Alex and Bobby start with a nominal Bad Take Dramatic Reading (but really more of a Weird Take Dramatic Reading) about Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman. Then, they discuss the whispers that other MLB owners are starting to express frustration at the Oakland Athletics use of their revenue sharing checks, before reacting to the news that the Mets met with Harry Marino, Executive Director of Advocates For Minor Leaguers. Finally, they react to Rob Manfred’s quotes summarizing the topics of the owners’ meetings.
Links:
Trouble in Oakland, according to Jon Heyman
Mets meet with Advocates For Minor Leaguers
DOJ asks federal court to limit antitrust exemption
Songs featured in this episode:
Taylor Swift — “Coney “Island • Billie Holiday — “All of Me” • 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? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
ALEX: Bobby, in a world ravaged by wokeness by the polarizing personalities, folks like Fernando Tatis Jr., and Juan Soto. One man, and one man alone could save the game of baseball.
BOBBY: And his name is Robert D. Manfred.
ALEX: Wooh! His name is Freddie Freeman if, if you buy into the premise of this profile of Freddie, that, that appeared in LA magazine, this past week. It’s by Fred Schruers, Fred Schruers.
BOBBY: Okay, we, we already have our first bias here. They have the same name, Fred get together.
ALEX: That’s true, that- yeah, that’s true. Where they like pitching articles and like the Fred group chat, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah, right.
ALEX: Someone was like Fred Armisen, and they’re like, no, he’s–
BOBBY: No, no.
ALEX: Past, past the time.
BOBBY: SNL, SNL really fell off.
ALEX: They’re like, yeah, anyone heard of this Freddie Freeman guy? This is a, it, it, It’s an article. We’re gonna, there’s a reason we’re opening, there’s a reason we’re opening the episode this week with a, what we like to term as a bad take dramatic reading. Because it’s really, it’s really good, man.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: There’s, there’s so much here. The, the title of this article is Can LA Dodger Freddie Freeman Save Baseball? And the kind of sub header is, is that: The new first baseman doesn’t drink, smoke, or swear—but damn if L.A. fans don’t love him anyway.
BOBBY: Okay, so I saw this article. And I thought that it might be ripe for a bad take dramatic reading. And so I did not read it. Because usually the formula is that one of us has to come into a cold and the other person has to present it. So I’m coming–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –in cold. And you are going to be our presenter this week. But before we even start, can I just say a couple things just from the sub header. Those three things are what made baseball cool in the 1980s. Not really what people still think makes baseball cool? Nobody smokes or drinks while playing baseball anymore. And–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to the extent that they swear it’s irrelevant to the death of baseball. But I’ll let the article speak for yourself.
ALEX: Speak for yourself.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: All right, here we go. You ready?
BOBBY: Sir reminded me of that moral panic after Pete Alonso started saying let’s fucking go Mets. People–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –like Pete’s not a role model.
ALEX: Clutching their pearls.
BOBBY: Pete’s swears, what about the children? The children of Queens? Who’ve never heard the F-word in their life famously living in New York City. They never hear that word.
ALEX: Yeah, if you’re careful, he might turn them on to Mobb Deep next. All right, I’m going to read, I’m, I’m not going to read the entire profile for you all. Because it’s far too long. And frankly, like 80% of it is really boring. But I have some choice quotes that, that I’d like to, I’d like to introduce to you. So we’re going to start off with, with the lead. The lead famously the first, first sentence, first paragraph.
BOBBY: You only get one chance to make a good first impression.
ALEX: “His eyes are bluer than a Nebraska sky.”
BOBBY: Bro.
ALEX: “His hair, when it’s not tucked into a Dodgers cap, is the golden hue of a Kansas cornfield. And his big, bright, 500-watt smile has all the sparkle and shine of- oh, what the heck, let’s go for the full cornball red-white-and-blue cliche- fireworks on the Fourth of July. About the only thing he’s missing is a bat with a lightning bolt and the word wonderboy stencilled into the wood.”
BOBBY: Hooo, boy! Wow! I thought we were doing the article about Freddie Freeman not the fanfiction that you discovered after, on the 30th page of Google results about Freddie Freeman.
ALEX: This is, it is, this reads a little bit like it’s from like a New York Times profile of some like dipshit alt right college student.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Who’s whining about being like censor on campus, you know. Like, everything changed when Freddie Freeman wore a maga hat to class one day. Then his world came crashing down, you know. Like this perfect Americana boy, who, who’s, who’s having his turn to face the music.
BOBBY: I have to say, this feels really racist already. Freddie Freeman doesn’t have blond hair. His hair is like the color of ours. Maybe a little bit lighter. But if–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –we played baseball when we were outside all summer, for 15 years, our hair would be exactly like his. I don’t consider myself blond. Why are they trying to make him blond hair, blue eyes. It feels racist already. But I’ll, I’ll let the rest of the article speak for itself.
ALEX: Is there an instance in which you think a profile of someone should talk about the blue hues of their eyes. Like if that’s the first, the introductory sentence, right? You want to set the scene for the reader. And you’re like, you know what, I’m gonna start with, Nebraska skies.
BOBBY: No, there’s not, especially, especially when you’re coming off that headline and sub header. That baseball needs saving. Here are the problems with baseball. And here’s the primary thing that I’m going to tell you right off the top is the thing that can save baseball. The blond hair, blue-eyed, big smile like the Fourth of July. This is already extremely weirdo shit. I can’t believe this made it through so many eyes.
ALEX: I know. The article goes on, says that, that Freddie is the one who may be able to save baseball. Again, save it from what? It’s not exactly clear. The, the article compares him to somewhere–
BOBBY: Well you can’t kill that part, Alex, that’s the quiet part. Come on.
ALEX: Right. You just, you, I mean, I mean, that’s the point, right? Is you’re not saying anything. You’re letting the readers figure out for themselves. What it needs to be saved for him, right? Freeman is the platonic ideal of the baseball player, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm.
