Evan Drellich: Inside Rob Manfred’s signing deadline plea, Realignment plan, Tourney floater, CBA tilt

00:00:08
Speaker 1: Fancy intro for Evan Dralek from the Athletic joining us right now and buckle up, dude. I've got like eight topics to run through, and I know it's been a busy twenty four hours for you, but let's start with Commissioner Manfred's appearance on WFN radio and him talking about the potential of a split season or an in season tournament. Can you enlighten us on more that will get our fans riled up?

00:00:32
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I had some fun text with Ken Rosenthal yesterday because he had heard it and I think I had heard it at one point. It was something we had chased a little bit because there'd been murmurs in the industry that there had been some interest in what would they go to a split season? And we would call people and they'd say, that's crazy, what are you talking about? And you know, look, I think there's a reality of When Rob Manford says, yes, we've considered it, where you can go, oh, that's good. He should consider he's the commissioner of Baseball, you should consider all the ideas that come up. And he did pretty quickly acknowledge this to be very difficult to do. I did not think the reason that he offered for why it would be difficult was truly the most important one, where he said it's about the records and the attachment people have to those full season records. Like, yeah, that matters, but there are bigger issues when you try to make a change of that magnitude. So I don't think this is something that's coming to baseball anytime soon. I don't think it's necessarily bad that they are talking about it. I do think MLB and Rob Manford have a habit of kind of wanting to follow, particularly the NBA. You see it with the television stuff, where MLB has been pretty forward about the fact that they want to do what the NBA did, which is go make a lot of money from different streaming companies Peacock, Amazon, etc. I don't know that the NBA Cup gave the results to the NBA that the NBA wanted, and I don't know that baseball would do much better with it. Could baseball do something better than one hundred and sixty game season? Yeah?

00:02:01
Speaker 3: Maybe, Okay, Evan, let's just say let's just call this what it is. There's a CBA coming up at the end of the year. It's negotiating. It's what Rob Manford does. He wins the pr battle every single time. Why because he goes on these stations and he says, oh, yeah, we're thinking about doing this so that way when he goes into the CBA with Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer and these guys, and he goes, oh, by the way, we want to do this Tournament Cup thing and we want to do a split season, and they're like and the players are like, no, we don't want to do that. And he's like, okay, well we won't do that if you guys give us a salary cap, right or whatever whatever Rob wants. And this is what he does. It's classic Rob Manfred and the owners negotiating in the media. This is never good. This it might happen, but it ain't happening maybe in our lifetimes, because you can't. They won't even stop the MLB season for the Olympics. You think they're going to start it to stop in the middle for some tournament that nobody cares about. I mean the NBA. Do you know who won the NBA Tournament Cup this year?

00:02:56
Speaker 2: I think I actually do, and I really don't call the mbay clothes. I think it was the nixt And the only reason I would know that is because I was the nick man as a kid. But yeah, I I take I take your point generally. Look, I think it is very true that Rob Manford likes to float trial balloons. Uh you know, they they like to put things out in the media and see see what comes back. I don't know, this might be too generous to me. I don't actually think it's always intentional. You know, when he mentioned the golden at bat rule, I'm not sure he did that by waking up that morning and going, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna put the gold in that bat out there today and see what people think about it. He might have. But I think sometimes, you know, Rob does have some ability to be a straight shooter. You know, it is always kind of slanted to his interests. But you know, if you ask me a question, he'll usually usually find some way to answer it. That said, are there things that he does bring up for the sake of the bargaining table? Yes, I just don't see it with this one. Like, you know, it's not the kind of thing that you're gonna be but to kind of hold over the players heads. I don't think it's just it's such a major change and there's so much that goes into it, it's not it's not a great leverage point to me.

