Category: Management Bullshit

Steve Cohen really should have logged off

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Major League Baseball might be taking steps to improve the living and working conditions of present-day minor-league baseball players, but what about those that were already ground into a fine powder by those horrors? Consider, for a moment, that after essentially doubling minor leaguers salaries, making it so they were no longer responsible for paying the clubhouse attendant’s wages via tips, providing for at least some of the players’ food, and recently promising to pay for the housing of “certain” minor leaguers, Minor League Baseball is still nowhere near the situation they should be: housing covered for all players, a living wage, equipment paid for by the clubs instead of the players, and so on. Now, consider that the minor-league players who were around for years before all of MLB’s recent upgrades didn’t even have access to that much.

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Round-up: The Chop, Commissioners, MLB for cord cutters

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I wrote about the failure that is the Tomahawk Chop making its way to the 2021 World Series back on Monday, but I certainly have not been alone this week in publishing pieces on the subject. Rob Manfred opened his mouth before Game 1 to let some bullshit spill out, about how MLB’s teams only market themselves regionally, and therefore no one outside of Georgia should be concerned with the chop, but also, Native Americans everywhere definitely support the chop; that certainly gave some folks an angle to work with.

Clinton Yates was one of those people, for The Undefeated, in a piece headlined, “Manfred misses the mark with Braves.” The focus here is on how the chop and MLB’s insistence that this is all progress and everyone who needs to be fine with the chop is fine with it is simply an extension of white supremacy. Yates also spoke with Natalie Welch, who participated in the video MLB and the Braves are now touting as proof that the chop has the seal of approval of Native Americans:

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In CBA talks, all that matters is what’s said behind closed doors

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My latest for Baseball Prospectus took a look at the growing whispers around the ongoing collective bargaining occurring between Major League Baseball and the Players Association. It’s behind BP’s paywall for subscribers, but I can give you the gist of it and a quote before we dive in a little further:

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Names and cultures have changed, but the Tomahawk Chop persists

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The Atlanta Braves are in the 2021 World Series, which means the Tomahawk Chop is also going to be in the 2021 World Series. Atlanta was briefly forced to confront the racist chant back in the 2019 postseason, but the lack of fans at games in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic gave them an opportunity to bury all of that talk of potential change, and now here we are. The Washington Football Team is a thing, the Kansas City Chiefs have enacted some protocols to combat the culture of racism in their fan base, and the Cleveland Guardians will officially replace the Cleveland Indians in 2022, but the Braves? They are still the Braves, and they are still chopping.

Let’s go back to 2019 for a moment. It was then that Cardinals’ reliever Ryan Helsley, a member of the Cherokee Nation, spoke out against Atlanta’s use of the chop. The Braves’ response was… lacking:

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Maybe things are changing in the MiLB labor landscape

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It feels like we’re close to something in the Minor League Baseball labor movement, no? Maybe that’s just my optimism for a better future for those players talking, but there is a reason I’m as optimistic about it as I’ve been of late. That’s not to say I think it’s inevitable, but where in the past I’ve thought, “yes, it’s technically possible for organization and unionization in MiLB,” it’s starting to feel like it’s a thing that could actually happen at some point.

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Round-up: Athletes as workers, rediscovering America’s pastime, and the NWSL

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I’ve been pretty lax of late pointing y’all toward things I’ve been reading that I also think you should read, which was kind of the fault of a whole bunch of factors, but hey. Let’s change that up, and dedicate this whole newsletter entry to stuff I’ve been reading that I think you should read.

First up is Britni de la Cretaz and the return of Mic. Their first feature for the relaunched publication is on the fact we’re not used to seeing athletes as workers, even though they have to deal with management, even though they are not in control of capital within their own leagues, even though there are plenty of professional athletes out there who are making less money each year than some of the folks reading this right now. The topic is not only one that is close to me, but de la Cretaz spoke to me a bit about the subject, and I’m quoted in there a few times.

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The Rays two-city plan is in the news again

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I’m just going to outright say that I don’t know where this whole “Tampa Bay wants to be in Montreal, too” thing is going. Is Rays’ ownership simply trying to leverage one city against the other until their deal with Tropicana finally ends in a few years, in the hopes one will decide that they want this particular MLB team in their city full time by then? Is the idea to try to prove that St. Petersburg isn’t a fit for the Rays because they aren’t even really trying to stop them from spending half of their season in another country? Is Stuart Sternberg working for the United States government to invade Quebec with agents disguised as Floridian baseball fans, forcing Canada to secede the territory and breaking the longstanding agreement with America’s neighbor that defined the northern border of Maine centuries ago? Hey, that’s no less ridiculous than whatever else the plan might actually be, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that this is all an op.

I haven’t written about the two-city plan for a couple of years now, in part because there haven’t been any real updates, and also because what else was there to say?

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Please don’t try to rehabilitate Jeff Luhnow

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Listen, I understand what the New York Post’s Joel Sherman was going for in a recent piece on the Astros, I really do. He tried to couch it all, and repeatedly, in language that protected him from saying the sign-stealing the Astros performed in 2017 was acceptable. His goal was instead to point out that what Jeff Luhnow built was more than a team that stole signs through an elaborate ploy involving technology en route to a World Series championship. And that’s true! Jeff Luhnow, as general manager of the Astros, did help build a team that continues to be competitive to this day, even two years removed from his direct influence at the top of baseball operations.

Here’s Sherman on Luhnow:

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The Phillies reportedly reprimanded minor leaguers for wearing solidarity wristbands

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“The Phillies should know they’re being watched.” This is what the executive director of Advocates for Minor Leaguers, Henry Marino, told USA Today earlier this week, in response to the Phillies reportedly reprimanding minor-league players for wearing solidarity wristbands during the final game of the regular season.

The wrist bands, which are available to the public in exchange for a $10 donation to Advocates for Minor Leaguers, were used by the players to raise awareness of the terrible working and living conditions that minor-league players toil under. The Phillies did not appreciate the players standing up for themselves, nor bringing attention to their plight, and so, the players were reprimanded, according to the players themselves, who alerted Advocates about the situation.

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Be mindful of why you’re seeing leaks from MLB collective bargaining

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As more news of the ongoing collective bargaining between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association comes out, it’s important to remember that the news itself is part of the negotiation process. Leaks come out about salary negotiations and free agent discussions every winter with specific intent, not just so fans have something to pass the time with, and the talks between MLB and its players are no different.

A central part of two of my more recent Baseball Prospectus features touched on this: both were reactions to reported leaks from this year’s collective bargaining, and were I a betting man, I’d wager that both leaks came from MLB’s side. For one, the PA actively attempts to avoid leaks — remember just last year, when the PA only entered into the negotiation leaking game to put a stop to MLB’s tidal wave of negative info dumping? That’s how they operate, keeping the negotiations private as intended until they’re pushed to a point where doing so is no longer tactically sound. MLB, on the other hand, is constantly waging a public relations battle and thinking a number of moves ahead; ergo, they leak just enough to further whatever their goal happens to be. And second, both pieces of reporting assumed the reaction from the players’ side, without even an anonymous quote to go on. If one side isn’t talking, or isn’t giving you anything on the record, that’s what you’re going to have to do.

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