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2021-22 MLB Offseason Thread

Beau Vine

By Beau Vine
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Scraps
Scraps

This will make me rage more than the dumbass beer league softball rules they had

shadow_operative2.0
shadow_operative2.0

You stupid mother fucker, you just proved my point. Thank you, idiot. 

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Hank Chinaski

Hank Chinaski 6312

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18 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Passan is saying the Yankees are out on Correa, getting Seager instead. Wondering where Carlos is gonna end up now.

My guess is Detroit (who wasn’t as bad as you’d think this past season). The Hinch connection, young roster, Miggy coming off the books soon, etc. But who knows.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21827

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22 hours ago, Helobious said:

Passan is saying the Yankees are out on Correa, getting Seager instead. Wondering where Carlos is gonna end up now.

"getting" Seager instead?  So like, it's a done deal.  News to me.  Now I can very much see the Dodgers not signing him, but I don't think they've written him off just yet.

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Wulaw Horn

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21 hours ago, Hank Chinaski said:

My guess is Detroit (who wasn’t as bad as you’d think this past season). The Hinch connection, young roster, Miggy coming off the books soon, etc. But who knows.

Detroit should absolutely sign correa and JV. Reunion with hinch and if all goes really right that’s about 15 WAR. They were basically a 500 team after April. They will get better by players getting better. Sign those 2 guys and that team could win 92 games. You know they have the payroll room. 

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Beau Vine

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The ball appears to be in the owners’ court.

A week ago, on Oct. 29, the Major League Baseball Players Association made its second proposal on core economics, people with knowledge of baseball’s collective-bargaining process said. The players’ latest proposal is said to have only minor changes compared to the first. The adjustments were not immediately known, but the union viewed the league’s first proposal as a non-starter.

One person briefed on the union’s proposal suggested that significant movement on either side likely won’t happen until later in the month.

“Everything will come together in the last 72 hours, or more likely not,” the person said. “And we’ll see where it goes from there.”

The current CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1. If a deal is not reached by then, the owners are likely to lock out the players, creating the sport’s first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike.

The union has now made two economic proposals, the league one. To this point, the proposals have not come at a fast pace: MLB made its first proposal in August. The players are seeking changes to incentivize competition and increase player salaries in a variety of ways, but only partial details about both sides’ initial proposals are known.

As previously reported, the union’s first proposal would have allowed players to become eligible for arbitration after two years, instead of three. The union in May also proposed a change to draft order, increases in the minimum salary, raises to the CBT thresholds, changes to revenue sharing between clubs, changes to the way service time is calculated, and bonuses for players who have yet to reach arbitration. Under certain circumstances, some players would be able to reach free agency sooner than six years, as well.

Meanwhile, in August, the league proposed to effectively send the luxury-tax threshold in the opposite direction, to $180 million; to increase the penalties for exceeding it as well; but to also implement a soft floor, a penalty for teams who do not spend at least $100 million.

The league also proposed to eliminate salary arbitration in favor of a predetermined pool of money to be distributed to players. Under MLB’s proposal, players would become free agents once they hit age 29 1/2, which might help some players who would otherwise have become free agents later, but hurt the best players who presumably would, under the current system, become free agents at a younger age. (Players would also be walking out into a market where teams might be less inclined to spend than they are now, because the CBT threshold would be lower and the penalties for exceeding it would be higher.)

To help address tanking, the league also proposed that a team could not pick in the top five of the draft three years in a row. MLB also proposed an international draft, which it has long sought.

While the gap to be bridged on economics is large — the sides have proposed vastly different structures — there has been better progress in some of the other areas of bargaining, of which there are dozens. MLB and the MLBPA typically have been meeting twice a week, either in person or over video. Dan Halem, MLB’s chief operating officer, has been heading the process for the commissioner’s office, across from the MLBPA’s senior director of collective bargaining and legal, Bruce Meyer.

The league and the union are likely to hold in-person bargaining sessions next week in Carlsbad, Calif., where MLB is holding its annual general managers’ meetings Tuesday and Wednesday. The union has its annual agent meetings scheduled to begin at the end of the week in the same area, bringing representatives from both sides to the same locale at the same time.