00:04:11
Speaker 1: And we're going to get to more on the bargaining table side with your latest article that came out this morning, but before that, I do want to get to what I feel like is some significant news on the future of the sport with expansion. Eventually we're going to have two more teams. Manfas trying to figure that out before his tenure ends in several years from now. And I'll take the quote from the show. He well, I guess I don't have a quote. He said that the markets have multiple major leagues that have multiple Major League teams like New York, LA, Chicago, et cetera, should not have both teams in the same division. So what were your thoughts on that, because that did give us a little hint of what expansion could look like. As we do think that there is going to be some realignment within the sport when we add two teams and not just going to be like cool Ale and let's just keep doing what we're doing and add one team to a division that has too many teams, like.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: It's going to it all reworked right, right, and what was really new there to my ear, and my ear isn't perfect. Although I'd like to think that if I haven't listened to Rob Manford more than any other person outside of Major League Baseball, I'm in the top two for people who've heard this guy talk more than anybody else. He has talked before about the geographical realignment, that he wants it to be eight division, yes, eight groups, four teams per group, thirty two teams, and that he wants the East West separation, and you know, his belief is that the timing of playoff games would be better if kind of the West is playing the West in the playoffs and the East is playing the East and then everybody comes together again. Kind of. I'm pretty sure that's basketball's format, and that's something he's talked about before. The specific question of well, what would you do with the two market two team markets, you know, the New York clas I think DC and Baltimore qualify Chicago. Would you put them in the same division or not, so that the Mets and the Yankees are in the same division, And his answer was no, which I don't believe I'd heard him answer that question before and so and that grabbed me, and I usually think if it grabs me, it'll little be of interest to other people. So that was the new part of it. There's many steps before this all gets done. They got to choose the expansion cities. They got to get the stadiums built. You know, this is years away, but they do have a vision of what they want to do.

00:06:29
Speaker 4: You talk about the cities too, So my question to you is, I know we've heard a couple of them. Do you see Manford leaning towards the two cities that he wants. Has he brought that up in discussion exactly where he wants that the beer? Is that not in anywhere in f rustion?

00:06:42
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, And I don't know that they're going to tip their hand on that until they have to. Todd, we've heard the same number of cities and Stephen Nesbit at the Athletics done some great work on this. Where it's been Portland and Nashville and Salt Lake City have been have been in the mix. But like everything, when it comes to the Commissioner's office, it's political. You know, Nashville you know, the country is divided up into territories. The Atlanta Breys and the Cincinnati Reds. I think both would have some pause about a team going to Nashville. Does that mean there won't be a team going to Nashville? Not necessarily, but there's all sorts of behind the scenes negotiating in conversation that has to get done. I mean, you know, we saw this type of stuff with the A's and the Giants in the Bay Area, and it's hard to predict at this point. You know, Portland's got a plan that's brewing salt like cities making a push. The size of the city matters. You know, people look at Las Vegas and question whether it's a viable media market, and so you don't want to go too small. I think it's certainly kind of a limited group that could sustain a major league team.

00:07:55
Speaker 3: Listen, it's gonna be a while because it's hard to find teams in and people that have let's say five billion dollars for an expansion fee, a stadium and everything else. So it's it's gonna be a bit. But I understand why they want to do this, and what they want is the next thing that Rob said was I want to have a signing deadline. Okay, of course you do, Rob. Of course the owners want to have a signing deadline because Evan, can you imagine the pressure that would be on players, because every team would just be like, Okay, we'll just wait till the last hour, and then every player will grovel and come to us say please sign me for one year, one million. Like of course the owners want this, right Like, this makes no sense to me. The whole point. No other I don't think any other league has a signing deadline. They have a ope when it opens, and a lot of teams get there a lot of their stuff done, But no other league has a signing deadline.

