks i hate it category in multiple ways i mean it's one of those things where it's like the anchoring effect like my expectations were kind of calibrated to, oh, no, they're going to subject us to 14 teams or 16 teams or who knows how many. And so 12 is like, oh, thank you. Thank you for only expanding by two teams, which I still hate, but hate a lot less than the alternative. And as for the tiebreaker, yes, I hate that, too. And as for the tiebreaker, yes, I hate that too. That falls into that category of this isn't something that happened often, but it still sucks to lose that. It was very rare and weird. And it's not like anyone really notices or actively laments that being gone, but just the fact that it's not

even possible anymore makes me sad. And so the fact that we are ruling out the game 163, even though it doesn't happen all that often, when it does, it's wonderful and the memories last a lifetime. So very sorry to see it go. With all of these things, it's like, well, I'm very sad about this. And yet at least we will have playoffs. At least we will have a regular season. I don't want to look at everything that way because that seems like almost minimizing the importance of what is actually in the CBA and what the two sides were fighting over and arguing over for months and months if I just dismiss everything and say, hey, baseball's back. Forget about all those pesky details. No, the details really matter. And I don't like this one,

but I will take expanded playoffs over no playoffs and no season, which I hate that I have to look at it that way. But that was kind of a possibility, or at least they did a decent job of making us think it was right and you know i think that this is better than 14 it's better than only one team getting a buy you know like it's uh it's it's definitely a change that i was not in favor of to start with but i think that you know among the options we get this was we could have gotten rather this isn't the best one but it's also not the worst one so i don't know about that all right what other presents do we have to unwrap here okay so we have new major league minimums yes so the league minimum will jump to 700 000 in 2022 which is a 22.7% gain, and it will increase by 20,000 a year

and at 780 in 2026 for a five-year gain of 36.7. I think that throughout these negotiations, we have seen the union and we have talked about the union really prioritizing trying to get money to players earlier in their careers and there were some avenues that they wanted to explore to do that that they had to trade away in in an effort to get a deal done but increasing the minimum is a meaningful one so i would score this a good win for the union i know that doing it in terms of wins and losses is sort of, I don't know how useful that is. But I think that they, you know, this was a clear area of focus for them in bargaining. And I feel like they advanced this goal pretty well.

I know in addition to that, Travis Sachuk reported that players on the 40 man will see an increase in their AAA salaries. We don't know the exact magnitude of that increase. And we certainly, you we certainly still have the thorny issue of better pay across the minors to contend with, but a bit of good news on the minor league side of things too. So that's the latest and greatest on minimums. Yeah. We've gone through so many iterations of proposals back and forth that it's kind of hard for me to remember where we started with all of these things. But if my memory serves, this would be closer, significantly closer to the union starting position than the ownership starting position. And it's a significant bump.

Is it exactly what it should have been? Is it keeping pace with revenues and inflation and so forth? I don't know exactly, but it is a meaningful jump. and so forth. I don't know exactly, but it is a meaningful jump. And it's an area where the union sort of held firm and seems to have gotten all or most of what they wanted. Some of these things, we'll get to the CBT, I suppose, in a second, but some of these kind of did end up somewhere in the middle, which is, I guess, what you would have forecasted. And you just have to go through the weeks and months of arguing over the details to actually get to that point. You can't just skip the haggling and say,

let's meet in the middle. It'd be nice if you could do that. But in some cases, it ended up there. But yes, these are significantly higher minimums. And that was a top priority of the union. And that seems like a just change. Yeah. So there's that sort of sticking with the topic of young and early career players compensation. The pre-arbitration bonus pool ended up at 50 million. James Wagner of the New York Times reported that it will remain flat over the life of this CBA. I think the creation of a pool and the precedent for that is probably as I think we talked about with Dan probably more meaningful in the long run than the exact level that they were able to get it to this year our listeners will probably remember that this started quite a bit higher in the union's

initial proposals above 100 million so it has ticked down from there the pool cover 100 players which is roughly the top 20 percent of the pre-arb player pool and the bonuses will be based quote on awards and war the war metric or blend that will be decided upon by a committee at a later date so you know i'm just gonna like not fret about this as a treat i think that generally we have seen both the union and the league move away from the idea of using a public facing metric for this. So I think it'll be one of those things that we see more detail on both in the months to come once this committee gets to work and also perhaps in the language of the full CBA itself. Yeah, that falls into the category of TBD, I think, to see what the actual long-term effects

of that will be. I mean, the bonus pool seems like a good thing. The divvying up the bonus pool based on some sort of war metric. Who knows? There are all kinds of potential unintended consequences that could come from that that we have discussed. And we don't even know what that war metric will look like. And hopefully it is not baseball reference war, fan graphs war. It's some sort of mutually designed and agreed upon war. Just what we needed. Another war variant. Although maybe it won't be a public war variant. That would be weird

and confusing if we backward engineered some super secret MLB war by figuring out who got the bigger bonus pool numbers. There will be all sorts of strangeness that comes out of this. Oh, Ben, I have breaking news on the pod okay this is courtesy of jason stark of the athletic was tweeted two minutes ago details on the new pre-art bonus pool payouts jason what good

timing mvp cy young winners get 2.5 million mvp saiyan second place gets 1.75 million third place gets 1.5 fourth fifth gets 1 million rookie of the year gets 750k rookie of the year second place gets 500k mlb first team gets 1 million mlb second team or sorry this is all mlb first team gets 1 million all mlb second team gets 500 000 rest of the pool money is based on war but a player can only receive one bonus so rookie of the year who gets who also finished top five in mvp voting would get just one the larger mvp amount so they are at least not you know sticking you with the lower figure there but you cannot depending if you've had a truly superlative year you you're kind of capped in terms of your

