The Out in Left Weekly: April 14, 2024
The Out in Left Weekly: April 14, 2024
Elbows, non-monopolies, and more
MLB
The pitch timer and elbows can coexist
It was like finding out that a favorite relative had a terrible political opinion: the MLB players union blamed a spate of arm injuries on the pitch timer. The finger pointing started this week after the hard-throwing Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider tore his ulnar collateral ligament for the second time.
"Despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the commissioner's office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades," union executive director Tony Clark said in a statement.
MLB could have taken the high road in response, committing to working with the MLBPA on pitcher injuries, while gently citing how popular the pitch timer is among baseball fans. It is, in fact, the best rule change in any sport in my lifetime. Other sports, particularly football, which is now America’s most boring major sport, should take note. Instead, MLB offered a condescending, defensive lecture in what is no doubt a preview of its arguments if and when the union grieves the issue. The league’s top three executives are corporate lawyers, after all.
I don’t know why there seems to be more arm injuries in recent years. I’ll leave that to the talking heads, sentimental Boomers, Reply Guys, and armchair orthopedists. They seem to know everything. But I do know that I don’t want to watch no-name relievers pick at their crotch for two minutes between pitches.
If it really is a binary choice—to have the pitch timer or have triple-digit fastballs—then I welcome a new era of soft tossers. Since 2016, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Aaron Nola has thrown the third-most innings in all of baseball, behind (the injured) Gerrit Cole and (the injured) Max Scherzer, and Nola has been dominant in postseason play. He earned a $172 million extension in the offseason and I don’t think he’s thrown a pitch over 92 miles-per-hour since Obama was president.
The union opposing the pitch timer is also frustrating because it indicates the players’ willingness to make it a bargaining chip. One of the tenets of Out in Left is that what is good for the fans is good for the players and vice versa, but I can’t see how a slower and less engaging game product benefits either party. It’s also reactionary and illogical to pin a supposed, yearslong increase in injuries on one component of gameplay that was implemented just last year. At the same time, management dismissing labor’s workplace safety concerns is our actual national pastime. An anatomical conundrum is now a political football, which means only politics will get us solutions.
“The elbow crisis has been building for decades, from youth levels to the major leagues, and nobody in a position of power has done anything of substance to address it,” ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote. “With a sound process and commitment from both sides to it, all of the important questions would be asked and, hopefully, answered.”
Baseball and transit are good for you
Other news
The United Soccer League gets it
The Guardian reported this week on the exploding popularity of the United Soccer League, which runs the second and third divisions of soccer in the U.S. The piece nodded at the clubs’ community roots, as well as at the Messi effect, but it attributed USL’s rise mostly to the league broadcasting its games for free over network television.
I have written several times about how MLB could broaden its appeal and make more money if its TV product was more affordable and available. Broadcasting on network TV is what made the NFL the most popular and therefore the richest sports league in the world (although the league seems to be forgetting that), and it’s a model USL seems intent on adopting. It excited me so much that I Googled two things.
The first was “How to start a USL team?” I was reminded that I don't have tens of millions of dollars to invest in an expansion franchise. I don’t have tens of millions for anything, actually, and no investor would ever give it to me because my business plan would be to pay the fans. Putting a team’s games on, say, the local CBS affiliate and buying a digital antenna for any fan who wants one is the fastest way to become a sports billionaire and I will die on this hill.
The second search was “USL San Diego” and I was reminded of the sad case of the Loyal FC.
Founded in 2019, the Loyal and its ownership group worked their asses off to not only develop a rabid, dedicated fanbase amid a pandemic, but to also create a competitive and inclusive team for both players and supporters. During their first season, the Loyal forfeited two matches in protest of racial and homophobic slurs used against them. During the 2021-2023 seasons, the team made the playoffs. Now, the Loyal no longer exist.
In May last year, MLS announced it had awarded a franchise to San Diego and three months later Loyal chairman Andrew Vassiliadis announced in an emotional video that his team was folding. The Loyal technically could have kept playing in San Diego, even with the MLS in town, but the two teams would have competed for soccer fans’ attention and money, with the Loyal at an obvious disadvantage. They also couldn’t find anywhere to play. What is now San Diego FC claimed the 35,000-seat Snapdragon Stadium, leaving tiny and unsuitable college stadiums to the Loyal.
To further challenge MLS’s grasp on American soccer, USL is considering relegation and promotion, another pet cause of mine. The league realizes that such a pyramid system can make the league more competitive, thus more engaging, and that promotion and relegation would appeal to longtime and international soccer fans.
Relatedly, El Farolito SC, a semi-pro side named after a burrito shop in San Francisco, went viral recently after it beat two pro teams in this year’s U.S. Open Cup, a 110-year-old single-elimination tournament. It’s a tasty run that’s reminiscent of England’s famed FA Cup, in which hundreds of tiny club teams get to compete against the Premier League’s biggest brands.
For its part, MLS pulled most of its teams out of the U.S. Open Cup. The controversial decision reflects how the closed sports leagues unique to the United States are built on exclusivity and minimizing competition, both on the pitch and off. It also shows that monopolistic capitalists hate fun. I, for one, am pro-fun.
Recommendations
Because you might have missed it: “The 76ers aren’t causing gentrification. They’re exploiting it,” by me for this publication. (link)
Because local government officials are God’s gift to earth: “Inside the meetings that officially moved the A's from Oakland to Sacramento,” by Tim Keown for ESPN. (link)
Because the modern economy is ruining everything: “Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?” by Mary Pilon for The New York Times. (link)