00:08:42
Speaker 2: I understand. I believe that there. I was under the presson that the other leagues do have them. But the other leagues are cap leagues, and I could be wrong about that. I want I want to double check on that. But I in a cap league, it's just a different system because you're splitting the revenue. It is kind of a fixed sum of money. I think probably both things are true. AJ If you had a deadline over time, it could hurt what players make, and players could feel forced into deals that they don't want to take. And also it could create a period of excitement. I do think there is some validity to the league argument here of like, well, that'd be fun if we had this in December, and there's also validity to it. Sure would be fun for the fans. It would not be fun for us, the players here. And this isn't new. This is something that the league proposed in sixteen in the negotiations leading to the seventeen to twenty one CBA. There was mid term talks in twenty nineteen where the league proposes and then it came up again in the twenty one twenty two lockout negotiation. So this has always been there, and now we're in a happy CBA expiration year. Everybody, we're in a CBA expiration year, and you know, Rob's putting it out there. And also we have kind of a slow free agency, at least for the top guys in the market. And so this is one that's good, always swirl and people are always gonna talk about it. And I don't ever see it changing in baseball unless you end up in a very different economic structure. And we're gonna we're gonna have all year to talk about that and then probably into twenty seven as well.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: So let's get into your article on this. What did you think of the response from some agents you spoke to, from Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer who represent the player's side, and they've been on the quieter side, and it sounds like you got a lot of answers on this one. And I'll just chime in quickly with my opinion. When I try to take a fan opinion on most things, it's like, sure, fans want to see more activity at a certain point. There are other ideas I brought up trade deadline, incentivizing teams to do these signings instead of punishing players. So the bullshit problem I have is, if you really cared, wouldn't you create it for an incentive based program to say, hey, if you sign a guy by this amount of time at this rate, you'll get an extra pick or something. That's the way to spur growth and actually have both sides give a crap. That's where I call the BS meter.

00:11:02
Speaker 2: Right, and the Union has pointed out going back years. You know, there's a statement that Bruce Meyer, who is now the deputy director at the Union, gave in twenty nineteen when this was proposed, that was, you know, we have tried to offer other forms of incentivizing teams to sign the league doesn't want to do it. And I believe that the idea of a trading deadline has always been the league is not interested in that unless it comes along with a free agent deadline. So you're right on those fronts.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: You know.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: One of the things Rob was asked on the radio, this was a radio interview on WFN that spurred all this yesterday, was you know, what are the players thinking about this? And Rob made the argument that they think it's bad for their salaries and said, you know, but I don't really buy that. He was pretty dismissive of it, and Tony Clark batted back with a pretty forceful statement that the league is making a massive miscalculation if they're going to attempt to kind of blow up the system that has produced good six s for the league and over recent years, but you know, also over time. And so Clark had a forceful quote. The day before Brent Rooker on Twitter excuse Me on X said it was one of the most anti player ideas that exists, so he swatted it down. Scott Boris also said it's bad for players. Joel Wolf, who's another prominent agent, he's the head of Baseball Wasserman, and he's got Yamamoto and Rookie Susaki. You know, he drew a comparison to the international system where he has seen some fruits and benefits of the deadline system working well. But you know, he even offered kind of this key question of Okay, what if a guy doesn't sign, you know, if you have the deadline, whatever date you want, what then happens to someone who says, you know what, none of these offers are good enough for me? Are you seeing? I don't think anybody thinks the end result should be the guy who sit out. But that's an unanswered question of what happens to those guys here. So yeah, it's you know, as ninety eight percent of the stories I do and the questions we discussed when I come on with you guys are it's about money, and the players believe this would hurt their income, and I think they have reason to believe that.

00:13:18
Speaker 4: Take the salary cap out of this whole situation, right, So my question to you is, for both sides, what is the most important thing that MLB wants to get out of this CBA. And what's the most important thing the players want to get out of this besides salary cap?

00:13:31
Speaker 2: What do you think is next. I'm gonna be a little facetious and think I just said it. It's money, right, Yeah, But look, I think the key on the owner side, besides the salary cap, the kind of the underlying thing here is the media rights in baseball. You know what Manford wants to do is take the control of the local television rights every all the thirty teams right now control what they do with you know, the majority of their games. MLB sells like the Sunday Night package whatever. But you know, if you're a Yankees fan watching on the Yes Network, the Yankees decide to partner with the Yes Network, which they own, but that's their decision. Rob wants that to be his decision, his office's decision, and with the kind of decline of rsns, he would envision a world where I think more TV money is shared. Big market teams don't like that. How could you make big market teams happy? Well, maybe you give them a cap and tell them they don't have to share other money like tickets, and they can keep other things right. But all of this kind of comes back to how do you alter media rights and revenue sharing? And the very interesting thing about revenue sharing, we're talking about how owners share money between themselves that is collectively bargained. They can't change that without player approval because the players argue it affects, you know, how teams behave, what they spend on, what they don't. So the media stuff, this boring stuff that happen a couple of year years ago with bankruptcy with Diamonds Sports Group, which is now main Street Sports Group, which is which MLB's nine teams that are broadcast by that company have now cut ties with temporarily while they renegotiate deals. It can be mind numbing stuff, but it's going to be at the heart of all that's gonna happen in negotiations. I just.

