11 Comments

David, thanks for the insight into the baseball negotiations. I admit to not following them close, as I am interested in BASEBALL, not the millionaire negotiations behind it. So I appreciate someone kind of summing it up. (The Monfort thing is actually quite interesting.) Also, if you ever want to add football to your repertoire, you make some great points. I have had several of the same thoughts this week regarding the previous game; Chiefs' LT situation, Kelce and Hill with a down game, as well as the Bengals winning with 19 last week. Plus, there was a feeling that last KC-CIN game was poorly officiated, largely to the Chiefs detriment. Burrows even acknowledged it. That will hopefully not be repeated.

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Yeah, I decided to ignore the officiating, though that was obviously a big issue in the game. Like you said, even Burrow mentioned it. Still, it feels like a lot of things that went wrong for the Chiefs likely won't again (hopefully maybe?). Maybe some day I'll shift writing about baseball to full time and then add the Chiefs writing to the hobby list haha. Thanks for reading and commenting, Clark!

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David, I read yesterday that the plan on WAR for arbitration was to average fWAR and bWAR (saw it on Twitter and don't know who said it, so take it with a grain of salt). You make good points and ask good questions about the nuts and bolts of how WAR would be applied for partial season players, pitchers v hitters, etc.

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I saw that too, but not sure if that’s actually the plan or if it’s just speculation. Maybe there’s something I missed there. Either way I’m still curious!

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Who's one free agent the Royals should sign when the lockout ends? I'll go first: Michael Conforto.

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I’ll go second: Michael Conforto.

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David, I'm going to Phoenix the first week of March like you. If there is no CBA, do you know if there will be minor league games? Will the back fields be open?

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I honestly don’t know. I assume there’ll be SOMETHING going on, but who knows?

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Thanks. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

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David, great insights. Since it is obvious from this edition of Inside the Crown you have your eye on other sports I would like to see your thoughts on what insights MLB can take from the other s sports leagues in the USA. How they run their business and how leadership at the owners and players level impact the different leagues operating structure. If you have done something similar in the past please pass on a link to the story.

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I haven’t written about it, but from a labor standpoint, it’s tough to compare as money grows astronomically everywhere. Baseball can compare a bit more with basketball but using the NFL, for example, is so difficult. I don’t know the full details so I may be slightly off but one of the biggest differences is you’ve got all television deals national and the teams share the money. In baseball, it’s so localized and every team has a different local TV deal. Some are huge, some are not so huge and it creates quite a discrepancy. That allows every team to have access to similar, though not the same, money to make the salary cap work too.

In my opinion, for baseball to ever reach actual labor peace, it’ll require a more even financial distribution that you see in other leagues.

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