ALEX: You don’t, you don’t even need to, to talk about what the what the other side looks like. You let the readers do that work for themselves. He, he compares, Freddie Freeman to somewhere between Robert Redford in The Natural. Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees with a bit of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams thrown in. Just we’re just naming like white main characters of baseball movies that came out in the 20th century.
BOBBY: I have an important question.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Why hasn’t he saved it already?
ALEX: That’s, well–
BOBBY: Was just waiting for this article to do it?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He had it in him all along. And now he needs everybody to believe that he can do it.
ALEX: That he was biding, he was biding his time, you know.
BOBBY: Freddie Freeman, made his MLB debut on September 1st, 2010. 2010, you know what? I was a Sophomore in high school. I’ve, I’ve done a lot of things since then. You’ve [8:25]–
ALEX: Done a lot of baseball.
BOBBY: No, I haven’t saved baseball but neither is Freddie Freeman, apparently. The slow burn, slow process.
ALEX: Right. He, he’s been planting the seeds, right? He goes on, “He even talks, he even talks like an old-timey baseball player.” Quote. “I came up at the time of just playing the game the right way.”
BOBBY: 2010?
ALEX: What? Like what, like what does that mean? What old, quote, “old-timey baseball player” was, was talking like that? Like unless you throw on suspenders, and twirled his moustache and tucked in like a transatlantic accent.
BOBBY: His mustache, the same as a cornfield in Iowa. It even seems appears if you look closely, like it sways back and forth on his upper lip.
ALEX: Yes, exactly.
BOBBY: It sounds like the writer wants to have sex with him.
ALEX: It kind of does, yes. “He, he’s also a throwback, he’s also a throwback to an old fashioned sort of baseball hero. Complete with the bottle pretty wife and three adorable townheaded kids. Deeply, deeply religious, he doesn’t drink, curse, smoke, or even chew tobacco. He’s a walking, talking Wheaties box, a font of Norman Rockwell-style wholesomeness- but, miraculously, in a way that doesn’t make anyone want to barf. He has, in short, given the Dodgers and baseball- a sport where these days just about everyone but Mookie Betts seems to be running the bases with a chip on their shoulder- something it hasn’t seen in years: a winning personality.
BOBBY: Wait, so is that a drive by shot at Mookie Betts?
ALEX: No, I think, I think that was a shot at everyone except for Mookie Betts, right? Like Mookie, the, the writers clarifying that Mookie plays the game the right way. But everyone else besides Mookie is playing the game with a chip on their shoulders?
BOBBY: So Mookie is like the one black friend of this profile?
ALEX: Low key, yes.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Something that baseball hasn’t seen in years a winning personality. If you haven’t been watching baseball, sure?
BOBBY: Yeah. So I gotta, I gotta call you out right here. This violates one of the baneds topics. I banned the topic of talking about the game dying, remember? Remember that?
ALEX: That’s true. Yes!
BOBBY: So that’s one strike.
ALEX: This article is rife with discussion about how the game is dying.
BOBBY: I know. It’s like this Bookie-man where, like you said, like, it, it leaves it up to interpretation for the reader to paste on whatever they dislike about the game. And then imagine the ways in which Freddie Freeman can fix it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So is Freddie Freeman. gonna fix blackouts? For his Freddie Freeman, gonna make it affordable to come to the ballpark? Is Freddie Freeman, gonna make John Fisher sell the A’s?
ALEX: Right, this, this article is, is very light on what it is that Freddie Freeman is it, in it, is actually doing to save baseball.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: The vibe’s like, being a, being a white wife guy, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. Uh-hmm. Listen, I don’t even personally have anything against Freddie Freeman. I think he’s probably a perfectly nice guy.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I guess?
ALEX: Right, they had, they had the, the there was kind of the dust up between him and Acuña, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: After, after Freeman left the Braves. And that, that sort of, it felt like a bit of a litmus test kind of a line in the, in the sand, right? Of like the, the, the era of baseball play, right? There’s like the, the new baseball players who play the game the right way. And then the new baseball players who are just playing baseball, because that’s what they were taught to do, right? And it kind of, it wouldn’t surprise me if this article was kind of born out of that, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s like, here’s Freddie Freeman, who is maybe being unfairly maligned for talking shit to his teammate, I don’t know.
BOBBY: Here’s, I mean, this is why I banned the topic, though. Because there is no right way to play baseball. There’s no one right way to play baseball. And this is how we get these modalities of thought, is we put certain guys on a pedestal, and then any deviation from that. We think that it’s wrong, or like perverting the game in some way. Or–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –you know, bastardizing America’s pastime. Like when you talk about a guy this way. There’s no, it’s either conform or be villainized.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And I, I don’t know. It’s just it’s, it’s extremely weird. And I just got I mean, I gotta say, I don’t think baseball needs saving. Last time I checked savior complexes for multimillion dollar athletes are not a good thing. We’re not a good thing. Like nothing good is gonna come out of that.
ALEX: Right. Well, and it doesn’t even necessarily seem like Freeman himself is taking on like wants to take on this role, right?
BOBBY: No!
ALEX: It’s not, it’s not like he’s saying to the writer. I mean–
BOBBY: [13:37]
ALEX: –baseball is in a really tough spot right now. And it needs someone like me to come in and, and give it the spark that it needs. Like he’s, here’s the thing about Freddie Freeman. He’s just a dude.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: He’s, he’s just a, a guy, who I imagine is a lot like most of the other players in baseball, right? Deeply religious, has, has a family.
BOBBY: Like smile.
ALEX: Here’s this quote from him in here. He says, “I’ve just tried to be a good person,” he says, scuffing a cleat into dugout dirt.” It’s good to see and setting. “Being a human can be so hard”–
BOBBY: Dugout dirt?
ALEX: Will be up.
BOBBY: That’s–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –dugout is made of cement.
