PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Agree to disagree

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

On this episode, Derek and Jesse are discussing the ups and downs of the current CBA negotiations, Derek Jeter mutually parting ways with the Marlins, and MLB TV pivoting on subscriptions until the lockout ends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the PHNX D-BACs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as your mayor of PHNX, and I am joined by my occasional vice mayor of PHNX, my friend, my co-host, the one and only, Thunderstick, Jesse Friedman. Am I only occasional now? Is that what happened? We have other duties. You and I have other commitments. We have other things that, basically other things that, require our time, our attention. So we can't be the mayor and the vice mayor all the time.

There's just there's occasional times where we are and occasional time. I just figured this was payback for for me doing a collaborative piece with our buddy Patrick Lyons over from DNVR. I wasn't sure if this was. No, this isn't payback. You're dead to me. You're dead to me. You're dead. Okay. You have partnered with Patrick and then he's calling you guys the mega powers like you're macho man, Randy Savage. And I'm not like like like, as if I'm going to accept that laying down bullshit. But anyway, this show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Drafking Sportsbook app. Of course, this weekend is UFC 272, and you need to get down on the Drafking Sportsbook, official sports betting partner of the UFC.

They have a knockout offer for new customers. Use our code of PHNX, bet just $1 on the main event between Covington and Masmedal, and get your $100 in free bets instantly, no matter what the outcome is. that fight. So get over to the Drafking Sportsbook app now and get down on the main event of UFC 272. Jesse, we have some fighting going on, I suppose. Things are definitely turning aggressive, yet somehow John Heyman is still optimistic about this entire situation. Coming out today from the CBA negotiations, it started with a pretty bleak tweet from Evendrelic from the Athletic, who tweeted out that MLB today indicated a willingness to miss a month of games and took a more

threatening tone than yesterday. Sources briefed on the day's meetings between MLB and the Players Association tell me. So essentially it started out very contentious with the MLB being very forthright about the fact that they have no problem missing games this season. Something that is no surprise to us or the players. We kind of knew that they were holding this season. and hostage up to this point. We knew that they wanted to force players into a situation where now they have to decide

if they want to keep fighting or if they want to potentially miss one sixth of their salary for the 2022 season and possibly more. It's, it is sort of what we expected, right? I saw someone tweet, forgive me, I don't remember exactly where this came from, but you'll find it on Twitter was trending today.

Someone said that sources indicate that a deal could, be struck on February 29th. Do you get it, Derek? I do. That's a great joke. That's a great joke. It's a great joke. You'll find the tweet on Twitter. Shout out to my friend who actively got married on the leap year just so he wouldn't have to celebrate his anniversary regularly. I'm talking about you, Jared. And yeah, I'm not going to let you slide without publicly shaming you for your decisions. That's a big money saver, right? It really is. I mean, I mean, every first. I mean, four years. You do it up big a little bit more when it comes. What's that?

They don't have to do something big, but whatever. You don't have to do it big all the time, right? Yeah. Or whatever. Maybe just not be that kind of person, Jared. I'm still pointing at you. Anyway, MLB, I have no idea what they're, what, what's going on. Because for some reason tonight on the MLB network, John Heyman was at the, at the negotiations in

Jupiter, Florida. He said that they were still negotiating late on Monday. So this was about an hour or so ago, which would have been about six, seven-ish p.m. on Eastern. And they were still negotiating, which I take it as a positive sign. They've said often that once they start working into these late hours and extending the negotiations far beyond what they have previously, that at the very least you can feel like there's some progress being made due to their commitment to talking with one another, right? But that still doesn't, I mean, I still don't know what John Heyman is basing his optimistic approach on saying on the MLB network tonight that he feels like he was optimistic that a deal could be done today or tomorrow. Can I propose a theory on this? Let's go.

Because I think this is fascinating. So people might remember about two months ago, news came out that MLB Network was dropping Ken Rosenthal as a correspondent because of past criticism of Rob Manfred of baseball's commissioner. And we've joked numerous times on the podcast about the kinds of articles you'll find over on MLB.com about this situation, just blasting the player's position, you know, and enacting as if the owners are just on the right side of these negotiations all the way, right? I believe I've called it propaganda is exactly how I labeled a lot of the MLB.com articles by our friend. That's the word. That's the word. And MLB Network, of course, is directly affiliated with Major League Baseball.

