Baseball historian and author Rob Neyer talks past, present and future of the Baltimore Orioles franchise with Nestor. He also knows a few things about Adley Rutschman…
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
team, year, baltimore, baseball, money, league, players, revenues, place, figure, rob, week, fans, orioles, season, rubenstein, playoffs, major league baseball, mlb, play
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Rob Neyer
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Uh, welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. We are positively taking the Maryland crab cake tour on the road when the cheatstros come to town a couple weeks from now, we’ll be down at fadelies. On Friday, we will have the Gold Rush sevens, doublers, no cheating in the Maryland lottery, but we’re going to be giving these away at fadelies. We’re also going to be doing crab Kate tours throughout September. And our 25th anniversary ended this weekend. We’re now 26 like Boog Powell or Johnny Oates or rod Woodson. We’re going to be doing 26 oysters in 26 days, in 26 ways, because September has an R and I need to warm up for the playoffs. So all of that will begin on September the fifth. Luke is, of course, in Owings Mills. Luke’s at the ballpark. Looks all around. They allow him access. They do not allow me access. But back when I did have access, I met people like this. Next guest, he was a long time ESPN insider for baseball. He has written books. We have dined together on delicious Asian food in Portland, Oregon. He lives out in the west coast, and that for he is the Commissioner of the West Coast League of baseball. You may have seen the Major League Baseball broadcast of their All Star game back during July. Yeah, I don’t know how long it’s been. Rob Nyer, I’m literally going to look through my text threads, because that would probably tell me the last time. And I don’t know why I haven’t bothered you during playoff runs and whatnot, but it feels like to me the last time you were on was two summers ago, around this time after the trading deadline. And that was so man, senior go. That was so hey, this rushman guys from Oregon, huh? You know a little bit about him, huh? Rob,
Rob Neyer 01:41
wow, things have changed, and I’m sorry it’s been two years. I miss you, and it’s good to have you back aboard. Man. It’s great to be here. And Adley rushman, as you might recall, played in the West Coast League, so he’s one of our guys. Well, you had a moment tell me about, I mean, looks. Not often I have commissioners on, you know, I have had, let’s see. I had, um, Faye Vincent on many times, uh, I did sit down in the window at Mickey mantles on 59th Street South and Central Park with uh, Gary Bettman for two hours one day talking hockey. But I don’t have many I have chiefs on chief executive officers, all sorts of chiefs. I think that’s a cool title, but Commissioner, it’s like, like Batman. Commissioner, Gordon, do you have like, the little red phone to Alfred? You know what? What is the W what is the what is West Coast League Baseball? Commissioner, do? Boy, I this year for this summer, for the first time, and this is my sixth season. I have pretty assiduously kept a list of everything I do every day. I have a little notebook. There’s, I have this. There’s this company called Field Notes that that makes these small, sort of pocket sized notebooks. And I’m addicted to these notebooks, so I buy a big pile of them every so often, and I’ve been writing down every day everything that I do over the course of a day. And excuse me, it’s surprising even to me how many different things I do over the course of a day, but I Commissioner wears many hats. Rob Now he does at least this one does. I think of the job, and I think it’s probably like this for most commissioners and presidents. A lot of the leagues don’t have commissioners, they have presidents, but basically it’s the same role. I think that at this level, we all basically do the job is basically the same. It is to help the people who do the real work on the teams to get things done, answer their questions, make a call to help them out with some vendor or business partner, whatever it might be. I think of it as as a service job. I’m not setting policy very often. Occasionally I get to say, You know what, I think it’d be a good idea if our playoff system look like this instead of how we’ve been doing it. But for the most part, I’m here to serve the owners of the teams and the GMs and sometimes even the head coaches. What is the West Coast
Nestor Aparicio 04:03
League? Tell everybody what that is, because it’s a little different than the league’s ripkens been in, or the Bowie league or the Cape Cod League, but we’re 3000 miles removed. We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on in Camden Yards in the last two weeks. You
Rob Neyer 04:17
know? Well, we are basically the Cape Cod League of the western half of the US now, do we have the same talent the cape League has? No the cape league is way up here compared to every other league in the country in terms of collegiate summer baseball. A lot of people who don’t follow the game closely might not realize this, but basically every college baseball player wants to play in the summer somewhere too they don’t want to take the summer off. Some do. Some need that time off, but most want to continue playing in the summer to develop their skills. And where they go depends on where their skills are at that point, if you are at the very. Very upper echelon of that talent, 1819, 20 years old, especially 19 and 20, even 21 you’re going to play in the cape League. That’s where the very best players typically, is
Nestor Aparicio 05:11
that invitation,
Rob Neyer 05:12
