Red Sox/MLB Buffalo Blue Jays - Mookie Betts agrees to sign 12-year, $365 million contract extension with LA

[Smitty93]

w/ the cba expiring I think it basically just expedited the lockout


Oh well, sale got TJ and won’t miss a game lol

I'm starting to think the MLB saw the NHL break their record for longest work stoppage in professional sports, and decided they wanted it back.

 

[Johnnyduke]

I know in college sports, attendance has taken a hit in recent years. Until now I think pro sports has by and large maintained the status quo for attendance. This will be fascinating to see going forward. A lot of people won't be comfortable returning to stadiums until there is a vaccine and even then some people will choose to stay away. The TV presence/contracts is only gonna grow from here.

 

[CDJ]

I'm starting to think the MLB saw the NHL break their record for longest work stoppage in professional sports, and decided they wanted it back.

Manfred may sneakily be the most inept of all the commissioners

 

[JRull86]

SVP nails it here

 

[Therick67]

SVP nails it here

Ordinarily I’d agree 100% with this logic, but during a pandemic things just look different to me. 100k dead, massive unemployment, people losing everything.

sometimes life isn’t fair. Baseball can cancel the season for all I care.

 

[Smitty93]

Manfred may sneakily be the most inept of all the commissioners

Had to think about that for a second. Silver is clearly the best. He "gets it". Goodell sucks, but he does exactly what the owners want, and he's the commissioner for a league that's too big to fail, so his ineptitude doesn't really matter. Bettman has hurt his league twice with lockouts, but, again, he takes on the blame that should be placed on the owners. There's also the fact that as much as fans hate him, he's done a good job in growing league revenue since he became commissioner.

What I'd say about Manfred is that his ineptitude certainly matters the most. His league is at a turning point more so than any other league. There are clearly issues with the MLB, and he hasn't figured out how to fix them or is unwilling to fix them. The unfortunate thing is that he actually seemed like a decent choice when they hired him.

 

[CDJ]

Had to think about that for a second. Silver is clearly the best. He "gets it". Goodell sucks, but he does exactly what the owners want, and he's the commissioner for a league that's too big to fail, so his ineptitude doesn't really matter. Bettman has hurt his league twice with lockouts, but, again, he takes on the blame that should be placed on the owners. There's also the fact that as much as fans hate him, he's done a good job in growing league revenue since he became commissioner.

What I'd say about Manfred is that his ineptitude certainly matters the most. His league is at a turning point more so than any other league. There are clearly issues with the MLB, and he hasn't figured out how to fix them or is unwilling to fix them. The unfortunate thing is that he actually seemed like a decent choice when they hired him.

*like*

wasn’t it basically him vs Tom Werner for the position??

They still may have made the right call between the two Even with his ineptitude lol

 

[Ben Grimm]

Had to think about that for a second. Silver is clearly the best. He "gets it". ...

He's clearly the worst and just doesn't get it. None of the post-LeBron rookies have been great, because they needed the second year of college coaching and practice that even Magic and Isiah had. He's planning to go none and done in 2022 (the link is in my sig) and the quality level of both NBA players and college players (without the most talented players even playing college) will go down even further. He's going to ruin two sports with one stupid move.

 

[McGarnagle]

Had to think about that for a second. Silver is clearly the best. He "gets it". Goodell sucks, but he does exactly what the owners want, and he's the commissioner for a league that's too big to fail, so his ineptitude doesn't really matter. Bettman has hurt his league twice with lockouts, but, again, he takes on the blame that should be placed on the owners. There's also the fact that as much as fans hate him, he's done a good job in growing league revenue since he became commissioner.

What I'd say about Manfred is that his ineptitude certainly matters the most. His league is at a turning point more so than any other league. There are clearly issues with the MLB, and he hasn't figured out how to fix them or is unwilling to fix them. The unfortunate thing is that he actually seemed like a decent choice when they hired him.

Yeah, Silver is by far the best at his job.

Goodell is a fool and makes an ass of himself constantly, but he's doing his job which is to make money. A trained monkey could run the NFL though, so it's of no credit to him.

Bettman is far too hated for things that aren't his fault. The NHL has grown into a stable, nationally viable league under his tenure. There were some growing pains in the midst of it (lockouts, rule changes, etc.), but the league is better for having had him instead of John Ziegler or Gil Stein during that time period.

Manfred has spent too much of his tenure trying to fix things that don't need fixing, and what he's doing to the players now is reprehensible. Still better than that rat Tom Werner though TBQH.

 

[Nothingbutglass]

People are underestimating how big the TV ratings are going to be when live sports return. There's going to be literally nothing else on, scripted entertainment is going to take a long time to get back in production, movie theaters won't open for a while. But if the MLB playoffs are on, even in an empty arena, the ratings are going to be bigger than they've been in years. Which means sponsorship rights are going to go for big money.