potential earnings out of the pool now this brings up another issue that you tweeted about right which is the idea of award votes what a wonderful transition because that was next on my list of things perfect okay so we know that sometimes there are incentives in players contracts for certain achievements that can be related to award wins and that sort of thing. So I guess it's not entirely unprecedented, but the idea that you could be making a meaningful difference in the percentage-wise of a young player's salary based on where that player finishes in, say, rookie of the year voting or Cy Young voting or whatever it is, that will be weird. Now, I've been in the BBWA for a decade now, and I've never actually had an award vote

because I'm in the very crowded New York chapter, and it rotates. But presumably one of these years, my number would come up, and that will be a tough one. So I'm not sure how to feel about that exactly. And who knows? I mean, that really opens up all sorts of possibilities for malfeasance. I'd like to think that that kind of thing wouldn't happen. But even putting that aside, just knowing that voting on what you thought of a player season would determine to a great degree that player's pay.

I don't know that I would sleep so comfortably after that. Yeah. I think that it is, it's just really fraught. It's not remotely what, you know, I think that the incentives in contracts make writers uncomfortable. And I think that it's because this is just, this isn't our job. You know, I think that it's hard to avoid this with any award voting, but we are not meant to be the story here.

You know, so that's one problem. I think that you will have plenty of writers who think about this in a really careful way and try to do their very best to put forth a good vote. But even doing that, like, what if the guy they cover is the guy who should get that vote they're going to be potentially accused of bias in that circumstance what about situations like like last year's cy young right this revealed a fundamental philosophical disagreement within the voting body about how we should think about innings and war and the role that that stuff should play in how we determine awards. And, you know, obviously we were, we

weren't dealing with, you know, with rookies who were being left off the roster in, in the case of Corbin Burns. But, you know, I think that there are a lot of disagreements about this. A lot of awards voters rely on stats like war to determine at least a part of their vote. I don't know anyone who just looks at the war leader boards and then is like, I'm done now. I can send my ballot in. But they are relying on war as a stat. We've talked a lot on this podcast about some of the imprecision that is present in war. I think that we have to navigate that imprecision when we're dealing with awards voting. And we certainly take other factors into consideration. And some voters don't care about war at all. Again, some of these sentences out of context are just like really wild. But it poses

the war question rears its head again, right? So I understand that there is precedent for this. But I think that the BBWA is probably going to have to have a conversation as a voting body about, you know, how do we how do we feel about this? Do we stop giving out year end awards in response to something like this? Is there a way for us to sort of randomize which votes end up mattering? Right. Maybe the answer to something like this, if you're going to force the question onto the voting body is to say, you know, I saw this suggestion on Twitter

and I'm sorry, I don't remember who brought it up. I think Dan is the one who brought it into my feed, although I don't recall if he was the one who came up with it, that, you know, maybe a solution to this is to have every member of the association vote and then which votes end up counting are somewhat randomized they use the firing squad as an analogy which i think we'd like to move away from but you know

maybe that's a way to do it to at least try to have some controls in place in case there are bad actors which again i don't think is likely to be the biggest problem but you do introduce the perception of bias and you know these are reporters who are trying to do good, thorough, objective, and not in a both sides-y way, but in a rigorous way, work. And if you introduce this idea into readers' minds, how does that affect the way that the rest of their work is perceived? Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be the perception of bias in favor of a player. Maybe if that player perceives some bias against him, right, perhaps entirely unfairly. But if you're a beat writer covering that team and you don't vote for that player, then maybe that affects your relationship, your access in the future.

Which I guess you could say, well, that comes with the territory, but it doesn't have to. It sort of stinks that it would. It comes with the territory, but it doesn't have to. It sort of stinks that it would. And it's hard enough to massage these relationships without then having some say in a player's pay. I mean, that's just awkward. So it would be nice if that were not a part of this. And I guess maybe I'm jumping the line here, but there was another announcement which would be important to people like us and our colleagues, maybe not as much to fans, but it should be somewhat important to fans, which is that it seems like clubhouse access is going to be fully restored to pre-COVID levels, which is somewhat surprising to me and great. I think that that was something that impacted a lot of reporters' coverage,

especially reporters who were on beats, who were at the ballpark every day. And to get that back, which is something that both the league and the players had to sign off on, there was an effort seemingly across sports to walk back that access, which is understandable. I mean, I do understand the mindset if you just look at it from the perspective of, do I want reporters sticking this microphone in my face after the game or while I'm getting changed or whatever, as opposed to just having some area where I can go and stand and it won't be as useful for those reporters, but I would prefer it. I mean, if I were a player, I'd like to think that I would appreciate having reporters talking to me and telling my side of the story and spreading my message and so forth, but it would probably be

pretty annoying at certain times. I'm not going to lie just because I'm a baseball writer. I mean, there are, I'm sure, times where I'd prefer to have that clubhouse to myself. And of course, there are times. It's not as if it's open all the time. But it seemed like that was something that some people were portraying as anachronistic and this is quaint and it's traditional, but this isn't how it works in a lot of other sports in Europe, let's say. And maybe we just have prearranged press conferences.

