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Why Haven’t The Braves Paid Freddie Freeman?

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Though the consensus across the industry remains that Braves franchise cornerstone Freddie Freeman will ultimately end up back in Atlanta, few expected Freeman to reach 2021 Opening Day — let alone the long-inevitable lockout — without a deal to keep the face of the franchise with the only club he’s ever known well into the backside of his career. Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos is notorious for playing his cards as close to the vest as any GM in the game, but it would at least appear that the chances of Freeman joining friend, mentor, and recent MLBTR chatee Chipper Jones in spending the entirety of a Hall of Fame-caliber career in Atlanta have reached an all-time low.

Based on the most recent reports of the state of talks between the Braves and their sweet-swinging lefty (which came via USA Today’s Bob Nightengale and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman in mid-November), player and team are hung up on both length and value, with the Braves reportedly offering a five-year, $135MM pact and Freeman holding out for something closer to six years and $200MM. At the beginning of the offseason, MLBTR projected Freeman would ultimately land a six-year, $180MM deal, a prediction that roughly accords with how the market played out ahead of the lockout.

As MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes observed in December, while there’s no obviously ideal fit for Freeman outside of Atlanta, there’s also no NL team with an established incumbent at DH, hypothetically expanding Freeman’s market to NL teams with an entrenched first basemen — including the Dodgers (Max Muncy/Cody Bellinger), the Cardinals (Paul Goldschmidt), the Giants (Brandon Belt), and the Mets (Pete Alonso) — should the new CBA include a universal DH. But not every team has the payroll flexibility to add Freeman, of course, and few see either first base (the least demanding defensive position) or DH (a non-defensive role) as positions worthy of major payroll commitments, both of which Anthopoulos is likely relying on as he attempts to wait out his star.

Three teams with money to spend (the Dodgers, Yankees, and Blue Jays) were reported to have kicked the tires on Freeman ahead of the lockout, but Tim notes reasons to remain suspect with regard to each: in his seven years at the helm in LA, Andrew Friedman has never given out a deal longer than four years to another team’s free agent; the Yankees have more urgent needs at shortstop and in the rotation; and the Blue Jays would have to either transition Vladimir Guerrero Jr. back to third base (where his defense would detract from his bat’s enormous value) or ask their young star to give up his glove entirely after an MVP-caliber season at first. Still, each of these clubs have the financial flexibility to pry Freeman from the Braves, and there’s no telling how any team will react to the free-agent feeding frenzy likely to follow the end of the lockout.

Fresh off a World Series run few expected, the Braves and their deep-pocketed owner clearly could afford to keep Freeman on the books (the Braves are owned by the Denver-based corporation Liberty Media, whose chairman, John Malone, has an estimated net worth of $8 billion, per MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald). Because Liberty Media is a publicly traded company, the Braves’ profit-and-loss numbers are a matter of public record. The company’s 2021 third quarter earnings report (which runs from July 1 to September 30, roughly the second half of the regular season) records $222MM in Braves-related revenue and an operating profit of $35MM while running a full-season payroll of just shy of $145MM (per Fangraphs’ RosterResource) — a profit figure that does not include the club’s massive playoff gate windfall, the flurry of championship merchandise sales, or the lucrative explosions in season ticket sales and sponsorship deals that commonly follow a title.

To be clear, though he was characteristically cagy about the details, Anthopoulos has stated publicly that the Braves will run a higher payroll in 2022, a feat they’re likely to accomplish even without a fresh Freeman deal. Per Cot’s Baseball Contracts (which includes salary estimates for the Braves’ nine arbitration-eligible big-leaguers), the Braves have already allocated just under $129MM in salary commitments in 2022 and are still in need of at least one starting-caliber outfielder; of the four outfielders the team rotated in the playoffs (Eddie Rosario, Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, and Adam Duvall), only Duvall is presently under contract, and no one is sure what to expect from superstar Ronald Acuña Jr. (returning from a major knee injury) or Marcell Ozuna (from administrative leave) – or, indeed, whether the latter will even remain with the club. Further, while Acuña has played solidly in several years in center field and Duvall managed it through the playoffs, each is likely better suited for a corner. One of the prospect trio of Cristian Pache, Michael Harris, and Drew Waters is likely the long-term answer in center, but none has yet proven himself ready to take over.

