Bloom: Adding Alonso brings credibility and playoff push power for Orioles

Longtime MLB insider and baseball author Barry Bloom joins Nestor with an offseason primer with Nestor in discussing payrolls, 50 years of labor beefs and what the Orioles new ownership has done to wash away the ghost of Angelos by signing Pete Alonso to a big contract this winter restoring some hope in Baltimore. Now, about the pitching…

Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discussed the Orioles’ offseason and revenue challenges. Bloom noted the Orioles’ decent offseason compared to other AL East teams, despite their lower payroll. He highlighted the impact of the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays’ high payrolls and the potential revenue boost from Oriole Park renovations. Aparicio emphasized the need for the Orioles to create new revenue streams and build fan enthusiasm. They also discussed the broader MLB revenue model, the potential for a work stoppage, and the importance of a competitive team to attract fans and sponsors. Bloom praised the Orioles’ current management and expressed optimism for the team’s future.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Have breakfast with Katie Griggs tomorrow and discuss the Orioles’ revenue model and business growth questions (media, local revenue, fan monetization)
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Tell Katie Griggs Thursday morning that the host expects the Orioles to thrive and provide feedback/questions on community engagement, pricing, and fan experience
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Schedule a follow-up appearance or check-in with Barry Bloom in August to review the Orioles’ progress and offseason results
• [ ] Finish the 1984 Padres book (co-written with Ballard Smith) by April so it can be published next year

Orioles Offseason and Revenue Discussion

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the show, mentioning the Maryland crab cake tour and the recent Ravens elimination.
• Nestor Aparicio introduces Barry Bloom, a long-time baseball journalist, to discuss the Orioles’ offseason and revenue.
• Barry Bloom compares the Orioles’ offseason to other teams in the division, noting the Orioles’ payroll constraints.
• Barry Bloom discusses the impact of the Orioles’ park renovations on revenue and attendance.

Historical Context and Revenue Challenges

• Nestor Aparicio reflects on the Orioles’ offseason and the challenges faced during the Angelos era.
• Barry Bloom explains the historical context of baseball revenue and the impact of the NFL’s revenue model.
• Barry Bloom discusses the differences between baseball and football contracts and the historical context of the reserve clause.
• Barry Bloom predicts that the owners will not miss games during a potential work stoppage, emphasizing the financial stability of high-revenue teams.

Baseball’s Revenue Model and Market Differences

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discuss the complexities of baseball’s revenue model and the differences between markets.
• Barry Bloom explains the challenges of local television revenue and the impact of regional sports networks.
• Nestor Aparicio highlights the unique challenges faced by the Orioles in the Baltimore market.
• Barry Bloom discusses the potential for revenue sharing among teams and the challenges of implementing a salary cap.

Orioles’ Business Strategy and Community Impact

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discuss the Orioles’ business strategy and the importance of community engagement.
• Barry Bloom praises the Orioles’ current management and their efforts to rebuild the team.
• Nestor Aparicio reflects on the impact of the Angelos era and the need for the new ownership to build trust with fans.
• Barry Bloom emphasizes the importance of a symbiotic relationship between the business and baseball sides of the Orioles.

Future of the Orioles and Revenue Generation

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discuss the future of the Orioles and the potential for revenue growth.
• Barry Bloom highlights the importance of analytics in determining ticket prices and other revenue streams.
• Nestor Aparicio reflects on the impact of the Orioles’ recent signings and the potential for increased fan engagement.
• Barry Bloom emphasizes the need for the Orioles to build a competitive team to attract fans and revenue.

Impact of Pete Alonso and Team Dynamics

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discuss the impact of Pete Alonso on the Orioles and the team’s dynamics.
• Barry Bloom praises Alonso’s contributions to the community and his potential to be a positive influence on the team.
• Nestor Aparicio reflects on the importance of having a strong team culture and leadership.
• Barry Bloom emphasizes the need for the Orioles to continue building a competitive team to attract fans and revenue.

Orioles’ Competitive Position and Playoff Potential

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom discuss the Orioles’ competitive position in the AL East and their playoff potential.
• Barry Bloom highlights the challenges of competing with high-revenue teams like the Yankees and Red Sox.
• Nestor Aparicio reflects on the importance of winning and the potential for increased fan engagement.
• Barry Bloom emphasizes the need for the Orioles to focus on building a competitive team and leveraging their unique market position.

Barry Bloom’s Current Work and Future Plans

• Nestor Aparicio asks Barry Bloom about his current work and future plans.
• Barry Bloom discusses his ongoing book project on the 1984 Padres and his contributions to various publications.
• Nestor Aparicio expresses his interest in reading Barry Bloom’s work and his admiration for Barry Bloom’s journalism.
• Barry Bloom reflects on his career and the importance of covering baseball from a historical and analytical perspective.

Final Thoughts and Future Outlook

• Nestor Aparicio and Barry Bloom reflect on the future outlook for the Orioles and the potential for increased fan engagement.
• Barry Bloom emphasizes the importance of building a competitive team and leveraging the unique market position of the Orioles.
• Nestor Aparicio expresses his optimism for the Orioles’ future and the potential for increased fan support.
• Barry Bloom concludes by highlighting the importance of a symbiotic relationship between the business and baseball sides of the Orioles.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

MLB revenue, Orioles offseason, Pete Alonso, Barry Bloom, Angelos era, Baltimore baseball, Oriole Park renovations, baseball labor issues, revenue sharing, television revenue, baseball attendance, Orioles payroll, baseball market, Orioles pitching, baseball playoffs.