ALEX: “We all make mistakes every day. Being kind, that’s all I can really do.”
BOBBY: That’s the most boring quote I’ve ever heard in my life.
ALEX: That’s the, meaningless, meaningless. They there are some admittedly pretty, pretty wonderful photos of Freddie in this profile, right? There’s him kind of lying on a sea of baseballs, about to bite into, into a baseball, like it’s an apple, you know?
BOBBY: A horniest thing I’ve ever heard.
ALEX: They also included screenshots from his Instagram, like, like just full on like actual screenshots. Like you can see the–
BOBBY: The student newspaper energy.
ALEX: I was just about to say like I almost can’t even critique that because of the amount of times you and I have done that So the things–
BOBBY: The amount of times that you sat at a computer and someone went over your shoulder to take a photo of you on a website that we were reading an article about.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Like NYU Safety website goes down and it’s just like Alex’s shoulder trying to log on to the NYU Safety website.
ALEX: Right, a big screen that says, Safari cannot connect.
BOBBY: 409 Gateway Timeout.
ALEX: He, the writer also takes great pains to talk about Freddie’s faith, and and, and the way it has informed, the way that he plays baseball. And there’s, and there’s this one line in here as well that says, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, and the ballplayer–
BOBBY: Never heard, never heard that before.
ALEX: Never heard it before. “The ball player who would become Freeman’s first mentor on the team happened to be Chipper Jones, the hard-partying, philandering infielder who famously impregnated Hooters waitress. Oddly enough, the two became close allies.” What is, what, what is he saying?
BOBBY: Is this article written by Dayton Moore? I don’t know–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –I don’t know what he is saying.
ALEX: There’s no, there’s no anti porn line in here. But I don’t know, we’ll wait for the Editor’s Note.
BOBBY: This was good, this was a good one. Thanks for bringing this to the tables.
ALEX: It’s ridiculous. I want to, I want to say they claim that Freeman was replaced in Atlanta, with Oakland Athletics first base, first baseman, Mark Olson?
BOBBY: Mark?
ALEX: Just in case you were kind of wondering about the baseball prowess, present–
BOBBY: Trying to find Mark Olson on FanGraphs.
ALEX: I don’t know man, I just like, once again, there is nothing wrong with Freddie Freeman. I and I also struggled to find much that’s overwhelmingly right about him.
BOBBY: This is why I actually value someone like Fabian Ardaya, who covers the Dodgers for The Athletic. Because he just writes normal stories about things that are interesting about players. And doesn’t have to be parachuting in to save baseball. Because people who are actually here in the baseball community, and in the baseball media all of the time, not just trying to mine for culture, WAR clicks. Those people know that readers will just respond to an interesting tidbit. Or, oh a smart way of looking at things. It doesn’t need to be about how baseball is dying. And without Freddie Freeman, MLB will disband by the year 2032.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s just like a really lazy framing at this point, right? It has been a part of the discourse for a better part of a decade. And I don’t know, it feels like we’re past that, right? Like, especially given everything that has kind of been exposed about how the game actually works in the last couple years. It’s very clear that the villains in baseball are not the guys who smoke. Or–
BOBBY: And not the guys who don’t.
ALEX: –curse, yeah.
BOBBY: They’re the owners.
ALEX: Wait!
BOBBY: Okay, well, strike for you for bringing banned topic.
ALEX: That one is on me.
BOBBY: We’ll have to, we’ll have to think of a punishment for you. We’re gonna talk more about those owners and their villainy. Later in the podcast when we discuss the owners meetings and Rob Manfred’s quotes after them. We’re going to do a little town hall style. Bernie Sanders response to Rob Manfred’s press conference. And we have a couple of smaller things that came out of that to talk about as well. The news of course about the Mets brass meeting with Harry Marino from Advocates for Minor leaguers, and Jessica Ramos in New York State Senator. All of that good stuff, but before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[19:08]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Alex listeners, listeners with a fine tuned ear might be able to tell that I’m a little congested at the moment. When I extend my apologies for any sniffles that sneak through or sneezes or coughs. I’m sick with what is very likely the virus that causes COVID 19. But we’ll see in the next couple of days I’m going to power through anyway. So this will be forever remembered as the maybe COVID pod.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But the show must go on because we have so much to talk about. So much happened in the news in the past week. But before we even get to that. I want to say congrats to you. Noted Oakland native on the now San Francisco Warriors, the Golden State Warriors. Winning the National Basketball Association, championship trophy. Where does this go, I wanted to ask you, you’re obviously a baseball fan. Which listeners of this podcast I think know, you’re a fan of the Oakland Athletics. Where does this compare to if the A’s won the World Series? Like on a scale of 1 to 100? How good does it feel to watch the, the Dubs when the NBA Finals?
ALEX: I mean, at this point it’s all I got, right? Like I, the, the notion of the insert city here Athletics, winning the World Series is like not even on my mind is a possibility at the moment for the, for the near future. I mean, it feels, feels really good, right? It feels good because the Warriors, like weren’t really supposed to be here, right? There–
BOBBY: Oh, stop at this–
ALEX: Where–
BOBBY: –stop, stop this.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Nobody believed in us bullshit that–
ALEX: Nobody–
BOBBY: –the Warriors are doing on the postgame press conferences.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Everybody thought we were the trashiest team in the league. We were going to win eight games this year. We’re going to break the Sixers record for worst record of all time. No, no, no–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –no, no.
ALEX: Hey, man.
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: Steph, Steph Curry–
BOBBY: I was told–
ALEX: –and–
BOBBY: –he’s a bad shooter.
ALEX: No, it it’s, it’s, it’s really goofy. But it’s really fun, because you can tell how like, I mean, you want to talk chip on their shoulder, whether earned or unearned. This is a team that like very much is pushing that narrative, right? Of no one believed in us. And they’re so cocky about it. I love it so much. There’s such a different tone kind of from when they, when they won a few years ago. Pick your, pick your championship. But like this one, they’re very much like we’re the old veterans–
BOBBY: Count the rings on my fingers, bro.