And as many reporters have pointed out, you just don't develop the relationships with players that way. And there are stories that will not get told because you won't have that bond with those players or you just won't hear about them. It's in those times when you're just sort of standing around often where you get those stories. And it's helpful for me at times to be able to just parachute into a clubhouse and talk to someone as well. It's not as big a part of my job or it wasn't even when I was writing exclusively about baseball, but I know a lot of our colleagues and fellow BBWA members will be pleased about that. And I think there is an

argument that it is good for players, aside from maybe the temporary inconvenience of having people poking around while you're in what could be a private space, potentially. There's something to be said for having someone who is skilled at disseminating messages doing that for you, and hopefully not in an adversarial gotcha type way, which I don't think is the case for most reporters. They just want to tell an interesting and honest story. And yeah, players have social media and they can put out press releases and they have other ways to reach people now, which seemed like it would be one rationale for maybe limiting

that access. So again, I am sort of surprised and heartened by the fact that that's not the case. And that's not going to be at the top of most fans' lists of, hey, here's what we got with this new CBA. But I think whether they realize it or not, they will appreciate the kind of coverage that can come out of that. Yeah, I think that that's right. And I think you're right that there's probably some middle ground to be reached in terms of exactly where that access is provided. Because, you know, I wouldn't want people in my dressing room either. some middle ground to be reached in terms of exactly where that access is provided because you know i wouldn't want people in my dressing room either so i get i get it i mean i but i

think that you're right that the kinds of stories you are able to tell when you develop those relationships are just fundamentally deeper than they would be without it so i think that preserving access is important even if we acknowledge that need is maybe strong, but a desire to think about how to achieve that access in a way that isn't overly invasive in moments when some amount of privacy might be appropriate. So I think that we can kind of noodle our way through that. But if we go back to the rookie of the year thing for a second, this also, in some ways, i guess that it's a less significant concern since these monies are paid out of central revenue and not the responsibility

of any given team but like if you're a team and you have a potential rookie of the year candidate what kind of calculus are you doing to say i really want to put the full weight of my you know team pr behind a rookie of the year campaign for this guy versus what it's going to end up costing against the CBT because earlier parts of this said that that money would count and we just don't know. So anyway, I don't know. It's a weird bit of business potentially. So there's that. We may be burying other leads. What else we got?

We got Universal DH. Oh, yeah. We got a Universal DH. I may be going out of order here and that is one of the least surprising things to come out of this probably. leads what else we got we got universal dh oh yeah we got something right universal dh i may be going out of order here and that is one of the least surprising things to come out of this probably so but i think we are both pleased about that and we maybe don't have to rehash all the reasons now if we haven't convinced you yet we probably won't now i will just say that you know most american league fans like the dh and maybe that's just because they have been exposed to it.

And National League fans, a lot of them like not having the DH, but eventually they will, well, they'll have to get on board, I guess, but maybe they will learn to like it as American League fans did and as we have. And I think there are good reasons for that. I think it'll provide maybe a place for some players who might have a tougher time getting jobs and allow us to appreciate the talents that they do have, and it should boost offense a little bit, and it should, well, spare us the spectacle. Not in a good way of pitcher hitting, but I said I didn't want to rehash the whole debate here.'ll all miss the once in a blue moon pitcher homer too but i will not miss most pitcher play appearances so i am on board there's nothing that precludes a team from still having a pitcher hit it's not forbidden it's just

that they don't have to do it so you, you know, everybody relax. It is the end of an era, though. Oh, yeah. This has been coming for centuries. But the fact that it's finally here and the fact that it took as long as it did, like 50 years for it to move to both leagues after moving to one. And the fact that it had been 80 years or whatever since it had been first proposed. Baseball moves slowly sometimes, but we got there eventually. And there are aspects of it that even I will miss, like just being able to track the progression of the talent level in the league by looking at the relative performance of pitcher hitters compared to actual hitters, which just gets worse and worse

and worse. So that'll sort of miss. And I get that there are some other slight advantages and maybe people prize the variety. But, you know, it is the end of a long and contentious debate. I mean, it's not the end of the debate, probably, but the debate will be even less productive and purposeful now. And eventually the debate will die out because as long as you had it one way in one league and one way in the other league, it was never going to end. And now it will end. And I'm sure some people are sorry about that, but I ain't one of them. Yeah. Okay. We probably have buried the lead. We should get to the CBT stuff because that's pretty meaningful.

So the thresholds will increase. The threshold for 2022 will be $230 million up from $210 last year. That's a 9.5% jump. It will increase to $244 million by the end of this CBA term, which is a gain of 16.2% over the five-year deal. It increased by 11.1% over the previous five years of the CBA. It increased by 11.1% over the previous five years of the CBA. You'll recall, I think, that there was some consternation about how those numbers were doing relative to various benchmarks, including inflation and late revenues. But this is where we have landed.

In addition, there is now another surcharge. There is another tax penalty. We should say that as of this evening, we don't know the exact penalties and whether they will maintain sort of the escalator structure that they did in the previous CBA. But based on how that has been reported before, I think that the assumption right now is that it will follow the same first, second, and third time penalties, depending on how far over the first threshold you are. But there will be a new threshold. In the prior CBA, the top sort of bracket was for teams

that were exceeding the threshold by $40 million or more. In the new CBA, there will be a new $60 million or more surcharge, which has been creatively dubbed the Cohen balance tax, mostly to deal with Steve Cohen, presumably, although the Dodgers probably feel a little left out when you term it in a Mets-specific sort of way. So we don't know what those will be from a tax rate perspective. Obviously, we don't have a prior CBA to sort of go off of,

but some shift here. And Ben, how do you feel about sort of where we ended up with the CBT? Because you mentioned that it's been hard to keep track of how much all of these have moved, not only within each side's own proposals, but relative to one another. This is admittedly much better than what ownership had proposed in their sort of initial round,

or even their sort of pre-lockout proposal which was quite draconian but it is still not you know it's not like it is specifically tied to revenue and meant to grow that way or anything like that so i don't quite know how i feel about where we ended up here i think it obviously could have been much worse, but it doesn't seem like a place where, and I don't know that we necessarily thought they'd be able to do this, but where the players were kind of able to claw back some of the revenue losses that they had. Some, yes, but not maybe to the extent that we had wanted. So I don't quite know how to feel about the CBT. Yeah, I don't either. I wouldn't call it an unqualified win for the players if we are reducing these things

to wins and losses. You know, I think the owners unanimously ratified this after the players ratified it, right? And I don't know whether to read anything into the fact that the MLBPA's executive subcommittee unanimously voted against it, right? executive subcommittee unanimously voted against it, right? And it was the player reps who voted 26 to 4 in favor of the agreement. And so it was the larger body of players wanted to take this deal and thought it was beneficial or close enough to start the season. The fact that the eight players on the executive subcommittee voted against it, the ones who have been in the room this whole time and leading a lot of this discussion, I'd wonder whether it was the CBT that was the sticking point for them, that they thought they just didn't get enough there. It's hard to know exactly as we speak, but I wouldn't blame them for thinking that.

