I DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS ANYMORE OH THANK GOD
Do you think you were tired of hearing about the owners and players not coming to an agreement? I could not have been more sick of it. “Oh, the owners suck,” I would say in 75% of my newsletters. “What a bunch of sucky sucks. I don’t care for them.”
I understand if some out there found that language harsh, but it was well deserved.
Now, though, that’s all over. Negotiations have finished, a deal has been struck, and we’re compressing three months of offseason and Spring Training into a few days. Where is Freddie Freeman going to sign? What about Carlos Correa or Seiya Suzuki or Trevor Story or Kris Bryant? You might learn all of those answers literally today.
I mean, probably not, but it’s not impossible.
So what we’re getting now is baseball concentrate, the condensed stuff that really packs a punch. I mean, just yesterday we had the annual Giants Show Up To Spring Training pictures:
I mean, check this Instagram story out:
Brandon Belt just wants to ensure everyone knows he’s the Captain:
On Sunday, an anonymous GM complained about the Giants signing a good baseball player to play baseball for them:
(The Giants are nowhere near the luxury tax right now, and have lots of money to spend that they would, in a better world, be paying to Buster Posey.)
That’s all pretty normal spring stuff, honestly. The team shows up, Brandon Belt is funny, some small market GM complains to a reporter that his team can’t compete with the big market teams who spend all that money, and then that reporter uncritically repeats his point without asking why the small market team can’t spend money and also just how much money does he think the Giants are spending at the moment.
But what’s not normal in Spring Training is a team starting its fire sale, which the A’s did Sunday, trading Chris Bassitt to the Mets, and then continued yesterday, shipping Matt Olsen to Atlanta for prospects, which also closed the door on Freddie Freeman coming back to the Braves.
Not to be outdone, the Reds send Eugenio Suarez and Jess Winker — Suarez was a 2018 All-Star, and Winker made the All-Star team last year — to the Mariners for some perfectly decent prospects, but mostly for some cost savings. The Reds had also, on Sunday, sent Sonny Gray to the Twins for a perfectly decent prospect, but mostly for some cost savings. And way earlier in the offseason, before the lockout, they let Wade Miley go on waivers in return for some perfectly decent cost savings.
See, that time they cut the middleman. Smart! Because cutting middlemen means cost savings.
It is a truly pathetic state of affairs in baseball when a team that won 83 games in 2021, a total that would have put them into the playoffs if the playoffs had been in their new configuration, tears down its team just to save some money. Remember, every team in baseball makes $65 million just off national TV deals. That doesn’t include local TV, or ticket sales, or merchandise sales, or any kind of other revenue. Just a flat $65 million in their pockets at the start of every season.
And what do they do with that? They tell their fans to go fuck themselves. It’s not their fault that Nick Castellanos opted out of his deal, but every choice they made afterwards, like destroying their team for what’s reported to be marginal prospects, was absolutely their choice. They decimated their rotation and traded their second best position player because they just kinda quit.
As much as the charming Spring Training quotes are an important part of baseball, so too is the fire sale that alienates a generation of fans. The Astros had one, and it took them cheating their way to a World Series to start packing their stadium again. The 2012 Red Sox had one, and they won their own championship the next year. The 2012 Marlins also had one, and that hasn’t gone so great over its first decade. The Reds and A’s have both started theirs, meanwhile, and it’s pretty clear that neither team is going to keep much of last year’s squad around in 2022.
The A’s, by the way, are going to start receiving revenue sharing money from the league again. That money is specifically earmarked for use on their roster. They’re off to a great start so far!
Also, Francisco Tatis Jr is injured and will miss about a month of the season. Love to see young superstars go down with non-baseball injuries. Hope your truck got real clean, buddy!
As much as there is to love about baseball, there is also…the rest of it. There is the human side, where there are unfortunate accidents. There is the business side, where there are unfortunate intentionalities. Two teams ran into those and blew themselves up for no good reason. Just a few days ago, their fans were ecstatic to have baseball. Now they’re miserable, because they found out what kind of baseball it’ll be.