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The league also proposed to eliminate salary arbitration in favor of a predetermined pool of money to be distributed to players. Under MLB’s proposal, players would become free agents once they hit age 29 1/2, which might help some players who would otherwise have become free agents later, but hurt the best players who presumably would, under the current system, become free agents at a younger age.

This is an interesting paragraph.  That first sentence has zero chance of succeeding.  The 29 1/2 thing would be interesting, because 1) it would stop the service time clock shenanigans, and 2) bias high school draft choices to go to college.

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Helobious

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14 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

This is an interesting paragraph.  That first sentence has zero chance of succeeding.  The 29 1/2 thing would be interesting, because 1) it would stop the service time clock shenanigans, and 2) bias high school draft choices to go to college.

Sucks that you get punished for being elite though. If you’re called up at 20/21 you’re not a free agent until year 10 of your career. And at that point who’s going to spend big on a 30 year old.

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WBT

WBT 20559

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24 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Sucks that you get punished for being elite though. If you’re called up at 20/21 you’re not a free agent until year 10 of your career. And at that point who’s going to spend big on a 30 year old.

Exactly.  I don't see a chance in hell that the players agree to that.  The age would have to be 25 or 26 at the most.  Teams have realized most players are already declining by 30 and don't give them big money.  All of the huge FA deals go to elite guys you're talking about who are up by 19, 20, or 21 and then free agents by 26 or 27.

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Beau Vine

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Here's the NHL free agency rule -- they need to agree on something like this:

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A player becomes an Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) if their current contract ends after either 7 Accrued Seasons or they are 27 or older as of June 30. An Accrued Season is defined as a year in which a skater is on an NHL roster for at least 40 games (30 games for Goalies).

 

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Beau Vine

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Lulz, hey to Helo:

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CARLSBAD, Calif. — Major League Baseball on Wednesday made an updated proposal for baseball’s reserve system, including a revised approach to eliminating salary arbitration.

Overall, the proposal is similar to the one the league made in August, people with knowledge of the discussions said. Like August’s proposal, Wednesday’s would grant players free agency at the age of 29 1/2 and do away with arbitration. The most significant change between the two versions is how player salaries would be determined prior to free agency.

In the August proposal, MLB offered to use a predetermined sum of money that would be distributed to eligible players, those who had reached at least three years of service time. This time, MLB is offering to pay players based on performance, specifically on a calculation of wins above replacement, or WAR. There are multiple variants of WAR, but MLB proposed to rely on FanGraphs’ version, or fWAR. A player’s career WAR would be part of the calculation, weighted for recency. Whether a player has been in the majors for three-plus, four-plus, or five-plus years would affect the calculation.

Performance already greatly influences the current arbitration system, under which players who have reached three years in the majors can go to a hearing to fight for a higher salary than the team proposes. But the current system nonetheless allows flexibility and room for players to argue to a third party for better salaries.

Full details of Wednesday’s proposal were not immediately known, but the players’ union is unlikely to see the proposal in a much better light than August’s version. One player agent said the proposal has “zero chance.”

“Albert Pujols has a better chance of leading the majors in stolen bases,” the agent said. “The central theme of professional sports from the labor side is the ability to negotiate your salary and make a case for what you’re worth. In arbitration, a panel decides. In free agency, the market decides. In this case an algorithm which is obviously flawed would decide. Plus, it would open up the floodgates for WAR manipulation on behalf of the clubs. Also, since when do we let websites have such a direct influence on player salary?”

Using fWAR would create its own biases. The metric likely would hurt relievers, as the market has always valued them higher, though on shorter deals, than fWAR suggests it should. Some strong defenders would be helped by the defensive component of fWAR, but the potential will exist for teams to game those numbers, which currently do not account for defensive opportunities in extreme shifts. Pitching fWAR, meanwhile, is mostly based on strikeouts, walks and homers, potentially hurting pitchers who thrive on soft contact.

MLB sees its proposal as, in part, a way to do away with the acrimony of the arbitration process — which can be uncomfortable for clubs and players alike — and as a way for younger players to be paid more, one of the union’s stated goals. However, the overall trade-off for players under the league’s proposal likely would be steep: Typically, the sport’s best players reach free agency prior to age 29 1/2, because they often arrive in the majors at a young age.

Agreeing to a system that keeps the best players under team control, and at a set scale of pay, for potentially a longer period of time than six years — the current time it takes to get free agency — could lessen those players’ earnings in the long run. And, if the top-earning players in the sport don’t have a way to grow their salaries, then other players’ salaries also might not grow over time.

