I do almost all of my baseball on the radio anymore.  I actually prefer it anymore.  It's still difficult hearing "The Guardians" instead of the Indians.  The graphics grate when I see them.  

Oh well.  The old clock radio on the headboard is tuned to the channel all the time so it is what ever is on, is on.  If it wasn't, I might not hear another game and just let it fade away, not missed.

Sigh.

So went outside in the sun, fired up the grill an cooked 4 burgers with some red bliss potatoes. Turned one into a cheese burger with bacon. 

Cranked up the Sox game on the internet radio. Now all I need is for them to make a come from behind in the last 2 innings.

Another Opening Day at Fenway Pahk!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

I saw that last night during the game. That was really a grand moment in baseball!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Alyssa Nakken Makes History

So it's the Dodgers in the NL vs Who-wants-it-more in the AL? Vegas has Houston as the top AL bet. I wonder if that factors in Trevor Story going to the Red Sox. Commish is gonna like having him.

Sorry but Meh.

Fernando Tatis Jr. Has Fractured Wrist

Sanders Welcomes End of Major League Lockout But Slams ‘Baseball Oligarchs’

Posted on March 11, 2022 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield

Jerri-Lynn here. So there will be baseball this season after all. Sanders calls out the owners – aka, baseball’s oligarchs – for causng the 99-day lockout that has delayed players from reporting for spring training for the 2022 season.

Opening Day has been pushed back from March 31 until April 7.

While Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement that he is “delighted to see an agreement reached so that the Major League Baseball season can start,” he slammed the “unacceptable behavior” of team owners, who he said “negotiated in bad faith for more than 100 days in a blatant attempt to break the players’ union.”

“We are dealing with an organization controlled by a number of billionaires who collectively are worth over $100 billion,” the democratic socialist and two-time U.S. presidential candidate noted. “It should be clear to all that these baseball oligarchs have shown that they are far more concerned about increasing their wealth and profits than in strengthening our national pastime.”

Bernie Sanders on MLB’s attempts to union bust.

Let’s also not forget that MLB oligarchs have created one of the most anti-union and anti-labor systems in contemporary sport — minor league baseball. https://t.co/fAXjGsXejV

— Derek Silva (@Derekcrim) March 10, 2022

Sanders excoriated the owners for eliminating their teams’ affiliation with more than 40 minor league ballclubs, “not only causing needless economic pain and suffering but also breaking the hearts of fans in small and mid-sized towns all over America.”

The senator took the “baseball oligarchs” to task for paying minor league players “totally inadequate wages,” for seeking to “eliminate the jobs of another 900 minor league players,” and for taking “billions of dollars in corporate welfare from taxpayers to build expensive stadiums” while charging “outrageously high prices for tickets that many working-class families cannot afford.”

“It would be wrong for Congress to simply celebrate today’s agreement and move on,” Sanders asserted. “We must prevent the greed of baseball’s oligarchs from destroying the game. The best way to do that is to end Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption and I will be introducing legislation to do just that.”

Major League Baseball’s lockout is over.

MLB owners and the players’ association agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday, bringing an end to a three-plus-month work stoppage that began on Dec. 2.

A full 162-game season will be played, beginning with opening day on April 7 for most teams. Players are tentatively scheduled to report for spring training by March 13 and free agency is expected to re-open tonight.

MARCH 1, 2022

Calling Both Sides ‘Spoiled’ in Baseball Lockout Ignores How Owners Forced Labor War

MARC NORMANDIN AND NEIL DEMAUSE

While the lockout officially began when MLB’s CBA expired on December 2, everyone in the sports world has known for years that team owners were preparing to shut down baseball in hopes of enshrining the gains they’ve made in exploiting loopholes in the last agreement to siphon money away from players and into their own pockets. Soon after the previous CBA was agreed to in 2016, owners began aggressively cutting loose players in their prime who were eligible for higher salaries under the league’s system of arbitration (which kicks in once a player has three to four years in the majors) and free agency (which requires six to seven years of service time). In 2019, the last season for which full data is available, over half of the total service time was accrued by players who combined for less than 10% of the total pay (Twitter, 12/2/21)—indicating that team owners were still paying for stars, but otherwise filling out their rosters with the cheapest talent available.

This not only cost players who were forced to sign cut-rate contracts at well below their market value to compete with youngsters with artificially depressed salaries (SBNation, 3/18; Deadspin, 1/14/19), it trickled down to younger players as well: Ronald Acuña Jr., one of the brightest young talents in the game, surprised everyone by signing a relatively modest eight-year, $100 million deal in 2019 (MarcNormandin.com, 4/12/19), taking a guaranteed lump sum rather than gambling that someone would eventually pay him what he’s worth.