I don't know that it was worth holding the line any further at this point. And I don't know that MLB would have budged anymore, but I don't think that you can look at the growth of the CBA over time and say that that's how you would draw it up if you were going to be completely even-handed about it and have it pegged to inflation or revenue growth or whatever it is. It's still not quite keeping pace with that. So it didn't get worse, I guess. Is that a victory relative to all of the owners' previous proposals, I suppose? Yeah. I think that this is probably as much as they were going to be able to realistically get without sacrificing the season. So in that respect, you know, sort of understood in those terms, I think they did the best that they could here. I think that we talked a lot about sort of how realistic we thought truly radical change was going to be when we had Craig on one of the times. one of the times. We talked about how, especially once the age-based free agency came off and once both sides had agreed to the bonus pool, there really wasn't a whole lot that was truly radical

in terms of its constitution here. I think that this could have been worse. It obviously could have been better, but that's where we kind of ended up on cbt stuff there are ways that this could have played out where the players had just held firm on certain things that they gave on very quickly and very early and that very well could have nuked the season and maybe at the end of that you would have ended up with more movement their way but would that have been beneficial not just for the sport, but for them in the long run? What with the revenue losses that you would have incurred and who knows what sort of bad blood you would have engendered among fans? I don't know. You have to make some kind of

calculation there. And it's tough to say. We have to give a little on this in the interest of the greater good and hopefully our greater good as well. So this is not a sea change in a lot of ways that we thought, hey, coming into this round of bargaining, maybe there would be some more massive structural changes that could have happened. But I think that ship sailed a while ago. So there are some significant changes, but ultimately a lot of it did boil down to keeping a lot of the previous structures and just moving the sliders up or down. And this did end up somewhere, I suppose, in the middle-ish if you take like the harshest possible proposal and where it actually ended up. So, yeah, I can see why maybe those eight players who had been fighting tooth and nail for this thing and seeing it budge by

a million here and a million there. And then seemingly every time this thing was at the finish line. And again, as I said to you offline earlier, I don't know whether this is a product of the incomplete reporting that we get throughout this process, which really like the horse race style coverage of CBA negotiations. I don't need that next time, Ben. Yeah. I mean, it's tough because if we were getting nothing, then that would be frustrating too, right? But as it is, we get a leak here and a leak there and it's from this side or that side and you never know. And is it comprehensive? And are you finding out about just whatever tidbit or morsel this reporter happened to hear about? And we're just not hearing about most of the things in the deal.

And so you follow it in this way, tweet by tweet. And it's hard when you're in the weeds like that to really have a holistic sense of where things stand and what the movement has been. So I'm sure all of the reporters who've been reporting on this have been doing the best that they could, too. But it's tough. I mean, it's it's behind closed doors for a reason. It's supposed to be. So it would be OK if it were all just totally secret, I suppose. But imagine if we'd gotten nothing over the past three or four months. Like in some ways that would have been more maddening and in some ways less maddening, you know, because it's just like it seemed like every time that this deal was close to the finish line, there'd be a tweet that was like, well, they were close. And then MLB said, oh, and also we want you to, you know, give up this grievance.

Right. Which is another thing that happened. Right. The pandemic era grievance that the players had filed that one. They surrendered here. Yes. They still maintained the earlier grievance, right? Multiple grievances. So one of those grievances is still active. The 2018 one about the four teams that hadn't been spending their revenue-sharing bucks seemingly.

But it just seemed like there was always a rider attached at the last second, or at least it was often framed that way, which would be immensely frustrating if that reflected the reality. But again, it's tough because we're getting one side of the story here and another side of the story there, and none of us was actually in the room when it happened. So it's tough to tell sometimes. Yeah, it can be a little tricky to tell. Speaking of changes, do you like my segues yeah so a couple of rule changes uh in addition to the designated hitter i think this one is gonna be a favorite among players particularly

relievers who have been up and down a bunch teams can only option a player to the minor five times in a single season in an effort to sort of curb the experience of people like say lewis head who just like never knew where he was going to be sleeping on any given day. We've done interviews and stat blasts about record numbers of being demoted and promoted. Yeah, so I think that that's a step in the right direction from a quality of life perspective and one that is, you know, unlike other sort of quality of life improvements in prior CBAs, really targeted at guys on the fringe of the roster. So I think that that's good.

And then players have agreed to a 45-day window to implement new rules in the offseason. Their prior sort of notice period had been a year. And this one I think is, it got some play on Twitter, but I think it's useful for us to sort of delineate how this is different from prior instances. The league has always tried, I think, to get the buy-in of players when it makes rule changes, but with sufficient notice, they're allowed to make unilateral changes. So I know that some folks looked at the committee that is going to consider these rule changes, which will now consist of four active players, six league representatives, and one umpire and thought, well, that's slanted toward the league. And if that is sort of offensive to you philosophically, I think that that's fine. Like you can find that troublesome, but it isn't meaningfully different, I don't think, from prior instances of the CBA and does formalize the participation of active players in a way that hopefully will be productive to those conversations if they can, you know,

really be focused on the different perspectives that need to be represented there. So that's sort of where we sit with rule changes. Obviously, we can anticipate that they might, after the 2022 season, again, these are only off-season changes, and they specifically said this stuff starts in 2023 but we might anticipate a pitch clock base size changes defensive positioning stuff the automatic ball strike zone all of that will sort of be on the table but none of those rule changes are guaranteed and none of them will take place in the 2022 season so the only real on-field rule change is going to be the DH. So for 2022, I should say.

