The Ryen Russillo Podcast - The Murky Future of the MLB With Jeff Passan

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Blake Snell's comments regarding the possibility of players taking a pay-cut for a shortened MLB season (0:55), before he is joined by ESPN's Jeff Passan to discuss the issues surrounding proposed changes to the MLB revenue split in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, health and safety protocols, Baseball's opportunity to gain a new audience, and potential consequences of not reaching an agreement in time (19:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's episode of the ryan rossolo podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like sports the game of life is unpredictable talk to a state farm agent and get you a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected like players in baseball saying i may not even want to play bro i'm going to get to that here in a second jeff pass and also he's going to spend about 45 minutes with us talking baseball is this going to happen this year some days it feels good some days it doesn't feel so great so get a teammate who can help you just play a little long toss with get ready spring training maybe right around the corner get a teammate who can help you just play a little long toss with get ready spring training maybe right around the corner get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected talk to a state farm agent today a little dirt bike in the background never hurt anybody so

blake snell really good pitcher for the rays really good a couple years ago um was on twitter excuse me not twitter twitch is like what everybody's getting caught with these comments which i would admit like that part kind of sucks that you're just sort of on the stream. And you should know better. I get it. But sometimes there's these moments where it feels less formal and you're just flying off the cuff. And Snell, who, again, a month or so ago,

had said that coronavirus is no worse than the flu. He's been getting trashed. I mean, there's almost no one taking a side except for Bryce Harper. And as soon as I heard Harper's comments, I was like, man, I feel even better criticizing Blake Snell. And then Bauer, who, you know, is just out there when it comes to some of this stuff. And then I thought Aaron Otto made the most sense. And it's hard to tell guys like, hey, you know what?

Actually, you're supposed to take a loss here. I know that if I'd signed a multimillion dollar contract that it would suck to go. Hey, you know what? Like, I'm going to lose some of this money. And Snell said, quote, I got to get my money. I'm not playing unless I get mine. Okay. Um, you gotta, y'all gotta understand, man, for me to go, for me to take a pay cut has now happened because the risk is through the roof. So now he's either changed his mind or I don't know if it's some sort of negotiation and that's what he's doing. And he's saying these things where he just letting it know, like, Hey, it's not just even about the union. that's what he's doing. And he's saying these things where he just letting it know like, Hey,

it's not just even about the union. It's about my money here. Well, here's the simplest thing. Like he can not play and not make any money. All right, cool. Done. And if he wants to go ahead and do that, because he thinks the risk is too great, then go ahead.

He could do that, but yes, it's not going to play well. And then for Bryce Harper, who his comments being off didn't really surprise me a ton with Bryce Harper, but Harper saying, Hey, it needed to be said, bro. You know what? There's tons of stuff that actually doesn't need to be said. And this was one of them. Yes. I'm sure every single player you would like to keep all of your money. I would want to do the same thing, but would I read the room a little bit better? I'd like to think I would. Maybe that's just being a little bit more, um, I'm not going to say educated. I think it's just being around a little bit longer.

I think sometimes when you're so rich and you're so successful, you can kind of be isolated from reality of like, hey, I might think I'm right. But to say it needed to be said, needed to be said, bro. Yes, no, definitely. In the middle of one of the highest unemployment surges ever, you definitely needed a pitcher saying i need my full salary uh and i'm not even against how i would probably feel at that moment like i wish i could keep my full salary but i would know i would be smart enough to not say it publicly and then have other guys trying to chime in because it's like all right i understand it baseball your battle with the ownership over decades prior to any of these guys are even talking about this stuff, their animosity, their lack of trust,

all those things that we're going to talk about with Passon, I get it. But what then happens, which I think is a huge mistake, wow, look how vocal Snell is. Look at Harper having his back. Look at Bauer. Look at some of these other players. These guys really don't want to play. What about all the what-if scenarios?

I was reading a piece on The Athletic from Stark where it was, okay, what if a player says he doesn't want to come back and play because he feels like he's at risk? Can he get excused because of pre-existing conditions and therefore still get his prorated salary? And then you start thinking like, wait a minute, is that the first thing that you should be worried about? And then if it's real, or is it another guy that maybe just doesn't want to play or doesn't want to play with that team and he wants to get the service time, get paid, and then not have to resign with that team and become a free agent and let the year count? Well, wait a minute. Does that make any sense? All of these little things, and they start realizing some of these solutions are as if the entire world is worried about a

peanut allergy. And I'm not saying that coronavirus is the same as a peanut allergy, but what I'm saying is that we've all had those moments, right? We're on the plane, you're traveling and you go, Hey, there's somebody, maybe it's a child. A lot of times it's a child and you go, there's a peanut allergy here. So no peanuts or that's the plane. You're like, all right, that's cool. I'm in the air for a few hours. I can handle not getting a little satchel of peanuts. But if you're starting to look at these things on a much grander scale, whether it's baseball, basketball, or football, and coming back and saying, okay, like Sean Doolittle, who I like a lot, reliever. And he's like, look, my wife has all of these health conditions that I'm concerned with. So if I'm exposing myself by going back out there and playing, I could be putting her

at risk. It's hard to tell Sean Doolittle like, hey, no one would say you're wrong, but what you'd say is, yeah, that's tough. That's really tough and something that you're going to have to make a really tough decision on. But because of that concern, which is valid, no one is suggesting it isn't, we can't make that decision based on your sole circumstance. Like Larry Nance Jr. with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He's got Crohn's disease. And he said, you know, I hope they would think about me when they want to start this up again. I think there's a nice way to say, yes, the NBA is thinking about you. And then there was even some studies when I started reading about this and the medication that he takes where some doctors are saying, actually, it helps your immune system to a point where he would be fine.

