Diamond loses more teams, what’s next

Three more teams leave Diamond for a MLB-controlled game broadcasts.

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On Tuesday morning, Baseball Prospectus published a feature of mine on the Diamond bankruptcy proceedings, and what they meant for the coming MLB offseason. As discussed last month, MLB already pointed out that the trajectory of the bankruptcy saga means impacted teams won’t be able to plan their budgets for the 2025 season, and the addition of another couple of teams — and the threat of more joining them — meant that we were going to be in for another quiet offseason.

On Tuesday afternoon, it was announced that three more teams whose deals with Diamond had been dropped would not seek to renegotiate with the regional sports network… network… and would instead work through MLB to broadcast its games. The league already did this in 2024 with the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Padres, and they’ll now be joined by the Guardians, Brewers, and Twins. (The Rangers have also separated from Diamond, but they’re going to peddle their wares on their own, without MLB handling things, so they aren’t part of this conversation.)

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Phillies, A’s open up about spending, could not be more different

The Phillies and A’s both talked recently about the need for spending, but for some weird reason it’s a lot easier to believe one of them than the other about actually doing it.

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The Philadelphia Phillies are in the postseason, preparing to head to Citi Field to take on the Mets in their home after evening up the NLDS 1-1 on Sunday. Before the series began, Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein ran a story on the team and its owner, John Middleton, saying that he provides “an unsparing blueprint for his peers.”

The gist of the feature is that Middleton not only spends on payroll at a higher rate than most of the league — and does so consistently, with the team ranking fourth in opening day payroll in each of the last four seasons — but that he’ll invest in the players off the field, too. The food the players want? That’s what the team chefs make. When J.T. Realmuto said the team’s jet was behind the times enough that even the lowly Marlins had a better one? The Phillies got a new, much fancier aircraft. Clubhouse accoutrements, better equipment, an entire hibachi spread when Kyle Schwarber mentioned having a craving for that — if the Phillies want it, Middleton lets them have it, with Dave Dombrowski feeling confident enough in not even going up the ladder for the stuff that isn’t jet-sized to just authorize it himself.

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What was Ken Kendrick trying to do, exactly?

Ken Kendrick took the blame for signing Jordan Montgomery by talking about how bad of a decision it was to sign Jordan Montgomery. Oh boy.

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Jordan Montgomery’s 2024 season didn’t exactly go as planned, either for Montgomery or the team that signed him, the Diamondbacks. Montgomery was real good for the Cardinals in 2023 before a midseason trade shipped him to the Rangers, where he was a revelation, and a significant part of their first-ever World Series championship — a title they won for besting the Diamondbacks. This year, though, Montgomery made just 21 starts (and 25 appearances), totaling 117 innings, and produced an ERA+ of 67 in the process.

Given an ERA+ of 100 is supposed to represent an average performance, Montgomery was awful. Throw in that he managed a 136 mark in the stat in 2023, and entered 2024 at 116 for his career, and that 67, somehow, looks even worse. It’s not an entirely unexpected outcome, however. Montgomery, despite his strong 2023 and years of above-average work, sat on the sidelines as a free agent for the entire offseason, and then some. He didn’t agree to a deal with the Diamondbacks until March 29 — not only was this after the start of spring training, it was after the start of the actual regular season, which had begun the day before.

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The Oakland A’s are no more, and here’s why

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We’ve known this was coming for some time, of course, but it’s official: the Oakland A’s have played their final games in that city, as they’ll close out the 2024 season on the road. The next time they play a home game, it will be in Sacramento… assuming that park does end up with the necessary renovations to appease the Players Association, anyway.

The shock of this has, unsurprisingly, hit hard, both for people who have known this day was coming and for those who were sort of forced to recognize what’s been going on for the better part of the last two years. I wanted to address something Buster Olney posted on Twitter, though, since it feels like a too-common sentiment both for some media and fans who haven’t been locked in on this whole saga.

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Dick Moss, MLBPA legend, passes away at 93

One of the union pillars that helped banish MLB’s reserve clause passed away over the weekend.

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The names you so often hear associated with the end of Major League Baseball’s reserve clause are players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, as well as MLB Players Association executive director Marvin Miller, for encouraging this challenge to be made in the first place. Those players didn’t argue their own case in front of an arbitrator, however: that job went to Dick Moss, who had been hired by Miller as the union’s general counsel in 1967, and won his most famous and vital case eight years later, representing Messersmith and McNally, but in reality, far more players than just those two. His is a name worth remembering, too.

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Notes: A’s and Las Vegas timeline, Reinsdorf’s stadium gambit, incompetency

The more things change? No, just the more things stay the same.

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You will be shocked, but the A’s are in the news again for their planned move to Las Vegas. You will be even more surprised by this, but it’s more like “news” where information we’ve already had access to is being presented as if it’s new, in such a way that makes it seem if progress is being made. Ah, well, nevertheless.

Here’s an Oakland Fox affiliate, KTVU, doing that very thing earlier this week:

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White Sox to ‘cut payroll’ in 2025 after ‘substantial losses’

Of course.

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Do you see what I did with the headline there? “Substantial losses”? It could be about the White Sox’ revenue from their horrible 2024 season, or the number of losses they’ve suffered slash inflicted on their fans this summer. Safe to say that I’ve still got it after knee surgery.

The White Sox? Well, they’re winners of two in a row, but that doesn’t mean much in terms of whether they’ve got it. Other than that they could lose 30 in a row to balance things out, if only there were 30 more games in ‘24 for them to drop. As it is, they’re still on pace for 124 losses for the season after picking up consecutive dubs, which is two more than the current modern-day record the expansion Mets set in 1962. Leaving aside their chances of playing better than .500 ball the rest of the way to avoid infamy, let’s focus on the 2025 payroll thing.

