Lots of information is and has been coming out in the baseball world with Spring Training camps starting today. Let's get to some of it!
Story #1: Diamond Sports To Bankruptcy?
Earlier today, the conglomerate "Diamond Sports Group"- a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting- have elected to skip a $140,000,000 interest payment and will be entering into a 30-day grace period in order to discuss finances. The way it seems that this will turn out is that they will be filing for Chapter-11 bankruptcy. This is fantastic news for baseball. But, why?
In 2019, Diamond/Sinclair purchased the rights of broadcasting to more than 20 regional broadcasts across the country which includes 42 professional teams across the MLB, NBA, and NHL. These rights were bought from Disney for $10 Billion dollars and now it is being reported that the company is $8.6 Billion in debt and needs serious restructuring.
In baseball, they owned the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers. They also held the rights to 16 NBA teams and 12 NHL teams.
Luckily, the MLB has already been talking about what they will do if Diamond Sports/Sinclair is not going to be able to broadcast. In a recent owners meeting, Rob Manfred was quoted with the following:
"I think you should assume that if Diamond doesn’t broadcast, we’ll be in a position to step in. Our goal would be to make games available not only within the traditional cable bundle but on the digital side, as well.”
and,
"What we do is largely dependent on how Diamond and the creditors play their cards, what they decide to do. Our No. 1 goal in terms of preparations is that if for some reason Diamond isn’t broadcasting, that we want to be in a position to make sure our fans are going to get their games.”
While this does not directly affect the New York Yankees (and we can all thank our lucky stars that the YES Network exists), this does pose a very interesting question about the future of cable networks and sports streaming online. Obviously I hope that the MLB can retake control of their broadcasting rights and be able to promote a bigger and better streaming service through MLB.tv and most importantly, allow fans to be able to watch their teams play.
There are no answers to these many questions right now, but it will be incredibly interesting to follow and see what happens in the coming weeks and months.
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Story #2: Frankie Montas Heading for Shoulder Surgery
Earlier today, Aaron Boone announced to reporters that the New York Yankees pitcher, Frankie Montas, will be heading into shoulder surgery next Tuesday. This news is not incredibly surprising as reports came out a little over a month ago that Montas was set to miss the first month of the season with a shoulder problem. This, however, throws a bigger wrench into the equation.
Aaron Boone also stated that he is hoping that Montas could return to the Yankees, as a best case scenario, at the end of the season. Cue the "Montas is our trade acquisition" jokes about the future comments from Brian Cashman.
This also comes the same week that the Yankees are dealing with an injury to another starting pitcher, Nestor Cortes Jr., who was taken off the United States World Baseball Classic roster as he is dealing with a hamstring problem. He will be limited from throwing for the next two weeks, and it is unclear how that injury recovery progression will go.
For the time being, however, the news on Montas' shoulder brings about two very important questions: "What is the rotation going to look like?" and "Why did the Yankees get him?".
The rotation- provided Cortes is healthy and ready by Opening Day- will be:
Gerrit Cole
Carlos Rodon
Nestor Cortes Jr.
Luis Severino
Domingo German/Deivi Garcia/Clarke Schmidt
That 5th man in the rotation spot is not promising...at all. I have no faith in Domingo German (and I've wanted him off the team ever since the aftermath of CC Sabathia's gala event). Deivi Garcia is a former top prospect who has had a combined ERA over 6.50 across the MLB and MiLB (Double and Triple-A) in the last two seasons. Clarke Schmidt is also somebody who should not be stuck in limbo. He should be a reliever. Don't mess with him like they messed with Chad Green.
If Nestor Cortes Jr. is also going to be out, the biggest Yankees strength is going to be hurting a lot.
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With this latest injury, and his horrific performance with the Yankees down the stretch last season, the question does also have to be asked about why the Yankees thought Montas was going to be the right pitcher to get. At the time it was exciting, but it was underwhelming that the Yankees missed out on bringing in an ace like Luis Castillo for Montas. Montas, who was dealing with a shoulder problem at the time too!
He's set to join the list of many other pitchers the Yankees put their eggs into a basket with that failed. Names like Sonny Gray (what a shame that was), J.A. Happ, Andrew Heaney, and more. This is looking more and more like a failure on the front office every day.
Story #3: New Rules - Extra Inning Zombies, Bases, Balks/Balls, & Position Players Pitching
A slew of new rules have been agreed to by the MLB's Joint Competition Committee. These rules are nothing new to those of us who have been following the sport, but they are a kick in the gut towards us fans.
The first rule (as seen above) is the the "ghost-runner" is going to be fully implemented going forward. There will forever be a runner automatically placed at second base for the start of all extra-inning games in the regular season. How annoying! They are purposefully taking away baseball from us. I'd honestly be embarrassed if I had to talk about this as a player to a kid.
Imagine this:
Kid: "So, why aren't you playing the same game in extra innings? Why is there a ghost runner?"
Player: (Being honest) "Because I want to get home earlier."
For the players making hundreds of thousands of dollars (for a rookie) up to hundreds of millions (for a superstar) to play a game, this is a sad look. Everyone else has to sometimes fill in for overtime at their workplace. Sometimes it's required. Sometimes they have to work long days and it isn't fun, but they have to do it. But, baseball players can just opt out of playing the sport to make it easier for them to go home. It's sad.
Jay Jaffe ran a detailed analysis about the time saving measures of this rule. I hate to spoil it because you should give it a read, but he found that it saves about a minute a day over the course of a full season. For 162 baseball games, that'd be a total time save of under 3 hours. To see his whole article, check it out here.
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The new bases for the 2023 season (and beyond) were also revealed. ESPN has quoted Alex Cora as saying they are the size of a "pizza box" and "personal pan pizza".
Here is a photo from Bob Nightengale:
That's about it. I've talked about my opinions on the bases in the past and I'll hold judgements about how they will actually change the game for now.
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There is also a new change to what pitching motions are going to be allowed going forward. We've seen firsthand the many different wind-ups that Nestor Cortes Jr. has taken, and it seems that there will be a big limitation to that going forward.
The new official rule is that there will be no more allowance on pitchers coming to a full stop in their throwing motion. If an umpire deems that this was the case, the batter will be rewarded with a free ball. This is being done with an emphasis on allowing the pitch clock operators to have an easier time with keeping the timing consistent.
League representatives also reportedly commented saying that the motion should have been called a balk in recent years. While I am in favor of the league honoring the rules of the sport, this was a fun little thing to watch with pitchers and it's a shame they are (seemingly) getting rid of it.
I wonder how this will affect Nestor Cortes going forward.
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And the final new rule is that they are putting limits on when a position player can come into a game to pitch. This new rule has it that a position player can only pitch if:
The game is in extra innings,
If their team is trailing up 8 runs, and/or
If their team is up by 10 runs, but ONLY in the 9th inning
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this rule. The move to put in a position player to pitch in a blow-out has been happening more and more recently and that was making it more boring to watch (except when Kyle Higashioka hits a home run). It used to be an oddity and it was being treated as a 1st resort instead of a last resort.
Just another rule to add more rules. We'll see how much (or little) this actually changes the sport.