Anyway, I don't know. I just read it. It was online. Doesn, I don't know. I just read it. It was online. Doesn't mean it's true, but I read it. But I think the NBA would go, yes, those are valid concerns, but your team is not going to be in the playoffs. And your season is going to be over if you even have any remaining part of the season. And we need to get the rest of this going in the right direction. We've got to turn this ship around, even if it means a few

people are more at risk. And the Snell part was hard to believe because he had just apparently changed his mind about how serious he thought the virus was. So as all of these different things come up, hey, does this mean Mookie Betts is going to be a free agent? Could he sit out the year? What does service time mean? All these little minor things for baseball. They're, they're all just a list of things that are worth acknowledging, but shouldn't be overriding factors in any kind of decision to actually getting this sport started again. And that's the mistake at one point that I felt like the public was making

with the NBA, where I had operated from the situation of from everything I'd heard that the players actually wanted to come back and play which I think people forget like hey you know what's weird here's a weird thing guys that play sports their whole lives like playing sports I know I know I know it's fucking crazy to think that but it's true they like it they like that part of going out and doing something awesome because they're awesome at it. But we can be tricked into thinking that there's so many players of concerns because there's players that have real concerns that are vocal

about it and it gets covered and you start thinking, man, I get one moment there with baseball. I'm like, wait a minute. Does this mean like a ton of baseball players don't actually want to play? There's a Mike Trout story out there and I don't know if Trout's going to want to play or not because his wife is expecting. And then you worry about the risk there. Again, all right, yeah, that's tough. That's a really tough deal that you have to worry about. I don't mean tough in the dismissive sense, but more along the lines of it's noted, but we're still going to try to get this thing started again July 1st. We'll ask Jeff Passett about that coming up in a few minutes. But first, Miller Lite. I was thinking about Miller Lite the other day, Kyle.

During this time of social distancing, connecting with friends over a beer today looks pretty different. As the original Lite beer, Miller Lite has always been there to bring people together in real life through Miller Time. Miller Time is a moment for people to come together in real life to connect over a few beers, but having Miller Time is tough when you can't be with your people. By the way, Shellbacks is opening for takeout. And I didn't even know you could do that.

But I just wanted to give you a heads up, Kyle. If you and your crew head down to the beach anytime soon, they're doing to-go everything. Is that like an oyster bar? I've been really missing out on oyster bars. That's what I wouldn't. I don't think oysters are their number one things. I think it's the Fanta shots where they mix Fanta and, and booze.

Yeah. People love them. People really do love them. I'm a little out of that range now, but I just, you know, there was, there was a lot,

a lot, a lot of buzz here in the South Bay about it.er light is the beer they got miller lights there left and right that's why i'm bringing it up um miller time is possible because of miller light i think you guys get what i'm trying to say here miller light is the original light beer that tastes great and is less filling which means it won't get in the way of enjoying time with your people you know i was thinking about miller light because I was thinking about homeschooling and all the dads out there. And I could just see a dad at home right now,

Miller Lite in his hand. He had some girders that he had to reinforce. And the kid's like, can you help me with my math? And he knows he doesn't know the answers, but he's still not afraid. And he just goes, hey, you know, answers but he's still not afraid and he just goes hey you know carry the two although i you know word is they're not they're not doing division the way they used to do it i i found that out recently i don't know how that came up somewhere

they're like you know division in some of the carrying stuff is completely different with uh with elementary math i was like wow yeah i was like i can't wait to not learn more about that but i think a miller like i would have a can in his hand and he would say all right you know let with elementary math. I was like, wow. Yeah, I was like, I can't wait to not learn more about that. But I think a Miller Lite guy would have a can in his hand and he would say, all right, you know, let me check this, double check this. He goes, if your teacher has a problem with that,

you can have him call. You know, he or she call me directly and we can talk about your math homework. Miller Lite is the original light beer. While you're home, enjoy a classic. Available for delivery today. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Before we get to Passin, I'm reading the Office book. The Office, the untold story of the greatest sitcom of the 2000s in oral history. Speaking of oral histories, Grantland was just the king of oral histories. The one on swingers was so good. That's over six years ago now. I pulled it up to take a look at it. Alex French and Howie Kahn wrote that piece. It was just awesome. So that's what this book is, 400 plus pages. I'm almost done with it. And I love the TV show. I've seen every episode multiple times. It's just fun.

I just really like it. People don't like it. It's kind of like, all right, fine. I don't know. We'll talk about something else. We'll come up with another topic here and it just gets better i think it gets better all the time because of not layering necessarily but there's just these little moments and you can tell that writer's room really pushed itself to okay that's a good joke is there any way we can come up with a better one so instead of like hey that works okay that's cool that ties the scene together we're good and i'm only doing this as somebody that's a good joke. Is there any way we can come up with a better one? So instead of like, hey, that works. Okay, that's cool. That ties the scene together. We're good. And I'm only doing this as somebody that's interested in it and certainly not in this world yet. But I am really impressed with how much they would push to try to find ways to make things funnier and funnier. And it worked. That's how funny I think the show is. And it was really a daunting task to try to adapt this from the BBC version with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Obviously, Gervais is David Brent.

It's awesome. I mean, the BBC one is incredible. But anybody that does the kind of, oh, I only like the BBC one. I don't like the American one. The American one found its own way to be great. And it was different. But in the first very beginning of this, when everybody thought it would suck and it wasn't going to work they had a real problem as they explained in the book unlike michael scott where he was too harsh he was too mean and he slicked his hair back and that was something that they did in the second

season where they go we have to soften him up but carell had also just become like a huge movie star right around that time so that helped the show and my name is earl helped the show because in the beginning there was a lot of doubts about it ever happening again. There were executives that were just like, look, I don't get it. There's no laugh track. There's no studio audience. What are you doing? And I do love these people that are creative that go, well, whatever the rules are, can't

we do it in a different way without following every single rule? And it's always funny because people will say you can't and then somebody does it and then everybody else tries to emulate what that was. But Daniels, whose name comes up twice in the credits he's the showrunner he's the guy the visionary behind this whole thing running all of the writers and and working these storylines and having his own idea about the arcs of each season which is kind of the job it's not just to sit there and write out every single script although showrunners usually from my understanding would write you know the pilot right the first episode the last episode of each season to kind of know where it's going

to keep everybody in the same line, even if every single writer doesn't understand what the showrunner is thinking for the entire season. Because a lot of these seasons too were like 20 episodes once it was beyond six in the first. And when the credits would come up, it would say Greg Daniels, producer, but then there was also adapted for American television.

