Month: April 2021

Rob Manfred is letting gambling decide MLB’s direction

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There is some concern out there that, because Rob Manfred seems intent on ruining the game of baseball as you know it, seven-inning games are going to eventually be the norm instead of what allows for regularly scheduled doubleheaders while MLB navigates a pandemic. With the modified extra innings rules, the minor leagues being used as a laboratory for pace of play and even more extra innings quirks and so on, it’s no wonder people feel like this about Manfred and his plans. Worry not, though: we probably won’t lose nine-inning games, because it would make the gamblers unhappy.

That’s right! The gamblers. Calling the intrusion of gambling on Major League Baseball “creeping” does not do what’s happening enough hasty justice—it’s been less subtle than that— but it’s still fitting since gambling’s influence is not becoming all-encompassing all at once. It is there, obvious to anyone who has seen the ways in which it has been introduced into even league broadcasts, but now we also have Manfred bringing it up in an interview with Sportico.

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Jeff Bridich is gone, but does that mean anything for the Rockies?

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Longtime Rockies’ general manager Jeff Bridich resigned from the position on Monday, less than a month into the 2021 regular season. His exit was a “mutual decision” with Rockies’ higher ups, meaning they told him he was fired but could bow out on his own instead of getting tossed out. Rockies’ owner Dick Monfort finally tiring of Bridich and telling him to go doesn’t mean that there is a major change coming to the organization, of course. Bridich acted the way he did for years because Monfort wanted him to: it is entirely possible that Monfort just needed someone new as general manager so they can restart this whole cycle.

You might remember this line of reasoning from when the Pirates parted with their own longtime GM, Neal Huntington, and their team president, Frank Coonnelly, after the 2019 season. Here’s me on that:

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On that Super League nonsense

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I’ll be the first to admit I’m not completely learned in the ways of men’s soccer’s worldwide economics. I know enough to know, however, that the system that is in place — in Europe, not in the United States’ MLS version of the game — does a better job of promoting competition than an American league like Major League Baseball does. There is a reason that, over the years, you’ve seen more than one writer pine for the idea of relegation in American sport leagues, especially in one like MLB where tanking or actively not trying is so rampant: the threat of being demoted to a lesser league and replaced by a team that is actually trying would provide the kind of motivation missing from the day-to-day and long-term operations of quite a few MLB teams.

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MLB, MLBPA finally begin discussing expiring CBA

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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have had their first collective bargaining meeting of 2021, according to reporting by ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He has no details on just what went down at the talks, as both sides declined to comment on them, and a lack of leaks from the MLB side — come on, you know it would be them first — means we can’t really figure out just how the first conversation went.

Passan gives a brief overview of the current situation — distrust on both sides, the players being understandably dissatisfied with both the league and the way the current, expiring collective bargaining agreement has played out — but I want to focus on one specific item he mentioned:

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Some MLB teams aren’t paying for minor leaguers’ hotels or meals at alternate sites

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One week ago, I published an article stating that MLB should be subsidizing the housing of minor-league baseball players, especially given how awful the salaries of those players are. I brought it up then due to a rumor that MLB wasn’t allowing families to host MiLB players during a pandemic — understandable — but also wasn’t footing the bill or arranging for housing otherwise. While that was unconfirmed, we now have word from Advocates for Minor Leaguers that there are definitely MiLB players forced to pay for their own housing, even though they’re taking part at the alternate training sites that have them basically on call for MLB duty during its second COVID protocols season.

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MLB should be paying for MiLB player housing

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In 2021, Minor League Baseball players will see a raise from their previous poverty-level wages to… well, higher poverty-level wages. Every level in the minors, outside of those repeating the Triple-A level, will still have a salary below the poverty line, and the ones above it will be so just barely. There are some little qualify of life changes MLB has put into place for 2021 and beyond, like getting rid of clubhouse dues so that players were no longer the ones responsible for paying a club employee, and paying for meals before and after games, but still: in the end, we’re talking about players making poverty-level wages.

Bill Thompson, who you’ve likely seen published in various baseball outlets, tweeted on Wednesday that it turns out, “MLB is not allowing host families for minor leaguers this year due to COVID. Understandable, but there’s no indication they are then footing the bill for these players to get their own housing. That means the raises they enacted will be canceled out paying for housing.”

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MLB supports voting rights, immediately has antitrust exemption threatened

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On Friday, Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s recently enacted voter suppression laws, those laws themselves a response to Georgia’s voters rejecting as much of the Republican party as they could in recent elections. You know, like the one that booted the truly wretched (and never elected) Kelly Loeffler from office and also convinced her to sell her stake in the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

You can debate whether what MLB is doing is the right thing or not — do the people in Georgia who will be impacted by this restriction of voting rights want these boycotts of the state? Is this anything more than a corporate reaction to which way the winds are blowing, in the same way their empty rhetoric around Black Lives Matter was around one year ago? — but what’s undeniable is that the decision to pull the All-Star Game out of Atlanta has infuriated the right. That’s no surprise, given they’ve been trying to spin what’s going on in Georgia as a strengthening of voter rights, not a direct attack on them, and also because like, three-quarters of what they’re up to now is culture war, America-is-being-canceled bullshit. MLB basically threw catnip for racists at a bunch of racists.

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