00:15:22
Speaker 3: It's all it's You know what's funny, Evan, is we've had a lot of talks you and I on field, off field, on this show, not on the show. Everything you've said, though, is such so pro owners, right the players like what are we need? What are the players want? Okay? And when you say yes, Manfred is getting his dream come true by this arnsense folding. Now he has control. He controls the pre game, he controls who the announcers are, He controls all this stuff, the money flow, where it comes and goes. But the real question for me is, how do you, if you're Rob Manfred, tell the Yankees, the Cubs, the Mets, the teams that have their own network right that, Hey, guess what, guys, we're cutting you from the Dodgers. They're making three hundred or whatever million a year off sports and at LA right, Hey, La, you know what you're making three hundred We're gonna cut you back to two hundred and pirates you only get fifty million. Isn't that kind of the same thing that they already have. How is he going to get all thirty owners because everything they do, let's not forget Evan, is always unanimous, every vote unanimous. All thirty owners voted forward things, right, So how do you get thirty owners to say, well, I'm gonna have to take less money so I can give it. It's basically revenue sharing, but just in a different way.

00:16:38
Speaker 2: Right, And I'll nipick one thing he said about not pro owner so much as this is from the ownership perspective, which I think the reality of this round of bargaining compared to the last one. Aj the players were so angry for really that whole previous CBA back in twenty nineteen, they were angering. Twenty twenty, they're angry, and then you know, we go into the life out twenty one. This time around, the pendulums kind of swung the other way. Where it has been management, the owners who at Manford's office, who are saying, these are the issues that we want to address here. It's we know generally what the players want, right. They want to get younger players paid more. They want to you know, raise the CBT, loosen restrictions on the market. Things that are always true will again be true here. They did a great job last time with service time, manipulation. There were some things that I think we're genuinely achieved in the last CBA here. Rob as you point out, has a big owner versus owner problem here, which is one of the reasons why the idea of a CAP is kind of not unfathomable. But like you, first you got to get your owners on board. You've got to find a floor that's agreeable for your small market own you got to find a ceiling that your large market owners okay with, and then at the end of it, you've got to get all the teams, all the players involved, to approve it right. The battle for MLB very often isn't we know this historically is not just the players. It can often be worse internally. And this big market small market divide. The difference between the TV money that the Dodgers have and the small market teams with FanDuel Sports Network have is a big bridge that Manford's got to find a way to get across. And you've got to find a way to get across it that the players will find palatable. And I gotta tell you, you know, Rob Manford makes a lot of money. That is not an enviable position to be in. That is a very difficult task. And I am truly curious what system he settles on, assuming they don't end up getting a cap. Okay, what does it look like? What is this the major change to that media right system you can make that the owners can agree on and that the players will say, okay, you know, we believe this will still spur competition because the one thing that the players don't want is all the money being centralized, because then if you're getting a big check, no matter what you do as a team, why are you going to spend It's a really fascinating problem if you step back, I love it. I agree.

00:19:26
Speaker 1: It's almost the game inside the game. It's why I love reading what you put out there. So that leads me to my next question. I think probably the last notable thing from the interview with Manfred Auden WFN, he called out the lockout negativity. So the quote and I'll do a direct one this time, I found it. I do think there has been a rush to negativity by a lot of the media that covers our sport.

00:19:49
Speaker 3: You sure about that?

00:19:50
Speaker 1: I mean, are we wrong?

00:19:51
Speaker 2: Are you wrong? Like?

00:19:52
Speaker 1: And I don't think we're just getting up here and screaming everything sucks. But I think it's pretty clear that if you pay attention to the sport, the two sides are not best friends. They're not partners, as the NBA calls their players. And there happened to be a shouting match a few months ago between one of the faces of the sport and the commissioner of the sport. Amongst his meetings with teams about the salary cap. So your thoughts on the negativity. I consider you media, I consider us media. Do you think we're being too negative about what's coming up in eleven months?