I thought like, is that just one of those weird credits where it actually doesn't mean anything? And for this show, it's the opposite because he wanted this to work. Like I said, most people doubted it. John Krasinski, who plays Jim Halpert, even during, and I had heard this story before during his audition, sat down and Daniel, he didn't know i don't think he knew who greg daniels was and he was like you know what do you think he's like i hope they don't they don't you know i hope this doesn't suck there's a good chance it could suck and greg

daniel's like oh we're gonna try we're gonna try to make sure it doesn't suck he's like ah i can't believe it the audition i just assumed that this thing might be terrible because a lot of these adaptations end up not working out. There's two things that I want to bring up and then we'll get to pass in here and talk some ball. But trying to figure out who Scott was and everybody having their different interpretation, which is kind of cool in a way. Not every writer is in agreement of exactly who he was. which is kind of cool in a way. Not every writer is in agreement of exactly who he was. And Daniels, who says, I'm not even an actor, but I would try to figure out who Scott was. And so I started filming myself doing things. And he came to this conclusion, which I think is a really cool way to kind of think about the show. And if you watch it again, think of this

concept where Daniels was like, Michael Scott should be this character that's thinking there's these cameras around me. I finally get to be the center of attention my entire life. And maybe one day, say, a Jennifer Aniston gets to watch the show. So if you think of Michael Scott, who you forget that it's filmed as a documentary, they do, I think, take necessary liberties at times to also keep it a TV show. But if Michael Scott's this... I don't even know if he can be labeled a narcissist, but he has these moments where he's just... He needs attention because of his odd family upbringing,

and he wants a family so he can have kids so they can all be his friends and they can never say no to being his friend because they're his kids, which he says as a little kid kid and that part of this is he's putting on the show hoping a famous female actress like a jennifer anson could watch it one day it's a really i think they use brilliant in the book quite a bit genius is thrown around quite a bit but that's pretty genius and it's a really cool way to go hey remember we're writing for this person that's capable of doing this the other part because you know i got to bring up pam i'm not done with the book yet we all know my stance on pam in a binge of the office she starts to show

her flaws in a major major way where if you see her week to week it's like a reliever that's like a left-handed setup person comes in and gets the other lefty out you're like oh my gosh this person's amazing but if you ask them to go out there and pitch you six innings you're like this isn't gonna work and that's kind of what i think of pam and yet so far every writer in the show in this book no one ever seems to go you know on second thought, we, Pam,

we made her out to be like America's sweetheart. Everybody loved her, but man, there was some stuff there that maybe wasn't great. Now I, again, I haven't finished the book, so I don't know if that's coming. It doesn't feel like it's coming.

And the reason I bring it up is because at the Phyllis wedding scene, if you haven't seen it, Phyllis is a coworker with all of them. And at this point, Jim is dating this other girl named Karen, karen philly philly and karen decides to like jump on stage and start singing the police every little thing she does with scranticity and jim is kind of doing this awkward phone thing but karen's character characters crushing it like greatest wedding date ever. And they were like,

we had to do something with Karen to make her just as great as Pam so that it was this kind of torn thing. Yet everybody was still rooting for the Jim and Pam ending that was watching the show. And I'm like, wait, so you think that that's comparable where Pam spent the entire wedding bitching about how Phyllis stole every one of her wedding ideas and the other one is singing the police on stage?

And you think that's a tie? You created these two characters and you think that's a tie? So, like I said, on the Pam thing, I know we're slowly gaining ground out there. Little battles at a time. said on the Pam thing. I know we're just, we're slowly gaining ground out there, you know, little battles at a time, but even the guys that created it disagree with me. Let's talk chicken fingers. The best chicken finger meals made from fresh ingredients, Raising Cane's, that's what they're serving up hot in their kitchen at Raising Cane's. Raising Cane's uses premium chicken breast tenderloins to make the most tender chicken fingers possible. And since the best chicken finger meals are hand

battered and cooked to order, that's what you'll find at Raising Cane's. It makes a difference. I love to top my chicken fingers with Cane's sauce. The sauce is like a little cup. It's like a ramekin of magic. Oh, I need to know what it is.

I don't really know what else to say i need you to explain it to me it's just it's just amazing it's um it's not ranch but it it isn't it's a little spicy but not really it's not like a buffalo thing what color it's got it's like uh almost looks like a thousand island thing going on a little bit. Right. But, again, some people are like, Thousand Island, huh? That's just basically, no, man. No, there's a lot going on there. So, ramekin of magic is what I like to say.

You can be sure you'll get chicken fingers made hot, fresh, and fast when you order from Raising Cane's. And don't forget your sides of crinkle cut fries made from grade A potatoes, toast coleslaw, and Cane's famous tea. fries made from grade A potatoes, toast, coleslaw, and Kane's famous tea. My favorite side is just taking a little bite of that toast. You're like, man, how come more things don't have a little toast on the side? At Raising Kane's Chicken Fingers, quality isn't complicated,

and their menu is proof. They focus on only doing one thing really well, making hot, fresh, and fast chicken finger meals just for you. Stop by today. Tell them I sent you or ask for the owner. No, actually, if you ask for the owner, Todd, that's probably not going to do a ton for you. Unless you're in Baton it is maybe the actual subjects. Because I think a lot of times it's kind of straightforward.

It's like, I feel this way or I feel that way. And one of the prime examples of this is once basketball was shut down and within hours, some players were saying, hey, you know, I'm donating money. And then I thought a lot of people in the media were doing the typical pandering thing where it's like, well, what about the owners? Because that gets tons of action. And my rant wasn't about that every owner was going to bail everyone out. It was that, are you seriously doing this hours

after they just shut down the basketball season? Can we give it a few days to kind of see who does a good job of this and who does a bad job of this? And that, in some circles, has turned into me defending billionaires. I've been as pro player with the NBA stuff, as you can imagine, um, the NFL guys, like it's not even rooting for them. I can't even imagine rooting for NFL owners and negotiations and baseball has such a bad history that all of us understand the lack of trust. It's an inherited thing. Like,

hey, you're part of Players Union. All right, let's tell you a little history here. So as baseball's trying to find a way to get this season started and salvage this and take advantage of this opportunity, really, to be a product that people can consume here quickly, as you've written about, whatever the agreement was in March, that's not what the owners want now. And the fundamental problem is this 50-50 split, which 50-50 always seems to play well. But the problem I have with this is, am I supposed to do the thing I normally do where I go, I don't trust the owners, I don't trust the owners, there's stuff in here that I don't, inside with the players, or do I hear from certain players

