The Juan Soto sweepstakes begins

And there is no basically no excuse for the Yankees to not come out on top.

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Juan Soto is going to get paid. That much is known. Which team will be paying him is a bit more up in the air, as Jon Heyman reminded everyone before the weekend with a report that 11 teams had already checked in on him the second they could post-World Series.

Heyman mentions that Soto is looking for $700 million, and not deferred like with Shohei Ohtani’s major deal. The chances of Soto actually getting $700 million are basically nil, sure, but you ask for $700 million and negotiate down to what a team will give you. If you start with what a team will give you, you’re still going to end up negotiating down. That’s just how these things work, which is a lesson a lot of folks seem to need to relearn every November.

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Notes: Tony Clark on pitching, RSN viewership, Those Two Yankees Fans

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With the World Series starting, MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark had some time for the assembled reporters. A number of topics were brought up, such as the Rays’ and A’s stadium situations — one caused by a natural disaster and the other by a manufactured one — but the thing I want to focus on is his comments on the state of pitching in MLB:

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Notes: Latest on the A’s, Reinsdorf’s Nashville gambit, WNBPA opts out of CBA

John Fisher is good for the money, he promises, also could someone please wildly overpay for a stake in the A’s, and soon? Also, Jerry Reinsdorf’s attempt to create leverage from the ether intensifies, and the WNBA players opt out.

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On Wednesday, Baseball Prospectus published a piece of mine updating their readers on what’s going on with the A’s and their quest to move to Las Vegas. I’ll give you the short version here: sources close to the A’s have been saying that there’s a plan “in place” for the private funds needed to cover the over $1 billion the A’s are on the hook for to build a stadium in Vegas, but no one is allowed to see the plan, there is no set date for revealing the plan despite a ticking clock, and oh, also the plan isn’t actually finished or in place, and is still mostly a hypothetical about things owner John Fisher could do if he wanted or needed to, I guess.

I bring this up here not just to point you in the direction of related writings elsewhere, but also because, later that same say, the New York Post published an “exclusive” story about the A’s and their quest to sell 25 percent of the team for $500 million, which some simple math tells us means they’re valuing the franchise at $2 billion. Two things: first, those same figures were reported nearly a year ago by the Los Angeles Times, and second, this doesn’t mean the Post is necessarily behind the times or the Times, so much as that it’s like Fisher simply isn’t moving off of this amount of money for this amount of ownership, and the calls for it are just getting louder given the aforementioned ticking clock.

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Rockies plan to cut payroll after losing 100 games again

The Rockies’ decisions are emblematic of a deeper issue in MLB.

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In 2021, the Rockies last 87 games. In 2022, they dropped 94. The 2023 season saw them take the L 103 times, and in 2024, they improved their record for the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 forced them to lose fewer games than they had the prior year, by losing “just” 101. Oh, right, and in 2019, before that 60-game season, Colorado lost 91 games. Don’t worry, in 2020, they were still on pace for 92 defeats, this was an unbroken string of failure.

How do the Rockies plan on fixing things for 2025? They’re once again hoping their youth movement does the trick, and also, they’re planning to cut payroll again. And this goes beyond just not spending the money that the end of Charlie Blackmon’s career frees up, as well, according to Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. They’ll be attempting to trade late-stage arbitration-eligible players to free up additional salary, players like Brendan Rogers, Cal Quantrill, and Austin Gomber.

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Notes: Rays roof, Twins owners, ESPN’s broadcasting deal

A shredded roof, the Twins are exploring a sale, and ESPN involves themselves in the future of MLB’s local broadcasts.

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It’s kind of incredible that no one inside of Tropicana Field was injured when Hurricane Milton ripped the stadium’s roof to shreds, but thankfully, that’s how things played out. It’s unclear how long it’s going to take to repair the roof — it simply does not exist anymore, an entirely new roof is needed — or what it’s going to cost to do so. There are some educated guesses out there, however, given similar work once done to the Metrodome.

According to the Rays themselves, the roof was designed to hold up against 115 mph winds; Milton blew harder than that, and the roof is no more. While it will take time to fully assess the damage, and opening day is a little over five months away, this process also can’t be rushed — hurricane season isn’t even over yet, after all, and we’re in an era of much larger, and more frequent, major hurricanes, as well.

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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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