Alex and Bobby get together hours after the news of a new CBA between MLB and the MLBPA to discuss the end of the lockout, their instant reactions to some of the key points in the agreement, what this means about player-owner relations moving forward, and more. Baseball’s back, baby!
Songs featured in this episode:
Taylor Swift — “‘tis the damn season” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
[INTRO MUSIC]
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and and and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about. It’s amazing. That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, Alex, Alex, we did it. Collective Bargaining Agreement Poddddd!!! What’s up, dude?
ALEX: Dude, we have to go back to like talking about actual baseball. There are–
BOBBY: Not yet we don’t, not yet we don’t. We still have tonight, my friend.
ALEX: That’s tomorrow.
BOBBY: Tomorrow we might wake up and have to preview the National League Central. But tonight–
ALEX: But today–
BOBBY: –on this day, we have a collective bargaining–
ALEX: –99 days–
BOBBY: –agreement.
ALEX: –later.
BOBBY: We broken format for the intro because we’re breaking format in general, for this past year.
ALEX: If baseball has broken it’s its own format.
BOBBY: And us in the process.
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: This is the first official Tipping Pitches Emergency Pod, now five hours after the emergency occurred. But guess what? We have jobs that have to pay.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Our bills and this podcast is not one of those things that’s paying our bills.
ALEX: Years ago, I thought the the very first emergency pod we would do would be one Timothy Richard Tebow getting the call–
BOBBY: You’re exactly right.
ALEX: –to Queens, New York.
BOBBY: Can you imagine a baseball game being exciting enough for us to record emergency pod for it now?
ALEX: No, not anymore.
BOBBY: No, we wait for historic labor agreements within the sport of Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yes, we power through even if we’re sick as a dog. I’m I’m coming down off the high of a labor agreement and coming on to the high of some drugs that will put me out for the next 12 hours. So you know–
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: –we’re kind of at a sweet spot right now. Like–
BOBBY: I act [2:09]
ALEX: –I’ve no idea what’s gonna happen in the next 45 minutes.
BOBBY: Clock ticking before the NyQuil sets in for Alex.
ALEX: Yeah, right. I think this is your cue to just kind of stall, right? And push this out as long as possible. [2:21]
BOBBY: Don’t have to tell me twice my friend. We’re sitting here to record this at 8:45pm. Eastern Time. Listeners who listened to last week’s episode will know that we were back in person for that episode. As you just mentioned, you are sick. So we are back on Zoom back on Zoom for the collective–
ALEX: Cannot believe this.
BOBBY: –bargaining agreement is signed to pod. Even though I moved 3000 miles just for this podcast.
ALEX: Just for this, yeah.
BOBBY: We are going to talk about the highlights of the CBA where our emotions are at now that it is ratified and agreed to and the lockout is officially over. We are going to talk about how the news unfolded over the course of the day and the week. But before we do all of that. I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[3:06]
[Music Theme]
ALEX: So Commissioner deals, got it done.
BOBBY: He sure did. New York City
ALEX: [3:21] shear force of will.
BOBBY: 2:30pm. Eastern Time, 30 minutes before their deadline of 3pm. Their 3rd deadline? 4th?
ALEX: 3rd–
BOBBY: deadline?
ALEX: –maybe 5th or 6th.
BOBBY: They were all kind of invented at this point.
ALEX: I would like to tell my my boss at my day job to start taking a cue from Rob Manfred when it comes to my own deadlines. Because sometimes you just need to, to work through it a little bit more, right? Sometimes you just need it, need to bump the numbers up a decimal point or tier.
BOBBY: Yeah. But I think there comes a point, Alex, at which the risk/reward is just not high enough. And you just have to sign that deal. And that’s where the union was at this afternoon. Ah, man I don’t know where to start. Because, of course, we can go down the list of everything that is in this agreement. And we can talk about it in great detail as we have been all offseason. But I honestly think more constructively. I’d like to hear you describe what you were doing when you received that push alert from the recently hacked and since got his Twitter account back. Jeff Passan of ESPN.
ALEX: I mean ironically, I didn’t see it right away because I was in a meeting so I saw all the–
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: –the tweet notifications forming–
BOBBY: Corporate Alex doesn’t–
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: –care about baseball everybody.
ALEX: I saw the the notifications coming in and I was like, okay, sure, right like I it’s just Jon Heyman going off again and being like, today might be the day, optimism rains. I’m like, all right, dude–
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: –we get it!
BOBBY: Breaking news, Alex has tweet alerts set up for Jon Heyman.
ALEX: You know, these, these have been dark times, these last three months. I feel like a changed man.
BOBBY: You push this man to a brink and what did you expect?
ALEX: I know you’re, you’re actually it’s a good reminder for me to turn them off right now.
BOBBY: That’s a good question, actually. Who did you have before we get into the very, very, very important news that Tipping Pitches have been waiting three and a half years for. Whose Twitter notification did you have on for this whole process? I had Passan, Rosenthal, Evan Drellich. I think that’s it, those, those are my holy trinity right there.
ALEX: Yeah. Those are those are the those are the good ones. Relatively speaking,
BOBBY: Rosenthal, the father.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Drellich the son because of their relationship of The Athletic and yeah, Passan of course, the the Holy Spirit.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I regrettably, as you mentioned, I had Jon Heyman on as well as–
BOBBY: Don’t tell me–
ALEX: –after–
BOBBY: –you gonna say Bob Nightengale?
ALEX: –after that–
BOBBY: Don’t tell me, man.
ALEX: –fateful night. Because–
BOBBY: You know you.