And so it's not necessarily surprising to see someone go on MLB Network and have a very overly optimistic and potentially unrealistic take on what's happening right now. And I think it's interesting. We haven't really seen John Heyman tweet publicly about. about that optimism. His public tweets have kind of been pretty similar to what everyone else has said. And yet on MLB Network, like you're saying, he's come out and been very optimistic about things. I have to wonder how much the outlet that he's reporting for has to do with that. That's a fine point. I will say that I give MLB Network a lot of credit because I don't feel like they're MLB.com. But at the same time, yeah, yeah, I did see a lot of defending of the owners. I saw a lot of, you know, talking about like players realizing the owners aren't out to get them as much as they are.

But really, are they not? Is this not, has this not become contentious? Is it not about the fact that we've seen or apparently baseball profits are up over the last 20 years? But we haven't seen players really get that increase in salary aside from the superstars out there that, that get those huge contracts that kind of make the headlines, right? Those huge contracts are why people have this impression of MLB and its players all being so rich and that this is some sort of battle between billionaires and millionaires. I saw a tweet today that said 71% of MLB players make below a million dollars per year.

I understand that to a lot of, again, us, you're going to bring in the fact that you make a million dollars a year or close to it and you're going to have a hard time selling a lot of normal people on that not being a lot of money however in the grand scheme of things when we're talking about profits when we're talking about the the increase in revenue for baseball over the past 20 years it it coincides with the fact that players should be getting paid more than that and there shouldn't be such a substantially large portion of their of their players receiving that amount of money or less and that's honestly how it feels again though the the fact that there are that other what 29% of players that make over a million dollars per year those the stories of their contracts and how big

they are kind of get you know blown up so big they become such a story that that's all people think of like they're like wait didn't some guy just get paid like 500 million dollars for like 14 years it's like yeah but that was one guy like it's not like right Like they paid that and then decided everybody is getting, you know, all this money or something. It's just one headline grabbing, you know, acquisition or contract versus the huge amount of players that are part of baseball that don't get paid anywhere close to that kind of salary. And it's not just 71% that make under a million. It's 66% make less than 600K. Yeah.

I think I found a tweet. It's Ben, it's Ben Verlander who put that out. That's right. And yeah, you're so right. we have this picture in our heads of, you know, all the very, very well-paid superstars. That doesn't really tell the story of, you know, the full gamut of major league baseball players. There's a lot of players in this game. And we also have to consider the baseball players, their career only lasts.

Like we talked about it yesterday, right? Like for a lot of guys, it's only a couple years, you know, it's really hard to have longevity in this league. And so, you know, we're not talking about a million dollars. salary for 50 years, right? Obviously for, you know, for superstars, you know, maybe they find deals on TV or whatnot after after their playing career. But that's not the case for everyone. So I think it's important to realize that as we think about this. You're absolutely right. And I think the other thing, too, about baseball is that we in the past have kind of suggested there's the possibility that we could see players play overseas.

we could see players play for other leagues and such, whatever, that they might be able to figure out just so that they're playing baseball competitively against other baseball players and not just organized backlock games or some sort of workout or something that they're doing, right? Today, just to add fuel to the fire, MLB players have been very active on social media with the information that came out from the CBA negotiations. And Bryce Harper tweeted or put on Instagram, Instagram, a photo of him in a photoshopped jersey of the Yomuri.

I don't know if I'm saying that right. Yamiri Giants, which is in Tokyo. And he said, A, Yomiri Giants, you up, got some time to kill. And then the more troublesome, the more troublesome part of the image, like that was just kind of a shit post, right? That was kind of like, just like, hey, man, just to remind you, we'll go play elsewhere. But then down in like little print on the Instagram image, it said, I know you got Boris Corpse number, Scott Boris's number.

Let's talk with some fire emojis next to it. And that's the part that when I see that little part of the image, I'm like, maybe he means this. Like, maybe like, I mean, it really takes that next level when they start like, it's one thing to sub tweet. It's one thing to kind of put that out there just to remind like MLB and the owners and everybody that that's an option for for these guys. I don't know even if it is. like, I don't know if Bryce Harper has something in his contract that says he can't go play for another team. I imagine he does, but contracts are nothing right now because baseball doesn't have a deal. So players can kind of do what they want right now, right? Like a player could go

beyond dancing with the stars or some shit right now. And they really couldn't do anything to stop them. They have no control over them other than the PA or their agent may be suggesting it's a bad idea, but they really can't stop them the way that teams would have control over stopping these guys from doing something when baseball is in contract, right? Like, this is completely free period for these guys. We already talked about how many drugs they could do because there's no drug testing policy right now. They could do all the drugs, all the drugs they want.