At the same time, owners have used a “luxury tax” on high-payroll teams as a de facto salary cap (Deadspin, 1/31/19), driving down spending by imposing huge fines on teams that exceed an arbitrary limit—one that the owners, in their latest contract proposals, have repeatedly proposed making even more regressive by significantly ramping up the penalties even for first-time, low-level offenders (CBS Sports, 2/21/22).

The result has been an increasingly two-tier labor system where players can only fully share in baseball’s multi-billion-dollar yearly revenues (Forbes, 12/21/19) once they’ve played in the majors for four years or more—but owners are increasingly incentivized to ditch expensive older players for younger ones making near the league minimum (DRaysBay, 3/21/19).

That minimum salary, meanwhile, has actually fallen relative to inflation (TheScore, 12/2/21), rising only 6.6% since 2017; one of the union’s main demands has been to increase it to $775,000 for the 2022 season. While the salaries of the top stars continue to soar, the average salary fell throughout the life of the previous CBA, from $4.45 million in 2017 to $4.17 million in 2021, and the median salary now sits at $1.15 million, down 30% from 2015 (ESPN, 4/16/21).

There is a third tier, meanwhile, which is the minor leagues, where the vast majority of professional ballplayers are employed, hoping one day to have a shot at the majors. For minor-leaguers, even the major-league minimum salary is a distant dream, as they must work for years at wages as low as $500 a week, while paying for their own equipment and finding their own housing in minor-league cities—something that has left some ballplayers living in their cars (Athletic, 8/5/21). During spring training, it’s even worse, as minor-leaguers aren’t paid at all for their required work time (Defector, 9/8/21) beyond free lunches of single slices of deli meat and cheese on white bread (Marcnormandin.com, 2/12/20) (Though minor-league baseball players—unlike, say, minor-league hockey players—lack their own union, they are currently part of a class-action suit challenging baseball owners’ classification of them as “part-time seasonal apprentices” not subject to minimum-wage laws: Baseball Prospectus, 10/23/20.)

 Animal-Farm wrote: 
Pretty much hit that nail right on the head! People are pissed at players as well, but I don't begrudge them their salaries as they are relative to what the owners are cashing in. Without the players there isn't a game. Universal DH I don't care about, it's inevitable and opens up jobs. Most of the other stuff the players seem to be insisting on concerns arbitration and service time for prospects, and of course a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. Again, I don't really care about this stuff and do try to distance myself from the financial aspect of pro sports. The one takeaway I get from it is that top prospects who can actually help a team win won't be held down or optioned multiple times so that the team gets another year of control over arbitration and maybe rookie level contracts. What a concept, put your best players out there and increase your chances of winning...

So the owners are locking out the players until the players agree to limit their own salaries with a cap/tax because the owners can't control themselves they keep overpaying for players?

Two years ago they killed our Single A Red Sox affiliate which I would go see when I could. Then the moved the Pawtucket Sox to a new home in Worcester MA which is about 50 miles closer, but couldn’t go see because of Covid.

Now I just don’t care anymore what they do. They’ve killed the game I loved to play and watch. They get paid a crap load of money to play the game, which most of us would play for free. 
I’m done and moving on.

Manfred's Letter to Fans

A lot of the stuff here I don't care about at all and it's super super easy to get pissed at owners but it's the players driving the Universal DH. Owners want to expand the postseason but it's "only" going to be 12 teams with a Totally Valid best-of-3 series to see if an 83-game winner can sneak into a Division Series vs a 105-game winner. Let's plumb the depths of mediocrity just so the Rockies fans have some glimmer of hope in September! Nevermind the teams that actually try to field a winner. Yes I'm singling out Denver because yes they are profitable so why bother winning? 

Manfred talks about things fans want... an end to the shift? a pitch timer? who asked for that stuff? No one I know.

I wasn't paying attention to the MiLB rearrangement except I knew they were contracting from 160 to 120 teams. But I just noticed that San Jose (population one million) and Fresno (population half a million) are now in the "California League," Low A West. Along with Visalia (130k), Lake Elsinore (65k)... eight teams all in one league makes sense/fun but LOW A? 

I was sort of planning my summer to see if I could catch some AAA at Fresno. Saw lots of Giants last time. Now they're a Rockies Low A. Oh boy oh boy.

MLB: Season to be shortened if no deal by end of Monday

 zevon wrote: 


Yup me too. Not the slugging part but being able to throw a couple of 85 mph fastballs way back when.
Not much of a power hitter but would nickel and dime you to death.
 

 GeneP59 wrote: 
After having my hopes of being an MLB slugger totally shattered by total inability to hit a pitch now called a slider, I played rec league baseball and softball for 35 years. I friggin PAID to play in the majority of them...