What the league offered Wednesday was not what would be considered a comprehensive economics proposal. MLB didn’t newly address the competitive balance tax, or draft order, or revenue sharing between teams. It’s not uncommon for one bucket to be discussed separately from others.

 

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Snake Diggity

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On 11/10/2021 at 8:23 PM, Beau Vine said:

This is an interesting paragraph.  That first sentence has zero chance of succeeding.  The 29 1/2 thing would be interesting, because 1) it would stop the service time clock shenanigans, and 2) bias high school draft choices to go to college.

 

On 11/11/2021 at 11:48 AM, WBT said:

Exactly.  I don't see a chance in hell that the players agree to that.  The age would have to be 25 or 26 at the most.  Teams have realized most players are already declining by 30 and don't give them big money.  All of the huge FA deals go to elite guys you're talking about who are up by 19, 20, or 21 and then free agents by 26 or 27.

It will end up at 28.5 if it ends up being age-based (which I hope it is), but that will only happen if the PA agrees to a harsher tax/cap.  
 

Not sure what the median age for which a player first reaches free agency over the last few years, but 28 is very young for a free agent.

Basing arbitration on fwar is fine.  

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Beau Vine

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Maybe the best thing that could come out of a lockout is Sinclair going bankrupt:

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Major League Baseball’s offseason is normally filled with hot-stove anticipation, speculation, storylines and contractual drama, but baseball heads into 2022 with a couple of worrisome big-picture issues.

One immediate concern is the next labor deal. The other, which we’ll focus on here, is the future of the regional sports network ecosystem that’s financially underpinned MLB (and NBA and NHL) team economics for decades.

That the pay-TV (cable and satellite) RSN model is in flux because of cord-cutting, the rise of streaming services, and carriage disputes isn’t new. The pandemic, however, accelerated those trends and hastened the need for a stable new-normal so that the money continues to flow uninterrupted.

“Winter is coming,” said Lee Berke, a broadcast industry analyst and consultant who works with networks, leagues and teams.

The RSN owners and sports leagues are scrambling to find solutions, which are mainly focused on potential new streaming services and gambling partnerships.

Meanwhile, fans want to know when and where they can watch live games, and how much it’ll cost, in an increasingly fractionalized and chaotic media universe that tries to cater to different generations and the different ways they consume live sports. Oh, and they want an end to blackouts.

The long-term solutions really don’t yet exist, and the current hybrid TV + streaming model is expected to linger for years to come.

At the epicenter of the RSN situation is Sinclair Broadcast Corp., which in August 2019 paid $9.6 billion in a highly leveraged deal for the Fox Sports RSNs that carry 14 MLB teams along with 16 NBA and 12 NHL teams. Fox had to sell its RSNs to resolve federal anti-trust concerns about Disney, which owns ESPN, acquiring 21st Century Fox entertainment properties.

With 42 teams in its inventory (NFL games are on only national networks), Sinclair is the largest RSN operator. It struck a naming-rights deal with gambling firm Bally’s this year to rebrand the channels under that name.

Sinclair’s RSN subsidiary business, Diamond Sports, was forced to write-down the value of the acquisition by $4.2 billion and continues to face debt pressure over the deal. It has failed to restructure its $8 billion-plus in debt this summer, and the RSNs have been dropped from a number of services since 2019: Dish, Sling TV, YouTube TV, Hulu, and fuboTV.

To head off a deeper crisis, Sinclair has been focused on creating its own direct-to-consumer streaming service that could cost $15 to $20 a month and roll out in the first half of 2022, but there’s a dispute on how many team-level digital rights it owns to allow it to do so. As of now, it’s just four MLB teams, two of which are known to be the Detroit Tigers and Miami Marlins. The other two are as yet undisclosed.

CEO Chris Ripley told analysts during a recent quarterly earnings call that Sinclair planned to acquire more digital rights as team deals come up for renewal.

Without a successful shift in Sinclair’s business strategy for its Diamond unit, S&P Global Ratings forecasts a potential default and bankruptcy in the second half of 2022.

“Something has to be done because we have declining revenue as cord-cutting continues and rising sports costs in the form of broadcast rights,” said Rose Oberman, S&P Global Ratings’ director and senior analyst who covers Sinclair and Diamond.