How the Braves choose to address this need (as well as for a possible veteran innings-eater to complement the stable of young arms they’ll slot in behind Max Fried, Charlie Morton, and Ian Anderson) remains to be seen, but both Soler (projected to land a three-year, $36MM deal) and Rosario (two years, $15MM) are live possibilities. Presuming roughly $15MM of 2022 salary to address these needs would put the club right around last year’s payroll figure, and a $30MM annual commitment to Freeman on top would push them significantly beyond any number with which ownership has seemed comfortable in the past.

These are heady times in Atlanta, of course — and Liberty Media’s balance sheet makes it clear it’s a bump they could profitably absorb — but there are baseball reasons to consider. Freeman will be entering his age-32 season in 2022, after all, and the Braves will want to do everything they can to avoid the sort of millstone deal given to other first basemen (e.g. Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera) in the last decade or so. Still, Freeman has been a model of consistency, posting an OPS+ of 132 or higher in every season since 2013, and recent years have shown no signs of regression; the first baseman followed an astonishing run to an NL MVP behind a .341/.462/.640 line in the small sample of 2020 by essentially replicating his career numbers (.295/.384/.509) in 2021 (.300/.393/.503) despite an uncharacteristically slow start.

The slugger’s batted-ball numbers also show no serious warning signs; though his line-drive percentage fell to 25.1% in 2021 (his lowest since 2012), his hard-hit rate (the percentage of batted balls with exit velocity of 95 mph or higher) of 46.2% matched his career number exactly. His 2021 strikeout (15.4%) and walk (12.2%) also fall on the right side of his career numbers (19.7% and 11.7%, respectively).

A six-year deal would take him through his age-37 season (by which point Father Time is likely to have made at least some progress), but the recent precedent in Atlanta is on Freeman’s side. Though he never played in more than 143 games after his age-31 season, Jones remained a productive Brave through age 40, even winning a batting title in his age-36 season and lodging his final two All-Star appearances at ages 39 and 40, all while playing a much more taxing defensive position.

How Anthopoulos will choose to play the Freeman situation on the other side of the lockout remains to be seen, but he’ll almost certainly have to rethink his aversion to a sixth year to keep his face of the franchise around. The pre-lockout market proved favorable to high-end players; Marcus Semien, who’s only a year younger than Freeman and has a much less extensive track record of high-end offensive production, pulled down a seven-year deal, for instance, and he isn’t even expected to be asked to cover the premium position of shortstop. Braves fans are currently riding high off their first championship since 1995, but losing the one player they kept around following their post-2014 teardown would surely let quite a bit of air out of the balloon. Landing either native Atlantan Matt Olson (who’d cost the Braves a pretty penny in trade capital) or Anthony Rizzo (projected for a three-year, $45MM pact, and on whom the Braves have apparently kicked the tires) might soften the blow, but neither has the professional or personal stature Freeman has earned in his twelve years as a Brave.

Atlantic League To Shelve Robot Umpires, Return Mound To Standard Distance

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The independent Atlantic League, one of four independent leagues designated as official MLB Partner Leagues following the 2020 reorganization of MiLB, will return to the traditional method of calling balls and strikes in 2022, reports J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. The league had adopted the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system — known colloquially as the ’robo-ump’ — ahead of the 2019 season, when it reached an agreement with Major League Baseball to test equipment and rules changes under consideration for use in affiliated ball. The league will also return the distance between the pitching rubber and home plate to the conventional 60 feet, 6 inches after a late-season trial of an extra foot was met with disfavor by players and coaches.

As Cooper points out, the strike-zone change is likely driven by the expectation of a more widespread implementation of ABS in the minors; there’s been no official announcement, but MLB posted job listings for an ABS tech to work with each team in Triple-A West (the successor to the Pacific Coast League) earlier in the offseason. The technology was also deployed in Low-A Southeast (the revamped Florida State League) in 2021 and in the 2019 Arizona Fall League.