that we'll get to here where I'm like, what the hell is this guy talking about? Where you feel like, oh no, am I actually leaning pro owners? That was a very long intro to kind of set you up to where you're at now, covering this story and trying to figure out what's going to happen with baseball. There was an interesting presentation that was made Ryan last Tuesday at the first really face to face or zoom to zoom meeting that the players and the owners had. And at this meeting, the presentation essentially said that the owners are going to lose so much money. Even if there are games this season, interpret that what you will. We're not going to say 50-50 split,

but just here are the economics from our end. The thing is, upon closer examination, the economics don't make any sense. The economics look like, and I've been using this example a lot lately, but I feel like it's extremely instructive. Paul Beeston, the former Blue Jays president who worked at Major League Baseball, is quoted as once saying, under generally recognized accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss. That's what ownership does.

That's what they have always done. That is the trick. That is the magic. That is how they get rich. That's how billionaires get rich, by taking one thing, making it look like another, borrowing against it, taking risk. And so much has come home to roost over the last two months for these owners in baseball that they are going after labor at this point and using the coronavirus as a cudgel, in many cases, to try and get theirs, which is funny because what they're doing, Ryan, is just not saying it out loud like that. That's what Blake Snell did. And that was the mistake, I think, that

the union runs into a lot of the time. They used to be so incredibly disciplined. Everybody, everybody, everybody stayed on message. Right now, when you have Twitter, when you have Instagram, when you have Twitch, when you have all these different mechanisms. Yeah, Twitch. Twitch is where it happens, too. Twitch is where Bryce Harper talks. It's where Blake Snell talks. When you have all these different ways, when you have all these different people who have access to you asking questions, baiting you, goading you, it makes it really difficult to keep 1,200 guys on message all the time.

difficult to keep 1200 guys on message all the time yeah before we do all the snell stuff though i mean it it sounds like we understand the accounting part of this okay you know football for years has had these these side businesses where it's like well actually parking and concessions here is a part of you know that's called dc experience so that's not the washington redskins that's this whole other thing. And the accounting is, is really, really tricky. So are you of the belief that baseball owners are using this?

It's kind of sounds like, well, that's what you're saying. You're using this as an opportunity to change the economics around, even though they may be facing massive losses to still take it out on the players. Or is it that they're, they're being legitimate here and saying,

Hey, for, for this to work, let's just both accept the fact that the numbers on this are going to be different. We know what your contract says, but that's not happening, and we need some sort of 50-50 agreement here, which then sounds kind of like the salary cap, because that's really what a salary cap is

more in the NBA and the NFL than just, hey, this is the real number. This is agreed-upon percentage split, like a partnership, and baseball is the only sport that doesn't have it as far as the major ones that we're talking about. I guess it sounds like you think that this may be taking advantage of the situation of the ownership side more so than the owner's first priority,

just trying to get baseball back. Is that what you're saying? You know, I think that there are some teams that have real legitimate financial concerns. Well, of course, the revenue sharing is out some teams that have real legitimate financial concerns. Well, of course, the revenue sharing's out. So that has to be true. Sorry to interrupt. No, there are absolutely some over-levered teams out there that are looking potentially at bankruptcy.

And yet the whole thing about that is the way that it falls out. If one team gets bankrupt, okay, MLB can come in, stopgap, pay the players, pay the employees or whatever employees are left on teams after this, honestly, because that's a whole other disaster that's unfolding right now. The number of layoffs that are happening across baseball are staggering. But they can do that. And they can wait for the franchise to be bought by another billionaire and all's well when it's all said and done. When you have multiple teams start going into bankruptcy, then all of a sudden franchise values come down. And when franchise values come down, that's what really angers

rich people, when the capital that they have built up starts to disappear by something that's not of their own doing. And so that's really the endgame here, I think, that owners are trying for. They are trying to get the very best deal that they can out of this situation. And it's difficult sometimes to fathom billionaires crying poor. The skepticism on the player side is rooted both in history and in those numbers that they saw, that they look at, and they're like, I'm sorry, but this has been a productive and profitable business for decades upon decades now. And you're telling me that one year, one moment is suddenly going to make you insolvent? Is that really how it's going to work? And is that really

what you want us to believe? Yeah. The weird thing, if I were on the player side, I'd be like, okay, well, you go bankrupt, but you're still going bankrupt with this amazing asset that you own. And it's all different depending on what kind of debt service different ownerships are taking on but it'd be like having frank mccourt went bankrupt and still got billions of dollars for the dodgers frank mccourt bought a team because sea league liked him as sea league hooked up all of his buddies which is honestly atrocious what sea league did and mccourt's basically borrowing against a parking lot all on paper buys the Dodgers then borrows against the Dodgers on paper buying up stuff left and right and then quadruples his money because he couldn't pay for the team anymore it's like that was one of the

greatest heists of all time like I would love to be as broke liquid as Frank McCourt and be that rich on paper like because it wasn't, that's not even rich on paper. That was like rich on like forms. So, you know, it's almost like having this luxury building where you go, okay, well you can't make the mortgage payment anymore, but you're also going to get four times the price when you sell this beach house than when you bought it a few years ago. So that's where, if I were on the player side,'d be like hey man i don't want to hear what i'm wondering though is because i've gone back and read this is where i got myself into some trouble when i asked rob

manfred and then tony clark about declining player revenue because there was a lot of stuff out there fan graphs i think started back in 2015 uh they picked it up again where they basically were saying like unlike the other sports the revenue split has been on the decline for major league players here so whatever the pool is they're getting less and less of it so couldn't there actually if you believe all those things because trust me manford was like that's not true and i like manford i'm just saying i know you know he hasn't been popular now for a little while it's just the job of the commissioner i like him far more than i ever like sea league but then they'll always say like oh minor league expenses and all this stuff you're like okay you guys have always had minor league expenses it didn't just