Yeah. So we get a year or part of a year to persuade people that we don't actually have to bring the shift. Joe Sheehan is just going to tweet about this every single day. We talked about that last time. people to Russell Carlton's most recent article where he points out that the impact seemingly would be pretty minimal and is not, I think, worth the philosophical sacrifice that you're making there. But yeah, to MLB's credit, which is not a phrase that we have had occasion to say all that often lately, they have held off on making some of these changes unilaterally, which they could have, right? I mean, we could have had a pitch clock by now if MLB had just said, hey, we are imposing this a year from now, like it or

leave, right? And they have not done that because, well, maybe partly because the CBA was coming up and they knew it was going to be contentious as it was, and they didn't want to inflame players' passions any further. But this is something that I have misgivings about but ultimately I think is probably a good thing just it has to change certain things have to change and I do understand the player's position there are conditions at my workplace that I wouldn't want someone to come in and say hey this is going to be different now so adjust like I get it I get why they're resistant and it's not necessarily just hey this is adjust. Like, I get it. I get why they're resistant. And it's not necessarily just, hey, this is the way we've always done it. And I'm comfortable doing it that way.

But they may have other valid concerns about health or whatever, favoring certain types of players, training, who knows what. But I think there has to be some body that is making changes to the sport to adjust to the way that it is played now. And maybe in a perfect world, it would be some sort of neutral arbiter that decided that. But I think MLB, you know, you have to have a league that can step in at certain times and say, hey, players are acting in a certain way because it benefits them and teams are acting in a certain way because it benefits them. But none of this benefits the fans and so there has to be someone who steps in and

says well we're tweaking the settings and now you all have to adjust so obviously I hope it's settings that I prefer but and I hope that it's nothing that endangers anyone or makes things even less harmonious than they've been but in, I am more in favor of this than I am against it, which is really what a lot of this comes down to. It's like, does this make things better or worse? On balance, there are benefits and drawbacks to almost all of these proposals. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about some draft stuff.

First, much to the chagrin of jj cooper of baseball america the rule five draft for this year has been canceled so no rule five draft weird that they made them go through the protection exercise but this is good for some of our scouting friends who will now be able to scout non-40 man players there had been a couple of teams that had restricted scouting of their non-40 man roster in anticipation of Rule 5, but presumably those restrictions will be lifted now. Moving on to the Rule 4 draft, or as our listeners probably know it, the domestic amateur draft. We're doing this draft lottery for the top six picks to discourage tanking. I remain skeptical that this will play any role in discouraging tanking,

but as we have discussed, the motivation there is less, let's get a bunch of high draft picks and more. We can just make a bunch of money even if we don't win. I think that the dynamic around the draft and not winning on purpose has changed in the last couple of years, but we will have a draft lottery. The draft itself will be 20 rounds, which is kind of where we have settled in pandemic times. And we're bringing back draft and follow. I don't know why we don't, where was the demand for draft and follow, Ben?

I couldn't tell you. And then a couple of new details, and these I kind of want to talk about because I'm curious what you think their participation will be. So the top, this is from Mark Feinsand, and i don't know if he means picks players how does top 300 players get determined but the top 300 players will be eligible to participate in a pre-draft combine we don't know the details of that combine yet but combine and then we are instituting what

they are calling the kumar rocker rule and ben i gotta i gotta push back on this being the kumar rocker rule we'll get to that in a second a new entry for our stanky draft part two yeah i'm just gonna turn into the joker the top 300 players who submit to a pre-draft physical must be offered at least 75 of slot value associated with that selection even if it you know they come to find out later that there are medical issues or what have you and we're calling this the kumar rocker rule in response to what happened with kumar rocker except the kumar rocker did not submit to a pre-draft physical most guys especially pitchers who are gonna go in the first round

or in you know some of the sandwich rounds they don't submit to pre-draft physicals because you can only hurt yourself right you can't really there are exceptions to that right if there are guys who are coming back from injury and they want to demonstrate their health in a way that is you know i guess different than being able to go out and say throw college or high school innings like sometimes they will do that but this isn't something that gets utilized all that much with pitchers. Rocker didn't submit to a pre-draft physical, which is part of why the Mets were able to get draft pick compensation when he didn't sign.

So I just look, I'm going to be, I'm going to be persnickety. I'm going to be an editor and say, I don't think we should call it that because it doesn't subscribe describe the situation he went through but anyway good note yeah i'm just you know perpetually in danger of becoming the joker so here we are so those are some of the updates to the to the amateur draft we might have more so a couple of rapid fire things. We are going to have jersey and batting helmet ads now. We will have decals. So that's part of the new CBA. There are some minor local revenues. But I think, you know, there's a lot of detail that goes into that stuff.

So maybe we can kind of bracket that for now. We can talk about it when we know more there. I think one interesting little detail that people might be excited about is that starting next year, the league is going to schedule fewer division games and every team will play at least one series against every other team, including in the other league. So that's coming for us. We're not quite sure. It'll be interesting to see the effect that has on division races, and people seem to really enjoy division rivalries.

So I don't know that this will be welcome for everyone, but if you want to see the stars of every team in your local market, this is an opportunity to do that. I guess that there's some benefit there in a move that we are less enthusiastic about just because it means we have to care about gambling stuff more. Players now have expanded rights to engage in promotional and endorsement activities with sports betting companies.