00:20:26
Speaker 2: No? And you know, it's all I could. I think this expression that I'm making now is what it prompted me when I when I heard it yesterday. It's like it's a little bit of an eye roll and a chuckle. You know. Rob Manford does what he thinks he needs to do to further the owner's interests. Sometimes that's walking right up to the line of saying he wants a salary cap. That walking right up to the line of saying he expects a lockout without saying directly he expects a lockout it's a new norm in sport. But doesn't say I'm going to lock out the players, right, and then you know, kind of turns around and blames the media when people write about these things. It's it is what it is. I don't know how else to put it. I don't think the media is covering this improperly. I think I think there's a ton to explore here. There's stuff we we just talked about that I haven't written about in recent time, planned to it. It's never ending, and the league kind of wants it both ways. I think both sides want it both ways at times frankly, where it's how dare you talk about this? And then a week later, well we're going to talk about it. It's like, okay, it's it's always easy to blame the media, but I I just I don't. I don't spend my time thinking about that one.

00:21:51
Speaker 1: It's so fun, it's so easy. You're right, Although the media does have a response and it's here right now, we're not representing everyone, but we can try and we can reply to what is said. So yes, I agree, we're on the same page with that.

00:22:05
Speaker 2: One.

00:22:05
Speaker 1: Last one I have for you is the big news that popped up over the past twenty four hours with Trek Scougle. So I wanted to know your thoughts on how crazy the number exchange difference was and how that affects everything. We were talking about the arbitration system, and you can speak to this better than I can. But I know at some point last go around during the CBA, they were trying to essentially eliminate this and turn it into a numbers based system, which was rejected. So I am fascinated for the battle and wish that we could live stream schoogling court against the Tigers nineteen versus thirty two MIL.

00:22:43
Speaker 2: Not to reveal too many of my texts to Ken Rosenthal, but I think I texted that is all caps fun. Speaking about the difference between the two, it is very interesting. One of the things that's happened in arbitration over time is that I think MLB's looked at it to some degree as a tool by which players can raise salaries rightfully, and a lot of teams don't want to go to it anymore, and a lot of agents don't want to take players to it. Somebody made an interesting point to me in last a couple months that agents in the Union aren't always aligned on the value of going to a hearing. Because if you're the agent you take a player to a hearing, or you kind of support the idea of going to hearing and the player loses the hearing, well they might fire you, right, But where the Union's interest is collectively, the more times you go to these hearings, maybe the better shot you more quickly raise the salaries. So it's a battleground area. It is always, and I don't mean just inside these arbitration hearings, I mean even inside the decision to go. And yes MLB did propose last time to eliminate arbitration. That is not something the players want. They believe it is really kind of the first It's truly the shot they have to get closer to kind of a fair salary for their performance. Right, you know, your your minimum salary for the first three years, and if you're Super two, it's the first two years, and then find this is your first chance of real money. And so it makes sense that MLB would want to clamp down on it. Would and it makes sense that the players want to keep it televising. It would be so glorious. I wish they would do it. They'll never do it. I don't know how it goes away again unless there's some sort of massive change to the sports economic structure, meaning whether you go to a salary cap system. But as long as you stay in this system, which it seems certainly likely everybody will, we're, you know, we'll keep reliving this this same episode, and occasionally you'll get a really interesting matchup where the numbers are so far apart on a truly fantastic player.

00:24:53
Speaker 1: And here's what we're going to do, since we'll never be able to actually watch that, and also there's a chance that it never ends up happening. But school is one of the best interviews in the game. So at some point in his life it might not be right after the case. Maybe it's after he signs his big free agent contract. We can bring him on and we will ask him how that case went and the back and forth that went down, and how he felt about it, so we'll have some fun with it. Evan, this was great. Thanks for the extended time. It was very necessary. A lot of things happening. I appreciate you and forever else I Athletic Real before.