absolutely yes. And in the if you
Nestor Aparicio 05:16
get invited to play in a Cape Cod League, you go and play, kind of like the Senior Bowl, or, like, whatever that would be for evaluating That’s exactly
Rob Neyer 05:24
right. And the reason that they want to go there, among other reasons, is that the cape the cape League, all the teams are very tightly compacted, as you know, because Cape Cod is not a large place, right? You can literally, probably the longest drive from one the too far this ballparks are maybe, what, a half an hour, 45 minutes apart. I don’t know exactly I’ve been there, but it’s been a while. But point being, if you are there, it’s very easy to be seen by the scouts, essentially. So that’s where you want to go before you get drafted. You want to go to the Cape league so the Scouts can see you playing against the best competition, and the scouts get great clams there too. I must ask exactly and but after that, then you’re talking about the coastal plain league in the southeast North Carolina, mostly South Carolina, the North Woods league in the upper Midwest and the West Coast League. There’s also a couple other eastern leagues that have really solid talent, the draft League, the prospect League, the anyway, there are these collegiate summer leagues. There’s a Cal Ripken baseball league. You probably know about that one. These leagues are everywhere in the US, but as it happens, the qualitatively, the best league in the western half of the US happens to be the West Coast League. So we get that’s how rushman wound up in your league. Yeah, that’s right, because he went to Oregon State and grew up in the Portland, Oregon area, area. That’s right, yep.
06:48
Well, that’s where you are. And how many teams
Rob Neyer 06:51
we have, 1617, starting next summer, and
Nestor Aparicio 06:55
what, what time frame June to now, kind of, sort of, we
Rob Neyer 06:58
started the very beginning of June, and we run through mid August. Our regular season ends this Thursday, and then the playoffs start Saturday. And by the way, we just had the number one pick in the draft, Travis bizana, who also went to Oregon State, played for the Corvallis knights a few years ago. I remember seeing him. He set the league as at 18, he set the our League’s all time record with the 429 batting average. So there are some players who just stand out. They’re so good that even I can tell they’re going to be great. Did Quan play in your league? I saw him over the weekend. Another Corvallis Knight. Yep. There you go. There you see. You know, I figured he and Adley both played on the 2018 I’m sorry, 2017 Corvallis knights, just one
07:40
of them can play in the World Series this year, and it might not even be either one of them. Rob NYers, our guest, thank you for the what I was gonna you know I led with your lead, which is, dude, it’s my playoffs West Coast League, and I feel bad I haven’t had you on All right, so let’s reset all of this on the Orioles and where my framing of all of this would be shocked by any of this. I think last time we got together, you were talking about rush because you knew more about him than most people and had seen him. I’ve had you on a few times from the time they drafted him, and it wasn’t long from the draft he’s catching to there in first place. They’d never lost a series, you know, or been swept or whatever it was, boy, where the Orioles have settled in, in all of this as sort of a favorite, an underdog, a little engine it could and I mean, in the last if I would have called you two weeks ago, holiday and mayo wouldn’t have been a part of this, and now they’re a part of it. This has been something to watch from the outside, especially for you baseball nerds that study this over a lifetime, as we both have, this is something that to witness what’s happened here.
Rob Neyer 08:46
I got a sense for what was happening in Baltimore, in I believe it would have been, I don’t remember if it was July or August of 2022, which was probably what a month it was, a month or two after Adley had been called up, and there was an electricity in that stadium that I’ve not experienced in that many places over in my life. It was really an incredible thing. As you know, as everyone knows, in Baltimore, they basically started playing well as soon as he arrived. It wasn’t just because of him. No one player can have that effect on a team, but he certainly did make a difference on some temperature change here. There was a temperature change, certainly, and climate change. When I was there, the ballpark was not sold out, but it was pretty close. I went to a couple of games during that series, and it was just incredible given where the team had been just a year or two earlier. It the same thing had happened, by the way, in Houston some years earlier, where they went from having no fans and zero ratings on TV to transforming into a contender with the fans showing up. But. And all the excitement, and you know, it’s not a coincidence that some of the same people who were in Houston were and are in Baltimore. Those people seem to have figured out how to draft and how to develop talent. It’s not an easy thing to do. You can take all the analytics you want, and every team has those things, has those tools, has those departments in their front offices have had for years, some more than others, obviously, but the people who were running the Astros, many of whom now running the Orioles, they just figured something out that most organizations still have not figured out how to draft well year after year and how to develop talent year after year. And what we’re seeing now, this explosion of talent with the Orioles, it’s an amazing thing to watch, and obviously the fans respond to that.