Though just one of a number of rules changes mooted by the commissioner’s office during Rob Manfred’s tenure, the proposed automation (and thereby standardization) of the strike zone has proven to be among the most polarizing. Beyond more longstanding intra-fan disputes regarding the relative values of innovation and tradition, proponents of the idea have suggested that a strike zone standardized by precise technological measurement would substantially reduce the element of human error in umpiring decisions (and, perhaps, reverse the trend of declining contact rates), while those opposed argue that imprecision, ambiguity, and the idiosyncrasies of individual umpires — as well as the arguments that often ensue as a result of these — add intrigue and drama to the game.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the potential implementation of ABS at the big-league level, any longtime fan of the game will recognize a progressive change in the strike zone since the advent of pitch-tracking technology in the early 2000s, when MLB introduced QuesTec’s Umpire Information System in big-league ballparks to track umpire performance. This much less invasive system drew its fair share of criticism (Curt Schilling infamously took a bat to a QuesTec camera after a poor start in May 2002, and the umpires union filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board over its use before securing its removal in 2005 contract negotiations). Still, it’s long-term effects (as compiled in 2017 by Joe Lemire of Sports Business Journal) have rendered the effective strike zone closer to its rule-book definition, decreasing its width while increasing its height.

Despite scrapping the ABS, the Atlantic League will continue to test a number of potential tweaks to the game, including the use of 17-inch bases (2 inches larger than standard), anti-shifting rules (which require the four infielders to have two feet in the infield dirt before every pitch), and enhanced extra-inning ’zombie runner’ rules (which would place runners at first and second to start the 10th inning and load the bases in any innings thereafter). Further changes to Atlantic League play are expected to be announced later in the spring.

Quick Hits: Bregman, Taillon, Van Horne

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Astros third baseman Alex Bregman was cleared to hit today for the first time since undergoing surgery on his right wrist in November, reports Mark Berman of Houston’s Fox26 (Twitter link with video). Though he played through it, Bregman injured his wrist in September, an issue that came to light only when teammate Carlos Correa told Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein about it during the World Series. The extent to which the injury played a role in Bregman’s postseason struggles isn’t entirely clear, but it’s likely to have had at least some effect given his .217/.304/.300 postseason line across 69 plate appearances, including a meager .095/.200/.143 in 25 trips to the plate during the Astros’ World Series loss to the Braves.

The injury came at the end of what was a forgettable season by Bregman’s high standards. After following a second-place MVP finish in 2019 with a solid but unspectacular 2020, Bregman missed the first two months of the 2021 season with a quadriceps injury and saw a major dip in his power numbers, posting only a .422 slugging percentage against a .507 career mark (and a top-notch .592 in 2019).

Some other baseball tidbits from around the league…

  • Yankees pitcher Jameson Taillon discussed his ongoing ankle rehab with former Yankees workhorse David Cone on the latter’s podcast this week. The 30-year-old Taillon once again acknowledged that he remains about a month behind his typical offseason throwing program, jiving with the report he gave last December. More encouragingly however, is the right-hander’s claim that he isn’t feeling any lingering pain from his surgically repaired ankle. While his current regimen consists of throwing 3-4 times a week at much less than full, mid-90’s velocity, this marks another positive step forward in the right-hander’s rehab process. Taillon was a league average arm last year, sporting a 4.30 ERA in 144 plus innings, but has demonstrated the ability to be more than that throughout his career. More positive news as Taillon ramps back up will be welcome for a Yankees club that has a number of solid rotation options but only a few that don’t come with health concerns of their own.
  • Per a report from Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, longtime Marlins radio announcer Dave Van Horne announced that he is “essentially retiring” after declining the team’s offer to return to the organization in 2022 in a reduced capacity. The 82-year-old Van Horne retires after 53 years of broadcasting at the major league level. After a 33-year tenure broadcasting for the Montreal Expos, Van Horne pivoted to an upstart Marlins team at the end of 2000. In his lengthy career, the veteran sportscaster called three perfect games, thirteen no-hitters, narrated the 2003 Marlins successful World Series run, and was awarded the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in recognition of his broadcasting contributions. We at MLBTR extend a hearty congratulations to Van Horne for an illustrious career.

White Sox Re-Sign Kyle Crick, Sign Ryder Jones

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The White Sox have re-signed reliever Kyle Crick and signed infielder Ryder Jones, per Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Crick joined the White Sox Triple-A affiliate in Charlotte last July after being released by the Pirates, while Jones, whose last taste of the majors came in 2018, spent 2021 bouncing around the Diamondbacks’ system. Both signed minor league deals.