But again, talking about, like, do you put any stock in that before we move on? Do you put any stock in Bryce Harper putting this image up? Or do you think that this is just kind of an attention-grabbing move, something to kind of stir conversation and just remind people that this might actually be an option when he doesn't really plan on pursuing it. I would be shocked if any big name players actually. I mean, you're talking. Yeah, of Bryce Harper. I mean, you're talking about Japan, right? I mean, this isn't just like a spur of the moment decision. Like, I'm just going to pick up and, and go to Japan and start playing games there. I think what you're seeing right now is just a lot of players

taking to social media to try to make their voices heard. I saw a pretty fiery tweet from Jameson earlier in the day as well. There's just been a lot of that lately, and it's hard to fault the players for doing that, right? I mean, they're the ones who have really the voice that they can make public. You're not going to hear from owners on Twitter very much,

but players have a platform there, and they have a sizable audience, and more power. to them to try to use that for everything that they can. It's the same way that fans have access to the players, really, but not the owners as much, right? Because the players are out there. The players are on social media. Players are tweeting stuff.

I'm sure even when a player tweet something, even if it's not as aggressive as what Bryce Harper tweeted out or put on his Instagram, I'm sure if they say anything that they probably get dozens of responses to them blaming them for this situation, right? telling them like get back to work or some ridiculous response when in reality that's not what's going on and the manipulating really here is by MLB. And, you know, honestly, it's kind of weird because even blasting MLB for me personally feels kind of hard. MLB has been very good to me. MLB has given me my career. The Arizona Diamondbacks helped give me my career in doing this. Other teams, other organizations and other sports, they're not as accommodating to a small publication,

like they were to the website I originally came up working for. So there's times where it even pains me to be bashing MLB, but I don't feel it's bashing. I feel like it's really just like looking at the two sides and trying to be objective here, but seeing where one side is trying to play this game, right? I mean, I get that the players are asking for things that haven't never existed. That's the point of a negotiation, though,

is bringing new things that are important to you, something that's been bothering you for a long time, something that's been a pain point for your union since the last time a labor deal was put together. Now we're at a point where these things need to be resolved or addressed in some way. We need to figure out what is possible, what isn't possible, what owners aren't willing to work on,

you know, and we're really just, we're not getting closer to anything. We're not getting to a point where they're like, all right, well, we see your point on expanded playoffs, and we agree with that. We don't want to do the pool, but we will give minimum salary,

you know, we'll give you the minimum salary that you want. You know, we don't want this, but we will do this. Like, that's the part that's really frustrating me because the two sides are so far apart on something,

on some of these things that they're moving at micro amounts. And it just doesn't ever feel like they're going to arrive at any point where they can see eye on it, right? So, again, just like it really feels like they need to decide on what they're what they're going to fight for at this point, what they're not. Like I said yesterday though, I'm so tired of even talking about this.

I'm tired of talking about the lockout and trying to predict where this is going to go. This entire thing has just been exhausting. I can only imagine being a part of it as, you know, especially involved in negotiations as a player representative or even honestly on MLB side where you're not an owner and you're, you're not a person that's really involved with making these decisions, but you still have to be a part of these exhaustive negotiations that seem to be going nowhere. Well, and can you imagine, like, I know it's very hard to have any sympathy for Rob Bannford in the time like this, but, I mean, he has to find a way to get a majority of votes from the owners, right? And a group of owners who have very, like, the Dodgers owner has a very, very different set of goals than the Tampa Bay Ray's owner, right?