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SPEAKERS

Barry Bloom, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively, taking the Maryland crab cake tour out on the road. You know, I don’t have dates with this whole hardball firing thing. And people are asking if I’m going to spring training. I thought we’d be playing the Texans on Monday night. For all I know, I have Raven scratch offs to give away, excuse me, Candy Cane cash scratch offs to give away from the Maryland lottery. Our friends at GBMC help it keep me alive back in 2025 so that I can enjoy Oreo baseball in 2026 we’ve done a lot of chat or chatter around here about John Harbaugh and the next coach of the ravens, but I want to get a little baseball in here. And it’s been a week when, after the Ravens got eliminated, I didn’t know we would be firing coaches around here, but this guy was around every time. Billy Martin got fired, he got rehired again, as well as Bob lemon and probably just all sorts of people. Back in the day, Barry Bloom has covered baseball as long as since I my dad got the baseball digest, and I used to read Barry Bloom’s work. He’s out in Phoenix, Arizona. He is our defending champion for all things baseball. And Barry, I’ve been trying to get you on for five or six weeks, probably before any of this started to say, hey, how do you think the oils are going to do in the offseason? At any point, I can bring any of my baseball people in here and say, Well, how are they doing? And I’ll be honest with you, man, I’ve known you a long time. I’ve been doing this 34 years. There haven’t been a whole lot of times like on Elvis’s birthday, which is where we are right now, first week of January, that the Orioles have been involved in anything, anything during the Angelos era that looked like a good offseason, maybe going back to 97 or 98 Yeah.

Barry Bloom  01:38

Well, I mean, I think in comparison to other teams in the division, sands, the Blue Jays there, they’re probably having a decent off season because they’ve signed some people and hopefully the guys who were in the tank last year and multiple injuries, they’ll be okay coming into this season. You know they’re with their payroll. I mean, they’re up against it, against the Yankees, Red Sox and, you know, Blue Jays. I mean, those guys spend about a billion dollars in payroll between the three of them, and the aerials are just not going to get there. And, you know, be interesting to see if anything changes, revenue wise and attendance wise with the work they’re going to be doing or are doing on an Orioles park at this point. So you know, they in the and the rays are in a separate division from the other three teams.

Nestor Aparicio  02:37

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Just want to bring people like you on. I told Joe poily Earlier, I only want to talk to people that know more than me and like you’ve already started the whole party with the real story, which is, if you all are going to be successful, you’re going to have to create revenue. And Eric Getty and Rubenstein know that Angelos never seemed to care much because the revenue was just falling off a tree from mass and after he went broke before massing in Washington, put the team there. But Angelo said something to me. He said a lot of things. He lied a lot. I mean, I go back to the tape and how much he said that was true, run true. It was almost like a like a Trump press conference, to some degree. But the element of truth was he compared Washington baseball to what would happen with the a’s and the giants, and this is before the Giants had just hired John Miller at that point, so they hadn’t won anything at that point, and they were just about to get into the Barry Bonds business at that point, in the mid 90s. And Angelo said, If DC gets a team, it’s going to fracture this and it’s going to make Baltimore a small market Barry, and we don’t want the Orioles to be a small market and you know, your lead story is Orioles are small market team, and that’s what Rubenstein and Eric Getty bought, and that’s what they’re up against in the modern baseball as well as the work stoppage that may be coming next year. That may fix that right? Like the whole idea of the work stoppage would be like, fix it so everybody, so it’s normal, like football or or normal payroll, but baseball would never have a part of that. And this is why Steve bashati would say to me many years ago that he didn’t want to be involved in baseball because he didn’t think it was a fair fight.

Barry Bloom  04:18

Well, first of all, who’s to say that what the NFL does is is, is real payroll, and what they do to the players, most of the players, is pretty unconscionable. I mean, it how they the their pa has allowed over the course of the years because of a few strikes that were broken by players substitution players that they cracked that union and basically that most players in football are can be released without pay. They don’t have guaranteed contracts. You can get injured during the course of the season and. And be released by your team and lose your your healthcare care at a certain point too. So I mean, basically what you have in football is a graduated reserve clause, which was legislated out of Major League Baseball in the 70s, first starting with the Kurt flood decision, which he lost, but it is still a predecessor to, you know Nestor Smith, and you know the the arbitration decision that the reserve clause was illegal, that you couldn’t use it as a way to shackle your player to a team endlessly, because when those guys sat out a season without a contract and played for the team, they were no longer bound to the team after that one season, and it took the guy like Marvin Miller to figure that out. And that’s why baseball is where it is, and people who don’t have a context of where the union has gone since the 1970s and where they are today, don’t realize the history of it and why there’s not going to be a salary cap and a floor and that the owners can lock the players out for ad infinitum. But that union is well invested. It has plenty of money, and there they can withstand a long lockout from from the owners and on the other side of it, my contention is that the owners are not going to miss games, and they’re not going to lock out the players. It’s going to be very much like the last time. It’ll be an off season lockout where it doesn’t cost them any money. But if you think that the Dodgers who last year cracked the billion dollar mark in local revenue for the first time and drew over 4 million people for the first time, if you think they’re going to miss any games because they’re worried about it being equitable for the Orioles to compete Guggenheim baseball. That’s not happening, you know. And George and Hal Stein Brenner can say whatever he wants publicly, but in his heart of hearts, I don’t think the Yankees care one wit, if the Orioles are competitive, and I bet they don’t want them to be competitive. So when push comes to shove and games are starting to be lost, including television revenue, the or the owners are like they always do, are going to kowtow, and this will all continue the way it is. And we’ve had multiple proof in Major League Baseball that teams, if they spend their money wisely, can compete. You have an entire division in the American League, in the central that, yeah, they play each other, yeah, they’ve got a better draw, but hell, they all have payrolls under 200 million. They all make the playoffs. Either it’s not every year, but alternately, every year, and they’re all a thorn in the side because of the big market teams, because once you get to the playoffs, there’s no saying that one team with with a lower ranking, payroll wise, is not going to be able to beat a bigger team with a bigger payroll. And you know, look at the Dodgers. Last year, they had to come down to the last play of the season with their $400 million payroll for tax purposes to win the World Series when everybody was ceding it to them when the season started. There are too many variables in baseball, and if you just spend your money the right way, you can compete in a 12 team playoff format.

