The world according to Jim:
• Next Friday it will have been a year since baseball players and owners agreed to a collective bargaining agreement, ending an absolutely unnecessary 99-day lockout.
How unnecessary? Consider that baseball’s small-budget (or should we say small-minded) owners – who helped lead the charge to lock out the players – are again complaining about payroll disparity less than a year later, griping about New York Mets owner Steve Cohen and (particularly) the Padres’ Peter Seidler.
• When Commissioner Rob Manfred told members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America at last December’s Winter Meetings, “I think everyone in this room understands that we have a level of revenue disparity in this sport that makes it impossible for some of our markets to compete,” he was aware the regional sports network model from which so much money flowed had become precarious.
But I don’t think he anticipated it would be close to collapsing by spring training, with the owners of the Bally Sports regional networks facing bankruptcy and Warner Bros. Discovery preparing to, um, cut the cord with the three RSNs it owns in Denver, Houston and Pittsburgh, plus a fourth in Seattle in which it has minority ownership. …
• As much as we savaged the Dodgers for launching a network that most cable/satellite systems wouldn’t carry for years, there must be some relief in that organization knowing their deal at this point seems secure. (Unless Spectrum knows something we don’t.) …
• Cincinnati Reds President/CEO Phil Castellini told a fan group in January that “This team operates as a non-profit” and has no chance of winning. The Rockies’ Dick Monfort whined about the Padres’ moves to Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post and basically says his team’s ceiling is .500. And the Pirates’ Bob Nutting dodged a question from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jason Mackey about spending more aggressively on payroll as a team that…
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