On this Sunday morning, let’s catch up on some various baseball-related stories from this week.
The Dodgers paying seven players just over $1 billion in deferred salaries, scheduled from between 2028-46, after their contracts are up, sparked a lot of discussion across baseball. What the Dodgers are doing isn’t new, but the scale of the deferrals are at least eye-popping.
Evan Drellich at The Athletic talked to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred about various topics, including deferrals:
“Deferrals at some point can become problematic,” Manfred told O’Gorman. “Historically, we did have one franchise, Arizona, that got itself into financial difficulties as a result of excessive deferrals. We’ve strengthened our rules in terms of the funding of deferred compensation in order to avoid that kind of problem. But, you know, look, obviously the bigger the numbers get, the bigger the concern.”
Manfred can’t unilaterally make any changes to the rules, which are collectively bargained between the league and the MLBPA. At the very least, this makes for an interesting issue that might surface in negotiations for the next CBA, after the current deal expires in December 2026.
Russell Carleton at Baseball Prospectus looked at ways to disincentivize home runs, and by extension decrease strikeouts, and the various costs and benefits of such “impossible decisions” for MLB.
As Carleton posted on Bluesky, “MLB will propose dozens of rule changes to try to combat strikeouts, but won’t say a word about the role of the ball. Maybe the reason is that they know that the medicine would be worse than the disease.”
Links
- The Dodgers’ 2024 holiday card combines a drone tour all through Dodger Stadium, interlaced with various game calls and highlights.
- On the latest Three Inning Save podcast, Jacob Burch and I looked back at various predictions we got right and (so many) wrong in 2024.