start catching up now in 2015 wouldn't i like i feel like there's always this fundamental thing from the player side like 50 50 split no way like you know my dead body isn't there an argument to me that they actually that's what they they could have wanted in previous years to guarantee a certain cut of the revenue that they've argued now has been deep, has been in decline for years. There's also though, and this goes back to the fundamental mistrust that players have. Once they lock something in to a specified percentage, there is the belief that baseball is going to do everything it can to take away that baseball-related revenue, the same way the NFL takes away the football-related revenue, the same way the NHL does hockey, basketball, NBA does

basketball. There's always the fear that in a capped system, you are going to be worse off than you are in a free market system. And listen, I get that. I totally get that. If the player's job is to try and figure out how to maximize all of the player benefits, whether it is salary, whether it's the ability to move, to get free agency, to really have ownership in your career. A salary cap system does a pretty miserable job of allowing you those liberties. And I think that because the Players Association started off as this, I'm not going to call it a ragtag outfit, but Marvin Miller was definitely not the guy who was wearing the fancy suit and who was coming into a meeting and was going to blow you away with his polish. just the smartest guy in the room. And the MLBPA has always been about having the smartest guys in the room doing the dirty work for the players who have the gravitas to back them up. I don't know that the union has that right now. And it has put them in a really awkward position, I think, where for the last decade, it's almost like

their identity has been lost a little bit and they're still trying to figure out how to get it back. And this may be the MLBPA's moment to do that, to mark the line in the sand and say, we're not going to move off of this. And it's really risky risky ryan because if this thing blows up because of money there are going to be a lot of fans who treat it like 1994 that's my biggest fear for this and you know if they do get back on the ratings are going to be incredible and it doesn't mean okay now baseball has been saved it means baseball is making the most of the situation but right the negative the negative of them not figuring this out. All right. So, so let's dig through some of that. So you believe the 50, 50 thing,

cause I was wondering, like, could the players say, fine, we'll give you the 50, 50 thing, but we have a list of all the stuff that we want, which I'd like to get to because the players union does want all these other things too. Yeah. They could absolutely, they could absolutely do that. And they are not going to. I have a difficult time seeing a scenario in which the 50-50 split even gets a minute of discussion when the two parties are meeting. and he would say, no, I want them. They have to be cut into six-inch subs. I mean, that was just the way that whatever you're proposing, I don't want that.

This is how we want it. You'd be like, wait a minute, we just offer you footlongs. But they need to be cut into six-inch increments. Sorry, it's non-starter. Could the players' union say something like, all right, fine, this is really screwed up. We get it. We're talking to billions in losses already. The revenue sharing thing you mentioned, basically has been agreed upon that because of the local revenue. I think 48% of local revenue

was shared throughout all the owners and the Marlins who I guess got 70 million in revenue sharing one year recently, where I feel like the Marlins, if they never get any money from anyone forever, even though it is new ownership now, I'd okay with that i think the marlins should have to pay reparations um honestly to the state of florida but uh is there any way they could do something where they say okay fine we do it this year and you can't even bring it up for 20 years like don't ever even bring up a 50 50 any kind of cap thing because i mean this is what went back to 94 where, all right, we'll have it in writing in 20 years. You can't even bring it up. Although the players would say,

why would we give away a negotiation in something we're already not going to agree to anyway? So I already understand the counter. So maybe this whole point of mine is a waste of time, which it probably is. Yeah, we shouldn't, honestly, we shouldn't even talk about the 50-50 split. All right, so let's...

It's not happening. Okay, all right, good.. It's just not happening. Okay. All right. Good. Then let's just keep it going. If the owners go, all right, fine, can the owners do that? Because if the owners are losing all this money, there's also another part of me that's like, well, is having the season salvaging some of that money?

Because if you're going to be at such an operating loss with no fans and you're paying everybody, couldn't there be an argument to be made that it makes more sense for the owners to not even play any games? Is that out there in the back and forth? That's absolutely what they're implying. And that's what, there are four groups, someone put it to me this way a couple of days ago, and I thought it was very interesting. There are four groups of people in baseball right now in labor relations. There are owners who want to play, there are players who want to play, there are owners who don't want to play, and there are players who don't want to play. The largest group by far by percentage is players who want to play.

I think a vast and overwhelming majority of players want to play, even with the restrictive tenets that may be there in the ultimate health and safety protocol. I think the next biggest group is owners who want to play. Then I think the group after that is owners who don't want to play. And then I think the smallest is probably players who don't want to play. And the owners who don't want to play believe that these losses are going to put them in a really dark place. Now, the problem is, if you don't play this year, there's going to be a completely different

set of owners who are in that very same dark place because there's zero revenue at all coming in, because you have nothing from TV. You have nothing from sponsorships. I mean, it's essentially a sunk year. And that's, you know, for the teams that have big debt service and then have to go and borrow money to make payments on their debt payments already, it just winds up compounding on itself and turning into a financial mess. And look, again, don't feel sorry for some of these guys. You put yourself in the position financially that you put yourself in, but that's the calculus going on right now. And I think the fact that the players want to play as much as they do and that owners out there recognize that there

is long-term value in playing this year, in doing what you said, in bringing baseball back, in having it on every night, in trying to repopularize the sport, that it's worth every last effort you can get to go on the field this year. Yeah, that's so far, as I've probably thrown a million different things at you here, that's the most important point, that it's not the revenue for 2020. It isn't, it is,

do we reverse what is a real curve of, of lack of interest in comparison to previous years? And, and a lot of that too, it's, it's not even baseball's fault. Like one of the things I always think is so funny, like people are going to sit there and go,

Oh, well, you know, baseball 82 games now, now I'm more into this. I'm like, okay, well then just watch 80 when they play 162 like who cares like who who would ever say i think we listen to people who don't like baseball too much on their ideas of how to fix baseball like i would never ask like somebody and be like hey all right what's your least favorite sitcom and then somebody goes frazier okay all right well frazier's you know

it wouldn't be frazier i'm just top, it's top of my head, right? I guess I've been watching a lot of these. No, it's a bad example, but that way I'm actually not calling out a bad show. You know, I have to be careful with that thing. So it's a good show. Can't we just call out a bad show? I don't like to do that. You know, artists, man, respectful.

