The Rays are staying in St. Petersburg, for 600 million reasons

A stadium in St. Petersburg is unsustainable for the Rays, unless someone writes a check for $600 million, anyway.

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The whole saga of the Tampa Bay Rays has been something, hasn’t it? It feels like they’ve been trying to move out of the area they call home — or at least out of St. Petersburg, where they actually play their games — since they got there. To be fair, there are loads of problems with their current arrangement. Tropicana Field, as I’ve said many times in the past, reminds me of a rec center where I used to play indoor softball in the winter — that’s great for the rec center, less so for the Major League Baseball team that has to play in that setting. And St. Pete is considerably smaller than Tampa, with just under 260,000 residents compared to Tampa’s nearly 400,000.

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The Red Sox fired Chaim Bloom because John Henry can’t fire himself

Chaim Bloom might be good at the specific job he was asked to do in Boston, but we won’t get to find out.

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The Red Sox have fired Chaim Bloom, because owner John Henry hates nothing more than someone doing exactly what he wanted them to and it not being very popular with fans and media. Not to say that Bloom did a magnificent job with the Red Sox by any means, because he sure did not, but he did about what you’d expect him to be able to do with the resources given to him. Which is to say, not many: the Red Sox might still be spending a lot compared to some clubs, but with three of four seasons under the luxury tax threshold, they aren’t spending like the Red Sox can. And the team Bloom inherited was one designed to be spent on a lot more heavily than his own clubs were allowed to, so you can imagine how “don’t spend” impacted any plans to field the kind of team that was supposed to be at the end of this particular rainbow.

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Oakland reportedly a ‘top two expansion site’ once A’s leave

Oakland will be an attractive expansion city, sure, but what does that mean exactly, and who does this information actually benefit?

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According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Oakland might not be without a baseball team for long after the A’s eventually vacate for Las Vegas. It’s just a little note in a longer article, so, here it is in full:

Although the Oakland A’s will be moving to Las Vegas, the city may not be without a team very long.

High-ranking executives say that if Oakland officials and an ownership group secure a site to build a new ballpark, they will join Nashville, Tennessee, as the top two expansion sites in the next five years.

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There’s something ‘icky’ about those waiver dumps

The Angels dumping their players on waivers was a problem, but the Guardians scooping up so many of them is its own issue, too.

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I haven’t taken the time to write about what the Angels did before the postseason eligibility waiver deadline, when they placed 20 percent of their roster on waivers and told the rest of the league to have at it just so they could save a few bucks. And at this point, basically everything there is to say about it has been said, but still, there are some things about the whole ordeal I’d like to reaffirm, with the help of a couple of pieces that have run at Baseball Prospectus on the subject.

Patrick Dubuque, as I linked to last week, wrote about rules, and how there is always someone looking for a loophole, which makes acting within the rules the correct thing to do in a very general sense. That point of view forgets who makes the rules, though, which is how we end up with something like the Angels very obviously just trying to drop their chances of exceeding the luxury tax threshold and looking to gain a better compensation pick if Shohei Ohtani leaves as a free agent this offseason.

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Notes: Oakland bargaining with A’s name, Red Sox own Pirates TV now

The A’s won’t be the A’s anymore if Oakland has anything to say about it, and Fenway Sports Group owns the Pirates’ TV station now.

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The Athletics are leaving Oakland, we know this much to be true. Or, at least, we’re pretty sure we know this to be true, but until John Fisher gets a bank to agree to pay for the portion of stadium costs that Nevada isn’t taking care of, well. Chaos isn’t out of the question just yet, is all. Anyway! It’s going to take time for all of that to go down, so extending the lease with Oakland is a possibility, even if the eventual outcome is still the A’s heading a little bit east for Vegas.

Extending the lease isn’t going to come free, though, and I don’t mean that the A’s are going to have to pay for it, either. In addition to the usual fees for stadium usage, the mayor of Oakland, Sheng Thao, has said that the A’s need to relinquish their team name to the city as part of a deal to continue to play in the Coliseum while they wait for their home in Vegas to be built. That’s according to Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle, who reported as much earlier this week:

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John Fisher has another bridge to sell you

The A’s owner must be so happy to have a local newspaper that will just let him say whatever unchallenged.