ALEX: –see, here’s the thing is, when it comes to news regarding ownership.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: He he’s kind of your guy, right?
BOBBY: Right on the pulse. Yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I don’t remember who said this. And I think I saw it on Twitter. But like, there’s a reason why Nightengale gets so much of the player news wrong and is always spot on with all the ownership news.
BOBBY: Yeah. I think it was Nathan Bernhardt. Yeah, there you go. On Twitter a couple weeks ago, and when Bob was seemingly breaking that the deal was very, very close on the one yard line. And clearly that that didn’t happen. I kind of missed it- like I I I saw the Passan tweet when it came through. But it kind of caught me off guard because I wasn’t able, I had a really busy day. I wasn’t able to really follow the drip drip drip that was kind of leading up to it. I kind of thought it was just gonna be another one of those, despite the fact that I was tweeting BRAND THAT DEAL ZONE, in all caps this morning. Once they had sorted out the international draft, and qualifying offer problem.
ALEX: Sorted it out by just the punter out on the road.
BOBBY: Not doing it, right, exactly. Changing the deadline for that one piece. That’s always, the rules are very fluid here. It’s like you can kind of just, it is what you make it. And I think they got to that point where they were close enough in their proposals were delaying the season anymore was not really a positive cost benefit for either side. And so I think that’s why you saw them punt on the issue that seemingly was holding the entire situation up. But I mean, I I want to know, like, wha- were you excited? Like, was your first emotion, joy, baseball is back? I saw your joke about the A’s. But–
ALEX: Right. I mean, I did go to mets.com to see if, if tickets were available yet. And and they were not, as of, you know, 4:30pm or whatever. I I think I felt happy. But like I don’t really know, like insofar as you can be happy for a, a labor deal to be negotiated in the sport that you have tied your identity to, you know. That ultimately is not going to go near far enough to actually fix the systemic issues in the sport. But will at the very least give some players some positive gains in things that they were trying to accomplish, right? So I guess in that regard, it was nice to see the players get it, get what amounts to a win. Which is like still probably an overall loss for them, just given what we know about how much money is coming into and out of the sport, right? Just this week. And I, we’re gonna record a normal episode on Sunday where we’ll get into this more but but you know, you had two deals break about MLBs streaming deals with Apple TV, and Peacock.
BOBBY: They worked hard to get that plus in there can you please show them some fucking respect, Apple TV+.
ALEX: You’re right, I won’t, I won’t silly Tim Cook’s hallmark project, I guess. I don’t really know what Apple does anymore. All this to say like, you know, we can get into the the details of it a little bit more. I know you have them up in front of you. But I think it’s important to say that like when it comes to the things that you and I talk about day in and day out and have been for the last few years. A lot of those issues still remain and and and can’t really be legislated away, right? Like things like encouraging teams to be competitive. Encouraging them to not manipulate service time. You know that as soon as the ink is dried on this deal, owners will find a way to try and manipulate it because that’s that’s what they do, right? I mean, it’s not a surprise to anyone. So–
BOBBY: I mean, they have the number for Deloitte to find it, to find a way, the the number for Deloitte is typed into their cell phones right now to find a way to get around some of the stuff. The most efficient way to get around some of the stuff that they just agreed to, not three hours ago.
ALEX: Right, exactly. So I think that’s why my expectations and my excitement has been tempered a little bit. But like, I’m excited, it’s back. I am excited that I am going to be able to watch baseball in a month.
BOBBY: Yeah, I’ll say, and it’s very hard to have perspective on any of this stuff right now. I said this on on Twitter, when I like kind of threaded my reaction to everything that was coming out about what is in the steel. It’s, it’s impossible to know whether this is a win, or a loss, or whatever that even means in these terms, to, to win. If you ratify a CBA and enough of your members are happy about it, on paper, that’s a win. There are of course, like a lot of things that can change. And like you said, the owners will be immediately looking for ways to exploit this. And that is always going to be a problem in every labor capital dynamic in the United States in any other modern capitalist country. But the fact that you can get together a document that enough people sign off on that they are going back to work, and they are no longer locked out of their jobs. And we as fans are no longer prevented from being able to watch baseball. I think that it is enough to elicit a little bit of joy inside of you and not to feel bad about that immediately. Might feel–
ALEX: Oh, buddy, you are under estimating my pessimism. I got it.