00:25:29
Speaker 3: Kevin, you want to know why they'll never televise it because I've been through it. The owners and the don't want the fans to actually hear what they think about the players. I've been through it. That's why. That's why it'll never be televised. The player just sits there and the player gives the positive stuff that they did, and then the owner side, the team side just says, well, you sucked on Tuesday, Todd, you were terrible against oh two breaking balls in the dirt from a right handed sidearm Tyler Rogers looking dude right, and you're like, Okay, nobody hits that guy slider that goes up right. That's why they don't. That's why I'll never be televised because if it was televised, then people would actually know what the teams feel like, in what they what they actually think about players. And that's why it's not going to be televised. I wish it would be because the truth will set you free.

00:26:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, put it. Put the right dollar figure out at AJ you know Netflix?

00:26:21
Speaker 4: Is that it like kind of a baseball judge Judy.

00:26:24
Speaker 2: They don't say, no the money.

00:26:27
Speaker 1: I'm with you Netflix, right there, you're listening right now. Throw a big, big number, throw the bag at this and it would be it would be must see. It would be awesome, And I'm with you AJ right. It's like we brought this up the other day. Ivan Corbyn Burns told us about his ARP case and said, your two bad starts in August cost us the playoffs. Forget the other thirty that were incredible, those two bad starts that's why we didn't make the playoffs by a game or two. Like that kind of reply from a team after you're stating how good you are and you're a sign winner. Whatever would be such good content, So anyway we can dare to dream. I'm with you, Evan. We'll try and get the distribution deal done with the league and the streamers. But in the meantime, enjoy your weekend. Thanks for joining us and everyone else. Catch Evansworth in the work in the Athletic and on X you can see where his articles are posted on there too.

00:27:17
Speaker 2: Happy CBA expiration here, Yes, you too.

00:27:20
Speaker 1: We'll be talking win totals. Oh, this is the controversial one. You weren't on for this yesterday AJ where we talked about the Will Salmon article that referred to Mets officials feeling as if this is a very solid playoff team without doing anything else the rest of the off season, and this is what they're looking at right. Projection models play into what we see for regular season win totals put together by bet MGM on futures that you can bet on right now. Eighty six and a half wins over at one five under at one fifteen.

00:27:55
Speaker 2: Now.

00:27:55
Speaker 1: I'm not touching this because I do think there's going to be more in play for the Mets. TBD is one where I'll wait. But right now, if they did nothing else, that is a hot number.

00:28:11
Speaker 3: Have to wait right now, I would take I would probably that division. I would probably take the under because I'm not sold on their pitching. But who knows, they might have another move up their sleeve. David Sterens, who knows what they can do. But they lost Neil, they lost Nemo. I know they brought in Simeon, they lost Alonso. That's a lot of homers to try to make up for court. Listen, what are they supposed to say, no, we're not very good right now? They're the Mets. They have to say they're pretty good. They're trying, they're building the new casino and doing all that stuff around around City Field. So their course are going to say we're a playoff team. Because if they come out and say, ah, we don't think we're very good right now, Mets fans will riot in the streets. Man, they'll be so mad. They'll be out with the pitchforks for poor David Sterens and Stevie Cohen. So yeah, of course they're going to say that. But right now, eighty six I'd take the under.

00:29:00
Speaker 4: The under two as well, with the people they got rid of and I you know, oh, I didn't get rid of some. They got rid of some they didn't bring back. And I think that's a big difference. And I know a lot of Mets fans like, well, this has been like.

00:29:13
Speaker 2: This for years.

00:29:13
Speaker 4: Well, they actually were in the driver's seat to make the playoffs this year, and they blew that they had a really good team to really get after it and make a push.

00:29:23
Speaker 2: Getting rid of Nemo. I didn't really like.

00:29:26
Speaker 4: I think he was a staple on that team, even though you know, they went to him and asked him about, you know, going there. He said yes, I wouldn't never have made that conversation with it. But you know, Jeff McNeil, I still think he's got a lot in the tank. He's a really good hitter. We'll see, we'll see it comes down to pitching and being healthy. But I don't I would say like eighty ish.

00:29:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's an eighty ish right now. They lost a lot, and some of the youngsters will get better, but I don't think they're gonna get that much better right away. Hey, look at this odds boost token for the college football playoff score, bigger payout semifinals. You got one more game to go and then we'll see who the University of Miami is playing. But anyway, you can check out that odds boost token in the bedmgm app or at bedmgm dot com. Gambling problem or concern, there's help called one eight hundred a gambler