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Last month, due to the A’s moving to Las Vegas, I was introduced to the “journalism” of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It’s the largest newspaper in Nevada, and used to actually put out the kind of work you’d expect from a newspaper. Ownership changed hands in 2015, though, with the paper ending up in the hands of Sheldon Adelson, who has been referred to as a “kingmaker” for his sizable financial support of right-wing political candidates. Not like the newspaper landscape in America is run by a bunch of left-leaning folks or anything that would make Adelson an exception, but he’s not who you want running a paper even among the kind of people who tend to do that sort of thing.

Anyway, from people who are more knowledgeable about where the paper has been and is, I’ve learned that its mission statement these days is basically to let rich people do what they want without questioning them. Which is why any figure of any kind of authority who sides with the wealthy won’t be questioned even a little bit about, say, whether the A’s are going to spend all of the public money they’ve been approved to spend by Nevada or not, or how lawyer who is partner at a firm that puts together cases for clients looking for stadium financing isn’t exactly an unbiased expert source for your story on whether the A’s are going to be good for Vegas or not. And why A’s owner John Fisher got a chance to say whatever he wanted unchallenged in an interview with the Review-Journal’s Mick Akers, who was also responsible for the aforementioned pieces.

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Notes: John Angelos interview, stadium grifting

John Angelos speaking to the media is always a treat, because he’s oblivious, and some notes on things I’ve been up to, as well.

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John Angelos doesn’t do so well with the media. He lacks the savvy needed to actually convince people of his schemes, but he thinks he’s got things under control, so he feels like he’s in a position to speak relatively freely on things like the Orioles and their spending or not spending, how the ballpark lease situation with Baltimore and the state of Maryland is going, and so on. But he always just comes off looking delusional and overconfident, and like he isn’t aware that he’s giving away the game. His recent interview at the New York Times with Tyler Kepner is a wonderful example.

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Notes: Cubs’ concessioners, Manfred on Royals’ ballpark, Angels’ land deal

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The Cubs and White Sox might split the attention and allegiances of Chicago’s people, but UNITE HERE Local 1 workers at their two home parks are united in their labor. Concessions from Guaranteed Rate Field showed up at Wrigley on August 15 to show support for their crosstown cousins, who are currently negotiating a new contract with the concessionaire, Levy: the bargaining process has been going on for a year now, meaning Wrigley’s concessioners have been working without a new contract this whole time.

And that matters, too, since, as this piece at FOX 32 Chicago tells it, there’s a $5 gap between what entry-level workers make at Guaranteed Rate Field compared to Wrigley: the difference is because the White Sox’ concessioners recently reached a new contract with their concessionaire, Delaware North.

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John Angelos won’t stop stepping on rakes

John Angelos wants to control the narrative of the Orioles, as ignoring reality is kind of his thing.

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The Orioles are in first place in the AL East, which is its usual highly competitive self. They didn’t add like they could have over the offseason, they didn’t go big at the trade deadline in any way, and yet, they’re still in first. The season isn’t over, the roster still might not be as good as it needs to be to make a deep postseason run — which some trade deadline activity that went beyond “we tried” would have helped improve the odds of — but overall, things are looking good in Baltimore.

Except for when it comes to Orioles’ executive John Angelos, the son of owner Peter Angelos who also happens to be in control of both the team and the television network it broadcasts on, MASN. For one, it’s his lack of desire to spend that created a situation in which you could see exactly how the Orioles could have improved further, but did not. And that same lack of desire could very well mean this current run will only last as long as the pre-free agency contracts of their young players like Adley Rutschman. That stuff is more hypothetical, of course, and if the Orioles do manage to win the World Series before that happens, at the least, they managed to rebuild the roster in a way that reset the “years without a championship” counter. Which is no small thing, and not just because it limits some arguments against their behaviors and choices to “well, they could have been even more successful than they were.”

No, more tangible and more happening right this second are Angelos’ other business dealings. Like the lease for their ballpark that expires in five months, and hasn’t been renewed yet because of Angelos, even though it will guarantee the Orioles $600 million with which to renovate the stadium. As Ken Rosenthal explains, the holdup is that Angelos wants to turn the area around the ballpark into a complex like the one the Braves have around Truist Park: businesses and buildings owned by the team, which will generate additional revenue just like they do for the Braves.

