The Manny Machado front flared up on Wednesday under the tension of reporting news without ... well, news.
The situation remains what it's been: Some reporters say the White Sox are low-balling Machado yet winning (seven years, $175 million). Some reporters say the top offer is at least eight years and $200 million, and can go higher.
It just so happened on Wednesday that the ones reporting the lower figure had the floor, and Machado's agent Dan Lozano decided to put his foot down with an extraordinary screed:
For those that can't access the tweet to make the text larger, the gist is that Lozano called out Bob Nightengale and Buster Olney for carrying water for teams, and raised the question as to whether the clubs are "blatantly violating the collective bargaining agreement by intentionally misleading them to try and affect negotiations through the public."
Of course there's undeserved self-righteousness in play. Lozano and other agents had benefited from the same rumor mill previous seasons, so he's effectively letting everybody know the horse has left the barn well after cashing in a few trifectas.
But it's good symbolism, if nothing else. The hot stove season used to be fun because of the leaks, with both sides giving and getting a little before finding a compromise over a few weeks. Lozano's thesis is the result of one side getting a little too into it after realizing the CBA didn't codify a safe word.
When weeks turn into months, the process is as productive as trench warfare and half as fun. I suppose the lack of action over such well-regarded players is indeed newsworthy, but what's news without progress?
That's what some writers are wrestling with. Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle used a power outage for a tweet thread calling this reporting of non-news the "logical continuation of a trend that I absolutely hate." Using the Giants as an example, Schulman says the prevalence of leaks is so high that the lack of them is seen as inaction, even though a lot of moves end up as public knowledge only after they're complete, with the team a complete surprise.
On the analyst front, Jonah Keri has turned his annual "worst contracts" column into the "Get-Paid All-Stars," because "looking at every deal through the prism of saving billionaire owners a few million dollars stops making sense when players aren't getting their fair share." As you might guess, the White Sox have no entries.
And at Baseball Prospectus, Patrick Dubuque makes the case of ditching the idea of breaking down deals in terms of dollars per WAR, calling it a byproduct of the pre-luxury tax, David-Goliath era when smaller markets really needed to make every dollar count. He even goes a little further, wondering if it's ethical to report or ponder contract values when the rest of baseball's financial picture is so incomplete.
It seems that we’re unable, in the public discourse, to extricate the trivial details of player salaries from the connotations that come with them. If that’s the case, then, can we ever accept a specific and limited budget by which to apply that salary as a useful detail?
I don’t think it’s possible. The financial equation of baseball was once fairly simple: teams made money by selling tickets, and sold tickets by fielding good baseball players. Buying the rights to stars, or after 1975, signing them, was a simple investment calculation: will he be worth it? Now there are television deals, MLB Advanced Media, concessions and merchandising and jersey sales and suites and foreign markets and subsidiaries. Ticket sales are only loosely tied to revenue. Even with open books, baseball teams could lose money while still making their owners (who own the local TV network) wealthy.
I'd love to be on the side of ignoring it, except it just so happens to directly involve the White Sox. And not only does it involve the White Sox, but signing Machado would be the most momentous personnel decision they've ever made by far, even at the depressed/suppressed prices. Should it come to fruition, it'll warrant its own chapter in the franchise's history book, and so it's necessary to document the push and pull.
But yes, these nine-figure deals are supposed to be a little more exciting. The Cubs officially signed Jon Lester on Dec. 15, 2014, and unofficially on Dec. 10. They signed Jayson Heyward on Dec. 15, 2014, and unofficially on Dec. 11. They landed them because they offered them the combination of the most favorable contract terms and encouraging situations, but it was all handled expediently enough to downplay the business aspects in service of winning some games.
With Machado and the White Sox, it's now Jan. 17, and all we get is one side screaming at the other over the finer points of negotiation etiquette. Have you bought your SoxFest tickets yet?
If they end up together, it's with the hopes that resignation won't hang heavy over the proceedings. Then again, such a development falls in line with the rebuild's delayed gratification, starting with the stunted debuts of Yoan Moncada and Lucas Giolito, and continuing with the manipulation of Eloy Jimenez's service time. None of it is fun when at least a little of it is supposed to be, even accounting for the rebuild. The entertainment business indeed involves both words, but when the latter is so heavily prioritized over the former, it's natural for those invested in it to start asking for earning reports. Those aren't fun either, but at least one can actually learn something along the way.