The Diamondbacks owner. And the Diamondbacks owner. Like Rob Manfred, as much as he hasn't handled this situation well, and I don't want to make it sound like he has, his job is very difficult in this situation. Bordering on impossible, just given the, just given how forceful the owner's side has been on getting some of these things that they want. And the other thing I'll bring in here real quick, because I know we want to move on to things that are not lockout related for goodness sakes. but the one thing I want to bring in here is that I don't know if delaying the season, if lost games is as big of a threat to players as Major League Baseball wants us to believe it is. They have, from what I can tell from the things that I read earlier today,

the players union has basically been saving away a very sizable stash of money. We talked about that not too long ago that they were about to start cracking into their nest egg for this entire situation. Right. Exactly. And so the reality of that is only going to increase, you know, their solidarity in this situation. They are in no rush to cave to what the owners want here. And so unfortunately what that means for us as baseball fans is I don't know when I don't know when this thing is going to end. I mean, it really, it really could drag on for quite a while because one of these sides is going to have to blink, and whichever side it is is going to probably wind up as the loser in this negotiation.

And I don't think either side is anywhere close to that point right now. It's an irresistible force versus an immovable object right now, Jesse. And it doesn't feel like it's going anyway. And again, when you talk about the solidarity and how long this is going per Robert Murray on Twitter, the MLBPA has organized a fully staffed stadium and facility for players to train in Mesa, Arizona. I'm guessing, like, it can't be at one of the spring training, so it couldn't be Sloan Park, right?

Like, it would have to be an independent, not park, not associated with baseball. But according to this tweet, the MLBPA has organized a fully staffed stadium and facility for players to train in Mesa, Arizona, according to sources, familiar with the situation. So this is the part where we send you to drive around Mesa, Arizona. I'll find it. You think I won't find it? I'll find it. Yeah, you'll find it.

Just give me, like, give me one circle K, uh, convenience store clerk that wants to talk about the players that he saw come through there in the morning. And, uh, I'll find it in no time. I will say that it, it, it, this doesn't surprise me. Uh, today I was out at the Diamondbacks minor league mini camp again. Yes. And it was another day of, uh, of everything feeling right. You know, of everything feeling like, uh, oddly.

it just felt like there was no lockout, that there was not, you know, just felt like this is where I'm supposed to be. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. For a lot of these minor league guys, that's exactly what they want. That's how they want them to feel. They want them to be at a facility training. But we talked to Slade Sacconi, by the way, not Chikoni as much as I want to make it that.

We have official confirmation from. No, you know, we don't because Casey from the Diamondbacks confirmed to my face that it was Cicone, like almost with an S. Okay. And I told him about the fall league announcer that was really Italian, that was just peppering it up. And then the other, the newer PR guy came over to us to grab us to take us over there. And he said it, Chaconi. So I was like, hey, this is not helping me at all.

But that's funny. He made a mention of it. And I honestly, I know a lot of guys don't. I know it's not something that really, I guess they think about or really just take a moment to kind of express how much gratitude they have. But he made a couple of mentions about what an amazing, beautiful facility it is for them to train in at Salt River Fields and to have the, you know, just that ability to be there versus, you know, and he didn't reference the major league players, but he was just saying versus there are other options and other things they've done like training in the parking lot of a of a motel and some of the stuff that they've done because they have to during the season. it's not very glamorous season, as we've talked about, for the minor league guys. And they don't exactly have access to great nutrition and great abilities, you know, great facilities to work out at when they're in the middle of their minor league season.

So, you know, it's one of those situations where, at least for Slade, he was acknowledging how, you know, how grateful he is to be working out at a facility like that. It's just something that makes me think about with the major league guys. And again, going back to what you said about Rob Manfred having such a difficult, you know, being in such a difficult position, you're not wrong. However, with that being said, he's also the person with the power to change that. He's also the person with the power to end the lockout and say that he's doing it for the good of baseball. And the commissioner has that power. And the commissioner can still proceed with last year's, the previous CBA until a new one has been decided on.

So as much as all of this seems like just a, like, oh man, this is such a shitty situation that nobody can get us out of because we're just stuck in this now. It's not. It could end tomorrow. It really could. It could end Friday. It could end with a federal judge intervening because the government eventually gets sick of this shit. And that could also happen if this drags on and we see games canceled.

The other weird thing about it is don't the players have to agree to games being canceled? Can't, can't like, can Major League just make that call? I remember that the players were offering up the double headers and other things that they could do to make up these games. And it just seems so weird to me that there's no involvement of the Players Association or the Union on that call about whether or not they're going to make up games. Yeah, the thought of making up games is interesting. I think there's an added concern right now about player health, just given what we saw with the pandemic season. Like you have to be pretty careful about getting guys to ramp up quickly and maximizing the number of games played. It's dicey territory.