Crick, a one-time high-end prospect in the Giants’ system, tossed 24 1/3 innings of 4.44 ERA ball with the Pirates in 2021. But while his top-line numbers hovered around league average and he didn’t allow a single home run, an elevated walk rate (17.8%) and below-average strikeout rate (19.6%) suggest he may have been buoyed by a bit of luck. The righty did put forth a strong showing at Triple-A Charlotte — a 0.87 ERA with three walks and 15 Ks in 10 1/3 innings — in a small sample, but the call back to the bigs never came.

For his career, Crick has posted a 3.51 ERA (4.25 FIP) in 171 2/3 innings across parts of five seasons with the Giants and Pirates. After a strong debut (3.06 ERA in 32 1/3 innings) following a 2017 mid-season call-up with San Francisco, the Texan looked like a bona fide high-leverage option after heading to Pittsburgh (with Bryan Reynolds) for Andrew McCutchen ahead of the 2018 season, in which he logged a 2.39 ERA (3.14 FIP) in 60 1/3 innings across 64 appearances. Control problems began to bite in 2019, however, and elevated walk and home run rates (15.5% and 4.4%, respectively) saw his ERA balloon to 4.96 before a broken finger (sustained in a clubhouse fight with teammate Felipe Vázquez) ended his season in September. Crick did post a 1.59 ERA in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but he was limited to only 5 2/3 innings due to right shoulder problems.

Like Crick, Jones came up in the Giants system. Primarily a third baseman, he reached the bigs in 2017 but posted a meager .173/.244/.273 batting line in 164 plate appearances across 53 games. Including a further 8 trips to the plate logged in 2018, Jones’ career line stands at .185/.250/.316, a far cry from the solid .283/.347/.467 Triple-A line he’s put together in 782 plate appearances across parts of four seasons at that level. After becoming a minor league free agent following the 2019 season, the lefty-swinging Jones signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox before spending 2020 with the Sugar Land Skeeters of the independent Constellation Energy League following the cancellation of the minor league season. He signed a minor league deal with Arizona ahead of the 2021 season and compiled a .288/.344/.500 line in 293 trips to the plate across three levels.

Of the two, Crick likely has the easier path to breaking spring training with the big club, where he’ll be given a chance to slot in at the back end of a solid White Sox bullpen. The South Siders’ starting infield is set between Jose Abreu, Leury Garcia, Tim Anderson, and Yoan Moncada, but Jones will hope to benefit from the mid-season departure of Nick Madrigal in the Craig Kimbrel deal; he’ll vie for a bench slot as a backup infielder alongside the more versatile Danny Mendick, though the White Sox are likely to bring in at least a few more bodies to compete for bench roles.

Oakland A’s Job Openings

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From time to time, as a service to our readers, MLB Trade Rumors will post job opportunities of possible interest that are brought to our attention. MLBTR has no affiliation with the hiring entity, no role in the hiring process, and no financial interest in the posting of this opportunity.

The Oakland Athletics are currently accepting applications for the following positions. Each is linked to the job description and application for the position.

Major League Video Assistant (Full-Time)

Advance Scouting Intern (In-Season)

Baseball Ops Intern (In-Season)

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor Discusses Rays’ Future

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In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa mayor Jane Castor made clear that she hopes to see the Rays remain in the Tampa area. While she added the caveat that the Tampa region would “continue to grow without a doubt” regardless of the team’s future, reports Charlie Frago, Castor also made the case for the city to hold on to a team that’s been plagued by ballpark issues, low attendance, and limited revenue since its inception as an expansion franchise ahead of the 1998 season.

Tampa is “a large urban city growing each and every day,” she told the paper, “so we should be adding assets to our community rather than them being taken away by other municipalities or countries.” Financier and principal owner Stuart Sternberg floated the idea of moving the team to Montreal — which hasn’t had a major league team since losing the Expos to Washington following the 2004 season — as early as 2014, and in 2019 Major League Baseball gave the club permission to explore the possibility of playing half its home games in Montreal as soon as 2024.

Though a number of new stadium projects have been proposed throughout the years — most notably at the current site of Al Lang Stadium on the St. Petersburg waterfront and in the northeast Tampa neighborhood of Ybor City — none has garnered the necessary political support. An October report by Frago and C.T. Bowen in the Tampa Bay Times suggested the club had revived its attempts to build a new ballpark in Ybor City, though such a project wouldn’t necessarily rule out the club’s split-city plans; a January 8th open letter, signed by several dozen Tampa businesspeople and published in the Tampa Bay Times, expressed support for both a new stadium in Ybor City (which it calls “an economic development platform”) and the ’sister city’ concept.