I'm quoting from a tweet from Evan Drellick now was very restricted before now loosened up sports betting before it was a matter of league policy. Now been decided by both sides. So obviously we'll need to see what the specific language is around there. On the one hand, like I am, I am glad that there is an avenue for players participating in some of the revenue that might come from gambling,

but I don't love the idea of players endorsing betting. And I don't know. The continued creep of sports gambling seems to, once again, have not been examined with the sort of rigor and skepticism that I would perhaps like it to be. But here we are. I didn't know it was possible for there to be much more gambling in sports betting promotion than there already was, which is a disconcerting thought. It was limited all this time. Right. Oh, boy. Right. All right. Well, if that means that no one has to hack Jeff Passan's Twitter feed to promote NFTs or whatever on the day that he's about to break the news that the CBA was agreed to,

well, I guess that's good that there will be more lawful outlets for that kind of activity. But yes, no one wants to hear that, or very few of us, I think, on a percentage basis want to hear that. So go get yours, players, I guess. Yes. No one wants to hear that or very few of us, I think, on a percentage basis want to hear that. So go get yours, players, I guess. Yes. That, yeah. Other than that. Both. Yeah. And I'll also say, I was going to say, like one of the little saving graces, the silver linings of the lockout was that at least if there were no games, you couldn't have any scandals about gambling on games

like the NFL has had recently. It's like that tapping on heads meme that you see all the time. But I guess that is probably part of our future one of these days. So brace yourself for that. As for the decals on the batting helmets and the logos on the uniforms, personally, not something that I am, as you would say, going to get fussed about. This is something that I think a lot of people probably don't like, and I don't like it. I'm not saying I would have suggested this change or that I'm in favor of it,

but I'm also pretty sure that I won't care in the long run. I'm not really a uniform guy. I'm not really a jersey number guy, and I think that this will probably blend in with the scenery for me. I mean, there have been like swooshes all over the place for a while now, right? So there's already a little bit of creep when it comes to this. And it's everywhere in other sports, right? And those sports have survived. And I think the fans probably just get used to it.

So does it look kind of tacky? Are we bombarded by ads in every facet of life already? And was it nice to have baseball uniforms mostly be an oasis from that? Yes, but I have resigned myself to it and I'm not enough of a purist about that aspect of baseball to really get very exercised about it. I'm pretty sure that before long I won't even notice unless it's something particularly strange and eye-catching. Yeah. I'm not thrilled about it, but I, you know, it felt like an inevitability. It does. You do get used to it. You know, I think that the arena where I see this the most often is like in the WNBA, a lot of their jerseys are specifically endorsed and you kind of, you know, you lose sight of it. The jerseys for a lot of winter ball leagues, particularly lead home are pretty ad heavy. So, you know, I don't love it, but it's not, you know, I don't know. I think that you as a fan in all likelihood you're going to be able

to buy a jersey without that stuff on it so i think that that part of the experience will remain intact but yeah that that exists as a thing i guess that we kind of buried the the lead on on a couple of things which is you all might be wondering how it is that we're gonna play 162 games given the the fact that it is now March 10th and we have not started spring training. We will have nine inning doubleheaders, nine innings, and regular extra innings rules. How is it minute 50 whatever?

I know. We are just, this is, I actually, I tweeted. I know. On this equation, which I rarely do these days except to retweet something. This is such a momentous occasion. And thanks for the many people who have reached out to offer your congratulations. No more zombie runner.

The zombie runner is no more. This is incredible. I'm not used to things that I hate being added to things that I love and then those things being removed. Once they're there, they're usually there to stay and I just have to resign myself to them. But I never got used to the zombie runner. I never came around. As anyone who regularly listens to this podcast knows, Grant Brisby and I were out there on

the ramparts every day doing our shaking fists at clouds about this. And I'm so happy that this happened. I don't know how it happened exactly. I'd love to have been in the room because I've never exactly had a handle on who was pushing for this. Initially, it was a minor league thing or maybe an international competition thing. And then it just kind of got Trojan horsed into MLB because of COVID protocols. And I did understand it sort of semi, even though I still sort of hated it during that time. And I just kind of figured that once it was in there and entrenched, that players would say, well, I don't particularly want to play 18 inning games and

whatever. It happened and the world didn't end and MLB seems to have mostly been in favor of it. So I don't know who put their foot down or whether this was mutual or what. But thanks to whatever hero it was who spared us the zombie runner, hopefully in perpetuity. And we'll be able to look back at those couple of years. It'll be like when you look back at, you know, 1887 or whatever, when whatever when it was like oh there were eight balls that year or whatever it's like yeah things were changing we'll be able to look back at those weird days of 2020 and 2021 which were weird for any number of reasons but one of the ways that they were weird was that there was just a runner on second base to start extra innings that happened yep and we all just went along with it because we had no choice.

But now it's gone. And I'm so relieved that this is gone. And yeah, also relieved about the nine inning games. I really feared that once the season was delayed, that they would find a way to get 162 in, but that it would be seven inning double headers and a super compressed schedule and all that. And they have pushed back the end of the season slightly. And I am surprised and pleased because I never liked it from a statistical perspective where you have like nine inning games and seven inning games. And from a spectator standpoint where like suddenly the game would end when you thought it was just getting interesting. And it's like,

that's one of those sacred things. I mean, nine innings is pretty essential to the fabric of baseball. And it always just seemed like giving up to me to say, hey, game's got longer. So we're just going to lop off a couple of innings instead of just trying to speed up the pace. So maybe someday we will see seven inning games or doubleheaders again. And I'm fine with it at lower levels and in exhibition games and so forth. But I'm so pleased and surprised. This was just a great treat for me that I no longer have to put up with these Calvin Ball impositions on my favorite. Yeah, it's just it was such a nice surprise.

