JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/8/20

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Ben Clemens

2:49

So they'll probably try to do this

But they won't change their negotiating stance at all as a result

I do think it would be good TV though

2:50

Honestly, the league has a lot of avenues to get some extra dough

Expanded playoffs, with like you said less competition from other sports, are nice

And already baked in, the players agreed to it

Extra prospect stuff; selling expanded access packages with mics and backstage interviews and so on

There will be interesting new things that come out of this work stoppage no doubt

Curtis

2:50

If the season is between 60-80 games in length, who hits the most home runs this year?

Ben Clemens

2:51

I'll take a dark horse, Jorge Soler

No real reason to feel that way

I just love Soler irrationally

But in theory the shorter season shouldn't impact your prediction for most homers, just make the favorite less likely to win

David K

2:51

Does Fred Wilpon still own the Mets a year from now?

Ben Clemens

2:51

I'm going to say yes, though I hope I'm wrong

2:52

From what I can see, the sticking point in the sale to Cohen was that a)the Wilpons want to sell a majority stake, but still get to be the majority owners

2:53

and b)they want to kepe their ownership of SNY, which is valuable b/c the Mets gave SNY an absolutely sweetheart tv deal

Given that a) is more or less impossible and b) lowers the franchise value, uh

It's gonna be tough!

Sam

2:53

Given how contentious these negotiations have been after a prolonged period of relative labor peace, can you imagine what would be happening if someone like Marvin Miller was still running the union? Or do you think having a background in labor law would have increased the productiveness of early talks e.g. a clearer March agreement?

Ben Clemens

2:53

Wonderful question

2:54

I honestly don't know enough to be confident either way here

2:55

My sense is that one of the big issues in this negotiation has been the accumulated weight of the last 10-ish years of labor unease

Where the plyaers are unhappy with the owners, but keep not getting great deals

It both increases player dissatisfaction, which was already at a recent peak this offseason

and emboldens the owners to push for insane asks

2:56

So if Marvin Miller were teleported into February, yeah, I htink things would be a lot worse right now in terms of the players just being like well okay bye enjoy your empty stadiums and voided tv contracts

But if he'd been running the show for 10 years I'd be far more hopeful

David

2:56

Just gotta give you props, one of the most engaging Chats I've been apart of in a long while. Thank you.

Ben Clemens

2:56

Thanks!

I'd like to thank baseball for having some interesting things to discuss

But also my fire alarm for not continuing to go off

Derek

2:56

Do you think it's possible that we see an active player-owned major professional sports team (not necessarily just baseball) in the somewhat near future? With rising salaries and the ability of athletes like LeBron to make even more money beyond their salary, it at least seems like it should be economically feasible.

Ben Clemens

2:56

Does tennis count?

2:57

Oh, hm, you said team

I think it's tough. The fixed costs to starting one up are really high

You'd need to have a situation where the league is just absolutely unwilling to negotiate with the players, because I think the breakeven to make a baseball league, for example, more profitable for the players to run themselves would be quite long

2:58

Even in the current environment

They'd have to get TV deals. They'd have to compete with the existing owners, which would dilute the value of each given baseball game on TV

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