Though Castor refers to the letter as “a step in the right direction,” she declined to commit any public money to the project, stating that as much as she hopes to keep the team in the Tampa area, “the community’s appetite to pay for a stadium has left the train station.” Though she continued to rule out using any of the city’s general fund money, she did suggest her office would explore alternate funding methods. According to Frago, the proposed stadium would cost approximately $700MM, of which the Rays have promised to pay $350MM.

Tropicana Field, which the franchise has called home for the entirety of its existence, was initially built in an attempt to lure the White Sox from Chicago should the team fail to secure a suitable replacement for the increasingly dilapidated Comiskey Park or to secure one of two 1993 expansion franchises (which were eventually awarded to Denver and Miami); a team of Tampa investors nearly moved the San Francisco Giants to the area in 1992, announcing their purchase of the franchise before National League owners blocked the move under pressure from then-Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga. It opened in 1990 as the Florida Suncoast Dome, briefly serving as the home arena for the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League and the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning.

Since opening for baseball use in 1998, it has consistently placed near the bottom of ballpark rankings, facing criticism for its aesthetic deficiencies, a lackluster fan experience, and its infamous catwalks, which are regularly hit by batted balls and have necessitated the introduction (and frequent revision) of specialized ground rules for the field. Despite substantial recent on-field success, the Rays have consistently performed poorly in fan attendance, drawing only 14,734 fans per game in 2019 (the last pre-pandemic season), beating out only the Marlins. This may in part stem from the unusual geography of the area, which requires most of its population to cross the region’s titular bay to reach the stadium. The Rays’ lease on Tropicana Field runs through the 2027 season.

Quick Hits: Acuña, Yankees, Marlins, Pirates

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In what’s surely a welcome sight for Braves fans, superstar outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., who watched his teammates win the 2021 World Series from the dugout as he rehabbed an ACL tear, has resumed on-field batting practice in his native Venezuela (video of the session can be seen here, via Spanish-language baseball news site El Extrabase). Acuña sustained the injury in Miami in July while attempting to track down a fly ball off the bat of Jazz Chisholm into LoanDepot Park’s right field corner.

While it remains to be seen whether (or for how long) the injury might sap Acuña’s speed or explosiveness, the news marks a clear milestone in his recovery. However welcome the news, though, it isn’t clear when Acuña will be available, how he’ll be used when he does return, or what effect it will have on GM Alex Anthopoulos’ plans for the remainder of the Braves’ offseason. Regardless of Acuña’s availability, the Braves face several question marks in the outfield; of the four outfielders Anthopoulos acquired around the 2021 trade deadline (Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, Eddie Rosario, and Adam Duvall), only Duvall remains under control for 2022. It’s also unclear how the club plans to handle the return of Marcell Ozuna from administrative leave or whether it views any of its three high-end outfield prospects (Cristian Pache, Drew Waters, and Michael Harris) as ready for significant big-league action.

Other notes from around the game:

  • Per Lindsey Adler of The Athletic, the Yankees have promoted former big-league outfielder (and longtime minor-leaguer) Kevin Reese to the position of Vice President of Player Development.  Since retiring after spending the 2007 season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Reese joined the Yankees as a minor league scout. Before this promotion, he had served as the Yankee’s Director of Professional Scouting since 2017. In an extremely small sample (16 plate appearances between 2005 and 2006), Reese posted a .385/.500/.385 batting line in the majors.
  • The Marlins announced a series of front office promotions, including DJ Svihlik to Senior Director of Amateur Scouting, Adrien Lorenzo to Senior Director of International Operations, Geoff DeGroot to Director of Player Development, and Hector Crespo to Director of Minor League Operations. The full list can be found via the club’s official announcement.
  • The Pirates announced the promotion of two minor league managers, reports Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Miguel Perez, who managed the Double-A Altoona Curve in 2021, has been named the manager of Triple-A Indianapolis, and Kieran Mattison, who had served as manager for the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers, will move to Altoona in 2022. Perez spent twelve years as a catcher in the Reds system, going hitless in 3 ABs with the big-league club in 2005, while Mattison spent nine years bouncing around the minors and independent ball, including stints in the Royals’, Indians’, and Dodgers’ systems.