You're so right. It was not. I was like, oh, they're going to play like three inning games. They're going to sim games and that's just how it's going to go. They're going to play projection ball, but no, we just get like full hardy baseball back.

How nice to have just like full and hardy baseball back. So that part's really, really very nice. So there's that. You know, we got that going for us. Apparently, we're going to go play baseball all over the world. We can't just keep podcasting until the updates stop because I think it will be here all night.

But, you know, we're going to apparently be playing games in a bunch of different locales over the next five years. Mexico, Asia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, London, and Paris, as a friend of the podcast, Craig Goldstein, pointed out. The range of specificity there is really hilarious. In Asia and also Paris, very similar geographic sizes. But I think it's very cool that they're going to contemplate more games internationally.

I hope, as we talked about last summer, that we end up with more games in creative places in the continental US so that we can bring Major League Baseball to more people. So I think that there's potential there to really embrace the international aspect of the game and view MLB as one of many places that enjoys the game and wants to see it grow. And so that part's exciting. I don't know. And speaking of international matters, one issue we have not discussed because there was not a resolution is the international draft, which briefly came to the fore and played a major part in negotiations this week. And

that, it was decided, would just be punted for a few months. And July 25th is the new deadline to figure out what to do about that. And that is potentially tied to qualifying offer compensation as well. That was the big back and forth that resulted in one of the deadlines not being met. And we will not talk about that at length now because we've decided that that is a complex and important enough subject to do an entire segment on, which we have actually already recorded. So that will be part of the next episode where we will consider that in depth. So that much is still up in the air for now can i ask you a question about that that isn't about the actual international draft itself but is about the the thing that it has been tied to in these negotiations does it strike you as sort of a mismatch to tie it to the qualifying offer

system yeah because like and i'm jumping the gun a little bit because I know that Ben Clemens is looking at this for us because it's still interesting as a, you know, it's an open point of, I'm not going to say it's an open point of bargaining because I think that that is legally imprecise in an important way, but it is still like an open question that will be resolved in the coming months.

But like 10 guys a year are impacted by the qualifying offer and it doesn't even depress all of their markets, although it certainly does depress some. And so for that to be tied to an entire international draft apparatus, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, seems like those are not equally weighted things. So I found that to be, you know, there were a number of moves on the owner's part that I found to be kind of distasteful because they were bundling things together that

were not equivalent exchanges. And this one, thankfully, question mark didn't blow. I mean, it didn't blow up the CBA negotiations, although it, you know, it seems like it was being kind of rushed through. And it's a really important question that baseball needs to sort out. But it didn't seem like it all tied together in a way that made it make any sense. So I don't know about that, Ben. Yeah, it's hard to say. It's hard for me to say, at least, which is one reason why I wanted to have someone who has actually covered these things on the show, because this is one of those areas where I don't even know what my position is necessarily on an international draft. It's like, well, I like this part of it. I don't like that part of it. But I also don't even know what my position is necessarily on an international draft. It's like, well, I like this part of it.

I don't like that part of it. But I also don't like this part of the current system. And so I don't know. Is this better or worse or is there a better solution? So it's hard to say. And, yeah, as to the value, I'm not sure about that either because you already have the hard cap system, right? So that kind of already determines how much money is being spent on those players. So then it's just about how that money is distributed and to whom. And so if, as I've

seen reported, the qualifying offer compensation is worth something like $50 to $100 million a year, which sounds like a lot. I have seen that figure though, right? But no, I don't know where that came from. If that came from the desk of Rob Manfred, then that would explain why it sounds exorbitant. But yeah, I don't know how to do that math exactly. And there, as you said, have been a lot of those situations where it's like, well, we'll give you this, but only if you give us that. And it's like, but that is like 10 times more important. And also, we never really talked about that before. And it has nothing to do with this other thing. So yeah, it's frustrating. But I will say, because I guess we've just about gotten to the end of the actual changes that we

know thus far, although I'm sure next time we talk, we will know more and we will talk about those things too. But one of my major takeaways from this whole thing, I mean, just aside from the sense of relief, because if this had gone on any further, and not that I want to create a fake deadline of my own, but we were getting to the point where it was going to be very difficult to play a full season. And if we had gotten to that point, then it would have thrown a whole other set of wrenches into the negotiations because then the players potentially could have pulled expanded playoffs off the table. And MLB could have pulled the prospect of 162 games and actually paying players for those games. And then they would have had to negotiate both of those extraordinarily sticky issues. And then all bets would have been off.

So the fact that that was averted is a relief. And also, I think one of my takeaways from this whole process, and we've talked about it plenty, but there really was a major shift in the quality of the coverage and the tone of the coverage, I think. And there was a good article in the Washington Post just this week with thoughts from Craig Goldstein and Hannah Kaiser and Ken Rosenthal and Jeff Passan, et cetera, about just how the tenor of the coverage has completely shifted since the last work stoppage in baseball. And I think the article does a good job of laying out the reasons for that.