BOBBY: We might feel bad in two years for this podcast. And we might come back and be like, This is the worst CBA ever signed in the history of humanity. We didn’t see this $50 billion streaming to Mars deal that they were signing with Amazon–
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: –coming. And the players have no access to any of that stuff.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We had no idea any of that was coming. But how do we ever? All you have really is what the players are willing to stand up for. And I think we saw that when kind of awkwardly, the Executive Subcommittee voted 8-0, not to agree to the steel. And then it went to the the player representatives from the 30 teams, which is a different group of 30 players. The Executive Subcommittee is a separate thing. They’re elected to be just members of the Executive Subcommittee, they represent the Union as a whole. They don’t represent the interests of just their specific team necessarily. Now, honestly–
ALEX: A lot of them are are veteran players, too, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Whereas I believe many of the the 30 team representatives are younger, more pre-arb oriented guys, right? So you can breathe into that what you will it’s so, again, it’s so hard to to make something of a vote like this. I I guess this is your opportunity to get your takes in about how Scott Boras had his finger on the scale for this one.BOBBY: So the Executive Subcommittee is made up of Andrew Miller, Max Scherzer, Francisco Lindor, Marcus Semien, Zach Britton, James Paxton, Gerrit Cole, and Jason Castro. And those are the eight guys who were most frequently in the room, bargaining. So they’re most intimately familiar with each individual MLB proposal and how they responded to it and what problems they were trying to solve with it. And then the 30 teams all have their own individual representative. And this changes year to year a different person is elected, because oftentimes the guy will get traded or no longer wants to do it, or it’s transitioning into a different phase of his career and wants to focus on whatever. So it went to the vote there because in the MLB Players Association union constitution. It says that in order to ratify a contract, you need a simple majority of those 38 people. The eight people on the Executive Subcommittee and the 30 members who represent their individual teams. Now, there’s also language in there about how all of those people are also considered on the bargaining Committee, which is incredibly chaotic. As someone who’s been inside of a bargaining committee like thinking about that there being 38 people is insane. We had 10, our bargaining committee, but alas, it’s a much bigger union, with much more interests in many different parts of the country. And the world as we saw with the international players draft. So the 30 team members voted yes, 26 to 4, in a, in a very stark departure from the Executive Subcommittee. I don’t really think it’s valuable, to try and glean all that much from that difference there, I the the thing that I feel most comfortable saying is the Executive Subcommittee was in the room, they saw the way that MLB wanted to treat the union throughout these negotiations. They saw the motivation behind each individual thing. They voice their frustration, over the shady behavior by trying to tie some of these things to other things at the 11th hour. And trying to manipulate the media to make it seem like the PA was rejecting them at every single turn, when they were throwing these new wrenches into the equation, any opportunity that they got. And so therefore, the players on the Executive Subcommittee, probably were much more wary than anybody seeing this deal for the first time, or seeing this most recent proposal, divorced of the 15 proposals that came before it. And I think that those 30 guys probably, probably were like, this is a good enough deal to get us back on the field, get our younger players paid a lot better than they have been, in the last couple of years. This is the single biggest increase to the minimum salary that we’ve seen in the 21st century. And I think that’s what happened. I mean, you you could see some, you could read into each individual line of each individual player’s comments for the next five years. But I don’t really even know how constructive that is. Because all of these guys are rowing in the same direction, even if sometimes they’re arguing about the best way to row that way.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it comes down to just like a a vote, right? Like people are, you get 38 people together in a room, and you ask them to vote on something. And there are going to be split interests based on personal political orientations or based on your, you know, experience in the league, or based on how much you are currently making right now, or whatever it is. But you can slice and dice it in any way you want. But I think you’re right, that there was kind of a lot of buzz about that specific nugget coming out of the deal. And it just felt mostly like a way to try and sow division among players. Which who have largely remained incredibly unified in their, in their messaging.
BOBBY: Yeah, and I think it was reported immediately after that one of the biggest reasons as to why the Executive Subcommittee voted unanimously against it was that they felt like the Competitive Balance Tax could be higher. And guess what? They’re right! But the rest of the union didn’t think that that was a big enough priority right now, to not agree to the deal. To not enshrine all of the other things that we’re about to talk about that are advancing the union’s causes. Now, we could argue till we’re blue in the face, about how much the Competitive Balance Tax really will do to help young players, younger veterans, veterans and older veterans. I don’t know how constructive that is, because like you said, teams will always find a way to manipulate around it no matter what that number is. But I think from a principled perspective, like from a philosophical negotiating perspective, when you’re bargaining against MLB, I think it’s hard to see all these big revenues, and the increase in revenue in the last 10 years. And they’re announcing all of these gambling partnerships in the Apple TV+ partnership. And for them to push back so hard on Competitive Balance Tax for you to then vote yes, for a contract where the CBT is only going up, like $10 million, or $15 million, or $20 million, or whatever it is, throughout the lifespan of this deal. When you know that there’s there’s what a 100% chance that the revenues are going to outpace that. And if you’re on the Executive Subcommittee, you almost certainly know that. Because you’ve been deep in the weeds of this for the last 99 days. And I that’s what I would attribute that difference to. We’ve probably spent enough time talking about that vote. And with, with–
ALEX: Well, especially just without talking about what it is they were actually voting on. I mean, do you want to get into it?
BOBBY: No, I I think it’s I think we should get into it. The owners for what it’s worth voted 30-0 to ratify the CBA. They only needed 23, but they got all 30. Which I mean, it just goes to show like how easily, how easy it is for the Management side to tighten screws and remain aligned in this current moment of Major League Baseball. Like they’ve centralized the revenue so much that there’s, for all the talk about the differences between small market and big market owners. For all the talk about the Steve Cohen tax, that they put the third tier of the Competitive Balance Tax, which we’re about to get to. He’s still voted yes. He’s still aligned with all of his other 29 billionaires to keep this sport going in the same direction. So just remember that–
ALEX: 100, 700 billionaire to you, Bobby.
BOBBY: Right, right. I’m sorry, to Bob Castellini and Mark Attanasio, he was under a billion. I think that’s it.
ALEX: I mean, Management has always been incredibly effective at showing solidarity, when it comes to fights against labor. And that’s really just what it boils down to.
BOBBY: Right. Okay. CBA highlights time. Do you want to start with the Competitive Balance Tax? Or do you want to end with it?
ALEX: You know, I feel like we’ve spent so much time dancing around it. Like, let’s just, let’s, let’s get our hands dirty. Let’s do it.