Does that mean teams may not be able to pay players if Diamond goes into bankruptcy and halts broadcast rights fee payments? Or that games might not be broadcast in local markets?

No. And that’s because teams have (or should have) cash reserves, and the franchises themselves and their billionaire owners have easy access to cheap borrowing if they need to resort to that to meet payroll and ensure games are televised in local markets.

“I think the vast majority of teams have reserves of cash or access to cash to maintain operations,” said Smith College sports economist and occasional MLB consultant Andrew Zimbalist. “There will be a few places with minor cuts.”

There is one relatively recent example of an RSN not paying a team: In 2013-14, Comcast SportsNet Houston, jointly owned by the Astros and Rockets, was forced by into bankruptcy by Comcast, which held a minority ownership stake in the channel.

The Astros reportedly were not paid their portion of live-game broadcast rights fees owed by Comcast for the final three months of the season, but that apparently wasn’t a financial hardship for the team because its payroll for 2013 was absurdly low by modern standards: $11.6 million for the active roster and $35.5 million when retained salary for former players is factored in, per Spotrac.

Still, coming off the 60-game fan-less 2020 pandemic season that saw many teams borrow money to meet operational expenses – MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has publicly pegged the combined debt total at $8.3 billion – and heading into collective bargaining talks with the players, there’s a heightened awareness of sustaining the revenue coming in.

That’s particularly true for the RSN situation and cash flow interruptions.

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of concern,” said a source familiar with MLB’s thinking.

“Everybody has been preparing to manage through the process,” the source said, who added that things could be financially “bumpy” in a transition period.

RSN fees account for about $2 billion of MLB’s $10 billion in annual revenue. For some teams, those fees account for half their yearly income. National TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner Sports pay MLB a combined $1.74 billion annually that’s shared among the 30 clubs, with the remainder of income coming from tickets and game-day fan spending plus corporate sponsorship, licensed merchandise and apparel sales, etc.

Sinclair’s direct-to-consumer strategy for Diamond is a streaming app platform that includes social games and wagering around live game broadcasts. Some of the app games would be free (with rewards such as digital accomplishment badges and public recognition instead of money), and some would require payment.

“If fully developed, that would change the outlook for Diamond quite significantly,” said a source familiar with Sinclair’s thinking who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. “Diamond still has plenty of liquidity and lots of levers it can pull to continue to operate.”

The company has said it’s current on its sports rights payments.

Sinclair, while not obligated to do so, can subsidize Diamond if necessary. It recently paid $184.4 million to Diamond’s lenders, per industry reports.

If Sinclair fails to deploy a game-changing streaming service, or if one is rolled out and it’s a disaster, S&P Ratings predicts “a worst case scenario” for the company’s RSN business.

Sports betting, games, and other revenue-generating aspects of a streaming service only begin to produce real money as they scale upward over time. And it’s an open question on just how much money Sinclair could generate from a streaming product to offset the loss of pay-TV subscribers.

“It’s not enough to fix the business,” Oberman said.

MLB itself is interested in developing its own in-market streaming service, possibly a joint effort with the NBA and NHL. If Diamond does end up bankrupt, baseball and the other sports theoretically could buy broadcast and digital rights back for pennies on the dollar.

At last month’s CAA World Congress of Sports, both Manfred and NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed the RSN situation.

“Sinclair does not have enough digital rights from enough clubs in order to have a viable direct-to-consumer product,” Manfred said at the event. “The other set of rights they’ve talked a lot about is gambling rights; they don’t have those, either.”

And, he noted, those digital and gaming rights are “extraordinary valuable to baseball.”

“We’re not just going to throw them in to help Sinclair out,” Manfred said .

Silver called the pay-TV bundle for RSNs “broken” and added that the NBA is trying to help Sinclair figure out how to fix things.

Sinclair/Diamond isn’t the only RSN player. Others with major league broadcast rights include NBC, AT&T, Spectrum and a few independents such as MSG Network and Altitude Sports and Entertainment. Many channels also have rights to air WNBA, MLS, college and high school sports.

While those other companies have their own pressures – no one is immune from cord cutting – it’s Sinclair that is in everyone’s crosshairs because of its debt load. Sinclair itself is a longtime local TV station giant and financially well positioned even if its Diamond subsidiary is not.