Nestor Aparicio  08:50

Bloom is our guest. He’s covered major league baseball for many, many years. What are you doing? You’re right, working on a Padre book, right? And who are you working for? Give me the whole I always think the Associated Press, because that’s where I sort of associate you with, you know,

Barry Bloom  09:03

well, I was always just a freelancer. You know, when I covered the the Padres for the San Diego Tribune, the Union Tribune, later, when it merged. You know, I always freelanced for AP, and I freelance for AP when I broke it in the Bay Area, covering the Warriors and the a’s and the Giants so but I never actually worked for AP. So you know, my thing is Tribune union, Tribune Bloomberg, mlb.com, for 16 years, Forbes. I looked locked up with them after I left MLB. Then a friend of mine who was creating sportico, came and got me to found sportico about five and a half years ago. And you know, there was some shuffling around in the Penske media company recently. And you know, I chose not to move to New York, and I went just back to four. Forbes. So I’m a contributing writer for Forbes. I have a sub stack column for my non baseball stuff, and I’m writing, I’ve been writing a book on the 1984 Padres with Ballard Smith, the club president at the time, since, you know, for years, and now it’s coming down to push the shove. I’ve got to get it done by April so I can get published next year.

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Nestor Aparicio  10:27

I hope Manny Machado reads it for you, you know, hope all of them read it. You know, Padres guys.

Barry Bloom  10:32

Manny Machado read, I’m not sure. Oh, well, you’ll find out

Nestor Aparicio  10:36

English, Spanish. I’m not sure. Barry bloom writes in English, and I think he thinks in baseball, you know, you gave me a little Lords of the Realm flashback there, from 34 years ago. I was on the air in in 94 during the strike time, and in a baseball only city at that time, we did not have the Ravens. At that time, there was any prayer we’re gonna have the Ravens at the time, Angelo’s took the side of the of the players instead of the owners. So I’m well versed. I’ve had Marvin Miller on the show, and, you know, I’ve had, you know, all the Fave Vincents of the world that were in the middle of a lot of that stuff back in the day. And also, Angelo, she was worried about it. You mentioned media and television revenue and money. And my great question that if I have only talked to Roger or not Roger Goodell, excuse me, that’s Freudian. Rob Manfred, once in my life, it was the day he was approved at the Hyatt in Baltimore as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He was he was voted on here and commissioned here, and he was literally in the sundry shop at the Hyatt. And I spoke to him briefly. If I ever ran into him again, I would talk to him about what he really thinks the future of revenue is for Major League Baseball, because I have not met anyone, and I’m going to have breakfast with Katie Griggs tomorrow at an event here in Baltimore. He’s now running the Orioles that can explain to me, really explain to me, what the revenue model looks like. For having the games on my phone, for having the Birdland discount thing we do here, for having tickets, getting a bobble head, doing the things that you would want a fan to do, having a credit card, having an affinity this or that, but like, I don’t understand, I know their old model because I’ve been doing this for four decades. The old models were going to sell tickets and maybe some beer, and then it was we’re going to sell some names on the wall, we’re going to sell some sponsors, and then we’re going to get a new stadium, and we’re going to just bilk everybody for these club level and we’re going to charge more for the beer. And then we’re going to get a television network. Television Network is going to save us. It’s going to be the yes network and Nesson mass in that’s going to save and that sustained Angeles made Angeles billions of dollars, while the team just sucked and sucked the life out of the city and took money from cable subscribers who didn’t know they were giving $3.20 a sub to home team sports or mass and or yes network, or any of that, that model’s blown up with cable television. He knows that. You know that I know that everybody knows that. What I have not figured out is, other than charging more for your beer and more for your tickets and getting people back to the ballpark, how you’re getting people from Apple TV on Friday to land work on Fox on Saturday to ESPN on Sunday, and I’m going to have all of these things like I I don’t understand their business model. Barry and my partner, who covers the Orioles lives in southern Pennsylvania and sometimes has the Orioles blacked out 55 miles from where he lives on the local app thing, which the Angelos family could never figure out they were the last ones, kind of like the Padres the last ones to kind of like, have HGTV as an example. And I don’t know where the investment is, and I don’t know where the mind frame is. And when I talk to really smart business media people, when I bring your pal Eric Fisher on, when I bring John Randall and I bring business people on. Nobody can explain to me, when I talk to baseball people, like, where’s the model that, not just the Dodgers and Yankees can eat on? Where’s the model that the Rockies are going to eat on, or the Orioles or the pirates or the Royals? Because it used to be like cable television. It’s like, it’s like water. It’s like in a utility, it’s like the mafia. You’re going to pay them every month just because you got cable TV. We’re not going to know it, and it’s just going to add up to a lot of money. And it did for John and Peter Angelos and that family, who never really managed the network. Well, they didn’t put news, they didn’t put any they didn’t put any programming on it. That made the network anything other than just the cash suck for the baseball team, I don’t understand their business model, and that’s why I really want to get educated on that between now and whenever the work stoppage or fight, because there’s going to be a huge fight over money next year, and I don’t understand where the money’s coming from.

