JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/22/20

Ben Clemens

2:30

Hey everyone, and welcome to the chat.

2:31

I'm sure we're going to do our fair share of talking about whether there will be a season or not, but let's make sure not to neglect talking about food, board games, and weird baseball hypotheticals.

Obviously starting with the season, though :/

Chris

2:31

The players are going to say no during your chat right?

Ben Clemens

2:32

Definitely could be the case!

We're at a pretty interesting place here where I don't know, the owners are doin some weird second brinksmanship maneuvers

2:33

And who knows if the players are going to say no right away, debate it until they have no other choices, or get some other concessions somehow

Lorenzo

2:33

Can you explain why the owners couldn't counter with a 65 game proposal? Spite? It seems that there is so much animosity now between players and owners that neither side will ever agree on anything.

Ben Clemens

2:33

I think it was just brinksmanship. They're saying no hoping the players will cave now that they're really close on details.

It's no longer the case, as it was weeks ago, that the two sides are so far apart that there's no point in making little moves.

2:34

Now we seem to be at a place where making a small concession might change the outcome.

For example, let's say you're bidding on a $1000 baseball card

Raising your bid from $550 to $600 is easy

2:35

The seller lowering their ask from $2000 to $1500 is easy

But when you're offering $980

(and let's say that a 65-game season is kind of near $1000 in this example)

It might behoove you to just say, you know what, we're sticking at $980

If you think the seller might compromise

Saves you 20 bucks!

Chris

2:35

Why do national writers write such ridiculous things about collective bargaining? It's like they haven't been paying attention to the last 150 years of baseball...

Ben Clemens

2:35

Yeah uh

2:36

I want to be clear when I say that I think it's very difficult to balance the competing asks that you have as a national-level reporter

2:37

You have a lot of sources to protect, and in general both sides accept that you're going to do a lot of reporting things that are leaked to you

No players are done with Ken Rosenthal b/c he reported that the league thinks the players are intransigent

That's his job

2:38

But I do find that some people, whose names I'll leave out of it but whose names lightly scrambled are Bbo Ngaleighten, are just not even trying.

Blue

2:38

Stub hub won’t refund ticket prices for cancelled games. Ticket master won’t refund either. My mlb tv subscription is worth less than half now with no adjustment in sight. The out of town paper I look at for Indians coverage just put up a pay wall. I can’t watch games on tv for free anymore. And going to a game fro North Carolina to Baltimore is a several hundred dollar proposition. Baseball is not fan friendly. I am no longer a baseball friendly fan

Ben Clemens

2:38

This is likely cold comfort, but MLB.tv is offering full refunds.

If you email them about it they are processing them essentially instantly

And they may even have a form that does it

2:39

I haven't canceled mine b/c I use it to make a lot of gifs and I think that merits my money, but yeah

The stubhub and ticketmaster things are ridiculous

I don't know how they can even do that, to be honest

As a journalist myself, I'm honestly not too broken up that a newspaper had to put up a paywall; that is the kind of thing that happens sometimes!

2:40

But the rest, ugh