BOBBY: This Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball in the Major League Baseball Players Association will start the Competitive Balance Tax at 230 million, and it’ll go up 244 million over the lifespan of the deal. There are no meaningful changes to the non-monetary penalties in the Competitive Balance Tax. So a similar structure to the last agreement, which is you lose traffics after your repeat offender after certain amount of time. Probably not worth getting into the weeds on this. I also failed to actually find if the tax percentages were the exact same. I did see Ken Rosenthal reporting that they were similar. So I don’t know if you saw differently, did you?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: That’s the kind of thing that we’ll sweep up on Sunday, hopefully, after we’ve read the Collective Bargaining Agreement, once it gets released. The other main change that they did was that they added a third surcharge level for once you go a certain amount over top of it. So that was what I was referring to as the Steve Cohen tax. Alex, your thoughts on probably the the biggest, most talked about issue, economic issue in this round of collective bargaining?
ALEX: Uh, it’s fine. Like, certainly hot take, but like, should it be higher? Yeah. Like, could every team afford for it to be higher? Yeah. Despite Rob Manred’s comments about, you know, market deals, playing out in market fashion. I don’t really know what his exact quote was, right. But his point was that the players would like to see a free market. And you’re gonna see that reflected in the the onfield product.
BOBBY: Markets produce market results, the MLB, the MLBPA, historically one of the market-based system. I think that the changes that were made in this agreement move dramatically in their direction convenient for you to think that.
ALEX: Alright, buddy, well we’ve seen drastically different market results across the board for the last decade plus, so–
BOBBY: I love the way that he weaponizes, like the free market language. Like as if this is a free market, or as it free markets even exist to begin with. But as if even if you did think they exist, that this would be how you would describe it. But th- they are fixing the market. That’s the whole point of being a baseball owner.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That you can decide along with your 30 other cohorts, what the market is.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it’s obviously not really near what the players originally set out to gain. And it’s not near the levels at which it probably shou- should be set, given what we do know about the money that is coming into MLB right now. But they managed to move on it, right, more than $10 million. It’s a small victory, but I, I think a lot of what the players were trying to do is undo some of the things that came up in the last couple CBAs. So you were never really going to see radical changes to the economic structure, right? Because the owners weren’t going to allow that to happen. So if it, you know, all that means is a somewhat modest bump in the CBT, then, you know, so be it.
BOBBY: I think it’s a little bit more than modest. I mean, it’s a $16 million jump in the first year, it’ll be up at 244 million by the end. Do I think that that is an appropriate number for how the CBT was originally conceived or supposedly was supposed to exist? No, I I don’t. But I think that if that number is going to be treated like a quote unquote, “salary cap” that the big market teams are supposed to spend up to. I think that that would be good for the game, if those teams actually spent like that. The big problem with the CBT and we’ve talked about this numerous times in our CBA-ABC episode about this. In our appearance on the Phillies Nation Podcast, is the big market team that spends $30 million less than the CBT. That decides to set their own hard cap that is $20 to $30 million underneath that. If all those teams were spending up to that, yeah, we could haggle over whether that number is the right number. But it would be much less urgent of a problem. And the union would have had to spend much less political capital on trying to raise that number. So that the three teams that actually do go towards it are the four teams now that the Mets are owned by someone who actually has money in their bank account. I think that as long as those teams and teams of their ilk are spending that and spending over that when they want to be in a championship window, so to speak, then I think that this is an okay number. I don’t look at this and say it was all for not it’s certainly not the the radical transformative CBT number that we were hoping for two years ago when we were talking about the potential work stoppage strike lockout talk. But it’s not bad.
ALEX: Yeah, I think that’s where I come down on it too. And again, like we prefaced at the top of the episode, it’s so hard to read the tea leaves this early on. Because we really don’t know how owners are going to treat this. We don’t know how close teams are going to be willing to get to that. We don’t know how many teams are actually going to be willing to say fuck it, and blow through, you know, the first second, third tier of taxation. The fact that they were able to raise the CBT, the fact that the players were able to raise the CBT, you know, upwards of 15 million is like, ultimately a good thing, right? Like–
BOBBY: Right. And I think, if we were to look at this for for the CBT. And then just kind of for the rest of the pot of what is in the CBA, if we look at it from the perspective of what were the goals of the union that they set out to accomplish this. And one of them was to stop the Competitive Balance Tax from functioning as a salary cap. And pivot it more back towards preventing runaway spending, as it was supposedly designed to do. In the late 1990s when it blew up the ’94 season. It was a, it was a Yankees tax, basically. And I think now with this number, jumping $20 million next year, I think it’s going to expose a lot of those teams that were at, like 190. And saying that they had no mon– no more money to go. Because all of a sudden the Competitive Balance Tax is now, two really good players hire, and you’re not even signing one really good pl- you know what I mean? Like, I think that it aims at accomplishing that goal. Even if I don’t really know that there’s any kind of hard set number that could accomplish that goal, without owners also behaving appropriately alongside it.
ALEX: Right. And the tough thing is like, there isn’t really anything that’s incentivizing those teams to spend more money. Other than you hope that the market forces them to, the market, quote unquote, “forces them to”, right? Which is those, as you said, those big teams actually going out and making a competitive push. Now, it’s, it’s made kind of interesting with the expansion of the the postseason, because obviously, we have, we are encouraging teams to spend more. At the same time we’re widening the field of teams that can actually get into the playoffs. Which doesn’t exactly incentivize going all out and blowing over 220, 230 million. I can say it’s a blessing that we did not get a 14 team playoff. Because that may–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –have, that may have been it for me, I would have.