ALEX: Exactly. They’re like so fed up. I don’t know. I love it.
BOBBY: I mean, I mean, I needed to ask you I needed to show respect. Do you have your Warriors, your bonafides? There’s a video of you out there interviewing the We Believe Warriors players–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –as–
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: And standing coming up to Jason Richardson’s hip. So you’re a real, you’re a real one, you’re real Warriors fan.
ALEX: That’s it–
BOBBY: It’s not fake.
ALEX: –that’s it. That’s a Patreon exclusive down the road. Is me asking Jason Richardson, what sort of music do you listen to?
BOBBY: Congrats to you, congrats the Warriors, I guess. Lesser of two evils kind of situation. Before we talk about the A’s, and the various messes that are happening in Oakland, big shout to our new, our one new patron this week Schomp. This sort of this A’s topic sort of falls under the umbrella of the owners meetings thing. But it felt specific enough to like break it out and talk about it earlier on. So Jon Heyman wrote a story. After the owners meetings that alluded to the idea that there are multiple MLB owners who are mad at what the A’s are doing this year. And specifically, they’re mad at them, because the A’s are now receiving Revenue Sharing checks from the league and from the rest of the 29 clubs.
ALEX: Again, after being, after being ice out for a few years.
BOBBY: Right. They are back to receiving Revenue Sharing, because supposedly, the justification is that they’re spending a lot of money on searching and developing a new stadium site. And so in order to remain financially solvent, they need to start receiving revenue instead of paying Revenue Sharing. So Heyman reported that other MLB club owners are frustrated that the A’s immediately after starting to receive Revenue Sharing checks, again, in this most recent CBA in these most recent CBA negotiations. When went out and sold all their best players and their most expensive players and traded them away to different teams and basically admitted that they have no interest in competing. The stated goal of Revenue Sharing is supposed to make it easier for smaller market teams who are maybe not as financially viable in their markets, allegedly. It’s supposed to make it easier for them to compete, not easier for them to go sell all of their players and tank intentionally. So I don’t know, I wonder what, what do you make of this as an A’s fan, but then also as a co host of the Tipping Pitches Podcast?
ALEX: I mean, I think my reactions are, are, are probably similar, regardless of the lens through which I, I look at it, right? Because the premise of these quotes is correct, right? One of the, one of the owners, both of them are quoted anonymously, but, but one of them says, “The idea of Revenue Sharing is not to make money. It’s to fuel the competitive team, the A’s took money and put it in their pocket.” And, and another referred to the, to the franchise just as a quote “mess”. And these are accurate characterizations of what is going on in Oakland, right? I mean, my response to this is something along the lines of you had a hand in creating this system that the A’s are able to now benefit from, right? There was much talk in the offseason as the CBA was being negotiated about what to do about tanking teams, right? And competitiveness around the league. And it was, as we mentioned, kind of the, the most glaring oversight in what was eventually agreed upon, right? There was, there was not much in the way of changes to the way that Revenue Sharing actually works. There was not much that actually incentivizes teams to spend the money. Because when, the one side of the equation, you have the ability to pocket millions of dollars, it’s, it can be probably hard to come up with an alternative solution that is more enticing to a potential owner, right? But these sorts of, these sorts of stories always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Because it has big like, someone should do something about all the problems, energy, you know? Like, like, instead of going to Jon Heyman, who will give you cover to talk about the A’s anonymously. Why are these not concerns that you were voicing during the negotiation of the CBA? Why are these not things that you are bringing to Rob Manfred? And, you know, the most generous reading is that they, you know, maybe these concerns were aired, right? The, the A’s were voted back into Revenue Sharing with a three quarters vote among the owners. So there were, there was some dissent there. But I’m just kind of like, now what?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: What are you gonna, what are you going to do about it? And not, not from like, as not from like, a snarky way, right? Like, from a way of like, okay, you can, you can have all the quotes you want, but you are at the levers of power right here.
BOBBY: Yeah. For me, there’s two things, number one, it’s, it’s the players ask for this, you know? Like, so am I supposed to believe that one quarter of the owners were amenable to that idea to change, revenue sharing? I, I guess? That’s how I would read these quotes. That’s what it would lead you to believe that these owners who spoke to Jon Heyman for this New York Post article, they were on the player side when it came to this. And maybe they didn’t actually say that, that plainly in negotiations. Because that would give away a lot of leverage. And you never give anything away for nothing. And maybe they didn’t think it was worth the trade, so to speak. But if this is what they think is better for the health of the game, and the health of the 30 teams in the health of the fan base is there’s like do something about it. You know what I mean? Don’t let–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –this be the de facto way to own a baseball team. Because not–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –a John, because not John Fisher and the A’s are doing anything completely out of left field. Like this is how every team operates. And so I don’t understand why, why are you mad now because they do it in a way that is a little too obvious for you? Because Dave Kaval is getting mad on Twitter? Like, because no, but because the fans actually decided not to show up. And now you look stupid? Is that why you’re getting mad now, in the New York post article, I don’t know. That’s the first thing, and then the second thing is this strikes me as something that it, it’s kind of shocking to hear owners say this. Because you’ll remember when the players agreed to return to work. When they signed the CBA. They agreed to the terms in that CBA to end the lockout. And they also agreed to end or to drop their 2020 grievance about the return to play. The billion dollar agreements that they had filed against MLB that they were acting in bad faith, about trying to negotiate to get back onto the field during the pandemic. There was also an another lawsuit, there remains another lawsuit, that, that certain teams are abusing the Revenue Sharing system. That as it states in the CBA, what they’re supposed to do is take that Revenue Sharing money as the out- as the owners are saying in this article, they’re supposed to take that Revenue Sharing money and reinvest it into the onfield product, reinvest into the team, not pocketed as profits. Well, sounds to me like the owners are admitting that they’re doing this. And I don’t know the grievance doesn’t extend to the present. And it doesn’t extend to what the A’s are doing right now. But that grievance was filed against I believe the, the Rays and the Pirates, right?
