Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Evan Drellich talks baseball's looming labor battle

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris were joined by Evan Drellich of The Athletic to discuss the impending MLB lockout after the 2026 season.

This hour is brought to you by Cars for Kids. I think the important distinction is that it would be a lockout. It wouldn't be the player's choice. It would be the ownership's choice. And hopefully it doesn't come to that because I think baseball has a ton of momentum. Baseball has been in a great place. The rules changes have worked. The games are faster.

People are excited. You see attendance numbers growing. Some of the TV deals that have come in in the last couple of years are really great for the game. And so hopefully we continue that momentum and don't put the sport back. That's Ian Hap, who was the Cubs player representative for years. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 104-3 The Score. And there's been some news regarding at least the likelihood of a lockout. Bruce Meyer, who's acting as the head of the Players Association right now, had the quote.

The league has pretty much already said there's going to be a lockout. I think Rob Manfred more or less guaranteed it. That's what he said to the Detroit free press. So that said, we go to our hotline and we bring. bring in the big guns. Evan Drellick, the reporter for the athletic who has been covering Major League Baseball and the Players Association ongoing discussions in CBA. He is at Evan Drelick on X. Evan, thanks for joining us. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. It is. It is still, yeah, for us it's still morning. So you're correct. I think that's where

I want to start, Evan, is just with the concept of this is. I think he's saying the loud part out loud, Bruce Meyer, because we all are under the impression that somehow this is going to get locked out next year. What did you think of those comments and just what you know in the background that you add to it? I am not a betting man. I don't encourage anybody to become a betting person. Were I a betting person, I would be very confident that a lockout is going to happen. Now, the real question is whether there are missed games. Remember, last time, we had a lockout in December right when the CBA expired. That's what's going to be. going to happen again. The chances of the players and the owners having a deal in place by 1159 p.m.

Eastern on December 1st are incredibly low. So you're going to have a lockout. And then the question is, can they get a deal done so that they can play a full 162 game season? So it's not whether the people get shut down in the winter. I think that really is very likely. Can they work something out in time to avoid miss games in 2027? I'm looking at this and I'm with you. There's going to be a lockout. I think there will be missed games because this driving force of we need a salary cap has really, in my mind, been the deciding factor on what happens next and whether or not

baseball, the owners, the players can come to any kind of agreement. Do you see a path forward without a salary cap? There probably should be, but a lot of that just depends on what owners decide they want. Rob Manford needs a three-quarters group to pass the CBA. So if he has eight owners standing there and saying, we need a cap, we need to take this longer, we need to wait, well, then probably everybody's going to wait. And the question of what is rational is a difficult one to parse.

If the owners got a salary cap, their franchise values across the sport instantly rise, there's big money attached to it. There's also big money attached to missing games. And I think last time, you know, the players had been angry for 10 years. Service time, tanking. The Cubs are certainly a part of that. There was a lot of going on in baseball that had angered the players. And yet, even through all the drama and what I've come to call leverage theater, they found a way to play.

And it seems to me, again, that the rational decision will be everybody's going to look around all the agents, all the players, whether they're high-income players, low-income players, small-income players, small-income players, small-income players, small-income players. market, big market owners, are going to really feel the pain if they miss games. And I think that's going to be the prevailing factor. But if the owners look around and go, you know what, we're tired of this, we see the NBA franchise values going up. We want fans in the smaller markets to feel a little differently than they do now, where, you know, there are the Kansas City Royals ever going to go out and go sign the truly biggest name on the free agent market, probably not. It's a different question then whether the royals can ever compete, but whether they can compete for the top names and free agency.

The wild card here is what do the owners end up doing? At the end of the day, people like making money, and the way to make money is to play games. No, I think that's the best point, Evan, is, yeah, your team is somewhat useless if it's not playing a game against another team. Then it's not doing the thing it's supposed to do. but the dig-in has been pretty evident. You know, I feel like that's a good way to put it, leverage theater.

They've conditioned us to believe that there is going to be a lockout next season. How much do you think that helps either one side of this, players or ownership, to even have the discussion that we're already having about cherishing this season? We've heard multiple owners talk about that as well. It's very hard to sift through the noise because when you're going into a labor negotiation, everybody's going to dig in. And you're going to hear a lot in the next

12 months on management side about how, you know, we're ready for Armageddon, and you're going to hear the same thing on the player's side. Everybody's going to talk really tough. And some of them might mean it. It's not even that I'm casting doubt on everybody's fortitude here.

The issues just don't become real until you are in crunch time. Until you're in February and March, and you're staring down the barrel of missed games and miss paychecks. And to some degree, that's the league's operating logic for a lockout, which is that you're kind of putting the pressure on the players and forcing the issue at hand.

But if you look back last time, the lockout starts. Nothing even happened in December. It wasn't until January that stuff started to pick back up. And then, you know, we had kind of, there were some days down in Florida, where they were meeting in Jupiter, the players and the owners, and the thing finally got done in early March in New York. But until you're at the deadline when it comes to a negotiation like this, where literally billions are at stake,

it's not that nothing matters. It's not that the proposals don't matter, but you're not going to see real movement. It's really hard to sift through, okay, are they really going to want to miss games? Because everybody's going to project strength, and everybody can sit there and go, oh man, they're talking really tough.