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Notes: A’s stadium(s), newsletter housekeeping

Another loss for Schools Over Stadiums, issues in Sacramento, and a note about scheduling.

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The news isn’t great for Schools Over Stadiums, the political action committee formed to attempt to stop the Oakland A’s from becoming the Las Vegas A’s. The Nevada educators who formed the PAC were dealt a blow last week by a state district court judge who rejected their lawsuit over the constitutionality of the public subsidies the team would receive to build a new ballpark.

Judge Kristen Luis did not rule on “the merits of the claims,” per the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin, but instead, stated that whether or not the money the A’s were receiving from the public coffer was constitutional could not be determined until said money was actually made available to the A’s. And it won’t be unlocked for them until they secure the private financing that they need to pay for the rest of the stadium.

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Notes: MLB’s latest threat to Bally Sports, NCAA unfair labor charge

MLB and Bally continue to go at it, while Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team ups the ante.

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There’s been some progress in the Bally/Diamond broadcasting rights bankruptcy debacle of late, but only for the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. MLB is continuing to have issues with the regional broadcasting giant, and the latest stems from the agreement Bally made with the NHL and NBA. Evan Drellich has the full story at The Athletic, but there’s one specific thing I want to focus on here:

“Major League Baseball and those clubs are unable to plan to obtain revenue and to have certainty with respect to the 2025 season,” James Bromley, a lawyer for MLB, said in court Tuesday.

Judge Chris Lopez on Tuesday approved deals Diamond recently reached with both the NBA and NHL, calling them “a step in the right direction.” But contained in those agreements is a key date that has put MLB on the offensive: both require Diamond to come out of bankruptcy by April 1, shortly after baseball’s season begins.

Speaking for nearly 14 minutes straight, Bromley warned Diamond that it cannot wait that long to figure out its plans in a bankruptcy process that’s already taken nearly 18 months, and called the status quo a “Band-Aid.”

Nine teams are under contract with a Diamond-operated RSN for 2025, with another three facing expiring contracts after this season. So we’re talking about over one-third of the league not knowing just how much money they’ll be getting in 2025 for their television rights, and from where. Diamond, per Drellich, seems unfazed by the threats from MLB to escalate their legal action if this isn’t figured out sooner than later.

Here’s what matters about this from this newsletter’s perspective: whether 9-12 MLB teams actually will have a problem with revenue and cash flow in 2025 isn’t what we should be concerned about, but that their public position is that the lack of resolution from Bally will keep them from being able to plan out rosters for 2025 is an issue. Now, I’m not saying these clubs are absolutely all fine, that there won’t be issues with their numbers or what have you; it’s more that, by saying this, you know that they’re going to act as if there definitely are. As if 2025 is something of a lost year, before it even begins, one in which general managers of these clubs are probably going to have to work overtime to make creative upgrades to the roster that won’t increase payroll.

The 2023-2024 offseason was already a slow one. Yes, massive contracts were handed out to the very best talent out there, but the winter, for most, was a slow-going affair, one that resulted in a number of players signing very late, even during spring training, which in turn impacted the year they had. It took Blake Snell months to finally be the guy he’s supposed to be, to make it deeper into games (well, deep for Snell) and look dominant and healthy. Jordan Montgomery still hasn’t recovered from his late start and lack of prep. We’re probably just going to do that again, which shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Even without the broadcasting issue, the current CBA has just two more seasons on it before it expires. The league’s owners want to tighten their grip a bit before then, to help create problems that need to be solved in bargaining, in order to try to extract more from the players once more.

It’s not a new tactic, but the Bally issue helps give them an excuse for the kinds of behavior they’d be displaying, anyway. This is an ongoing story to watch, basically, that is about more than it’s about on the surface.

Late last month, Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school with the National Labor Relations Board. The charge? A refusal to bargain with players. The union, formed in March, has certainly been patient with Dartmouth College, which has refused to enter collective bargaining with the players despite the NLRB’s regional director already declaring them to be employees.

In a way, this is all a positive, though. Dartmouth’s refusal to bargain, with the defense being that the NLRB has made a mistake, means that this is a case that’s probably going to end up in court, with decisions that reverberate throughout college athletics. The school wants a federal court to review it, even! Now, federal court could certainly be a blow to the idea of unionized college athletes, especially with how much more conservative they’ve become in recent years, but look at the current situation, where the NLRB has declared that these athletes are employees and should be treated as such. Dartmouth refuses to acknowledge this to be the case, so nothing has changed. The courts could force a change, and the results would then be NCAA-wide, because what separates Dartmouth College from every other institution with college sports on campus? Not a thing, other than that their students struck first.

No need for a full monthly check-in on the White Sox since I already did that on Friday, pre-Labor Day holiday, but just for the sake of having something here in early September all the same: the White Sox lost every game since that piece was published. They finished August 4-22, just one win better than July with the same number of losses, despite losing 16 in a row that month. They’re 0-3 to begin September, already set a new franchise record for losses in a season with weeks left to go, and are 14 losses away from setting the modern-day league record with 22 games to go.

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Let’s check in on the White So—oh god there’s blood everywhere

The record-tying losing streak is over, and somehow, the White Sox are still just as bad as they were during that.

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Monday is Labor Day, and given that this is a labor-focused newsletter, it feels wrong to sign myself up to cover any stories then. So, instead, let’s do our monthly check-in on the White Sox and their horrific 2024 season now, the final weekday of August.

Last we looked in, the White Sox were in the midst of a franchise-worst losing streak that would soon end, but not until after they had tied the historical AL worst mark of 21 in a row. They were 27-84, “good” for a win percentage of .243, and had been outscored by -229 on the season. Things have somehow gotten worse than they were then, which seems impossible. But that’s our 2024 White Sox, baby.

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