Barry Bloom  14:55

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Barry, well, I think when you talk, have your lunch with Katie Griggs. Who I like a lot, you know, she’s an accolade of Derek Hall out here in Arizona, and she she’s very she’s very sharp. And the money comes from all different places. And really, there is no one size fit all in baseball. It really is a as far as local revenue is concerned, it’s really adjudicated by the market itself. You’re on your own basically, yeah, what you can do in the market, right? And as far as television is concerned, it’s just simplifying it at this point. It comes down to that the old local television paradigm, as you just adroitly pointed out, is really broken down. So you have teams now, maybe six or seven of them, including the Diamondbacks, the Padres and the twins. They don’t have their any sort of regional baseball network, either that they own, or is existing there that is paying them X amount of dollars a year to buy their product. So they’re

Nestor Aparicio  16:11

you also can’t put a sales team together to put them out to create revenue, because you don’t have any certainty, right? Like, literally,

Barry Bloom  16:19

that’s not true. You can put a sales team out there, and what you do, what they’re doing now is they’re selling their own subs, and they’re bypassing the the actual cable network.

Nestor Aparicio  16:33

So where am I watching a twins game? If I’m in Minnesota, on the app?

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Barry Bloom  16:38

No, you’re also watching it. They sell it, it. Sell it to local TV too.

Nestor Aparicio  16:43

So channel two or six or eight or whatever, will have the games there because they don’t have a Northwest sports, Fox Sports, regional route, massing

Barry Bloom  16:51

thing, right? Look, the sun’s right now. Opted to put all their games on local TV for free. They don’t have a TV model where anybody’s paying them to broadcast their games. And the Diamondbacks, who were much May, at one time, was making $60 million you know, average fee from Fox who turned into diamond it turned into bally, you know, as all these things came apart and crumbled and all and they all went into bankruptcy because of it.

Nestor Aparicio  17:30

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Barry, the guy that owns all of it, this four miles from where I’m sitting here right now, the Sinclair guys, right like, literally, they’re four miles away. The Smith boys, they were the ones that at the end of the day, who came in, who thought they were going to rescue it, because they had television channels to put it on, and they couldn’t figure it out.

Barry Bloom  17:45

Either, they don’t own all of it, and that’s the problem. You have a number of teams that own their own television networks, you know, like Madison, like yes, like Dodgers, like the Giants, you have all these teams that have their own regional sports networks that either they have a hand in or part in, and then they play the game of taking a rights fee from neighbor networks that they own and incorporate it into their Baseball operating expenses and revenue. So what getting it down to this? The simplest explanation is what Manfred wants to do on his way out, and what a lot of these smaller market teams want to do is they want to revenue share all that money between all 30 teams, just like they did when they started mlb.com and MLB TV, back in 2000 Now there were teams that didn’t want to do that, but since it takes 75% in baseball to pass anything, there wasn’t enough opposition at that time From the Dodgers, White Sox cubs, Yankees to block it. And so when that started, and they started investing money in that, they wound up sharing it. And it turned out to be a huge boon business with spin offs and sell offs. And over the course of time, their original $2 million per team investment turned into billions of dollars.

Nestor Aparicio  19:25

Yeah, by bam, right? Is that right? Right?

Barry Bloom  19:28

So what’s happened since then is now they’re going to start spinning off MLB TV and those baseball games that were always controlled by MLB. They’re now starting to spin it off the ESPN and others who are going to control those networks. And what they want to do is they want that paradigm, the 30, you know, split evenly among all the teams, to take place. But the problem is. You have, I can give you 10 markets of the top of my head that are not going to do this, and so any vote among the owners is going to be squelched by those 10 teams.

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Nestor Aparicio  20:12

And again, kind of like impeaching Trump, right? Yeah, kind of like that.

Barry Bloom  20:16

Kind of like what I was just explaining to you about the lockout. Those teams with the high revenue are going to keep are not going to vote in favor. They don’t care about the Minnesota Twins, the Baltimore now, who’s got massive on their own because nationals are opting out of massing. They don’t want to be part of it anymore. You’ve just gotten

Nestor Aparicio  20:41

to the root of the root of the problem. They don’t care about each other, so then they don’t care about the entity, like, literally, right? Like, then that that they’re in lies

Barry Bloom  20:48

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a problem. It’s not a problem, because what you’re you don’t, you forget that this is they are competitors, even though they are under the umbrella of the whole of a sports league, just like, you know, the NFL or NBA or NHL or soccer or whatever, they’re all in competition with each other to win, and they don’t want to give any franchise any chance to win that they don’t have to give them. So it’s not that they’re they’re in our argument with each other. It’s just the model is on one hand, since you’re you’re a closed market with 30 teams, you’re still 30 different independent businesses are all in competition with each other, and because you built these systems that have to that you have to use to vote to pass anything. They favor the majority. They don’t favor the minority. It’s just really that simple. And that’s where baseball is. And I go back to 2002 when I was covering this stuff for MLB, for for bam. And you know they were talking about, initially, revenue sharing money among the teams, and they went to the union and, you know, they asked their help for it, or they were trying again. That was that errors. We need a salary cap. And the union, under Don fear, at the time, said to them, that’s your problem. You have to negotiate that among your owners. And then when you come up with something, come back to us and we’ll talk about it and collectively bargain.