ALEX: Right along with the A’s and the Marlins.
BOBBY: So the A’s are included in it.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So okay, wrap it up then, they win the grievance.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: You just admitted that you did it.
ALEX: Yeah, the owners. It does. feel like are maybe a little boxed in right now. Because what some of these teams are doing is so brazen. To the point where players are willing to come out and talk openly about this sort of thing, right? And on the one hand, you kind of need to toe the company line, right? Manfred expects the owners to fall in line with this sort of thing. I think he’d rather be the one who is leading the narrative around what the A’s are doing, for example. Rather than hearing them from quotes in a New York Post article, right? But it’s also, if you see what the A’s are doing. And you see that there is kind of a rising, I don’t know, acrimony around this. It’s like hard to stay silent, right? Like you want to feel like maybe you can do something. If you’re Hal Steinbrenner, right? You’re probably pretty pissed off.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But again, like, I’m like I, what, what does this do really? Like, what is this–
BOBBY: How pissed off are you though?
ALEX: What [31:05], yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Did you still voted 13 and nothing to ratify the CBA. With this exact same system in it.
ALEX: Right, you’re not pissed off enough to blow up the whole system. Because you recognize that, by and large, it benefits your ilk, right?
BOBBY: I’ll say, for, for Rob’s purposes, there is, there’s this section in this article that says MLB, people point out that the A’s have spent considerable sums in the Howard Terminal, and other projects to try to land a new home in Oakland. And that even with the monies they now receive from the league, plus the loot saved from their multiple stars they traded. They are still losing money. That is what MLB sources point out. So there is a hedge in here, against–
ALEX: Yeah!
BOBBY: –what some of those owners are saying. That the, the system is not actually being abused, because you’re not allowed to take the money and turn a profit from it. You ought just take the money and reinvest it in something that is external to the organization. MLB is trying to say no, no, they’re taking this money. And they’re reinvesting it in the Howard Terminal project. Which is, you know, part of the A’s organization. So it would be aboveboard with the way that this system is outlined. But kind of contradictory elements to a lot of these quotes from the MLB owners that are in here. Anonymous, though they are still pretty contradictory.
ALEX: Yeah, it just, I mean, I don’t know. It, they just ring kind of hollow to me.
BOBBY: I agree.
ALEX: Unlike until you’re willing to go on the record and talk about this sort of thing, right? Put your name behind it, throw your weight around?
BOBBY: Have your Theo–
ALEX: I–
BOBBY: –Epstein moment, Hal Steinbrenner.
ALEX: Exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: Okay, let’s talk really quickly about, because we don’t know that much about it, really. But the Mets meeting with Harry Marino, the Executive Director of Advocates for Minor Leaguers, who was on this podcast not that long ago. And State Senator Jessica Ramos, who’s a member of the Working Families Party who has a long track record of writing petitions and giving quotes and talking about the mistreatment of minor leaguers in MLB.
ALEX: Right, she’s, I think she sits on the labor committee in the New York State Senate, right? So it this is, this is right up her alley.
BOBBY: Yeah. So this is a story from Evan Drellich, me Athletic, midway through last week talking about how the Mets are the first club to ever, individually directly meet and talk about these problems about the treatment of minor leaguers. And to actually hear an organization like Advocates for Minor Leaguers out. There’s very little in the details of these conversations, but it sounds like it was started based on last summer. And Advocates for Minor Leaguers tweet, knowing Steve Cohen this, this actually adds up. and Advocates for Minor Leaguers tweet that said that a bunch of other organizations had fixed some of the problems with minor league. Like the Giants had a problem with minor league pay, and they addressed it very quickly. And then the Mets were still lagging behind and Steve Cohen responded to that tweet and said this is news to me. I’ll look into this. I don’t want to be reactionary and respond too fast. But we’re going to look into fixing this. So that opened up sort of a avenue window for dialogue among these groups. And they met to discuss about the, the seven proposed changes that Jessica Ramos at the behest of Advocates for Minor Leaguers proposed to the, the New York Mets to be like the industry leader on minor league pay. And that’s pay your weekly salaries all year round without periods of free work. Provide a cover the cost of inseason housing. Provide a cover the cost of three meals per day during the season. Provide multiple buses on road trips and sleeper buses on overnight road trips. Assist players in shipping their cars to new affiliates have reassigned. And assist players without a car and getting to the field each day. Cover the cost of offseason training. And adjust salaries and per diems based on the cost of living in different affiliate home cities. So that’s the ask, MLB is notoriously missing from this article. And as part of a memo from the long running lawsuit against MLB, the class action lawsuit by minor leaguers against MLB. MLB had said and of, and on February 14, 2020 memo that clubs, they’re welcome to exceed the, the pay scale at their discretion for non first year players. So MLB had told those minor leaguers if clubs want to pay you more, they can pay you more, we’re not colluding against you. And so, Advocates for Minor Leaguers I think really smartly decided, well, we’re just gonna start talking to individual clubs then, saying, will you pay us more? Will you meet these seven demands? I don’t know. Do you think, do you have confidence that legitimate positives will come out of this?
ALEX: I really don’t know. I, this story was praised a lot by both Mets fans and, and baseball fans kind of more broadly, on Twitter when it came out, right? Saying that the Mets are a stand up organization, Steve Cohen is, you know, doing, doing what’s right. Steve Cohen notorious for, for just doing the right thing. But, you know, I think he’s a guy who’s well aware of the importance of optics too. And let’s not forget that nothing is has happened yet, right? Like players weren’t even a part of this meeting. There’s a second meeting, that’s, I think still being scheduled right now. The players are going to be a part of. So sure, this is a, this is a wonderful first step. But I don’t know, I’ve been burned before, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like, I’m not holding my breath necessarily. I also the, the reference in Ramos’s statement to Steve Cohen as, as Uncle Steve, just like–
BOBBY: As I just gonna say–
ALEX: –what are we, what are we doing?