But I'm telling you, just wait until you get to the actual moment of truth. Evan Drellick, the senior writer for the athletic covering baseball joining us here on Rahimi Harris and Grody on 1043, the score. And Evan, I'm wondering who's better set up for this because it's not like

this is one of those things where your car breaks down and you didn't have time to save up money. MLB, the owners knew it was coming. The players have known it was coming. We've heard about this $2 billion war chest that would give teams approximately $75 million each of reserve funds. And obviously the players, arguably the most powerful union on the plan.

That's what I always hear since I was a little kid. They know that this comes around every once in a while. The process of storing up money happens every go around. Both sides build their war chest. They have to. It's not like I've seen the reports too about the owners amassing about $75 million per. That's what you would expect. And the same thing on the players side.

What the players do is they start to hold on to their licensing money, the union does, rather than sending out checks to everybody. The closer you get to the CBA, the more money gets held back. Now, the owners, the net worth of the owners is going to exceed anything that the players themselves are capable of, right? The owners, if they wanted to, could they survive just fine, you know, in two years in this baseball, which isn't going to happen? sure they could right they have more financial might the thing they consider also though

they have debt right some of these owners you know have plenty of debt that they have to pay off and there's a big owner versus owner fight to be had here where the interests of the cubs is different than the interest of the pirates and go on down the list and there's a lot that the commissioner wants to do with baseball TV rights you know what kind of agreement can he get amongst his owners to make major changes to baseball TV rights. The thing about a salary cap, besides the fact that the owners have always wanted it, this was a core issue in the 94-95 strike

that took down the World Series and 94. Besides that, it's a way that the owners could affect big change. If you give the big market to the salary cap, then maybe they're more willing to share their local TV money, then you can do bigger things to revenue sharing. And so the question kind of becomes, if you don't get a cap near the owners, what can you change about your key B. Right structure? What are you willing to change in revenue sharing? What kind of agreement can you get amongst your owners internally? So there's really

two fights here. It's not even just owner versus players. It's owner versus owner. Evan, I think that's probably what makes me the most concerned about there actually being an ongoing lockout. We're talking to Evendrelik, the senior writer from the athletic. He is the author of winning fixes everything, and he is following the Major League Baseball Players Association News along with what could happen in 2027. But that's been my concern is ever since Rob Manfred came out, and I know you remember this, it was either last year or the year before where he was criticizing the Padres for spending money on their players. And I think that was a good indication of, well, whose side are you on this? Like, I thought you represented the owners,

and now you're questioning teams for wanting to actually pay players to have a competitive salary with the Dodgers, for example, or try to compete with the Dodgers at least. And then you've got guys like Artie Morano, the owner from the Angels coming out and saying, winning doesn't matter as much as having a good time at the park. It really does seem like, and I think maybe the Kyle Tucker contract deserves to be thrown in here too.

It just seems like there's a lot that the owners can infight about that would lead to a pause no matter what. Rob Manfred doesn't have an easy job Whatever you think of a guy Managing these 30 personalities Very wealthy people Of a kind of Look I would say varying competence

And varying ages Some of them are getting quite up there in age It's not an easy thing to do To pull that group together So if you have a group of hardliners Saying Rob you got to go get us this cap We've had enough of this

you know, in a way, part of his job is to demonstrate to them that he tried. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point the owners back off of a cap. I don't know when that would be. You know, is that March? Is that January? Is that after you started to miss some games in April? And then everybody says, okay, all right, that's enough. Let's try to find a way to play.

But before you get to that point, don't you have to demonstrate to them? Well, hey, look, guys, I tried. I tried to give you this thing that you told me I need. to go out and do. And the other interesting wildcard here is Rob himself. Manfred has said he intends to retire in January 2029. That's when his

contract is up. We could take him on his word at that, that that is his plan. But there's also a world in which, you know, he's not going to get whatever he's making now in another job. Let's say it's $25, $30 million a year in total compensation, something like that.

So maybe he wants to come back. Well, if he wants to come back, what do you have to do to come back? Do you have to deliver the cap to the owners to make them say, hey, we love having you here, please stick around? And so the question of what does Rob Manfred himself want is a hard one to answer right now. And he says throughout his career, he's focused most on having games played. He's very proud of the fact that since he's gone in-house at Major League Baseball, there has not been a game missed due to a work stoppage. And if there was, his legacy would take a huge hit.

If you missed the 2027 season, I don't think people are going to be saying very nice things about Rob Manfred and talk radio, and I think he knows that. Does that matter to him? What matters to the lead figure at MLB is a hard question to answer right now? So secondary to the actual lockout that is coming, that we know is coming next year, is this idea that the media rights deals are not in a great place

when you look at the sport as a whole. how much do those two things tie into each other when you're talking about revenue and everything else? And is the plan to get something similar to maybe what MLS had through Apple where all the rights, or I guess most of the rights, are under one roof? Is that a reasonable plan for Rob Manfred to have? It doesn't seem likely to me that MLB is going to end up in a spot like MLS where everything is with one streaming company. For the reason being that if you look at what happened in the NBA, it seems that the end. NBA was able to just make more money by breaking up the packages.