And I think even the owner's side understands that too. So. Well, the players are the ones that want to, they want that. They don't want to miss games. So they're saying if this dragged on and things have to change as far as the schedule goes, doesn't mean we have to lose games. It just means they need to be rescheduled. And the players or the owner's side very much does not see that right now. But again, you can actually get some more information about this over Judas Friedman over.

I mean, Jesse Friedman over here wrote an article with our friend Patrick over at DNVR that you can get on go PHNX.com. It's an amazing article. It's called On the Corner. And it's going to be a new monthly piece that you can get over at both DNVR and go phNX.com about Jesse and Patrick apparently meeting on the corner of their respective states for a discussion on the latest news. in the world of baseball. And this infuriates me. They just completely left me out of this entire thing. I guess I am not.

My opinions aren't valid enough as the mayor of PHNX to provide them here. But whatever, I get it. And go check that out over at go phnx.com. And then let Jesse know what a mistake he made by not including me on all of this. And then yell at Patrick for Patrick's trying to come between Jesse and I. And I don't like that either. But go sign up if you haven't already. ready to become a member at go phnx.com.

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Unfortunately, we don't get an opportunity to do that very much these days. Hopefully, we will soon, though. Now, moving on, we had another, I don't want to call it an argument, but I guess things going bad, another partnership turn, as Derek Jeter has decided to mutually part ways with the Miami Marlins as the CEO and shareholder. I blame you for this, Jesse, because you talked about how much you like their jerseys yesterday. And I think that that had some sort of impact on this entire situation. But per report. It has nothing to do with that. It's like I have, I have to resign immediately.

Some guy from Arizona is complimenting our uniforms. We have obviously made mistakes. But no, per reports, it was due to the organization's reluctance to improve the team through free agency. He was also on his final year of a five-year deal with a five-year plan that he had in place. And apparently the Marlins weren't going in the same direction as Derek Cheater. I kind of think it's a bit of a bummer, even though I'm not typically.

rooting for the success of other teams that aren't the Arizona Diamondbacks. I did feel like the Marlins had started to gain some momentum, and I wonder how this is going to impact them going forward. I thought it was really interesting to see, did you see Justin Turner give his hot take on this Derek Jeter situation? No, I did not. Yeah, so Justin Turner tweeted this today, and we're recording on Monday evening, of course.

You all are listening to this probably on Tuesday, but this is what Justin Turner said. that hot take, my sources, common sense, and reading in between the lines, tell me that one of our game's greatest champions, Derek Jeter, stepping away from a team with one of the best young pitching staffs in the game because ownership isn't committed to winning and spending. And Justin Turner did also mention that he hasn't had any direct conversations with Derek Jeter himself about the situation. But there is likely some truth to this. Derek Jeter's commented about how his vision for the future of the franchise didn't seem to align with some of the people that he was working with.

And it seems pretty reasonable to believe that the financial situation in Miami was tied to that. We all know they haven't been a team that has spent a whole lot of money in recent years. Right. Well, when they do, they don't spend it necessarily on the right way, I guess you could say. They don't really reward their young talent that have come up and proven themselves to be. be well just think about how many like they've just traded away i mean christian yellich and it's either traded away or letting them walk away yeah i mean it's incredible the amount of talent that they get or that they trade away they do it typically before they have a chance to come up for

free agency so that they get something in return and that something in return continues to have returns right it continues to regenerate their farm system it continues to keep them productive with young players and young pieces. And it also keeps them free from having to make this decision when a guy is a free agent and it's time to decide if they want to walk or not, right? It's weird because on one hand, the Marlins have two World Series, which are more than a lot of teams have. And the Marlins also have kind of almost built a business model around this. it's not good for baseball it's not good for players but at the same time too they're they know what they are i don't think their fans expect more than that i don't think their fans expect them to go out

and get big free agents and make any kind of big moves like that i also don't think that they're the only team in baseball that does it i think that they're you know what they're doing is similar to the astros success i think the difference was the astros had a significant number of you know maybe like the diamondbacks right they had a significant number of young players come up all at the same time. And that allowed them to build a nice core, add some pieces to it, and have their big league team be successful for more than just a year or two, like the Marlins have experienced with their spurts.