BOBBY: I do think, again, and this comes back to how front office’s and ownership are willing to conceive of their motive heading into every season and heading into every trade deadline, honestly. Because it’s now a bigger failure if you don’t make the postseason. Like 12 team postseason means that you’re a lot closer to contention. You don’t have to win your division, you know. You don’t have to chase the team that lost their division because the Dodgers won 110. You know what I mean? Like you now should probably make the playoffs if you’re trying. In the current structure of Major League Baseball, so many teams, a third of the league are completely punting on every season, that now if you don’t want to completely punt, there are enough players out there for you to go get a roster good enough to make the 12 team postseason. And I think that we should frame it as such going forward. Not that we have had a problem with framing competitive behavior. But I think that’s a good opportunity to start talking now about one of the other goals of the Union, which was to curb some of that anti-competitive behavior behavior to try to make it less financially beneficial to tank. And I I gotta be honest, this is what the one of the ones that I’m most skeptical on in this Collective–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Bargaining Agreement. Because nothing transformative was brought into this about anti-competitive behavior. There’s no real penalty that I can see with this, that if you just filter it through the lens of what did the Astros do? What did the Cubs do? What are the Orioles doing right now? Would the draft lottery have stopped them from doing that? I I don’t think it would, like the Astros did their rebuild. And the guy that they got with the top overall pick, wasn’t even part of the good team. They got the rest of their team with just other first-rounders that wouldn’t have been affected by this draft lottery at all. So again, I think that there are still massive, massive loopholes, even in this new Collective Bargaining Agreement that can be exposed by teams who don’t think winning is important. And I think that that’s kind of like the original sin of ownership right now.
ALEX: Right. And and that gets back to what I was trying to say up top, right? Is that like, there is really no rule that you can put in place to compel owners to be on their best behavior, right? Because that’s just not honestly, that’s not why they’re there, necessarily. Just the, with the way that profits have been decoupled from winning. They, the incentive isn’t there for them to go out and try and put the best product on the field. Maybe it’s there, if you have a bit of an ego, right? I mean, I think that’s why there’s a bit of optimism around a guy like Steve Cohen, who many Mets fans are hoping just goes balls to the wall, are they spending, right? Again, we’ll see, but I think a lot of the systemic issues that have troubled the sport over the last few years, remain. Even if you’re rewarding teams with draft picks for not manipulating service time. Which I still cannot wrap my head around, I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that we are rewarding teams for not doing something that was already against the rules, you know? Like that, if you actually were interested in solving this issue, Rob Manfred, instead of litigating this with the Players Association, he would go to the owners and say, You gotta cut this shit out. And and I have a dozen other owners who are on my side about this. So you know, put up or shut up. And obviously, that’s not going to happen, because Robin Manfred would be out on this ass. But I–
BOBBY: The service time manipulation element of this is probably one of the most disappointing and frustrating things to talk about when we talk about labor relations. Because it is so out of anyone’s control. Anyone who anyone who cares. You know, it’s so out of anybody who has a righteous or moral worldview of service time manipulation, to actually affect change when it comes to any of this stuff. Because it is so ambiguous as to why you would promote someone to the major leagues. If you, if you really think about it, what is ready mean? What do we know about ready? It’s so nuanced, it’s so specific. And so it’s very easy to obscure and like, do I think that promoting young players should lead to reward like a reward like a draft pick, like you’re talking about, that they just agree to in this collective bargaining agreement? No, like, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, to reward bad behavior. Basically, incentivize them to continue to find loopholes so that they can bargain good thing for themselves in the future. And make that a new, make that basically status quo when it comes to labor relations. I think that’s fucked up. But also, we could do this podcast for the next two hours. And I don’t think that I could spit ball a better idea for how to fix service time manipulation. Kris Bryant lost and that was the most clear cut, service time manipulation, since you and I have graced this earth.
ALEX: Kevin Mather’s autobiography is going to be titled: What do we know about ready?
BOBBY: No, dude, his autobiography is going to be titled: I know about ready, and–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –I don’t care.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So we’ve now knocked off three of the union’s stated top priorities, three out of four. The fourth one, which I think was the most righteous and easy one to get behind was get players paid younger. Younger players have been the most hard done by the trends of the last two, but three, really three CBAs as we’ve seen, your man’s Billy Beane’s Moneyball ethos, really take hold in every single front office, and have that Moneyball analytics forward mindset really become like a religion that these teams follow in how they select their players. It’s really like, which players the cheapest, the youngest guy? How can we get the youngest guy to be as good as possible, but make sure it’s still the youngest guy so that we can still be paying him pre=arb arbitration salaries. And the union was like, that’s a huge problem. These guys are contributing more value onto the field and for the product than they ever have in the history of baseball, we have to try to fix this. So they spent a ton of time. And I think rightfully so focusing on getting the minimum salary up, there was at $575,000 in 2021, and heading into 2022 now with the new CBA, it will start at $700,000, it will go up $20,000 every year for the lifespan of this agreement, so that it will end at $780,000. Just the jump from last year to this year, will be the biggest percentage increase, like I said, in the 21st century for the minimum salary, they did good. And they also conceived of this idea of this pre-arbitration bonus pool $50 million spread out to the top performing players who are still not yet arbitration eligible. I think of all four priorities that the union had heading into these negotiations, I think this is the one that you can really look at. And check that box and say, we’re really proud of this.
ALEX: I agree with the exception of how the pre-arb pool is going to be distributed.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because the money is going to go to, as you said, pre-arb players who perform well, but really, who perform well and voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, right? So an MVP or a Cy Young winner will get a couple million dollars. The the second place, players will receive a slightly lower sum, third, fourth, and fifth, get a slightly lower sum and and Rookie of the Year it gets a set number, second place Rookie of the Year. And then all MLB team, you know, the thing that you and I care you and I and many fans care a lot about those guys get rewarded as well. That, which I should point out is voted on half by media members and half by fans?