Nestor Aparicio  22:30

Yeah, there’s plenty of money there. You guys got to have to figure that out, right? Literally, that’s the

Barry Bloom  22:34

that’s what they did. And they came up with the with the platform right now, where, I think it’s off the top of my head, but I think 32.5% of all revenue is shared. And so the problem is there is plenty of rules on the book that teams that get 50 to $70 million in revenue sharing every year are supposed to be putting that into their rosters, into their ballpark, into their minor leagues.

Nestor Aparicio  23:05

The oils begin a season with a $38 million payroll a couple years ago, when they’re already getting 75 for waking

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Barry Bloom  23:10

up, right? Yeah, exactly. And they don’t, they chuck it against the off, against the bottom line, and then the union looks at it and goes, you want us to put a salary cap and a floor in to control what you’re doing? This has been a time honored argument over the course of 50 Years of labor problems and negotiations in baseball and until and I’ve talked to Scott Burroughs about this, who’s, you know, really the top agent in the game and and brilliant, and

Nestor Aparicio  23:44

was in town a couple weeks ago, went for the first time in a long time with Pete Alonso, because Angelos wouldn’t deal with him for years and years and years.

Barry Bloom  23:53

A lot of owners wouldn’t deal with John Moore’s when he was out in San Diego after a while, didn’t want to deal with him anymore. But I mean, the point is that if you want his players, you have to deal with it. And then the Orioles stepped up and, you know, and signed Pete. And so the what Burroughs knows that, and we’ve had this discussion that baseball, MLB, their labor negotiating committee, among those lawyers who run the league, they’ve got to sit down and come up with a plan of how they can present a salary cap to the union that tells them it’s better for all the players if you have a salary cap than it is for the few that make all the money. You’re going to continue to make a lot of money for only a small amount of players, but it’s not going to be distributed around the rest of your players, and they’ve got to come up with a cogent plan for that and an argument for that, and prove to the players that it’s true, and open up all the books to prove it to them. And if you do that, then you might have, of course. Is a conversation on this. But as of now, if the owners don’t go in and negotiate among themselves this television issue, much like revenue sharing decades ago, before the next collective bargaining agreement, they are dead in the water on a salary cap or a floor with the union?

Nestor Aparicio  25:22

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Well, you know, you mentioned the NFL in the beginning. They got together generations ago and created a different system that benefited them, still benefits them. I’m in full agreement with you after, you know, seeing these football players at CTE and seeing all the issues they have, it’s it is disgraceful. You know, Bashan, he’s made $2 billion since the last time he’s at a press conference, off the football team seriously,

Barry Bloom  25:45

but the what they did, and if you compare the two back in the 1960s under Pete Rozelle, he convinced the NFL back then to turn all the television, national television negotiations and dollars over to The League, and they did, and then they split that evenly. So it’s like, and it but in football, it’s it’s a good idea, because you don’t have that many games, and most of them could be sold nationally. There’s no local television in football, except for preseason. If then in baseball, what they could have done in the early 1960s is Major League Baseball for a million or two when you had 16 teams, could have paid that money to buy the local television markets of each of those teams, and I can tell you, except For a few outstanding they would have major league baseball, would have jumped at it, and they would have had the rights to the local television dollars for time immemorial, just like the NFL does. And if you look at the history of networks and owning teams, you have CBS, who owned the Yankees in the 1960s selling that team to Steinbrenner for $10 million can you imagine if CBS had held that team and what rights they would have now, you had Fox owning the Dodgers wedged in between, O’Malley, McCourt, for you know, Mark Walter, and they wanted to get out of the business, so they sold the team to McCourt for like $165 million the they then, a few years later, when McCourt had to get out, and sold the team to Guggenheim for $2.15 billion they went out and and they they bid for the television rights for the Dodgers, which ultimately went for $7 billion so we’ll get let me ask, see, I don’t understand the optics of it, just like you don’t understand some of The things that you’ve seen that in itself. To me, you sold those rights for time immemorial, $465 million now you’re back at it a decade later, trying to buy those same rights for $7 billion how stupid is management in all these businesses that this is what they do. This is where we are, you know, Nestor and what this is what we’re looking at right now in baseball is the product of all this, but it baseball made $2 billion they cracked $2 billion last year in local marketing and merchandising. I think for the first time, there is plenty of money in baseball to go around. And just like I said to you, the your baseball ops and your business ops, which irrevocably have to work together, and this is what you’re seeing now in the Orioles for the first time. And you know, you you could dredge up a dead horse with Angela’s all you want, but that’s gone. And in this current organization, I was pretty impressed this off

Nestor Aparicio  29:15

season is really you’re right about I would not have said that six months ago, when they’re in last place and the owner is making a bobble head of himself, right? So, but this last 90 days has reinvigorated.

Barry Bloom  29:29

It’s not 90 days. I was in there in the middle of last summer. I came to Baltimore for three days, you know, I talked to Elias, I talked to Greg’s, I talked to the manager, I talked to everybody I could, and I wrote a huge story about the Orioles and where they were going, why they had the problems, but how everything was positive. They have. They major league teams would kill for what they have. They have the state of Maryland as a pub. Bank to rebuild our ballpark. They they pay taxes on it, but they pay no no rental fee, and they and and they have no responsibility to maintain or run that ballpark. And that’s what gives them a heads up against the, you know, an edge up against the Yankees, Blue Jays and ball and Boston in their own division, because those three teams, they have enormous expenses on running their own ballpark, enormous the Yankees $75 billion a year just in a nut to pay the city back on the bonds that they floated to build the stadium for 30 years. Yeah, I