Joel Sherman tweeted, Her Derek Jeter believed going into the lockout that there would be another 10 to 15 million that the Marlins would spend on the 22 roster and that strategy evaporated during the lockout. Right. And that's the thing is, is when you feel like you have one, one of the best pitching cores, young pitching cores of baseball. That's the key, right? Like, we've talked about that.

We've talked about the phases that a team is in. And Derek Jeter believes that team is in that, that the Marlins right now are in a deeper phase than the Marlins organization themselves believe that they're in, right? Yeah. Derek Jeter feels like now is the time that you supplement these young, talented players with superstars. Not a lot.

You know, again, maybe two free agency acquisitions that can just, help improve the offense a bit and make it a more well-rounded team to free agents that bring in experience that the young players might not have playoff experience, you know, just experience in the league. Yeah. You know, even that's why even my plan to fix the Diamondbacks seems so far fetched, not because of the money, not because of spending the money, just because I don't believe that they're in as good of a position as like the Marlins are in to add those free agents and have them be the thing that gets them over the hump to being a contender, you know, the Diamondbacks just aren't there yet

with a core. But they easily could be by the end of this season. That's how fast things can move in baseball. Marlins, they've moved pretty fast, especially in Derek Jeter's 10 years CEO. I can only imagine how frustrated he is with being so close to success and not having that desire to win be reciprocated by the organization. Well, they have Pablo Lopez, Trevor Rogers. and Sandy Alcantra, which is a pretty dynamic front three for, I mean, there are not many front three starting pitchers in a rotation that I would take over that group right there. Correct, especially with their youth. Yeah, their offense is rough.

Last year, they had the worst team OPS in baseball. Right, right. So they have a lot of work to do. But yeah, I mean, I mean, Derek Jeter's position here makes sense. If you have another $15 million that you can spend, you couldn't. You can improve a league worst offense, even with that amount of money, you know, just with, you know, the Azruble Cabreras of the world and, you know, veteran guys who come in and generally are pretty solid at what they do. And it really doesn't make sense for the Marlins not to be willing to go that direction. Right.

And then it also doesn't make sense for Derek Jeter to give up before the lockout without actually seeing what they would do once we're back to baseball, seeing who's available. Maybe things change. the only thing that that that what what i believe is he must have had some pretty concrete conversations that with with people in the organizations that said we are not going to spend anymore you know what we have is where we're at we're not you know like maybe you can pick up a seasoned veteran guy for a mill or two a year you know that's that's it but we're not letting you go all crazy with the remainder of this budget that we have and that's the part that you know obviously it was a it was a non-negotiable for Derek Jeter as far as what they needed to do.

And I understand he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that needs this level of frustration, right? This guy's won multiple world series. He has a great career. I mean, he's even arguably thought of much better than his stats back up, right? Like Derek Jeter's like a god of baseball in a lot of people's eyes. But then when you start looking at some of the stats,

you could pull holes in how great of a player he was. The big deal here is that I just can't imagine dealing with this level of frustration anymore after being a player and after playing your whole life in this sport. Jeter must really love it, you know, to have done it for the period of time he did. And I even remember a period where people were questioning, you know, his success as the CEO of that franchise. Didn't do so bad. He really got them into a good place. it just seems like they don't want to commit to making that final step.

And that's the part where I think baseball players in this league are sick of teams that don't want to do that. Look how close you are to being good. Why don't you want to be good? Why don't you want to be competitive? Why don't you want to win your division? Why don't you want to do these things? So just throw your hands up.

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I was part of the movement telling people to cancel their MLB TV subscriptions because I did not trust what the folks over at MLB TV were going to do with your money. And apparently today they came out and addressed this because I'm guessing this has not been good for them. I'm not the only person that's been saying this. and I know there's a lot of people that have been on board with canceling their subscriptions. The update from MLB TV is that MLB TV and MLB audio subscription renewals, they will not bill for 2022 subscriptions today, meaning Monday, February 28th,

which is the day that they were supposed to bill for the season. Notification about renewal will occur once a new CBA is in effect. All current subscriptions will remain active. Until then, subscribers, check your email for important updates. So I would love to know because I didn't actually have a subscription or cancel mine, but I would love to know if people that did cancel got any kind of email, you know, maybe trying to talk them out of it or welcome them back or if this impacts that in any way, shape, or form. Obviously, they say all current subscriptions will remain active until then. So that means if you just maybe canceled auto renewal, you still have your subscription. but definitely a wise move, something that, to be honest, in my opinion, MLB TV should have gotten out in front of a bit earlier than doing it on Monday, February 28th, which was the day that they were set to bill.