BOBBY: We could do this without sucking up to the owner.
ALEX: Literally, I, I don’t know. It felt like the perfect kind of representation of where like American liberal politics are today, right? That like there are in fact, good billionaires who are, who can look out for, for the little guy who could do the right thing.
BOBBY: Yeah. That we just need one insurgent member of the billionaire class who’s willing to undo all of the bad that the rest of the billionaire class has done.
ALEX: Yeah. And, and hey, it’s not nothing, right? Like if Steve Cohen wants to go and pay the, his minor league players appropriately for the, the value that they are creating, by all means I am, I am not going to stop him. But like I, I also recognize that he, you know, he runs a business, right? I, do I necessarily expect him to do this, just out of the goodness of his own heart? No! I think he probably realizes that there might be tangible benefits to treating your minor league players like, like human beings.
BOBBY: Yeah. He finally heard the pleas of the masses saying wouldn’t it be–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –a market inefficiency to just pay your minor leaguers and then attract more good players and then win more?
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. I mean, this was still the guy who was talking about Kumar Rocker. Like he was a a–
BOBBY: Stock?
ALEX: –stock–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –right? You know, talking about return on investment and, and the value of picks in the draft. So–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –I think the jury is still out really on, on what’s actually going to happen. But you know, it’s, I don’t know, I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of like, at least they’re talking.
BOBBY: Yeah, I think uhm, I think that somewhere J runs Darfur, sitting with his arms crossed, nodding his head saying, This is why I tried to tell you guys, you bring in someone who’s, who’s a wildcard, who’s willing to break rank on certain things, and you don’t know what could happen. Whether–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –that’s transformative or not, the owners are not going to be happy about this.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And I think, I mean, I think Cohen is sort of perfectly positioned to lore those people into his camp to like, win them over. Because he’s not afraid to spend money. The other guys like they don’t spend, the whole thing is that they don’t spend money. They leverage every built in advantage that they possibly can. One of Steve Cohen’s built in advantages is that he’s actually a Wall Street guy who spent and spends money. He knows that you have to spend money to make money, all those like dumb cliches, he actually made $14 billion doing that. And of course, he had criminal activity to do so. But in the context of baseball, like criminal activity is currently codified in United States federal law.
ALEX: Right. It’s mostly encouraged.
BOBBY: Exactly. So I don’t know. He is kind of like Jerry Reinsdorf theorized the, the perfect person to unravel it all, and that’s why they didn’t want him around.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But hey, that sale price. That sale price was sweet.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. You get that- yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, the rising franchise value raises all boats. This came at the same time or write around the same time that Bill Shaikin of the LA Times wrote an article about the Department of Justice recommending to a federal court that they limit the scope of baseball’s antitrust exemption. So all of these articles are in the description if you want to read the fine details of them. But honestly, I don’t know how much this matters. Because without the Supreme Court hearing, rehearing, a challenge to the antitrust exemption, we’re not going to get a full repeal of it. And therefore, we’re not going to get a legal environment in which minor leaguers can say, hey, you’ve been colluding against us this whole time and sue them, sue the MLB owners and Major League Baseball. But I do think it’s interesting that they’re all these forces kind of aligning right now. That it seems like some of these built in advantages are going to need to change or die. And, you know, I’m not really that optimistic about it changing in a way that is super beneficial to anyone except the owners while they still exist. But I at least think that it’s, it’s positive that a federal court will have to narrowly define the scope with which the antitrust exemption still exists. Because it’s changed so many times. And because we don’t, frankly, know plainly how it would play out in a legal setting, at the different levels of baseball. We know that it doesn’t apply to the MLBPA covered players anymore as part of the 1994 return to work agreement. But we don’t really know how it would affect minor league affiliates or minor league players who are saying that you’re colluding not to pay us. So, I don’t know, it’s, it’s good. But do I think that the Department of Justice is going to act in favor of the little worker? Probably not, probably not.
ALEX: Right. And, and this co- this comes in the context of the antitrust lawsuit that’s currently being levied against Major and Minor League Baseball, right? On behalf of three teams that were contracted in the shakeup a couple of years ago, right? You, some of you may remember this offseason we had on Jim Quinn, who is one of the lead litigators in that lawsuit. And he, he talked about, you know, what makes this lawsuit different from past ones and kind of what the, what the goals are for it, right? And, and, again, it’s a massively uphill battle, right? It’s, it’s the kind of thing that goes back and forth for potentially years and, and it takes appeals and appeals. And, you know, in theory, you want to take it up with the Supreme Court. Because their view is that there’s a more amenable environment to this sort of challenge. Something tells me that Major League Baseball absolutely has no interest in actually giving the courts an opportunity to make a ruling on–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: –this sort of thing. Given, given kind of what we’ve heard from them about how they feel about the, the antitrust exemption, right? And, you know, this is a, this is a legal precedent, right? It’s not a legislative precedent. So the, the courts very well could, could say we, you know, we don’t think the antitrust exemption applies in this manner anymore. And the league could turn around and go to Congress and ask for specific legislation that carves out that antitrust exemption, I’m not sure that Congress would be very amenable to that sort of legislation right now, either. Given that in the last year, there have been a couple of different bills aimed directly at the antitrust exemption. So–
BOBBY: One in the House of Representatives, because MLB is to woke and one in the Senate from Bernie Sanders, because MLB is, I guess, not woke enough?