BOBBY: Ohhh… ohhh…
ALEX: The rest of, the rest of the pool is distributed by WAR, which in itself is still like a question of how that’s going to be determined if it’s going to be a proprietary number, if it’s going to be a just a blend of all the types of WAR. [38:36]–
BOBBY: Yeah! [38:36] on the pod! Yeah.
ALEX: But I don’t know, I there’s something that is a little icky to me about tying a player’s salary, or or bonus to something that can be decided on by, say, members of the media. Who there are many of whom I have much respect and admiration for. And many of whom I don’t, and don’t really think they should have a [39:07] and they actually think a lot of members of the BBWAA would agree with that point that they don’t necessarily want to be a part of that process, if that makes sense. So that’s really the I think the only point in that kind of getting younger players paid more section that I’m not entirely sold on yet. Everything else, let’s do it.
BOBBY: Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is a huge problem in basketball. They have a structure in their CBA where, since they are a salary cap league, there is a maximum contract that you’re allowed to receive. You’re only allowed to make a certain percentage of the salary cap. Now, if you finish on the 1st Team All-NBA or you finish within the first three teams All-NBA in your first five seasons, whatever, you are allowed to be offered what’s called the supermax extension as a player who was coming up off of their Rookie contract, or about to sign their second contract or whatever.
ALEX: That’s an iPhone ass name right there, was just a max, supermax, supermax plus.
BOBBY: Uhm, this is a significantly different sum of money. Like the regular max for a while there was like five years 190. The supermax was like five years to 45. This is a lot of money that is on the line here. And it’s voted exclusively by media members. And media members like Zach Lowe have been talking on their podcasts and in their columns for a long time about how that’s a really, really, really heavy burden for the media. And it doesn’t even really seem fair, because how much does the media really understand about how much a player means to a team financially? Like that doesn’t seem like we should cross those streams. And it seems odd that baseball would choose to opt into that problem when they didn’t have it before. But I guess the counter to that argument would be the flip side is do you make it just based on WAR then? Do you make it just based on statistical value? Because then you start running into problems like we’ve talked about in the past, or like when they first floated this arbitration based on war system that was roundly rejected and mocked by everybody in media. And in the Players Association as well, where, you know, relievers have no chance. Service time manipulation suddenly means millions and millions of dollars back in the owners pockets. Like all of these things that then crop up if you do it just based on statistics. So I suppose like a blend of these, these things, is better than relying just solely on one of them. But the real answer would have been just knock off years of of service time, or and let them negotiate it with their agents or get to arbitration earlier, and the Players Association–
ALEX: Double the minimum salary and put it at like a million, right? Like–
BOBBY: Right, and the Players Association, unfortunately, backed off all of those proposals.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So, yeah, it’s not as strong as it could have been. It is not, as I’ve mentioned a couple times now in this podcast, the radical transformative, Collective Bargaining Agreement that we were hoping for two years ago. But I think a lot of young players will be excited about the increase in salary minimums and the potential to perform up to more bonuses. Which they haven’t really ever had that structure didn’t really exist. It’s creative and it’s a way for younger players to get more money in their pockets earlier in their career, in the event that they don’t ever sign that huge, Max Scherzer deal.
ALEX: Yeah, I agree. I think this sets the table for young players pretty well, going forward. And hopefully, sets a sort of precedent for what actually can be negotiated in the CBA when this comes up again. Because it it will, right? This is not going to exist in perpetuity, this is going to be opened right back up in a few years, most likely. And many of these same issues might be on the table. So I think there was a big kind of moral victory in a sense that the players really could go toe to toe with management, and not back down and actually win some concessions, right? After all of the blustering from owners about fake deadlines, and threats of canceled games, and not receiving a full season’s pay. The players actually made it work, they got many of the things that they were looking for, Again, even if it was not the militantly radical CBA that we wanted, and we’re never going to get, right?
BOBBY: Maybe next time.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. We got to have Max, Andrew, Francisco on, we’ll chat them up.
BOBBY: Perhaps the Players Association could consult us before their next round of collective bargaining.
ALEX: Let me tell you, if the Players Association is going to consult anyone that before their next round of collective bargaining, I would like to be the last person on the list.
BOBBY: I’m with you there. Uhm, a couple more miscellaneous things Speed Round really quickly for you, Alex. Don’t have time to go in depth really on any of these things. And nor do we have the details, really, at this moment more on Sunday. But I did see some reports coming out that the Players Association expanded the union’s ability to negotiate with sports betting agencies. That seems bad. Just a day or two after Calvin Ridley of the NFL was suspended an entire year for illegally betting on NFL games. Seems like a bad idea. However, if the owners are going to pump their own pockets for sports betting money. I don’t totally fault the players for being like, I’m the person that’s bringing this product and making it possible. Why can’t I actually be financially compensated? You’re making money off of me?
ALEX: Yeah. And look if Jeff Passan can shill for NFtT on his Twitter account, like the players can get paid from sports betting.
BOBBY: Now is where I do the Jeff Passan.
ALEX: Do it!
BOBBY: Emergency–
ALEX: [45:22] cap on.
BOBBY: –emergency alarm. pause the podcast, pause the CBA discussion. Now is where I do that Jeff Passan was hacked because he wrote a column panning MLB owners last week, and he was going hard at them, he was on our to see too last week saying that the media has been too kind to owners for the last two decades. Jeff, you’re part of the media and you’ve been a mainstream baseball reporter with hundreds–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –thousands of followers for like over a decade. You were a big–
ALEX: [45:54]
BOBBY: –part of this my guy. But the owners were like enough of bass, Jeff Passan, we need to knock him back down a peg. So now we’re gonna make him into an NFT shell so that nobody takes him seriously. They hired–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –some black site, defense tech contractor to send him a phishing link. I don’t know what that link was to. And I don’t care. But he clicked it, I think.
