Author: Marc Normandin

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.

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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.

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The first MiLB CBA could be ratified by Friday

If the players and MLB’s owners agree that this is the deal, the first-ever MiLB CBA will be ratified before their Opening Day.

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By midnight entering Friday, the first-ever Minor League Baseball collective bargaining agreement could be ratified. It’s already been initially agreed to by the negotiating parties: now, the larger minor-league player base and MLB’s owners have to vote and agree to what’s been bargained. It’s a historic moment, and one that might take a little time to see some of the effects of —both because these things don’t come to light all at once and because there are some larger, structural changes that are going to take time to see the full effects of — though there are also immediate changes that are far more obvious.

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Mailbag: Kids with jobs

Celebrating kids celebrating a high school graduation is good, yes, but consider why it’s a notable story, too.

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Mailbag time! This one on international signings and how weird MLB’s behavior with literal children gets to be. If you have a mailbag question you’d like to see answered, either respond to this newsletter email, or hit me up on @Marc_Normandin on Twitter.

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The annual Forbes’ MLB valuations are out; don’t forget about context

Forbes’ annual report is a tool, not the finished product you’d build with them.

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Forbes’ annual look at the most valuable teams in MLB posted on Thursday, and it’s, as always, worth opening up and perusing. Seeing that there are increases in team valuations and the like is always fascinating — even if they’re just estimates — especially when they’re balanced against this idea that teams just aren’t making all that much money: an idea perpetuated by Forbes’ own report, even.

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From the highs of the WBC to the lows of the Angels

The Angels might be good in 2023. They also might just be the Angels, and then lose Shohei Ohtani forever.

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Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, the two best players on the Angels, faced off on Tuesday night in the World Baseball Classic final. Ohtani came in to close out a one-run game in the ninth, and he blew his teammate — one of the greatest hitters to ever take the field, whose only issue these days is actually being on the field — away with a couple of fastballs that gave away how much Ohtani wanted this match-up, and then a slider that not even Trout was going to be dialed in for. It’s going to be a lasting memory of the incredible 2023 WBC, and Angels fans are going to want to hold onto it, because they very well might need it.

The 2023 Angels might be pretty good! They usually aren’t, of course, but this year might be different. Ohtani has been teammates with Trout since 2018, and in that stretch, the Angels are 328-380. They haven’t posted a .500 record in those five years, never mind a winning one, and have lost 90 games in the season in which Ohtani didn’t take the mound, but could still show up to hit. Even with Trout batting .283/.369/.630 with a 178 OPS+ and Ohtani following up his MVP-winning 2021 with a .273/.356/.519 line and 2.33 ERA over 166 innings, powered by an AL-leading 11.9 strikeouts per nine, the 2022 Angels lost 89 games.

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Round-up: Diamond bankruptcy, WBC pitchers, cheap owners

Diamond finally declares bankruptcy, Team USA is struggling with pitching restrictions, and Bomani Jones has something to say to MLB’s cheap owners.

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We’ve got a few things to catch up on, so let’s hit the ground running.

Diamond declares bankruptcy

We knew it was going to happen eventually, but Diamond, the owners of Bally Broadcasting, which serves as the regional broadcasting network for a not insignificant number of MLB’s teams, declared bankruptcy. That sounds scary on the surface, but as I wrote about a few weeks back, it’s more of a sign of things to come than it is a notice of an interruption of how you consume baseball in 2023. Here’s Sportico’s Brendan Coffey with an explanation and quotes:

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The Yankees made a ton of money just from tickets in 2022

The Yankees have bills to pay, but they’re raking in way more than they’re spending from the looks of just their ticket revenue.

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The gate for a baseball team isn’t just tickets: there’s also parking and concessions and local merchandise to account for. And yet, just from tickets, the 2022 Yankees raked in $345 million. That’s not a rumor, it’s from a market disclosure the Yankees had to send to the state of New York, which owns Yankee Stadium thanks to the whole publicly funded thing. Via Sportico:

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There’s work to do to fix arbitration

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A few weeks back, I wrote about how arbitration shouldn’t go anywhere, despite MLB’s attempts to get rid of the system they’ve hated since its inception in the days of Marvin Miller. Hell, the fact MLB wants to get rid of arbitration remains the best proof that the system is worth salvaging. Arbitration certainly isn’t a perfect tool these days, though, as teams figure out how to manipulate hearings in a way that earns them victories. While things on the position player and starting pitcher side are a little more evenly split in terms of which side, teams or player, wins out, as Malachi Hayes wrote for Baseball Prospectus, relievers are doomed.

Read the entire feature, but here’s a snippet of the findings:

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MLB hasn’t given up on restricting minor-league pay yet

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If you needed a reminder that Major League Baseball is disingenuous in their public desire to make life better for minor-league players, you only have to check the news to find it. They might have chosen to voluntarily recognize that the players had unionized and sought representation under the Players Association, and they have certainly spoken on how they gave the players raises across the board and are now paying for their housing, look at us, aren’t we just the greatest? But that’s just the surface level stuff: underneath, they’re the same old MLB.

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MLB is trying to shrink the minors again

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We hadn’t heard a peep about the nature of the minor-league collective bargaining between Major League Baseball and the Players Association despite it going on for months now, but we finally got a tiny morsel to reflect on. Tony Clark spoke on various matters around the league, which Evan Drellich published at The Athletic, and it’s all worth looking at. The newest info in there, though, pertains to the ongoing bargaining, and an ask MLB is making that the union isn’t about to budge on:

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