You know, I don't know why I just thought of Frazier is because when I was watching the 98 finals to do the pod with Bill on Sunday, the best is those 90s television promos the play-by-play guy has to do. That's always the house of bugging ones. Right. And so it was Bob Costas reminding us that it was a double dose of Frazier every Thursday and Sundays on must-see TV for NBC. So Frazier's top of mind fascinating i was gonna say as long as long i just as long as we're not like dropping a dharma

and greg on us here like that no problem no that's going that's going a little too far that might be that might be on the uh on the bad comedy list you know what i forgot about that one so go ahead all right so let me just use the frazier thing as the example. And if somebody said, you know, I don't really like that show. And I would say, well, would you like it better if the season were eight episodes instead of 16? You just go like, no, I don't, I don't like it if it's 16 or two. Let's put it this way. If I had no TV for like three months and you put on an episode of Dharma and Greg, I'd be like, hell yeah, let's see you act.

Let's see you make me laugh. Let's do this. I would be all about it. Aren't we that starved for sports at this point that people are going to almost convince themselves to try baseball. It's like a try it, you just might like it thing. And that is what baseball has to keep in mind throughout this whole thing. You have a literally captive audience and people who are dreaming of live sports again. And you're going to piss it away over money. You're going to screw it up because you might have to change into your uniform

at the hotel. Like that's what we're dealing with right now. I just hope that in the end, everybody involved here has enough perspective to recognize that if they feel like they can do it in a safe and healthy or as safe and as healthy a fashion as they possibly can, that they give it a whirl. That to me, if you feel like you can do this the right way you owe it to yourself to try well i'm we're in agreement there i want it back on and i'm not just doing it selfishly i want it back on for baseball i want it to be you know one of the things that i do find a couple things i find frustrating about baseball is that if you look at the postseason storylines of the last five to six years and the way some of these postseasons have played out it couldn't be any better it's been incredible and i'm not talking about the astros you know the astro storyline all this diminishes it somewhat but the stuff that you

had with cleveland and the cubs and the toronto stuff i mean these were some unbelievable moments for baseball and it's kind of like my ncaa tournament thing it's like college basketball has a real problem but at least they still have this moment of a few weeks of the tournament right everybody's locked in and baseball's had these incredible moments but i don't know that it's carried over on a national interest level for enough people to go like i love the playoffs so much that i'm locked in come april and may it just kind of like look i'll get around to it when i get around to it so let's go over some of the stuff that's brought up though. I don't know if it was 87 points. Was that the right number of different things that were brought up for as far as health and safety

here? As you mentioned, changing the hotel, showering both before and after away from everybody else. I read about the phone being disinfected, no high fives, no dipping. Although it said no smokeless tobacco in designated areas because I was like, that might be the hardest one for them to get the players to agree on. And it's like, actually, you can go over here, but don't leave a Snapple bottle lying around because that can mess dudes up.

But yeah, let's hammer some more of those because it is a lengthy list where I think baseball is trying to show not only its players that we're trying to protect you, but also the public and that you're going to get absolutely beat up publicly if it doesn't look like you're taking every single precaution. And I'm going to take it one step further. I actually think this is even more than the public for public health officials. this is even more than the public for public health officials. Because let's remember, public health officials have one job. That is to keep the public as safe as possible. If you have someone coming to you and you're a public health official saying, I'm going to do something that is risky, the first instinct of public health officials is going to be to say no. Like that's the first instinct. It is much easier officials is going to be to say no. Like,

that's the first instinct. It is much easier for a public health official to say no and never know what would have happened than to say yes and find out the hard way that it was wrong. And so it's really incumbent then on baseball to convince public health officials, and not just one or two, Ryan, 26 of them in all areas of the country, that we're going to be doing this the right way. Now, is the right way by having guys wake up in the morning and take their temperature twice, and then wearing masks around the stadium when they're everywhere except on the field and not being allowed to use hot tubs and cold tubs and like you can't give a guy a high five during the national anthem you got to stand six feet apart there you know i was talking with one person earlier today who was saying it's such eyewash that they're going to make guys sit in the stands.

You know, if you're not expected to play during the game, you are up in the stands and there are four seats between you and the guy to your left or right and two rows behind you or in front of you. Like, is that a little too much? Is that a step too far? Maybe, probably. But even still, if modeling good social distancing behavior is the thing that allows baseball to come back and get the rubber stamp of public health officials and the White House and governors and mayors and all of these people who have every right to be skeptical about the sport coming back, then to me that's the very least baseball should be doing, is trying to get them on board. Was eyewash a substitute for swearing?

Eyewash is such a great baseball word. It really is. I was just trying a great baseball forward. It really is. I was just trying to make sure everybody translate here. All right, a couple things I still need to do here. More with Jeff Pass in just a moment, but WHOOP is a fitness wearable that provides personalized and actionable insights on your sleep recovery and daily exertion. May is Mental Health Awareness Month,

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I don't know why. I'm fine, guys. Don't worry about it. But didn't have a great night of sleep. It told me I didn't have a great night of sleep, and I was like not peak. And it was saying like, this is going to be a strain day, but I hit it hard. I hit it real hard. 112. Well, no, that'd be a lot of minutes. 72 minutes, 112 on the stopwatch, 72 minute workout, no rest in between bands in between lifting. And somebody recognized me working out because my rack rack my rogue rack is on the side of the street and a guy walked by he was like look at you look at you he didn't know i lived there and it was he's like i listen to you all the time he goes you're a real entrepreneur aren't you i

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dot com. Enter RUESSILLO at checkout to save 50%. Sleep better, recover faster faster and train smarter with service time is an issue okay um what if a guy like i was reading stark's piece on the athletic where it was like as soon as you start figuring out well wait a minute what if a guy decides he doesn't want to play but he knows he's still going to get paid and then they cave on that but then is it also service time and then is it something where you can actually as i said in the open like getting a doctor's note about all this stuff and then the mookie bets part of this like if nothing even

happens and then i remember i talked to an agent who i said i imagine you're trying to get service time for everybody that's on a 30 man roster instead of 25 he's like damn right we are you know like hey they're major leaguers so that's the part where you go yeah you guys aren't cutting any corners on the stuff that you're hoping for here um what do you think about the players positions on all the player related kind of transactional stuff where they want it to be obviously they want every part of this to still be as beneficial to the player as it would have been in a normal season. Yeah, and they should, and they should hold firm on that. And there is going to be compromise there somehow.