ALEX: See, I really do care. I’m so curious. What, what is the link that a guy like Jeff Passan, who is by all accounts a very skilled reporter and seemingly smart dude. Like, what is the random link that he got? That was like, yeah, this looks legit to me, right? It it wasn’t, I need you to wire me 5 million US dollars right now. Enter your Twitter credentials, right?
BOBBY: John Henry is stuck in Europe. He’s lost his wallet. He needs to get back to the United States to sign the CBA and ratify it. Please wire him $1 million in Bitcoin today and he–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –will pay it back tenfold so that he can fly his private jet back to Boston.
ALEX: Hello, Jeff. I am Rob Manfred. Here is a look at the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. Click here for see. Don’t worry about–
BOBBY: I’m still curious, PDF name accidentally talk to texted while driving and parking in Manhattan.
ALEX: I want to know, I want to know. Jeff, if you feel comfortable telling the people that this is the place to do it.
BOBBY: Who would we be if we did not derail the podcast for three minutes to talk horse shit about Jeff Passan. The players are dropping their grievance from 2020, in the pandemic return to play. They filed a grievance for $1 billion over lost revenue because the owners were negotiating in bad faith on that return to play and always planned to institute a 60 game season. Despite claiming they wanted to play as many games as possible. The players are dropping that we kind of knew that this would happen, it still stings. Do you have thoughts on that? Or you want to just save that for Sunday?
ALEX: I think it does stink. I think it equally stinks that the owners perhaps unsurprisingly, decided to slip that asking at the last minute as they are want to do, right? At the 11th hour say, oh, by the way, can we also have this, right? When you are so close to the end zone on a deal? Now, they, the owners asked for the players to drop both lawsuits, right? There’s one from 2018 regarding revenue sharing, right. There are a few teams that were essentially accused of just pocketing the money. That one is still ongoing, which I think is probably the more important one of the two–
BOBBY: In terms of precedent.
ALEX: –but–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –in terms of precedent, yes. But it still stinks and it’s just kind of shady that this is how that issue ended up being resolved, right? That it just kind of fizzled out with this CBA.
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s just like, yeah, they can get away with it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just like they get away with a lot of stuff in a lot of aspects of our lives. And I think the Players Association probably thought that this was a long shot to ever win in the courts because of all of the built in benefits that owners have. Like the antitrust exemption like courts not wanting to anger large political donor. Like millions of different reasons, billions of different reasons, you could say. So they dropped it in order to not hurt players being locked out in real time, who wanted to get back to playing. But I I do think it just kinda just feels like a little bit like you got the the wind knocked out of you, when you find out that this is dropped right at the last second. The last two things, players can only be optioned back down to the minor leagues five times per season. This was previously they were previously allowed to be options six times this will improve the quality of life of a lot of guys who get shuffled back and forth. Just one less time for you to get sent back down to Triple-A, so that the Rays can bring up another bullpen arm, which is good. I mean, that’s it’s not a huge, probably not going to be a huge financial win. But it is a quality of life and a qualitative win in a way. And then, like we mentioned at the beginning, the qualifying offer in exchange for the International draft that is still open, they have until July to decide what to do with that if they can’t come to an agreement on what the international draft should look like. Then the qualifying offer will be reinstated back as it was, in the previous agreement, the qualifying offer being a contract that a team can offer to an upcoming free agent, that if they turn down that contract, then that team gets an extra draft pick. This is anti-player because that contract that they offer, the qualifying offer is usually not actually up to market value for that player. So most people turn it down and then the teams get an extra draft pick. And it’s like you get more team control out of it. It’s the whole thing. It’s very complicated. We’ll get more into that on Sunday. Once I’ve had time to read about what the fucking international draft is and what it actually looks like. Because this is a real area of weakness for Tipping Pitches, let me tell you. I want to close with this, Alex, as we our 30-minute reaction pod is now approaching 60 minutes. Alden Gonzalez and ESPN baseball reporter tweeted a screenshot of a quote from the Rod Manfred press conference, which I was not able to to check out. Let’s do another stuff. Here’s that quote, “One of the things that I’m supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players. I’ve tried to do that. I think that I have not been successful in that. I think that it begins with small steps. It’s why I picked up the phone after the ratification and call Tony, and express my desire to work with him. It’s gonna be a priority of mine moving forward to try and make good on the commitment I made to him on the phone.” Your thoughts?
ALEX: That’s rich, Rob, after the ratification and he picked up the phone and says, Hey, why don’t we get along? Why do we fight? After slipping in those demands to drop the lawsuits at the 11th hour. After months of stonewalling the players getting up onto a podium and saying outright lies that Manfred was called out about in almost real time? I don’t know, all I can really say is like, I’ll believe it when I see it, dude. You’ve given neither the fans nor the players, any reason to trust you. So he has a lot of work to do when it comes to rebuilding that goodwill. Which, I mean, I guess I believe him when I say he doesn’t want an acrimonious relationship with the players, because I think that kind of sucks for his brand. But I think it also means it’s because the players are fighting back and asking for more of the pie, which I think he doesn’t want either.