MLB, Apple Reportedly Discussing Broadcasting Rights

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According to a report from the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand, Major League Baseball has recently engaged in “serious” and “substantial” talks with Apple with regard to weeknight broadcasting rights, specifically to the Monday- and Wednesday-night package previously aired by ESPN. Should a deal be reached, Apple would presumably broadcast the games on Apple TV+, the company’s subscription streaming service that competes with Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, among others. Apple, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, recently attained a $3 trillion market valuation.

Though the move wouldn’t exactly represent something wholly new for MLB — regular-season games have been carried on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in recent seasons, and speculation that MLB might seek to sell the games ESPN had dropped has been rampant since the network’s new deal was announced — it would reflect a shifting sports media landscape. Amazon, a direct competitor with Apple in several arenas, recently reached a deal with the NFL to poach Thursday Night Football from Fox to the tune of $1 billion per season, and NBC has made many Premier League soccer matches available exclusively on Peacock, its own streaming service. MLB also operates its own highly successful streaming service, MLB.tv, which logged a record 10 billion minutes of viewership in 2021, per an October press release. Neither Apple nor MLB have yet commented on the reported talks.

Though the size and scope of a potential deal are presently unclear, it’s unlikely the package would approach the $1 billion mark that Amazon agreed to pay the NFL. While the approximately 60 MLB games ESPN has relinquished dwarf the 18 NFL games Amazon will receive, national viewing habits (and consequent broadcast values) differ greatly between the sports. For reference, per Tom Bassam of SportsPro Media, ESPN paid MLB $700MM annually for the right to a 90-game package and from 2022 will pay an annual fee of $550MM to retain Sunday Night Baseball (roughly 30 games) as well as the Little League Classic, the opening night game, the Home Run Derby, and either all Wild Card series games (should the new CBA include a playoff format similar to 2020’s) or one of two Wild Card games and eight additional regular-season games (should the existing playoff format remain in place).

Still, should a deal be reached, it would almost certainly represent a substantial cash infusion for a league presently at a standstill in CBA negotiations that center largely on the share of revenue retained by owners and that paid to players. In any event, should such a deal come to fruition, it’s very unlikely to be the last of its kind.

Giants Deny Mets’ Request To Interview Andrew Bailey

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Following a frustrating weekend that saw the Padres refuse an interview with quality control coach Ryan Flaherty and Reds planning and outfield coach Jeff Pickler remove himself from consideration, the Mets’ search for a bench coach hit another snag today. As Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports, the Giants have denied the Mets’ request to interview pitching coach Andrew Bailey to be new manager Buck Showalter’s deputy.

Following his retirement ahead of the 2018 season, Mets GM Billy Eppler, then with the Angels, gave the 37-year-old Bailey — who pitched for the A’s, Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies, and Angels in a career that spanned eight seasons and was named the 2009 AL Rookie of the Year while serving as Oakland’s closer — his first coaching job, hiring him as the Angels’ replay coordinator and coaching assistant in 2018 before promoting him to bullpen coach in 2019. The Giants then hired Bailey as their pitching coach ahead of the 2020 season. He led San Francisco’s staff to a 3.25 ERA in 2021 (second only to the Dodgers) en route to a 107-win season and an NL West title.

While teams customarily allow coaching and front office staff to interview with other clubs when they’re up for a promotion — which made the Flaherty news something of a surprise — it isn’t exactly clear that a move from pitching coach to bench coach would represent a ’promotion’ as such (Rosenthal notes that executive opinion is mixed on the issue). Timing may have also played a role in the decision; big-league coaching staffs are usually filled out relatively early in the offseason, and Rosenthal previously reported that the Padres denied the Mets a chance to speak with Flaherty largely because they didn’t want to have to find a replacement at this stage in the offseason.

Of course, the Mets’ attempts to fill out their coaching staff were held back by delays at the top, with Eppler’s hiring coming on November 18 (less than two weeks ahead of the lockout) and Showalter’s on December 20. They’ve since hired three additional coaches — Wayne Kirby as first base coach, Joey Cora as third base coach, and Eric Chávez as hitting coach — but only Chávez had been tied to another organization (the Yankees let him interview for the job only a few weeks after hiring him as an assistant hitting coach). Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner is the lone holdover from the 2021 staff.