“While all RSNs are in an increasingly challenged position, the worst positioned RSN group is Diamond Sports Group. Sinclair overleveraged the Diamond Sports RSNs based on implausible financial projections,” wrote Rich Greenfield, analyst at New York City-based tech, media and telecom research firm LightShed Partners, in a recent blog post.

Seventeen MLB clubs have an equity stake in their local RSN. Sinclair itself has a minority equity stake in the Yankees’ YES Network and a joint venture with the Cubs to operate Marquee.

Baseball’s labor situation looms over everything. If the Dec. 2 deadline for a new deal isn’t met, owners are expected to wage a capital strike, i.e. a lockout. Opening Day isn’t until March 31, so there are four-plus months to resolve a labor impasse, but if there’s no deal after the season is scheduled to begin, that could accelerate Sinclair’s issues.

“If there’s a lockout, what’s that going to do for Diamond Sports trying to pay back their loans?” a broadcast industry source said.

The future of how fans consume live games on TV or streamed on a device isn’t going to be solely dictated by Sinclair or professional sports leagues as much as what consumers demand with their checkbooks. There’s a younger generation that includes people who never had cable to cut, and thrives with streamed highlight clips and stats, and isn’t much interested in watching a three-hour game live on cable.

“This is just not a model that can work anymore. You have to meet people where they are,” said Jon Lewis, who has analyzed trends and viewership at Sports Media Watch since 2006.

That said, traditional (linear) TV and cable are here to stay for the foreseeable future, even as pay-TV subscriptions have declined from 100 million-plus homes a few years ago to 60 to 70 million today.

“We’re in a transition where some people may never be part of the (cable) bundle,” the source familiar with MLB said. “Linear will remain a very important part of the ecosystem. The transition is coming and will become more digital over time.”

RSNs and national networks pay enormous rights fees for live sports because they still command the biggest viewership in an era when overall TV usage is down.

“The issue right now is not one of value of the programming. People are still watching the games. In many markets it still wins the nights,” Berke said. “The problem is, it’s the distribution model that’s outmoded.”

By 2024, Americans are forecast to pay more for streaming services ($76.3 billion) than cable/satellite, ($74.4 billion) for the first time, per a report from Strategy Analytics. For 2020, U.S. annual spending on traditional pay TV was $90.7 billion versus $39.5 billion on stream.

“We’re watching more content on a lot of different screens in a lot of different places than we used to,” Berke said.

The monthly cost of a household cable bill includes the price of RSN access, and they’re typically among the most expensive chunks of the channel bundle – and bundling is how channels with limited appeal survive. RSN audiences range from 10-15 percent of a pay-TV bundle audience, said Patrick Crakes, a media consultant and former Fox Sports executive.

Now, as part of a cable bundle, an RSN may account for about $3 to $6 of the monthly bill.

“When you bust the RSNs out of the bundle, they’re like $20 to $30,” Crakes said.

While the TV industry continues to sort itself out in pursuit of whatever the future “new normal” will be, RSNs generally remain profitable, but not like they used to be. Crakes called the current era a “transitory stage” and predicts streaming services eventually will be bundled like cable channels are today, and some may disappear as consolidation and mergers occur.

“The new system is less profitable than the old one; costs have gone up,” Crakes said.

Sports leagues and teams are not expected to accept less money for their live game broadcast and digital rights – money that in the NBA and NHL helps determine salary caps. MLB doesn’t have a payroll cap.

One of the transition era issues is that none of the streaming services are profitable. Disney last week reported its portfolio of DTC services, including 17.1 million ESPN+ subscribers, lost $600 million in its fourth quarter because of production and other costs.

The industry-wide hope, of course, is that the streaming can scale to the point of profitability. But no one is there yet and it’s unclear when they will be or if the money will be enough to replace what’s lost from cord-cutting so networks can afford live sports rights fees.

“There are some underlying issues having to do with how you securitize the streaming platform,” Zimbalist said.

Curt Pires, founder and president of Charlotte-based media management and consultancy CAP Sports Group, said he believes even as consumers grumble about having to pay for several different streamers, and the price can approach or top a cable bill, fans still will pay because they love their teams.

“At the end of the day, live sports are something that people turn their TV on for (and) are willing to spend money for,” Pires said. “It’s a population of people with tremendous means willing to pay what’s necessary to watch those contests.”