ALEX: Right, exactly. Either way, it feels like the, the walls are closing in, at least on, on this specific lawsuit. Which is why I feel like the, the most sensible thing for Major League Baseball to do, to protect their own interests is to settle it. Because I, like they did with the, the lawsuit surrounding minorly pay, which we talked about a few weeks ago. Certainly I don’t think this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back on this exemption. I think MLB finds a way to kind of wriggle out of this. But it is another domino suggesting that it may fall, right? It is having the Department of Justice suggest that the courts should limit the scope of that exexemption is like not- nothing.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And that’s something that the courts could if they wanted to take into account.
BOBBY: Okay, let’s take a quick break. And then when we come back, more takeaways from the owners meetings, and specifically, Rob Manfred’s press conference after this meetings.
[45:16]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Okay, Alex, last week, we, we said that Rob had kind of been laying low for the 2022 baseball season, we’ll ask and you shall receive. We got a lot of Rob this past week after the MLB owners meetings, which gave us a bunch of news. So this podcast has been mostly news this week, not a lot of bits. Manfred came out after those owners meetings and basically gave a watered down summary of what they discussed. And I wanted to run down that list. This is also from an article by Evan Drellich from The Athletic, where there’s sort of like these subcategories of things that Rob talked about. I wanted to run those, through those things with you and just get your reaction to them.
ALEX: Alright, let’s do it.
BOBBY: The first is that he basically had nothing of substance to offer about minor league housing in general conditions. Feel like we’ve covered that already.
ALEX: I, I really respect that Evan, put in the, the full kind of unedited quote from Rob, because it kind of illustrates his like stop and start and his like inability–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –to really say anything of substance, right? The quote reads, “Minor leaguers like all of our employees, we’re constantly in a position whether they’re employees here, or major league players here. We’re constantly in a position where we’re getting input from people and trying to be responsive and create the best possible workplace.” Bro!
BOBBY: That is nothing, that means nothing!
ALEX: I have to say I appreciate Rob Manfred, acknowledging that–
BOBBY: We’re constantly–
ALEX: Minor–
BOBBY: –in a position.
ALEX: That we’re constantly in a position that we live in a society.
BOBBY: I mean, we’re you and I are in a position right now. The listeners–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –they’re constantly in a position. I mean–
ALEX: Whether it’s here, whether it’s here or there.
BOBBY: –or there, and we’re trying to be responsive to that position to create the best podcast possible.
ALEX: Right. I love when I get input from people.
BOBBY: So good. Oh, it’s so good. Uhm, okay. Next up, the A’s and Rays stadiums. Rob kind of had two longer-ish paragraph quotes about those various, those various situations and how they would be addressed. We’ve talked so much about the A’s and their stadium. But I think that, largely, he played both sides of the fence again, as the A’s continued to do this. Seems to be the company line is that we’re, we’re simultaneously making progress in Oakland, while loving Las Vegas, and they’re not giving either side. They’re not Tipping their Pitches to either side, you know. So I don’t know, I don’t know that we need to spend too much time talking about that. And then about Tampa Bay, the Rays, their lease is coming up. It’s gonna end on their stadium pretty soon. And so as of right now, the company line is that they’re still focused on building a new stadium in Tampa Bay, not splitting between two different cities at the moment. Anything that you would like to add there, Alex?
ALEX: Frankly, no, it sounds like Rob hasn’t really updated his talking points since like, December, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. Okay, here’s where it gets a little more interesting. The MLB competition committee meets next week. It sounds like the pitch clock, and the banning of the shift are moderately, moderately likely to be adopted, though Manfred would not commit to either of those. And he’s saying, he’s maintaining the idea that there’s balance from the players and owners on how this will actually play out/ Even though we all know that they can essentially unilaterally institute any rule that they want to as long as they do in the offseason. He wouldn’t commit to either of those rules, though. He went on it at somewhat length about how well they’re working in the minor leagues. So you would, you would think that that would be a sort of a tip that they want to do those. He said, no rowo- no robo umps for 2023 though, Alex. Is that excite you? I feel like you love the failure of the robo umps.
ALEX: I kind of do, I, this is, this [49:29]–
BOBBY: Down with tech.
ALEX: I know. Like the baseball is Luddite and 2022, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It is there is a sort of like, shot in Freud. That is that I feel when the, when the robot umps fail. Even though that this is dragged on to the point where I’m, I’m always just kind of like I just want to stop talking about it, you know. Like you with the DH I think to a certain extent, even though you still fire of–
BOBBY: Banned.
ALEX: –anti-DH [50:01]
BOBBY: Banned. Banned topic.
ALEX: I’m just kind of like if, if, if this is happening, like, okay, let it happen, let’s do it. The, the interesting part in, in this article for me was a suggestion that they may experiment with manager challengers to calls from the robot umps. They might exper- experiment with manager challenges to the calls from the robot umpires.
BOBBY: So I know, I think it’s the other way around. I think that this option would be you leave the human umpires, and you use the robot umpires only in the challenge. So you would–
ALEX: Yup, that’s fair.
BOBBY: –the home plate umpire makes the call and then you appeal to the automated ball strike system, almost like tennis, where there’s like the line judge. And if they call it in, you use one of your challenges. And they have like a four or five second ball tracking system that shows whether, where the tennis ball hit? And whether it was on the line or not.
ALEX: Gotcha. Okay, that’s the difference, that’s the difference one word can make. Allows teams, allows teams to appeal to the automated ball strike system. That allows teams to appeal the automated ball strike system.
BOBBY: So yeah–
ALEX: It’s early out here on the West Coast.
BOBBY: I kind of liked that one actually.
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: Applying tech in limited ways.
ALEX: Again, my, do you trust Major League Baseball to implement this sort of thing? In–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: –in like an efficient manner?
BOBBY: No, but they should be able to, honestly–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –honestly.
ALEX: Right, and if–
BOBBY: And, and what if Rob says down here.
ALEX: –use any indication? Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re already doing it quickly. In the minor leagues. It’s so, this one is so this quote is so funny.
ALEX: It’s so funny.