I agree with the live sports ratings point, but I think MLB already cost themselves by waiting so long. Once NBA and NHL playoffs start in July/August, that's a lot of live sports for the summer that MLB typically doesn't compete with. If they had come back 1st, they had a fighting chance. If they cancel the season, they're pretty much expediting their path to irrelevance. The product is terrible compared to what is was even 15 years ago. Not sure how many baseball games I'd watch over NBA or NHL game on the other channel

 

[McGarnagle]

I agree with the live sports ratings point, but I think MLB already cost themselves by waiting so long. Once NBA and NHL playoffs start in July/August, that's a lot of live sports for the summer that MLB typically doesn't compete with. If they had come back 1st, they had a fighting chance. If they cancel the season, they're pretty much expediting their path to irrelevance. The product is terrible compared to what is was even 15 years ago. Not sure how many baseball games I'd watch over NBA or NHL game on the other channel

I don't see how the product is worse than 15 years ago. It's the same sport. I could see people thinking it's boring compared to the steroid days with less dingers and the Joe Maddon 6 pitching changes an inning delays. But they have addressed that a lot by juicing the balls last year and making the 3-batter minimum rule that was supposed to start this year (terrible rule, as a semi-purist, btw. But it solves that 'entertainment' problem of too many delays).

The problem is that Manfred has completely failed in marketing the game. Mike Trout is one of the most talented players in the history of the sport. He has no cultural imprint, the average person probably doesn't recognize him. Mookie Betts is a similar case. Aaron Judge should be way bigger than he is as a charismatic slugger in NYC. He isn't marketing them or the game at all. And he had the nerve to blame Trout for not going out and marketing himself. f***ing clown. In the 90s you had Griffey, Bo Jackson, Frank Thomas, Clemens, Jeter, Maddux & Glavine, McGwire & Sosa, everyone knew them, national exposure. non-baseball fans would recognize them from commercials and advertising.

 

[Nothingbutglass]

I don't see how the product is worse than 15 years ago. It's the same sport. I could see people thinking it's boring compared to the steroid days with less dingers and the Joe Maddon 6 pitching changes an inning delays. But they have addressed that a lot by juicing the balls last year and making the 3-batter minimum rule that was supposed to start this year (terrible rule, as a semi-purist, btw. But it solves that 'entertainment' problem of too many delays).

The problem is that Manfred has completely failed in marketing the game. Mike Trout is one of the most talented players in the history of the sport. He has no cultural imprint, the average person probably doesn't recognize him. Mookie Betts is a similar case. Aaron Judge should be way bigger than he is as a charismatic slugger in NYC. He isn't marketing them or the game at all. And he had the nerve to blame Trout for not going out and marketing himself. f***ing clown. In the 90s you had Griffey, Bo Jackson, Frank Thomas, Clemens, Jeter, Maddux & Glavine, McGwire & Sosa, everyone knew them, national exposure. non-baseball fans would recognize them from commercials and advertising.

Its too slow now and the rest of the world has gotten faster as far as attention spans. These changes arent going to change the fan experience. Pitchers take way too long to throw a pitch and hitters take way too long to get in the box to take a pitch. Every AB is 15 pitches now and games are 4 hours. I used to watch every game in the late 90s and the 2000's. Getting good tickets from vendors or clients was like hitting the lottery. Watching a game start to finish now is a chore and now they give tickets away. Totally agree on the marketing aspect, although part of the problem is that Trout and Mookie have the personalities of wallpaper paste and they are the best players, but yes personalities, rivalries, grudges in MLB were all more publicized and mainstream back then. They need to fix it though. The demographics trend old for baseball viewers.

 

[CDJ]

David Price is giving $1000 to every minor leaguer in the Dodgers system. That’s a nice gesture

 

[CDJ]

Inside Roy Halladay's struggle with pain, addiction


I’m sure all of us in here know somebody who has battled with addiction, thought this was an insightful read that gave more context to Roy Halladay the person and ultimately the events in his career/retirement life that led up to his unfortunate passing


He was a genius of a pitcher

 

[CDJ]

Sox are now paying the minor leaguers through August

 

[Centrum Hockey]

Effort to save the Spinners is late in the game – Lowell Sun
It sounds like there is a lot of desperation in lowell to keep the redsox affiliation.

 

[Smitty93]

John Henry can go f*** himself. Having cuts is bad enough, but the way they set up the tiered system is even worse.

A 20% pay cut for someone making $50k is a billion times worse than a 30% pay cut for someone making $500k. I've heard of a bunch of companies cutting high earner salaries (exec/director) so that the lower earners aren't affected, and if the Red Sox were so insistent on being assholes and cutting salaries, that's what they should have done.