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Nestor Aparicio  30:55

come out there and everything’s expensive and it’s nice and it’s shiny, but I’m not thinking about who’s really paying for it, other than the fans, because I always feel that way when I’m buying $18 beers and $15 conditions when I’m at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. But I don’t know every structure. I only know the structure here, and I know here, it’s pretty good business to be Steve bishati, a pretty good business. That certainly was a great day. You hate when I bring up angels, but like his ghost, is still very much here in the damage that was done, and his kids walk off Grand Slam literally with the amount of money they rolled out of here with versus what the community gave to them, and the lack of joy we had out of this. And these guys are up against that, whether they want to admit it or not, it’s the first thing I said to Rubenstein when I met him, I’m like, it’s been a lot of trauma here. Dude, that’s what your upper deck in the empty seats are about for playoff games. Because it’s not that people don’t love the Orioles. They’ll trust the Orioles. And this off season and bringing Pete Alonso, when he seems like a good guy, and he like, they haven’t had a press conference like that around here in a long time. Dude, under 50 million, like, it’s almost like they’re really in Major League Baseball. All the stuff we’ve been watching On the outside, where other team signed players, and we sit and there is no offseason here the last 30 years, where anybody they really were going to bring Mark to share a home. They were always in on it. But Angelos would say, I gave him Messina too much money. People here don’t forget that, but they’re also not going to forget that these new guys, what’s that

Barry Bloom  32:21

cut the shit on Angeles. Who gives a damn that’s

Nestor Aparicio  32:25

over understood, and that’s why this is important. You guys

Barry Bloom  32:30

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are gonna have, and I you have a symbiosis between the business side and the baseball side of the Orioles that in five years, people and another generation who didn’t grow up under Angelos and donor aren’t affected by it like you are. I’m not gonna we be well,

Nestor Aparicio  32:49

it’s not that I’m affected by it. It’s the people I know don’t give them money. I spoke

Barry Bloom  32:53

to a group that’s stupid because you’re not giving Angeles any money anymore.

Nestor Aparicio  32:58

No, it’s not about Angelos. It’s about the Orioles and being out of the loop. I gave a speech about a month ago to

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Barry Bloom  33:07

an Italian Wait a second. Didn’t they win the division two years ago?

Nestor Aparicio  33:11

But they’re not selling tickets here. They’re not selling enthusiasm here. The owner of the football team just fired the coach because like, enthusiasm is down for both of the teams now the baseball team. As we sit here this morning with the kick going wide right the other night, it’s now baseball season, and as we look up, it’s the first time I’ve been on the air

Barry Bloom  33:32

market problem, not, not a baseball problem. And you know, if you look at the Colorado Rockies, they did the same thing, and they don’t care, but they turned a great stadium into an open bar that draws 40,000 people a game, and the people go to drink and party, and they don’t care about what’s going on on the field.

Nestor Aparicio  33:53

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Baltimore is a different market to get people, white people, Republicans from the county, into the city. It’s a different market. It is totally Thank you. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And I think it’s a different market in thinking where the money is going to come from to get them to 200 million on a payroll, local revenue, where we all the things Dick Cass would say to me, we don’t have fortune 500 companies, all the things that Angelo said presciently about, like, if I give DC away, the next generation won’t have DC and all that money that’s floating in from Fairfax and Reston and the D that’s going to be gone forever for the next people. He really was right about that, because everything we’re going to talk about moving forward is how they create revenue.

Barry Bloom  34:41

Yeah, like the nationals are doing great guns too, right?

Nestor Aparicio  34:44

Well, that’s what Peter said. He said neither one would do great guns. That was his. That was what he said. That was so smart.

Barry Bloom  34:50

But the nationals are not their attendance and their revenue is way down because of the shit team they put on the field. Right? Oh, he’s wrong. You. And what, and what. What, you know, like the Giants might have argued in the 1970s about the Bay Area being able to accommodate only one team, so you got to get rid of the A’s. That didn’t come to pass, because there were years where both teams were pretty successful and drew over 2 million people, and the Giants did it by building their own ballpark, but they did it even at candlestick with teams that were that were successful and the A’s at the Coliseum, that old dreaded Coliseum, when they put decent teams on the field, and they weren’t doing the same thing that you’re saying people in Baltimore dread because they didn’t want to put the money into ownership anymore, and they wound up losing the team because nobody would come to the Coliseum anymore. But it wasn’t because of the market.

