Month: April 2023

The A’s are horrid (and also bad at baseball)

MLB and the A’s can blame the fans all they want, but neither they nor their actions built this embarrassment.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

The A’s are almost unbelievably bad in 2023. With most of the first month of the season behind them, their record sits at 5-21, and it’s a deserved record, too. Their pythagorean record, which is based on runs scored vs. runs allowed, is also 5-21. They haven’t scored 100 runs yet, but they’ve given up 212 of the things. You’re just not going to win very many games when that’s the case.

Back in February, I wrote that “The A’s have been busy, but only relatively speaking”. Everything in there is still pretty spot-on now that games are being played, with one exception: I did write that they might be better than they were last season given their various moves. In my defense, I said that because of how awful they were in 2022, when they went 60-102 and had a pythagorean record of 59-103. When I said their moves “probably made the A’s better” I meant in the sense that maybe they’d avoid 100 losses this time around. Which is to say, not much better!

Continue reading “The A’s are horrid (and also bad at baseball)”

MLB’s owners want to put a cap on contract length

There’s little chance such a cap would exist, but we can still explore why the league would want it.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Late last month at Global Sport Matters, I wrote about how the Padres and Mets were “paving the way for the next era of MLB labor relations.” The idea was that the union was able to keep MLB from accomplishing all of its lockout-related goals in the new collective bargaining agreement, and now, on top of the league’s failure to squash the union and its power, they had this terrifying new era where minor leaguers were unionized, the regional sports network model was faltering, and clubs like the Padres and Mets were not following the unwritten rules of spending like they’re supposed to.

I concluded the piece with these thoughts:

Continue reading “MLB’s owners want to put a cap on contract length”

The A’s are moving to Las Vegas, probably

Nothing is official, except for that Oakland told the A’s to get out and never come back.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

The A’s and Oakland have been at odds over a taxpayer-funded stadium and whether the team would stay or go for… Jesus, the entire time I’ve been writing professionally? I’ve been at this for longer than I haven’t been at this point, you know, this is like the Big Dig of stadium talks. And all of it for naught, too, as the A’s have decided to take their ball and go to a new home, this one in Las Vegas. Or, well, it was sort of decided for them, in a way. The A’s agreed to purchase land in Las Vegas with the intent of building a stadium on it, and the city of Oakland found out nearly the same way everyone else did: when they were told it was happening.

Continue reading “The A’s are moving to Las Vegas, probably”

PNC employees avert strike before Tuesday’s Pirates’ game

The deal hasn’t been ratified, and it has its issues, but a strike was at least temporarily averted.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

A strike was authorized in Major League Baseball, but you might have missed that news, since it wasn’t one that involved the players. Employees at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, authorized a strike and planned to picket outside of Tuesday’s game between the Pirates and Reds, but the strike ended up being averted due to a tentative deal reached with the club before any action beyond authorization could be taken. Strikes don’t have to happen to be effective, they just have to be a credible threat to be taken seriously.

And there wasn’t much the Pirates were going to be able to do on short notice when the ushers, ticket takers, and ticket sellers were showing up to picket outside of the stadium and explain to anyone trying to come to the game why they weren’t in their usual stations, ready to sell tickets or help visitors to their seats. So, a tentative agreement was reached, the strike was averted, and these employees will now vote on a deal that would go through 2025 and include retroactive pay for the 2022 season.

Continue reading “PNC employees avert strike before Tuesday’s Pirates’ game”

Opt-out clauses aren’t ‘problematic’

Are you really going to let Jim Bowden tell you how things should work?

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Former MLB general manager and professional interference runner for the league’s owners Jim Bowden had an article published at The Athletic on Thursday, decrying the rise of player opt-outs in extensions and free agent contracts. It’s a lengthy one, and while it does take opposing viewpoints into account to a degree — for example, there’s an executive in there saying if an opt-out is what it takes to sign a player, then the player will get an opt-out as the cost of doing business — it can essentially be boiled down to “players having options is bad.”

From Bowden:

Continue reading “Opt-out clauses aren’t ‘problematic’”

On MiLB’s new, bargained housing policy

A lack of player input into the housing policy helped spur on minor-league unionization, so it should be no surprise that the end result of a bargained housing policy is looking good.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Thanks to reporting by Evan Drellich at The Athletic, we now have more details on just what the improvements to the housing plan for minor leaguers is, courtesy of their now-ratified collective bargaining agreement. Some notes we’ve seen before, but they were more vague at the time — like the idea that all but the most well-paid minor-league players would have their housing paid for, for instance. What was that threshold, what percentage of minor leaguers would be considered “well-paid,” etc., those details were lacking when news was first announced.

Continue reading “On MiLB’s new, bargained housing policy”

Notes: Minor League CBA, ratification, the future of MLB labor

Notes on the MiLB CBA ratification, as well as some work from me from around the internet.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

Last Wednesday evening, it was reported that Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association — the representatives of the unionized minor-league baseball players — had come to a preliminary agreement for the first-ever collective bargaining agreement for MiLB. All that was needed was for the rest of the players and for MLB’s owners to vote on the agreed-upon deal in order to ratify it. We’re still waiting as of Monday morning for the owners to share their voted-upon feelings on the matter, but the players came through with 99 percent in favor, per a report from The Athletic’s Evan Drellich.

Continue reading “Notes: Minor League CBA, ratification, the future of MLB labor”