BOBBY: Where he’s just like, he’s like, I have to say I saw three challenges in the minor league game. The first one was so darn fast, I missed it. What happened? I mean, it was like four seconds, literally. I kind of liked that. I mean, four seconds is a pretty good replay change. So Rob knows that replays are too long, basically–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –is what I take from this quote.
ALEX: He was able to talk at length–
BOBBY: I missed it! What happened?
ALEX: I can just envision him saying that he has more to say about the period of four seconds than he does like the treatment of minor leaguers, you know?
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Because one isn’t his fault and the other one is. Okay, here’s the most interesting of all saved it for last. MLB continues to push towards its own streaming bundle, Alex. The much talked about as Rob Manfred dubbed it this past week, an undertaking called MLB Media. So my understanding is that this would be like MLB TV without blackouts? He didn’t really, he wasn’t, he didn’t commit to that. But we already have MLB TV. So I would have to think that a new undertaking would be something slightly different. And the only thing that you could change about MLB TV is that you can’t watch it in market. So you could make it available in market and charge people more money, which seems like they probably will do that. I guess the question that I have about this one. Is that, why haven’t they done it already?
ALEX: I mean, I think the, the most obvious answer is limitations with the regional streaming networks, right? And some of the rights that they have granted to them. But MLB does kind of hold the cards in this situation. Like these are their rights that are being negotiated over. And although Manfred makes the case that local revenues are very strong right now and they’re not concerned about them. [53:47]–
BOBBY: My local revenues are very strong right now. And we’re not concerned about the t shirt.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
ALEX: So I think that the original streaming networks might be doing okay. But I think they’re maybe not doing as well as some owners and some members in the league would like to hope, would like to think that they are doing. And so with RSNs kind of on the back foot a little bit. I do think that MLB is in a good position right now to explore this sort of thing, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It does seem like the stars are kind of aligning. I loved, I loved Manfred quote it said, “We’re concerned about reach. We think that fans, we think that we have fans who want to watch baseball, who don’t feel they have an adequate opportunity to do that.” What the fuck gave you that idea, Rob?
BOBBY: Was it all of the people tweeting incessantly at you guys? Was it all of the memes that get made about blackout restrictions? So–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I guess–
ALEX: Every, every athletic article that pulls fans were like yeah, no, that’s our number one issue.
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s really hard to watch the games. I had a problem with my Apple AirPlay. And so when I was streaming from my laptop because I’m blacked out of MLB TV games, and I’ve been streaming from my laptop, and trying to AirPlay to my computer, it wasn’t working. And I was freaking out, I was having an aneurysm yesterday, I was really mad. But that’s neither here nor there, I think that what will end up happening is you will just have MLB TV, and in order to continue their RSN partnership, these different RSNs will have to develop their own streaming services, or agree to remove blackout restrictions within the MLB TV app if customers pay them an extra $5. So you’ll be able to earn an extra $5 A month or whatever, it actually ends up being the pri- price wise. So what it’ll ultimately end up doing? Is transfer the responsibility onto the customer. But I guess we kind of always assumed that would be the case, right?
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Otherwise MLB will say, you, you can’t broadcast our games, if you don’t give them this option. That’s probably what I would imagine that they would do.
ALEX: Yeah, I think we’re still probably at least a couple of years out from really seeing any meaningful changes on this front, right? There’s a lot of negotiations that have to happen for a shift like this, to actually take place. Have to give them the smallest amount of kudos for even recognizing that this is an issue, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. It only took them 10 years to come around, 10 years of people not using cable anymore. To realize that maybe people don’t have cable anymore. I’d love to find like the first instance that someone used the word, the phrase cord cutting. And that if I had a time machine that would go back and stop that person from using that phrase. Sick of hearing that.
ALEX: Just, just not even the concept, just the phrase itself.
BOBBY: Yeah. Cord cutters. You mean cords, to stream things?
ALEX: Yeah. I have like, I have four cords–
BOBBY: It’s inaccuracies.
ALEX: –coming out of my computer right now.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: My TV has to plug in to the wall.
BOBBY: My Wi Fi [57:08] got so many cords.
ALEX: It’s–
BOBBY: I’m not cutting any cords. If anything, I have more cords than I had before. So maybe we should be known as the cord adders. Alright, this is how you know that this podcast needs to end. Big thank you to our Alex Rodriguez VIP Club members. We shout out five of them at the end of every podcast for being the top tier Producer level supporters that they are this week. We are saying big thanks to Ben, Cara, Austin, Cameronm and Jose. Alex. what are the wonderful listeners of Tipping Pitches need to know as we bid them into this weekend?
ALEX: They should know that there is in fact a Patreon.
BOBBY: This is true.
ALEX: You can gain, you can gain access to all sorts of cool stuff, including at the highest tier. A Q&A every other month. We just hosted our our first one last week. It was a blast! Thank you to everyone who, who came out and chatted with us. It was a, it was a freewheeling conversation. And frankly, it was really lovely just to see everyone’s faces and be able to connect with folks like outside of Twitter. Because boy what a, what an awful place to try it like forwards friendships.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: So that was a lot of fun, you’ll get access to that. We also have a, have a newsletter that comes out every other week where we, where we muse at length, about topics that we maybe didn’t, didn’t cover in the podcast. So you can get access to that. There’s plenty more that’s available. That’s patreon.com\tippingpitches.
BOBBY: The newsletter is just our ploy to become bloggers. We no longer–
ALEX: Really–
BOBBY: –leads, we’re going in the reverse direction. Anti evolution, we’re going back to the mid 2000s No, it’s fun to write this week, I got to write this week’s newsletter. Alex set the bar high last time and I tried to meet it, TBD–
ALEX: [59:00] the banger.
BOBBY: –TBD if I actually did. We’re just going to keep trading blows seen who can do the best. Thanks, everybody for listening. We will be back next week.
[59:10]
[Music]
[59:20]
[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 
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