As Rosenthal also points out, the land that allowed for the Braves to do that doesn’t even exist around the Orioles’ home, but that isn’t stopping Angelos from wanting it. Denying reality for the vision he wants is kind of Angelos’ deal, though: consider that he’s responsible for suspending play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown, because Brown cites “negative” statistics during O’s broadcasts. Statistics that are included in graphics shown on screen! Former O’s beat writer Dan Connolly wrote all about Angelos’ odd proclivity when it comes to bringing up the past in a negative light for Sportsnaut:

So, when Brown discussed how poor the Orioles had played at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., in past years – statistics provided in the daily media notes and used by Brown to add context to the importance of winning that series against the division rival Tampa Bay Rays – it wasn’t the first time Brown had used negative historical data. According to one source, Angelos believed dwelling on the past and not concentrating on the future reflected poorly upon Angelos’ regime.

…

Want examples? For several years, Orioles broadcasters at times were told not to mention names of former club greats who had left the team. They were not allowed to discuss Manny Machado, Buck Showalter, Brady Anderson or Adam Jones, among others. The point was to keep focus on the present club.

According to multiple sources, ownership was so adamant about that policy that in 2020 MASN broadcasters were told not to mention how the team acquired starting pitchers Dean Kremer and Bruce Zimmermann, since they were returns in the 2018 fire sale that signaled the Orioles full rebuild. MASN didn’t want to call additional attention to the fact they had traded Machado to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kevin Gausman and others to the Atlanta Braves. Just have the fans think that they parachuted down to the Camden Yards mound.

I joked the other day after the Brown suspension was revealed that Angelos was entering “his Vince McMahon era” with this suspension — the longtime WWE chairman and executive is notorious for… well, a lot of things, but I’m going to keep it related to the topic at hand… interfering with every aspect of the operation on every level, and having real weird hangups about what commentary is saying. Finding out that Angelos had a banned names list and that certain words or phrases or eras aren’t allowed to be discussed turns what I said from a joke into an actual reflection of McMahon policies. This is not a comparison you ever want to have, for a number of reasons.

What the Orioles are doing now isn’t all that impressive without the additional context of what they did before. They’re in first place, which is something, sure, but someone is always in first place. The AL Central has a first place team every season, whether they deserve to or not. No, the Orioles being in first place in 2023, in August, matters because of where they were in August in 2021, and 2020, and back a few years more. Their current standing matters because Manny Machado was traded all the way back in 2018, during a rock bottom season in which the O’s finished 61 games back of the Red Sox. What the Orioles are doing now matters because they haven’t won the World Series since 1983 — that’s 40 years ago, in Cal Ripken Jr.’s second full campaign, when he was all of 22 years old and his playing in all 162 games meant nothing more than that.

This context adds to the story, just like the Yankees’ season doesn’t seem that bad on the surface unless you’re aware that everyone who doesn’t work for the team could see it coming as clearly as they could see the solutions to avoid it. Leaving out the Orioles’ past, recent or otherwise, isn’t just an attempt to control the narrative around the team, it’s also making that narrative weaker. And it’s not as if the only way Orioles fans can learn about the team is through MASN broadcasts, either, so this is nothing more than Angelos’ own vain, weird desire to own everything Orioles.

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On no-trade clauses and ‘losers’

Eduardo Rodriguez is stuck with a losing team for a couple more months, but it’s in a city his family doesn’t mind being in.

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On Thursday, Ken Rosenthal wrote about the failed trade of Eduardo Rodriguez to the Dodgers for The Athletic. It broke down the trade that failed to materialize thanks to Rodriguez’s invocation of his no-trade clause, which came out of a desire to stay in Detroit, where his Miami-based family didn’t mind spending their summers. In the piece, Rosenthal says there are no winners here, that both the Tigers and Dodgers failed in different ways. That, there should be no problems with: the Tigers could have used some pieces to help a rebuild along, the Dodgers needed a starter like Rodriguez (who has a 2.96 ERA right now and who has been pretty damn good outside of his last year in Boston, which was just average) right now. Neither got what they wanted, and since Rodriguez can opt out of his Tigers’ deal at year’s end, and very well might do so given his performance so far this season, well. There won’t be another chance to collect on him.

What I take issue with is this line of thinking that followed:

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