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Nestor Aparicio  35:48

Hey, I remember my dad quit on the Colts, and then the Colts were gone. So, I mean, Barry Bloom is here. He covers baseball. Last thing for you, just on the revenue side for the Orioles in our argument about this, is just, I live here, and I know what people are willing to spend for things. It’s not a New York ticket ticket item. And I know the Ollie’s bargain basement nights here that were five bucks or bring them out. I know the college night brought out all the young people, as well as the police IDing people because kids were drinking, like all of the things that they’ve tried to do here, I’ve been I’ve watched it all for 35 years and opined on it for better or worse. I wish it were better. Some years it’s been better. When Buck was here, it was better, for sure, and winning is better. But I still think the revenue part of this and who these humans are, they’re going to come down and give $20 for beer and buy the fan club and buy the whatever the television package is going to be and really get into the soap opera of it, beyond bobbleheads behind like free stuff that they give away because they give stuff away, people will come but that’s sort of the model right now. Katie Griggs is understanding that I don’t know where their growth comes from in the marketplace, without Pete Alonso being a good guy and a great player, and without gunner Henderson, and with rut rushman bouncing back all of these positive things and Barry, I’m telling you, in the last 10 weeks, they have shown themselves that you’re right. Angelos is dead. This is they’re doing things they’ve never done around here in all of these years. I will tell Katie Griggs that when I see her Thursday morning, because having the Pete Alonso press conference here in Boros, sitting up there, I haven’t witnessed that since maybe Albert Bell, right? You know what I mean, where they went out and spent money and kahada. I mean, we’re going back 23 years here, and we’re going back a long time. So for me to see this offseason, there is, without question, more enthusiasm that Rogers is going to be a good pitch. All the baseball stuff we would talk about on the field that baz signing the pitchers, whether they’re going to do more or not, and everybody here wants them to get one more pitcher, one more pitcher. There is enthusiasm here, but I don’t know that anybody’s reached for their wallet yet. And that’s where I would talk to Katie Griggs on the business side and say, okay, so you win now. What are you charging people? What kind of experience you give them? How are you washing Angelos away for the next time I go back to the ballpark? Because I’ll promise you Barry, when their last place last year again and nobody’s at the ballpark again, it wasn’t like Angelos was dead. It was like dude made a bobble head of himself and gave it away in April, the team’s in last place, and they’ve dealt everybody off. And when does Lamar play? Because that’s the way it works. I want to see them thrive. I told Mark fine that I will tell Katie Griggs that I told her that in the letter, publicly, privately, I want, I need them to thrive. They’re important here, and this has been the first time in a long time that I can tell you that the temperature is up for them, even if people don’t have aren’t calling the 800 number given their credit card just yet. But I think they’re willing to, and I think they’re willing to become big fans of Pete Alonso, if he continues to perform and be a good guy, he seemed like a great What’s the question? That kind of human they couldn’t get the sign here before. What is the question?

Barry Bloom  39:05

You just went off into a diatribe. What’s the question?

Nestor Aparicio  39:08

Um, the question is, what’s the next thing they need to do to make their pitching better, so that they absolutely make the playoffs this year and don’t have what they had happened last year? I think they got the right manager, by the way, too. That helps

Barry Bloom  39:21

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the the whole thing is that you ask her the same analytics that they use for baseball, they use on the business side to answer all those questions. They look at the market, and they determine what they can charge for a ticket, a piece of a memorabilia, a hot dog, everything to bring make it equitable for people in your market to come to the ballpark. They’re doing that you, I guarantee you, they’re doing

Nestor Aparicio  39:53

I’ve seen the research. I mean, I’m on their I’m on their mailing list as a fan. They sent me. Give us feedback. Give us feedback, for sure.

Barry Bloom  40:00

The research isn’t coming from just, you know, like surveys they have, like, they put it into a computer, just like they do with with with baseball operations, on how to build a team. Now, the problem with last year’s team was when they built it, the season started and the team broke down, and they had multiple injuries, and by the time may came around, they were in too deep a hole to get out of it. Now Elias, when I talked to him at midseason, he said he was going to do what he did this offseason. He said there was plenty of money from the ownership to let them do what they needed to do to build the team. Now, diverging for a second for the life of me, I don’t understand why Steve Cohn would allow Peter Alonso to walk to the Baltimore house. You know, this guy is not only a great player, not only a great clubhouse guy, not only a slugger, hits home runs and drives and runs, and last year, batting average was way up, but he’s a huge contributor to the community. And since his whole career started, he’s taken money like his home run derby earnings and put it into his charities to benefit first responders and second responders all over New York and all over Florida. Here’s a guy who had to rebuild his home in the off season last year in Tampa area because it was wiped out by the hurricanes, you know. So, I mean, this is a high quality individual who the fans in New York loved, and, you know, they make the calculation that they’re not winning with the fans are going to come to the ballpark in New York anyway. The people who love, you know, loved Alonzo, they’re still going to sell tickets at Citi Field. And you know, we can replace him and try and build a team that has a chance to win, because we didn’t even make the playoffs with him last year. But the Orioles are a complete different thing, and you will find that Alonso as a building part for a franchise like Baltimore is going to be an outstanding add to the whole environment, much like the homegrown you know, Cal Ripken was many years ago, a high quality individual who is a an all star every year and can

Nestor Aparicio  42:24

play Rubik’s compared to the Frank Robinson in 66 so we there’s a little ways to go on that. And I will say this for the Orioles and for enthusiasm, since we’re in the enthusiasm business for them, the emergence of Rogers and Elias not being the village idiot for having the kid hit 30 home runs to be an all star, that he was dealt off for that he came on and that Bradish came back and looked as healthy as he did. To me, that’s where the hope for the franchise is. It’s not necessarily that rushman will hit the ball better, or that Henderson will bounce back and have more of an all star caliber year, or the Westberg would stay healthy. I’ll hear or that holiday will progress. I’ll hear all of that. I mean, on a regular baseball continuum, I think all that can happen. I was far more concerned about the pitching at the All Star break last year, when it’s like pitching costs money, if they would have given burns the money. His arm fell off anyway, all of that. But the two pitchers emerging very quietly at the end of the year last year around here, because they were in last place. Football had started. People aren’t watching them. But that top of the rotation, the ability for both of those guys to, in my old guy vernacular, 20 game winner potential, you know, three era, 20 game potential, make 32 starts. Kind of guys to have that on the front to feel like you have horses. That’s certainly something you and I were not talking about even in August of last year, to think that the body of work would sustain itself. To say, well, that’s that’s two things that, in my mind, they’re not worried about right now, which is number two, number three, starter, number three, number four, wherever you want to put it, they’ve got starters. They signed effluent, they got Boz. I’m I am as much as you think. I’m down on them. I’m not. I’m up on them. I’m down on what they’ve done in the community so far for the new owners and the new face of the community, because it hasn’t smelled great yet. I’m waiting for that spending money is the first part of it, because you think, and everybody says, when they win, people will come back, all right, then go, win. That’s how I feel about it. They’re on the road to doing that. They bought my confidence that I think when I have you on the show in August, it won’t be because they’re selling off half the team.