That's the thing. MLB is saying, we'll give you 28 or 30-man rosters. That's two more spots. That's another half million, prorated over a full season, half million dollars or so. full season, half a million dollars or so. And I'm very curious to see what the players push for or what the players ask for here. They want their showers. And it's been sort of a running joke that the showers are going to be the new second seat on the bus. Because if you recall back in 2016, during the collective bargaining negotiations,

a big criticism of the union that year was that it prioritized the creature comforts that players wanted over stuff like getting the competitive balance tax higher so it doesn't serve as a

soft cap or any number of other economic issues. Now, that's exaggerated a little bit, but they did get beaten in that agreement. They got beaten pretty handily. And someone was joking yesterday, I wonder if MLB put the shower thing in there to rally the players around that so they could trade showers for $100 million. That's the way sometimes that people see the union as a group of very impulsive guys who get stuck on something and who will lose sight of what the truly important thing is here. And that's why I hate to keep bringing it back to the Snell and Harper thing. That's when the true colors were shown.

Everybody in the union wanted to say what Blake Snell actually went out and said. Everybody. That's what they have been thinking about. And it's just the, you know, as much, Ryan, as this shouldn't be about money, isn't it always about money? Yeah, it always is. So let's stay on the Snell thing because I talked about it in the open.

And, you know, Snell, I would say, is at best pretty dramatic in some of his assessments. And I still can't figure out the timeline of like, wasn't he just saying a month ago it wasn't that big of a deal? And now he's saying he's risking his life. So then I was like, is he actually that calculated that he's publicly negotiating for a full salary here? Do the players think like this is where the players would lose the public? Not because working guy hauling sheetrock is making so much an hour. I'm not doing that.

We all have to be fair here in that, yes, there are teachers that don't make enough money, but it's because more people can be teachers. And people don't like it when I say it, but that's the grown-up conversation. And not many people can sit out there and throw 95. It's that Blake Snell can do what 99.999 percent of humanity cannot that's all and people who have special people who have special abilities that they're listen there are teachers who are in that top 0.001 percentile who should get paid like uh i mean they should get paid really well much much better than they do. Right. I like your pro teacher save there, but I'm just the person like when I worked my ass off as a laborer, I didn't resent millionaires because I had a bad back at the end of the day. Like I was doing something where it's like a lot of people can do what I can do, and that's why I'm not making more money.

I don't understand why people resist that. Maybe because it's just more people in the labor group than there are the elite of the elite. So when Snell says this and then Harper chimes in, which again, I was like, Oh God, um,

I think Aaron Otto's maybe the only one where I was like, okay, this makes a little bit of sense. And I'm glad you said it. Cause I said, it's the same thing at the top with the, the NBA. Once I found out like the players union voted,

you like not unanimously overwhelmingly in favor of coming back to play, you see the Snell stuff, you see this Harper, you see Bauer, who's never afraid to say stuff. You're like, wait, do players not want to play? And then you go, actually, no. Like you said, a lot of players do want to play. And are these guys in this group, though, that think, yeah, sorry, we signed these contracts

and we should be compensated to the last dollar? Because they'd lose everybody if that's what they actually think. I think they felt like they signed a deal on March 26th. And let's look at the landscape back on March 26th. It's two weeks after sports shut down. It's about, I think it's because what day was Rudy Gobert? Was it the 10th? Was it the 11th? I think third. Okay. Yeah. Because I think two days, two days later it was baseball. It was the NCAA tournament. It was just like this,

this deluge. Uh, I have to say within two weeks, we had a pretty good sense that there wasn't going to be sports for a while. And we had a pretty good sense that there were not going to be fans back when sports did come back. And so the perspective that the players have right now is that we signed a deal that guaranteed us our prorated salaries and we want to get paid for doing what we do, for being the ones who are taking the risk, for going out there and hopefully helping save baseball and give the country something to look forward to. I don't think that's a losing argument,

but this is not about a winning or losing argument. This may just come down to something legal. And if you go and look in the document, March 26th, it talks about a discussion that needs to be had if there are no fans in the stands and how there need to be good faith. I think it's a good faith discussion is the way that it's put. And Major League Baseball is going to lean on that. And it's going to lean on that hard. And it's going to lean on that until we have a game of chicken where we're going to be barreling toward June 1st. And they're going to have agreed on the health and safety stuff. They're going to have agreed on all the other things and it's going to come down to money. And man, if this comes down to money and it doesn't happen, they've got nobody

to blame but themselves. And the way that they will lose baseball fans and put themselves in, I mean, I said earlier, it's like 1994. I think this would be worse than 1994. I think this would be way worse than 1994, actually. I agree. It would take a decade plus to get people. You'd need a whole new generation of fans. And even then, what are you going to sell them on? You're the sport

that could have come back during the pandemic and couldn't figure out how to divvy up billions of dollars that's that's what you are that is the that is the the most damning branding you can possibly have yeah that's the part where baseball uh uh, you know, none of this is fair, right? No one, no one knows in the moment you're like, what's going on. Uh, I have said that as much as I can read about this, I get incredibly frustrated if I read it every day, because I think there's some stuff out there that's misleading on purpose. Um, I think anybody trying to be positive, it's like you're, you're shunned, but then at the same time, I don't want to feel like I'm not taking this seriously and then i'm thinking oh hey whatever players just

go back out there and play like this isn't that big of a deal like i'm not in that camp either because you just can't you can't do that you can't be liable for all of these players hundreds of players here and sitting there say yeah whatever we need the revenue and bring it back but an agreement in march is just a completely different, like, it's just the idea of understanding of what this was then versus now, I think of two completely different worlds. And maybe- Do you know, you don't think the end of March,