I think with all of this going on, they probably should have addressed it about a week ago or so, but at least they've addressed it. I really have to wonder how much the social media outcry that we talked about on the show yesterday had to do with. this like would they have done this if there wasn't so many people talking about it as there were and um but yeah i mean they made the right choice um we were talking before the show about how it does it does worry me that major league baseball is is acknowledging the fact that a deal might not happen soon and that's why they feel the need to take care of this and not charge like like if there was going to be a deal tomorrow like would this really be necessary right like there wouldn't be any changes. And I don't think that's necessarily

necessarily a huge factor, but it's interesting to say the least. Definitely not as optimistic as John Hayman is over at MLB Network, for sure. But yes, no, you're right. And I think the first thing you said was probably more accurate. This is probably a step that they took to address this outcry on social media about canceling your MLB TV. But again, it's

something that you had to know you had to address at some point as a subscription service that carries MLB games. You had to know you had to address it, especially considering people were about to be charged for it. So I don't know. I mean, again, I just, I think it's terribly short-sighted. It'll be interesting to see how many people, you know, actually renew those subscriptions whenever the day does come. Like how many people is baseball going to lose from this whole ordeal? Because we've talked about it. I mean, it's not, it's not going to be zero.

There are going to be some people who kind of move on from the game, at least for a time, because of everything that's happened over the last 90 days. And hopefully for baseball, I mean, this sport, Derek, is not in a position to be taking chances like this. with its fan base. I mean, we're talking about a 37-year low in attendance numbers. We're talking about decreasing TV ratings. Like, this sport is not in a position to be taking those kinds of risks right now. You're absolutely right. It's it's just the dumbest thing I think I've ever seen. And I mean, it doesn't help that we not only cover it as our jobs, but we love it as fans.

We love this sport. We want baseball to be there. had such great feelings today watching an inter-squad game between Diamondbacks minor league players. I saw Dan Strayley pitching to Corbyn Carroll and, you know, it got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, right? Like, it was great to see baseball and I feel privileged that I at least get to go out and watch this. Like, I get to see something. I get to fill my soul up with baseball by being out there. They had several inter-squad games going on at the same time. I, So I got to like just bounce back and forth from one field to the next seeing the future of this team pitching against the future hitters of this team. It's it's something that we are all being robbed of right now by spring training not taking place.

Today, Jesse, I pulled up the spring training calendar for some reason. And they just they have all the games up through March 5th canceled. And it's just a it's just a gross word to see next to the games. Just just canceled all over the place. I just want it to be over. And I know baseball players do. I know, honestly, even owners do. Like you said, it's not all the owners that feel this way.

And I know there's a lot of people in baseball that want this to be over. I just don't feel like they're thinking about everybody in baseball. And that's the biggest problem here. I don't feel like they're thinking about the amount of people that work at all of these stadiums that will not be working this month. The people that work at the spring training stadiums, the people work at the regular. you know, at their actual home stadiums. Like there's just such a significant impact here. And it's not just the players and the owners with something on the line.

And you're right about the fans, right? Baseball fans. I mean, there's going to be people like we talked about yesterday. There's going to be people that actively don't watch when it comes back out of principle. But more than those people, it's going to be the amount of people that honestly don't care. That's the status part. It's not when people.

are mad at you, it's when they don't care that you're really in a position of being in trouble. You know, it's, it's a different level when people just absolutely just don't even think about you anymore, you know, you at least want them to be mad because mad shows that they still care about this. Yeah. Yeah, the mad fans will be back. It's the, it's, it's indifference. You're right. That's, that's, that's really what you're what you're trying to avoid here. So for sure. We'll see. All right. Well, I hope you guys never, I hope we are never something that you don't think of. I hope we're always on your mind.

We thank you guys so much for checking out the show. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at Kappa underscore K, Jesse is at Jesse N Friedman. Our show is at PHNX underscore D-Backs, but of course all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Subscribe to us on your favorite audio podcasting app. If you're listening to us now, please do so. If you haven't done so already, please leave us a five-star

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