 

[CDJ]

Chris Archer is having thoracic outlet surgery, that was incredibly out of the blue and is gonna be a bitch to come back from

 

[McGarnagle]

Chris Archer is having thoracic outlet surgery, that was incredibly out of the blue and is gonna be a bitch to come back from

The Pirates can never have nice things

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

John Henry can go f*** himself. Having cuts is bad enough, but the way they set up the tiered system is even worse.

A 20% pay cut for someone making $50k is a billion times worse than a 30% pay cut for someone making $500k. I've heard of a bunch of companies cutting high earner salaries (exec/director) so that the lower earners aren't affected, and if the Red Sox were so insistent on being assholes and cutting salaries, that's what they should have done.

Any sports team not covering the costs of employees/players is disgusting.

It's a business yes, but they are drowning in assets between this and any other businesses they own... pay the people, the money will be made back later. Even if not, it's an irrelevant sum of money for these owners.

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Effort to save the Spinners is late in the game – Lowell Sun
It sounds like there is a lot of desperation in lowell to keep the redsox affiliation.

They should.

 

[McGarnagle]

Minor League Sports are going to be a massive conundrum the next 18-24 months or so. No one is going to want to go to a single-A baseball game with a crowd full of people, and there are so many teams in the area that it's going to completely collapse as a business. In a vacuum, you'd say minor league baseball should shut down for 2 seasons or at least until a vaccine gives us enough herd immunity to go to stuff again. But, the major leagues depend on the minors for both talent and prospect development. Take a guy like Jeter Downs who we have big expectations for, and now he's just going to be sitting there doing nothing from ages 21-22 because he probably wouldn't be on an expanded active roster this season?

So you kind of need some minor league activity. Maybe it's a compromise like having a 40-man roster in the MLB and then each team has one AAA-level franchise operating with a 40-man roster of their own. But could they even logistically do that? Or these billionaire owners might just have to absorb the cost of keeping AA teams alive for 2 years for a down-the-road investment.

 

[Centrum Hockey]

They should.

I do not think the Red Sox will leave Greenville for Lowell. It sounds like FSG is waiting for something official to come out so they can say thank you for the many years of affiliation and officially move on.

 

[BigGoalBrad]

Minor League Sports are going to be a massive conundrum the next 18-24 months or so. No one is going to want to go to a single-A baseball game with a crowd full of people, and there are so many teams in the area that it's going to completely collapse as a business. In a vacuum, you'd say minor league baseball should shut down for 2 seasons or at least until a vaccine gives us enough herd immunity to go to stuff again. But, the major leagues depend on the minors for both talent and prospect development. Take a guy like Jeter Downs who we have big expectations for, and now he's just going to be sitting there doing nothing from ages 21-22 because he probably wouldn't be on an expanded active roster this season?

So you kind of need some minor league activity. Maybe it's a compromise like having a 40-man roster in the MLB and then each team has one AAA-level franchise operating with a 40-man roster of their own. But could they even logistically do that? Or these billionaire owners might just have to absorb the cost of keeping AA teams alive for 2 years for a down-the-road investment.

I think more folks than you think would love to check out a reduced crowd Paw Sox game or anything if the Bo Sox are playing in an empty Fenway.

But I can’t see things being organized for that to happen.

I’ll be at NASCAR in Louden before any closed door pro sports happen. Weird.

 

[Smitty93]

Minor League Sports are going to be a massive conundrum the next 18-24 months or so. No one is going to want to go to a single-A baseball game with a crowd full of people, and there are so many teams in the area that it's going to completely collapse as a business. In a vacuum, you'd say minor league baseball should shut down for 2 seasons or at least until a vaccine gives us enough herd immunity to go to stuff again. But, the major leagues depend on the minors for both talent and prospect development. Take a guy like Jeter Downs who we have big expectations for, and now he's just going to be sitting there doing nothing from ages 21-22 because he probably wouldn't be on an expanded active roster this season?

So you kind of need some minor league activity. Maybe it's a compromise like having a 40-man roster in the MLB and then each team has one AAA-level franchise operating with a 40-man roster of their own. But could they even logistically do that? Or these billionaire owners might just have to absorb the cost of keeping AA teams alive for 2 years for a down-the-road investment.

The major league teams pay minor league player and coach salaries, but many minor league teams aren't owned by their major league team. For example, I believe FSG only owns the Salem Red Sox (High A). The minor league team pays for travel and other operational expenses. I could see teams just keeping their minor leaguers in their spring training facilities. I wouldn't worry about players sitting around doing nothing. It's more that minor league baseball could change forever (i.e. many might shut down), which would naturally help the MLB in their goal for MiLB contraction. Of course, MLB and MiLB could make a deal where there's some subsidization from MLB so MiLB teams don't collapse.