I don't know that we ever know what's coming tomorrow, right? Like, that's where we are in this world. If you told me that something catastrophic was going to happen tomorrow, I'd say, yeah, that could happen. If you told me that we're going to have a great step toward a vaccine tomorrow, I'd say, yeah, that could happen too. I have no idea. But what I do know is that there will be high moments and there will be low moments. There will be ups, there will be downs. There will be this chaotic roller coaster of life that we are riding right now. And I think March 27th, when that deal was signed,

we had a sense that it was going toward that. It sure as hell felt like that at the beginning. I mean, that was early on in lockdowns. That was, hey, what's happening here? Like, is this really gonna last that's epidemiologists putting out you know the multiple million death number like that is that's the point where we're like okay this shit is serious we know it's serious now and we better start taking it that way so no fans and stands i think was a a very realistic thing at that point i just don't know that that you can argue how you felt as opposed to what's

in the language on the paper yeah i guess i the no fans thing you have me there but um compared to what i was reading in march and how people felt about it in march and the idea that we could have spring training here in june i think that is a bit of a reversal uh i think it was the unknown is more of a doomsday and i'm not i'm not criticizing anybody with the doomsday thought of it but i feel like either we're recovering at an error here or recovering in a way that maybe people weren't saying was even possible back in March. So that's the part that feels very different. Can we, can we, can we go back to, can we go back to something you just said? I actually find it very interesting that optimism is being shunned or shouted down, or

I'm trying to think of the right word for it. And I think that there have been some who have accused people, whether it's the ESPN or otherwise, of rooting for sports to get back as a bad thing. And I just have a really difficult time trying to understand why it's a bad thing to want it back. Maybe if you want it back so badly that you start pushing forward this notion of bad policy or of things that are going to harm wide swaths of people. But man, the idea of saying it's not safe, the idea of saying it's not safe. We got to shut things down right now. We're not going to at least give it a try flies in the face of what the rest of the country and world are doing right now.

Like there there's just a point at which there needs to be a reopening. And I don't know if it's now, but it's happening all over the country right now, whether we like it or not. And major league baseball as an industry is not going to be the super judicious ones like say the NBA, which has made 75% of its revenue. Like these decisions are going to be made. Right. That's the thing that baseball kind of the beginning of this back and forth where it's where it sucks for them because it sucks for everybody for different reasons. But baseball was about to get started, and they're on the fly trying to do this. And I think they were trying to come up with a compromise that sounded nice. We all know that $170 million over that many players really isn't that much of money at all. It was a nice little headline. It made people feel good. But they're still thinking, wait wait a minute are we really going to be waiting until july 1st are we really going to be doing an 80 game season i don't think anybody knew any of those things because we still don't know

and we still don't know what this reopening is going to be some people think this reopening is the worst idea ever and then other people are like you know let's go let's go you're going to have to reopen with risk and then if it ends up being the wrong call then you're going to shut everything down again which obviously would be catastrophic but would it be better to just never even try and that's kind of where I've been like, I don't think I'm selfishly rooting for something that's dangerous. I am suggesting that maybe everybody try and let's see what happens. And then you start talking about risk and life and all this stuff. And then it's like, okay, cool. I'm 40 something minutes into a podcast

here. And I'm talking about science again that I don't really understand. And I don't want to do that to the listeners that much more. All right. So let's, let's leave on this note. Well, no, I mean, you know,

Bill and I talk about it every Sunday and about 20 minutes in, I'm like, God, you're like, all right. I, you know, I've said my piece.

No, but do you, do you, do you know why I'm laughing? Because, because that you're all of us right now. You're like the, to me, the lasting impact of the coronavirus, hopefully, is that it pushed us all to the absolute wits end of our psyches and let us know how much we can take before we just snap. And we're all at that point right now.

I think the answer is about two and a half months. We're all like, okay, done this before, been here before, had this conversation, don't want to do it anymore. And I get it, man. I totally get it. It's just like, it's this unbelievable reality with which we have to live. And the fact that we're two and a half months into it makes me, it like makes me think we're going to be able to get through this. We can do anything for two and a half months. I mean, that's a, you know, that's a pretty good chunk of time and we are very adaptable as human beings. And I think we're going to figure this out. And the idea that baseball can be part of that,

getting back to some semblance of normal is, is something that I think we're going to see in the next couple of weeks. So that's where I want to leave this. Then you think this is going to happen. You think despite all of these things, cause it feels real negative right now, but you think they figure out a way to make this work. And we have baseball at the beginning of July,

right before, right before we started recording this i was talking with the gm and i said how confident are you i'm just kidding i i now a good one no no i would never do that i don't don't tell us i'm just messing with you but he better be one of the better ones. I would never answer that question. Come on. Did you ever ask Bill, by the way, or do you know who sent the Moss text? Remember Moss?

Wasn't it Moss to Patriots that he tweeted? Oh, no. I'd never have asked him about that. I totally forgot about it. Man, that's quite the uh the recall i mean if you're if you're gonna ask me who the random general manager i'm talking with on a monday afternoon like that's a historic moment right there i'll bring it up people would want to know kyle note that yeah kyle will have to note that for our next show with Bill? He said, yeah, he said, I'm optimistic. He said, I'm confident.

And I'll tell you what, before I read the health and safety document, I was at like 75% coming back. In the immediate aftermath, I was like, it's probably more like 50. I just like, I was up. I got that on, maybe I think it was late Friday night. I was up until like five o'clock in the morning, just reading through it. And man, like reading through 67 pages of, of legalese about coronavirus and testing and all of these things is a terrible way to spend a Friday night. Just awful. And after that, I was like, oh God, we're not going to see baseball this year, are we? But I'm back at the

point where now I think that there are things in that document that will go away. There are things that will be difficult to execute. But listen, we're in a time right now where we got to do things that are uncomfortable. And I think that baseball recognizes that and that the players are going to be on board with it and they'll figure something out. He is at Jeff Passan. He's been all over the story for ESPN and as always, uh, appreciate the amount of time you put in this today.

Thanks, man. We got another one coming this week. TBD. Not ever since, sure. By the way, thank you for checking out the American Kingpin book with Nick Bilton. That podcast last week, Amazon sold out of the paperback that day when that podcast came out. So I went and looked at the Amazon. And the true crime, it was three of the number,

three of the top four books were different versions of American Kingpin. So you guys got after it and bought that. I know I kind of was like, holy. So yeah,

it's kind of bragging, but also thanking you because I was really impressed. I was surprised to see that. So I'm sure Nick was thrilled. He was. He sent me a note. So keep subscribing. keep getting the word out and we'll talk to you later this week Thank you.