The Out in Left Weekly: March 17, 2024
MLB hates baseball players, British politics, and more
There wasn’t much political sports news this week, but that’s okay. Salvation is near. The baseball season starts on Wednesday.
MLB
Teams find new loophole to not pay players
The San Francisco Giants are not good and infielder J.D. Davis is, so it was a surprise that the team released him this week. Only once, in 2018 when he played just 42 games, has Davis been a below average hitter. His services were also relatively cheap, as he was awarded a $6.9 million salary in this, his final year of arbitration. According to The Athletic, he will be afforded severance pay, but that one-year deal is voided. The Giants saved millions and now Davis is looking for work.
In the latest labor negotiations, the players won guaranteed contracts for arbitration-eligible players. If a player with three years of service time, for example, comes to terms on a one-year contract with their incumbent team to avoid arbitration, then that contract is guaranteed no matter what happens—injury, release, whatever.
MLB owners realized that the rules don’t explicitly guarantee contracts awarded by an arbiter, but few players go through the whole arbitration process. It’s a ruthless, uncomfortable, and unpredictable affair in which the employer argues to a neutral party why their employee isn’t worth higher pay. Davis did go to a full hearing, and now he's the first casualty of the new loophole.
I acknowledge that the Giants signing third baseman Matt Chapman rendered Davis’s services redundant, but a deal is a deal, as the saying goes, or at least it should be. Before switching allegiances to Ron DeSantis, Giants owner Charles Johnson was a major Trump donor, and he must have gleaned his cynical business philosophy from The Art of the Deal.
And I acknowledge that not many fans care about the employment status of a solid role player, but as I wrote in January, MLB’s anti-labor practices make baseball worse because they exclude quality players from the game.
It seems super-utility man Wilmer Flores and prospect Casey Schmitt will provide depth at the corners. Flores is a very good hitter and is due slightly less money this year than Davis was. It’s a trade-off that I understand. On the other hand, Schmitt has produced negative value in his 253 major league at-bats, according to Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement. What the Giants really care about is his earning the league-minimum salary of $740,000, prorated for the time he’s in the majors. I wish Schmitt great success in his career, but he’s currently a lesser player than Davis. The Giants’ management purposefully made their team worse. That matters none to them, not when there are greater profits to be made.
Other news
British politics zeroes in on soccer
There’s a movement afoot in the United Kingdom to rein in the hegemonic Premier League, make the English football pyramid fairer, and better support football clubs in small towns and mid-sized cities. It’s such a salient topic in British society and culture that the Labour Party, the U.K.’s preeminent center-left party, is threatening to make it a central issue in upcoming elections. The governing Conservative Party had pledged to take on these populist reforms, and the left is holding their feet to the fire.
I wish politicians Stateside were interested in and savvy enough to take on the monopolistic billionaires who run American professional sports. After MLB completed its hostile takeover of the minor leagues in 2021, it threw dozens of teams out of affiliated baseball. Fans in mid-sized cities across America were left without a local professional team to root for, all because MLB wanted to consolidate its control over the game and cut costs. It got zero political attention on the national level, and I feel like a grumpy old man shaking his fist at the sky.
When our politicians do focus on sports leagues, it’s either a reactionary (and weightless) attempt at preventing relocation or they’re giving concessions to attract a team to their jurisdictions. MLB’s antitrust exemption “is more politically useful alive than dead,” I wrote in February. “Politicians can vilify it, showing constituents that they’re holding big business accountable, while at the same time they don’t do any real political organizing against it, for team owners might screw their constituency (or careers).”
When I run for president my platform will have two planks: break up MLB’s monopoly, and institute a price cap on domestic beer at ballparks. MLB owners would have me launched into the sun, much like they did those erstwhile minor league teams, but that just means I’d be onto something.
Recommendations
Because the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers open the season in South Korea on Wednesday: “San Diego to Seoul,” a YouTube documentary series about Padres shortstop Ha-Seong Kim. (link)
Because it made me feel emotions: “It Ain’t Over,” a documentary on Netflix about baseball legend Yogi Berra. (link)
Thanks for the note on Yogi Berra. For me, he is the pride and enduring symbol of the Yankees.