And it's partly the facts of this negotiation. It's partly changes in the demographics of baseball reporters and partly just changes in national attitude and how favorably people think of unions and all of these things that aren't directly related to baseball even but are reflected in baseball. But that has been a big change, I think, and it's one we've remarked on. And it also seems to have been reflected in fan sentiment. And I've seen multiple polls in recent months and one just this week, I think, which I will link to on the show page. But there was a YouGov poll. There was a Morning Consult poll. And they pretty consistently showed that it seemed like of the baseball fans polled who had an opinion, it was about two to one in terms of blaming the owners instead of the players. about two to one in terms of blaming the owners instead of the players. And I don't know whether that affected the negotiations at all. I think it's more likely that it didn't than that it did, but I think it might still have a tangible effect. And this is why I'm pleased about it, not just because generally that's the conclusion that I've come to also as far as how to apportion blame. And so I think that means that the coverage has just become more factual and has done

a better job of informing people about what's actually happening. But put that aside. I mean, if I didn't care if I were just both sides in everything or even if I were saying it's the player's fault, I think it's better for fans to blame the owners, all else being equal, regardless of the actual facts. And again, I think the facts do support that in this case. But put that aside, I think it's better for the owners to be the scapegoats in terms of the health of the sport and the prospect of people coming back to ballparks and tuning

into games because no one really watches those games for the owners. You know, even people who take the owner's side in these debates, they're not watching because of the owners. And if they are mad at the players, I think that makes them much more likely to walk away or tune out or feel bad about baseball than if they're blaming the players because if you pin it on the owners, well, then the players go back to work and it's baseball again and you feel good about it. Whereas if you blame the players for whatever reason, then you might have that lingering resentment and you might not come back to watch the sport. So I think the fact that it is played out that way, again, like the way the negotiations played out was not necessarily good for baseball, although it was better than it could have been. negotiations played out was not necessarily good for baseball, although it was better than it could have been. But the fact that among people who are blaming someone, it seems like most people were lobbing the majority of the blame the owner's way. That just sort of means that hopefully we can come

back to baseball with less lingering resentment and bad feeling and people saying so-and-so is spoiled and I don't want to watch them play anymore, right? Because really no one is watching because of the owners. And so if they're the ones taking the blame, then I think that means we can get back to just enjoying the sport more quickly and easily than we could have otherwise. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that that's right. I don't really have much to add. I mean, I know that in Manfred's press conference, when it was all announced, he, I don't know that he will ever publicly sort of account for the state of the relationship between the league and, and the players association. Certainly like that, that is a relationship. And so I don't want to both sides it, but there are parties to it that are not just him but I think that he perhaps did acknowledge that like there isn't trust right now between him and the players and some of that is going to be a natural sort of I think what is the what is the the bad version of an afterglow aftermath yeah like the bad taste yeah the bad

taste that is left by the negotiation but i think that there is there's work that needs to be done to repair the relationship there i think that players are pretty clear-eyed about how they are valued by ownership and by the league and i'd probably be pretty mad if i were valued that way too and so i think that you're right that it's you know know, if you're the average fan, like you just want to be, you just want to be excited about Juan Soto. You know, you don't want to, you don't need to be excited about owners like that. It's crazy. Yeah. I have the Manfred quote here. One of the things that I'm supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players. I've tried to do that. I think that I have not been successful in that. That's a good self-assessment. I think that it begins with small steps. It's why I picked up the phone

after the ratification and called Tony Clark and expressed my desire to work with him. It's going to be a priority of mine moving forward to try to make good on the commitment I made to him on the phone. So it's very much an action speak louder than words sort of situation at this point. But I guess I'd rather have the words than not have them. So we'll see if he backs them up somehow. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing for everyone to remember, and I wish you expressed this well a couple of weeks ago, it's like, was it weeks ago? It might've been days spent. I have no memory. But it's not as if we are asking the owners to not make any money.

We're asking that they be a little less greedy. And it is so easy to sit back and just marvel at the opportunity that the sport has in front of it, right? Like we've talked about, the players have never been better than they are right now in this moment. And even though we find some of the revenue options to be kind of icky or boring depending on the day like the league is in a position to be very financially healthy and to sort of get ahead of any potential rsn collapses and like we could be at a moment where we say like

the sport really has a chance to to sort of solidify itself to shore up its financial position even more than it already has to think about how we really incentivize good competition and then to be able to sit back and marvel at what these guys can do on the field because it's so incredible and i think that that is an opportunity that we can't take for granted will be taken. And so I hope that one of the things that comes out of this is a renewed desire on all of the parties to continue to fight for the health and future of the sport. And that isn't going to always result in like clean or easy or stress-free labor negotiations. It often is going to mean them being contentious and it's

going to mean potential delays. And, you know, I tweeted earlier that like if we're doing this every five years, it's going to make me crazy, but it might be what we need in order to have a really vital sport that has a sustainable future and that has a place in all of our communities. So I'm ending on an optimistic note that we will take that seriously and everyone will kind of do their little part whether it's the the media offering clear-eyed and rigorous analysis of what's going on or the players standing up for each other and hopefully standing up for members of their playing community that aren't in their bargaining unit and hopefully the owners being like i can do with even marginally

less and then us all kind of moving forward because I think we do have this like, it sounds so hokey, but like this bright green field ahead of us and we can fight for it. So we should. Hear, hear. Yeah.

So thanks to everyone who has stuck with us throughout the lockout. Thanks for helping us get through this. Maybe we helped you get through it too. I'm so stressed. It's been a mutual support group. And if we could get through this, then we can get through anything.

And pretty soon we might have too much to talk about, which would be a good problem compared to the problem that we have been dealing with for months now. So I'm sure that we will have more on this tomorrow and in the days and weeks to come. And we will also have some exciting stuff to talk about that is not related to what is in the CBA, but is related to games and players and performance. And cannot wait to mix some of that into the podcast rotation.

I have missed it. So thanks to everyone. And we will be back soon. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Duncan Regan, Kevin Brotsman, Stephen Sachs, Jacob Sachs, and Dwayne Bishop. Thanks to all of you. Our Patreon supporters, of course, get access to exclusive monthly bonus pods

and an Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group, among other perks. Anyone is free to join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, you can follow effectively wild on Twitter at EW pod. You can find the 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 very soon I'll tell you exactly what I'm gonna do Get in the groove and let the good time roll I'm gonna stay here till I soothe my soul If it take all night long Yeah Oh, the winter is past The rain is over and gone The flowers appear on the earth The time of the singing of birds has come

And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land