Until the new-normal is here, it’s going to be an era of complaints, confusion, and change for sports fans, and perhaps some financial discomfort for wealthy people.

“I am confident it will get done eventually but it will be a painstaking process and it will be tumultuous,” Berke said.

 

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kevwun

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Especially when he didn't have a smooth recovery from said arm trouble.  It sounds like MLB has finally gotten tired of leaving money on the table by not offering a streaming subscription to all of their fans for all of their games.  They already have the system in place, they just need to open it up to in market fans.  Sinclair getting kneecapped would be the cherry on top.

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Wulaw Horn

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5 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Maybe the best thing that could come out of a lockout is Sinclair going bankrupt:

 

I do t understand why any sports fan likes the idea of decoupling bundles. 
it says right there in the article you are currently paying $3-$6 a month for your ran and it’s going to cost $20 if it’s broken out of the bundle. Right now the 85-90% of people who don’t watch RSN’s are kicking in money to lower my cost- why am I supposed to be upset about that or happy about a move to more single channel programming?  
 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54203

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26 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I do t understand why any sports fan likes the idea of decoupling bundles. 
it says right there in the article you are currently paying $3-$6 a month for your ran and it’s going to cost $20 if it’s broken out of the bundle. Right now the 85-90% of people who don’t watch RSN’s are kicking in money to lower my cost- why am I supposed to be upset about that or happy about a move to more single channel programming?  
 

Because your provider choices are limited to Directv (fuck them), AT&T (fuck that), or cable (no fucking way).

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19063

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1 minute ago, Beau Vine said:

Because your provider choices are limited to Directv (fuck them), AT&T (fuck that), or cable (no fucking way).

Gotcha. So you want to pay more to unbundle rather than just sign up with Direct Tv?  
I’ve never understood why so many here are so happy about the idea of unbundling. As sports fans our tv is subsidized by all the other non sports fans. I guess it’s what, a matter of principal? 
if you like all the major sports (nfl, nba, mlb, college football, ncaa tournament, soccer and golf majors) you need something like 30 channels to watch all that stuff. That would cost way more in an unbundled world than a simple direct tv account. Explain it to me why direct tv is a bad deal for a sports fan.   I’m open to being convinced I just don’t get it and don’t want to have 8 channels on my tv that will essentially cost as much as my 300 channels cost. 

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kevwun

kevwun 15758

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You can sign up for Youtube TV and pay half of what Direct costs and get all of that stuff and watch it from any device that has an internet connection.  If you want things like Netflix or Disney +, you are going to have to subscribe to them regardless.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54203

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OK then...

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After he kept quiet for nearly 30 years, sports radio host Craig Carton decided the statute of limitations expired on being sworn to secrecy about a former Major League Baseball All-Star’s absolutely bonkers pregame ritual.

Decades before he rose to prominence on New York’s WFAN, Carton was on-air in Cleveland. According to the sports radio host, former Cleveland Indians pitcher Charles Nagy invited him to see a teammate’s surprising ritual. It came with the caveat that Carton wouldn’t talk about it on-air, a promise he broke this week after three decades.

Nearly 30 years ago, Carton walked toward the Indians trainer’s room at the direction of Nagy. As he got closer, Carton said a group of players started to follow him and a rhythmic pounding began to increase in volume. Upon entering the trainer’s room, Carton was stunned to see All-Star infielder Carlos Baerga.

“Carlos Baerga is sitting on top of one of those stools and his baseball pants are down around his ankles,” Carton told his WFAN co-host Evan Roberts. “In his hand is what could very well be a baseball bat, but it’s much smaller and it’s attached to his body. And he is SLAPPING it against the doctor’s stool – rhythmically – ‘BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.'”

According to Carton, Baerga never stopped hitting the stool, despite others entering the room. The sports radio host proceeded to ask Nagy what he just witnessed.


“Pregame ritual,” Nagy said of Baerga’s unique tradition. “Nobody asks. Nobody wants to know.”

Baseball players are notorious for being superstitious, although Baerga’s alleged ritual is one that would seem unlikely to be duplicated. But did it work? Between 1992 and 1995, Baerga was a three-time MLB All-Star for the franchise soon to be named the Cleveland Guardians.

 

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