Now, breaking up the packages, meaning, you know, you're selling some games to Amazon, you're selling some games to Peacock. That's not necessarily great for the consumer, for the fan, because guess what? You've got to make sure you're paying for those various streaming services here. What Rob Manford wants to do with media rights is have all of them available to him. The teams right now, the individual teams, the Cubs, the White Sox, they control what they do with their local rights, MLB controls the national games. MLB Manfred wants to be able to take more games national and also potentially sell a bunch of local rights in a bundle to a streaming company.

So in 2029, when these new national TV deals start, the idea could be, okay, maybe Netflix is the local home for 25 teams, something like that. And that might produce more money for the owners than this current setup where each one is trying to find an individual TV. home. But what exactly it looks like is basically going to be dependent on the marketplace. You know, the whole goal here, I don't think anybody's going to be shocked to learn, is to maximize the money. And so if MLB can make more money with three national packages and then selling all the local rights, it just depends what the marketplace is going to bear. But MLB is encouraged by what happened in the NBA. That said, there are reports that, you know, Peacock and NBC are underwater on their NBA deal. So,

what the TV landscape is going to look like in 28 when they're negotiating these deals is a big question. The problem is you've got to collectively bargain revenue sharing with the players. So if you want to change how you share money, your TV money, you've got to go through the players now. And it's a very big jigsaw puzzle. We're talking to Evan Drellick, the senior writer for the athletic on Major League Baseball and the Players Association. What could be next? Evan, how much did that Kyle Tucker contract become a flashpoint for a lot of this discussion? Look, I had a story where I'll just paraphrase, but ownership, some ownership sources at that point, we're saying, screw this, we need a cap.

You know, this is our tipping point. I think it's very fair to point out that they were going this direction anyway. It's not as though it was unlikely previously that a cap. cap was going to be proposed. They've been thinking about it for a while, arguably for 30 years or more, you know, if you want to go back all the way to 94-95 here. But it's galvanizing, right? You've owners kind of roll their eyes and go, well, here we go again with the Dodgers and

look at that AAB and how could we possibly keep up. And, you know, one of the things to pay attention to here are the narratives around competitive balance. MLB is positioning a cap as good for competitive. balance and the union meanwhile looks at and goes actually our competitive balance our parity is better than any of the other major sports there's a lot of arguments to kind of sift through within the salary cap conversation of okay is baseball's competitive balance good if you want to improve it does a cap improve it how much does a cap improve it what becomes very crucial is the band between the

floor and the ceiling you know if you let's say it's a hundred million Let's say it's 150 and 250. The Pirates are going to still spend 150 every year, and the Dodgers are going to still spend 250 every year. And so the sense of haves and has-nots is not going to be eliminated. Will Pirates fans maybe feel they have a little bit better opportunity? Yeah, I think that's a realistic thing. Is that worth, you know, to the players giving up the economic value that they would in a cap system

because that's the great player argument? is that caps are bad for their income. We'll see, right? That's going to be at the heart of the whole thing. Now, Evan, this has been great, and thanks for the clarification, along with the information. Evandrelic, I have a feeling we'll be talking to you more as we all kind of watch and wait and see what happens.

What's your actual baseball assignment you have right now? Oh, there's no other assignment besides this. I'm sure. I'm working on a story about the, we're going to sort of with the A's and all the extensions they were doing. So I ever once in a while, I do talk about things other than labor. But happy CBA year, everybody. This is Frows Center for me.

Oh, my goodness. Well, hopefully you get some A's baseball to cleanse your palate. I don't know that that's how that works, but thanks so much, Evan. Thanks, guys. Evan Drellick, kind enough to join us here in Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 104-3, the score, giving us the latest. And his book is called Winning Fixes Everything, How Baseball's Brightest Minds, Created sports biggest mess.

When he said, I'm going from this to the A's, I was like, oh. Is he just on like the, like, what did Evan do to his editor? You get labor and the A's? Those things could be interconnected in many, many ways, many ways. I mean, good luck with that. I'm not ready for another year of watching baseball at a minor league park, by the way. Neither am I, Leila, which is why I don't live in Sacramento. Pretty sure Luis Severino isn't either. The ERA. Hey, the home road splits are disturbing. Can we save him yet?

How are we doing on the Save Luis Severino concept? Somebody get him out of here. He's on an island. An island that unfortunately the home runs at the ballpark are plentiful because they don't have enough stands to flow like a normal Major League Stadium. Save Luis Severino. Coming up next year on Rahimi Harrison Grady, we stay with baseball talk because, yeah, there's two Cubs starting pitchers that have given up some home runs this spring. But one I am far more concerned about than another. So we'll talk about that next.