BOBBY: So I had a bunch of thoughts. When I first saw this quote, I’ve gone back and forth a few times, because I’ve been on the other end of signing a CBA. And it is kind of freeing in that way. Once you have this piece of paper that governs your entire working relationship. And you then know whatever built in acrimony there is into the labor capital dynamic in this world that we have here. You at least know that you now have scaffolding to guide you in that in building that relationship back up. However, I was reminded of Rob Manfred’s quote that I read and I forget who put this in their story earlier this week, when the negotiations fell through at one of the fake deadlines, one of the seven fake deadlines that we’ve had in this process. Where Rob said when he came in, and he took over for Bud Selig, one of the things that he wanted to prioritize most was the positive relationship with players. He felt like there’s been so acrimonious, so much acrimony in the history of this game, which I thought was hilarious because he’d been negotiating for the owners for the last 20 years. This is the guy that negotiated all of the shitty deals for the players. On behalf of the owners, he was on the other side, taking the tomb, one CBA clause at a time. And for him to come in and say that at the beginning of his commissionership tenure, that’s when you got to start doing that. You have to start building that relationship from the jump man. And now it’s certainly looks like you’re just saying that because it’s a cute thing to say, once you’ve signed the CBA. And he went on to call the CBA. an olive branch to the Players Association. And when I saw that I was like, Okay, I’m fully flipped on the other side, fuck this guy. This is not an olive branch to the MLBPA, this is a collectively bargained agreement that they stood together and bargain against you. You did not give them this.
ALEX: You were legally required to come to the table and do this. Like, [55:21]
BOBBY: If you had just give me giving them olive branches this whole time, we wouldn’t have had a fucking lockout. We wouldn’t have had a quote unquote, “defensive lockout”. We wouldn’t have had 43 days of silence from the ownership side. We wouldn’t have had bad actors for the entire last CBA and the CBA before that. We wouldn’t have had potential free agent collusion. When all we had the free agent spending strike from the ownership side. We wouldn’t have had the championship belt for keeping arbitration prices, the lowest. We wouldn’t have had the strike in 1994, when you were negotiating for MLB on the other side. If you’re just handing out olive branches, what was all that stuff? Like, no, you did this because you had to. Because luckily, at one point in time, the United States was like, yeah, the National Labor Relations Act is a good thing that we should do. That would never happen again. But at least it did happen at one point. So it’s an olive branch, Rob, that was such a slap in the face. And it’s just like Rob, to get up there. And think that this is the right tone to strike. On this day. You should have just been like we’re happy baseball is back. Let’s move on. I called Tony, congratulations, Tony knows that like who is that for? Who are you telling that to?
ALEX: Well, let lest we go out on a on a down note. I will, I will counter your Rob Manfred statement with, with a statement from, from one of our own. True to his curmudgeonly self, one Senator Bernie Sanders came out with a statement following the end of the MLB lockout, saying, yes, I’m very happy that that an agreement was reached. But the baseball oligarchs, oligarchs who are running this game, are running it into the ground. Which is why I would like to introduce legislation to remove MLB’s Antitrust Exemption. Again, it’s very easy to gain some political capital by saying that, as one Dick Durbin tried to do by just grifting off the news earlier this week.
BOBBY: I mean, without a name like Dick Durbin, what else were you going to do in life besides griffiths?
ALEX: I want to say it is Bernie don’t get my hopes up. Unless you’re serious, bro.
BOBBY: Seriously, stop teasing.
ALEX: Yeah, come on.
BOBBY: Also, come on the podcast if you’re going to put out statements like that when a CBA is signed. Come on, dawg. Come on. This is an independent podcast that’s been talking about labor in baseball for years. And you’re gonna play a statement calling the owners oligarchy who are ruining the game and you won’t even come on the pod. Man, if anyone is listening right now who has any sort of tangential connection to forward an email to Bernie Sanders that will actually be responded to please, for the love of God. It’s time, it’s time.
ALEX: Right. If you haven’t heard our six or seven, please in the past, we’re hoping maybe this eighth one.
BOBBY: We’re gonna start asking, we’re not gonna keep asking so nicely, Bernie. We’re we’re gonna show up in Vermont, and demand that you come on the pod. I have a just a boom mic yelling questions to you.
ALEX: You know what? I think you do it.
BOBBY: I think you would. Alex, this has been the Collective Bargaining Agreement reaction pod that we’ve been waiting to do for three years. I hope everybody enjoyed it. We will be back with another pod on our normal schedule, Monday morning. Hopefully we have the full agreement to dig into. And we have the benefit of more time to sit with some of these ideas. This was kind of emotion and caffeine driving this one for me at least. And for you cold medication which you held it together pretty well, my friend.
ALEX: Appreciate that. If you the listener, have questions about the CBA about the lockout, but how things are going to unfold over the next few months, coming years. We’ll do our absolute very best to try to answer them, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. You can call into our voicemail 785-422-5881. If you have takes, you have Dick Durbin takes, hit our line. And as always, you know you can find us on Twitter @tipping_pitches–
BOBBY: Too much, too much on Twitter.
ALEX: Seriously, slide into our DMS though it’s, we’re there.
BOBBY: We’re gonna spend a decent amount of time on the next pod just answering questions straight up that people have about the CBA and the end of the lockout. And responding to people’s feelings that they’ve been feeling over the last three months. Alex baseball is officially back now. The next pod that we do the Mets are going to have signed Kris Bryant and Carlos Correa. I’m officially back, baby, back in New York backroom for the Mets because they’re not locked out anymore. Max Scherzer is officially my team’s number 2 starter. Let’s go! Thanks for listening everybody. We’ll be back in just a few days.
[1:00:24]
[Music]
[1:00:33]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya.
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
Leave a comment