Despite the chaos in putting together a coaching staff, Eppler has hit the ground running on the player side, inking Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Eduardo Escobar to free agent deals worth a combined $254.5MM in the days leading up to the lockout while Noah Syndergaard, Javier Baez, Marcus Stroman, and Steven Matz signed elsewhere. Indeed, having endured a second-half collapse and watching the division rival Braves ride a late-season surge to a World Series title, Mets fans will hope Eppler’s offseason isn’t finished regardless of the composition of the coaching staff. MLBTR’s Anthony Franco taps Kris Bryant, Carlos Rodón, and NPB star Seiya Suzuki as potential targets once a new CBA is reached.

New York Times To Purchase The Athletic

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4:05pm: As previously expected, the deal has been announced following the close of the stock market. A press release by the New York Times Company confirms that it has reached a deal to acquire The Athletic (as well as the purchase price of $550MM) and announces an expected closing of the deal in the first quarter of 2022.

Though she makes clear that The Athletic’s ample subscriber base played a major role in the Times’ attraction to the San Francisco-based sports outlet, Meredith Kopit Levien, the New York Times Company’s president and CEO, suggests in the statement that The Athletic will be given relative free reign, describing it as a “complement to” the Times and “a subsidiary of The Times Company” that will “continue to operate separately.” The Athletic’s founders, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, will remain on board following the acquisition, though each will now report to Times Company executive David Perpich, who will be named The Athletic’s publisher.

Though the role is multi-faceted and varies from organization to organization, a publisher broadly sets the editorial and commercial direction for a publication, particularly with regard to big-picture decisions like target markets, forms of content, and the scope and nature of advertising. Perpich previously served as president and general manager for Wirecutter, another New York Times subsidiary, and is the first cousin of Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. Perpich’s precise role in the future of The Athletic remains, at this point, unclear.

1:36pm: In a deal likely to shake up the sports media landscape, the New York Times Company (the parent company and publisher of the New York Times) has agreed to a $550MM deal to purchase subscription sports news service The Athletic (first reported by Jessica Toonkel of The Information). As of early Thursday afternoon, neither The Athletic nor the Times has announced the deal, though Sara Fischer of Axios reports that the deal is expected to be announced after the stock market closes for the day.

How (if at all) the deal will affect The Athletic’s coverage or subscription model remains to be seen, but Toonkel suggests that the deal may have been motivated by the site’s hefty subscriber base. Indeed, the acquisition of The Athletic’s more than one million subscribers (a threshold it crossed in September 2020) will go a long way towards meeting the Times’ stated goal of reaching 10 million subscribers by 2025; as of September 2021, it reported 8.3 million digital and print subscribers. Though some overlap in the publications’ subscriber bases certainly exists, the deal will move the Times a good deal closer to its target.

Previous reporting suggests that The Athletic had been in discussions with a number of media outfits since at least early 2021. In addition to the New York Times, the site had engaged in talks with politics-focused news site Axios (per Fischer) as well as sports betting behemoths DraftKings and FanDuel (per Jessica Toonkel and Sahil Patel of The Information), though it’s not entirely clear which of these negotiations culminated in an offer.

Since launching in 2016, The Athletic has pioneered a new model in the sports media landscape, offering a subscription-based service dedicated to what it has called “smarter coverage for die-hard fans” through a combination of day-to-day beat reporting (traditionally the province of local newspapers) alongside the sort of long-form analysis, original reporting, and social commentary more commonly found in national magazines. The site also benefited from a broader decline in print media, which has seen many local papers cut staff (including in sports sections) and others shut their doors entirely. At present, The Athletic has devoted coverage for 40 US cities, seven Canadian cities, and the United Kingdom.

On one hand, the backing of one of the world’s most powerful news organizations could offer The Athletic further coverage resources to add to its stable of experienced reporters. On the other, the potential imposition of new leadership (Fischer reports that founders Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann will stay on, though they’ll now at least notionally report to the Times’ board of directors) could impact the thrust of the site’s coverage in any number of possible directions. Until either organization confirms the deal or releases a statement regarding the future plans for the site, any further analysis of the deal’s implications would be wholly speculative, but it does represent a significant consolidation in digital sports media — a long-established trend across the digital media landscape.

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