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Barry Bloom  44:35

Okay, that’s not. And the point of the matter is here that the Orioles, like the Diamondbacks, like the Giants, at this point, you know who is a big market team. They’re competing in divisions like the NL West. I don’t know that there’s anything the Diamondbacks or the Padres and the Giants could do at this day. Compete, to compete with the monster that the Dodgers have built, and to that to the same degree, as I said to you at the outset of the show, the Orioles are have their hands full competing with those top three teams in the Al east. Those are the two best divisions in Major League Baseball by far. And so you know, you’re dealing with teams with big markets, big money, big revenue from all sides, from television, from their ballparks locally, what they do in the communities, and the Blue Jays have just except for resigning Beau Bichette, which they haven’t done yet. They’ve really built on what they did last year. And they play a brand of baseball. Their contact hitting baseball is so much of the antithesis of what’s going on in the rest of the baseball, in rest of baseball, that they’re not going to be easy to catch up with because they don’t strike out. They put runners on base, the home run is an ancillary item to what everything else they do. And yeah, they can hit them, but that’s not the game. And they’ve their pitching staff is terrific. So it’s like they are the team to beat in the American League, much like the Dodgers are the team to beat in the National League. And so the Orioles, you have to be content with the fact that there are three wild card spots in each league. You have to play good enough baseball you don’t win 85 to 90 games to get into the playoffs. And once you get into the playoffs, like the Diamondbacks three years ago, when they went to the World Series against Texas. Good things can really happen, because you never know what’s going to happen in the in the playoffs. And to that point, I would say the Dodgers got lucky last year, because they they didn’t have much of a bullpen, and so when they went into the playoffs, the Diamondbacks missed by two or three games. They got the Cincinnati Reds and they had to play a wild card round at home, they were thanking the baseball gods that it wasn’t the Diamondbacks who were going to come in there and have to play them, because the Diamondbacks know how to beat them. The Cincinnati Reds playing them were an afterthought. This is where things all meet. So the Diamondbacks have to improve just a little bit to get back into that playoff round. And then when you get into it, you know, the home field advantage doesn’t matter in the first round of the playoffs, you just go in and you win. And so if the Orioles do that, that’s what you have to be content with. Get in, get a good match up in the first round, win that first round, get to the second round, and as you’re starting to play against the better teams, then catch lightning in a bottle in the hope that there’s injuries on those teams. You just don’t know what you’re going to get against them at any time of year. But, you know, I’ve told my buddy Randy Levine, who is the president of the Yankees, I’ve written this ad infinitum, that if the Yankee they can sign whoever they want, but if the Yankees do not change their style of play from the three two outcomes, three true outcomes, home runs, strikeouts and walks, and start playing contact baseball, much like the Blue Jays, they are not going to take. Take the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays beat them 11 times last year, including the playoffs. That was the difference in the their entire season, and both teams finished with 94 wins, so if the Yankees don’t change their style of play, they’re not going to be competitive with the Blue Jays. They’re going to lose to the Blue Jays again, and that’s where the Orioles are. So you have to be content with them building a good enough team to win 85 to 90 games, get into the playoffs and then see if lightning and a bottle hit.

Nestor Aparicio  49:01

Well, if nothing else, I feel optimistic that they’re going to have a better year this year and a better chance. But I will say the weirdest thing is you and I talking about the Blue Jays in real terms, because it gives me sort of PTSD from 89 and 92 and 93 in the early days and Joe Carter and all that stuff. But I was in Toronto last year on opening day, and I had you on the show last March. Nobody was talking about the Blue Jays in any sort of, you know, incredible way. Certainly on opening day, the oils kicked their ass on opening day, hit like four or five home runs like all that. And there was no thought that the Blue Jays would be this toast of baseball in the way they are, or their own country, or Getty Lee, for crying out loud, or coming close last year. But I’m with you. The one thing that I noticed in the summer was, oh, Toronto and Canada, and the Blue Jays have gotten serious about this, and now we worried about the Yankees and the Red Sox and the evil empire for 30 years, Blue Jays are in on it big time again. And it didn’t feel that way a year ago right now, and that’s how quickly it can happen. And to your point, if all these guys mesh and the star power comes out and people. Eat the ravens and give all their money to the Orioles. Two years from now, the oils play some playoff games, win some playoff games, maybe the Orioles are the ones that wake up and have 32,000 in their ballpark every night all the time, because they’ve managed it better. And I’m pulling for that. I believe me. I sit here every day pulling for that so and I feel like they’ve been closer during the buck Showalter era of having the players before the Chris Davis problems and Adam Jones era, but they’re on to this right now. They’re in a good spot, not a great spot, but a better spot than they were last summer, for sure. And and there is enthusiasm here for it, which is why I talk to you. Barry bloom, is here your Padre book, not it could have come out this year. You think next year, next year. Okay, all right. Well, you know, I love the Padres. So anything you write about Tony green, something Tony Gwynn, something I want to read, always a pleasure. And you know, we’re this close spring training, pitchers and catchers reporting in a couple of weeks. It’s baseball season around here. We’re going to hire a football coach, though, Barry, and I’ll get back to you on the baseball thing. All right. Sounds good. Appreciate you. Barry bloom, my dude, I’ve been reading him since I was a young young man, and I always learned something, especially when he scolds me, gets angry at me. Peter Angelos is still dead, and Pete Alonso is still an Oriole. I’m Nestor. We’re Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.