10:57
I want to ask you something that might come off as flippant all these years, and I don’t know that I’ve ever had this conversation in 33 years of doing this. When the football team came here in 1995 96 I sat with Marvin Lewis and Jim Schwartz, a lot of guys that got real smart over the course of their careers in lots of places around the league, and won a lot of games, made a lot of money, all that. And it was about scouting and coaching and looking at people like John Ogden, like Peter Boulware, like Kim herring early on. Who are these really bright people, people that might have been doctors, lawyers, leaders in the real world, as opposed to he’s just a good athlete, and I so much was made in college basketball back in the days of Jim Valvano about your S A T scores and this and that, no one talks about S A T scores or intellect or wonder lick tests for baseball players or whatnot, this growth mindset part that sigma Idell that was chronicled in Astro ball and through their winning, all of it, minus the banging on girl, you know, trash cans and the dugouts, which certainly happened. But picking people and picking these, every time one of these Orioles kids shows up on mass in an interview, they all seem like really bright people, and people that might be dating your sister and people that don’t seem to be what I remember Sidney ponson or Scott Erickson. Our party boys are whatever they have, this growth mindset that they get, but they seem like they really find kids that are, like, obsessed with baseball, like more than anything else, and this notion that they have this ability to make them better, that they all would see analytics as a growth mindset thing, and not as something that even as recently as Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette saw and plenty of people in baseball, old school people see as something I’m not interested in, that They have found, like, if you’re a kid not interested in analytics, they’re not interested in you. And same thing would be true, probably for media members or anybody that works in their organization. If you’re not speaking that language, and lots of young Mathematics STEM kids would speak that language, of launch angle, spin rate, things that Earl Weaver knew about but didn’t know how to quantify, in a way, but they’re picking people that are already converted to their way of thinking, and picking the right pieces that come in here that gets these kids to the big leagues. I look, I’ll give all the credit to the system and to the scouts and all that, but I want to credit the people, because the people they brought in here, they all seem to be forward thinking in regard to winning and teamwork and just a good guys that are easy to root for here. And it wasn’t always that way. And I threw a couple of names in from back when I had a press credential, and would think, yeah, million dollar arm, 10 cent head. That’s a, that’s an, you know, 100 year old baseball axiom, right? But they don’t have that going on here. They’re, they’re picking really smart people that understand development and understand, in some cases, even patience and getting here. And when you’re 20 years old, your Jackson holiday or your Kobe mayo, that’s a tough thing to be hitting 350 at AAA, and you’re not getting called up.
Rob Neyer 14:24
Well it is, and I think he seems to have adjusted pretty well. And one would assume that he’s going to thrive eventually. Lots of tremendous young talents have struggled in their first week or two or three in the major leagues. They go back down, they come back and they’re fantastic. And he’s obviously still very young. You make a great point about finding players who fit in the system. You’re never going to choose a player with. You know, say, a 60 grade prospect over a 75 grade prospect because he is slightly smarter or under. Analytics more, but often, not always that. Usually it’s not clear who the next player is that you should draft or that you should sign. There’s you can make arguments for both. But if you’ve got a choice between a guy you know who’s eighth or ninth on your list, and one of them clearly seems to have a more potential, at least, to understand the tools, or even has been using all these analytics tools earlier. The other one doesn’t, you’re probably going to take the one who has been doing those things, because he’s going to fit in your system.
Nestor Aparicio 15:38
One of the things, even at 18 are hard to fix, I would say, right? It feels to me like they’re getting kids, they’re, they’re just, they’re drafting people as much as that kid can throw the ball through, you know, through the backstop, and we’ll, we’ll fix his control. Well, you might not be able to fix his off the field issues, you know what I mean. And it feels to me like that’s one thing. They’re not winding up in jurisprudence. They’re not winding up in the police blotter. They’re really having a run of getting these high ceiling, smart people that can then come into their system and take the science and technology that did not exist 20 years ago and apply it right
Rob Neyer 16:19
well, and people have said for what the main criticism of analytics for a long time has been, all you’re doing is looking at the numbers. And there certainly were teams that relied heavily on the numbers, and there still are, and that’s probably appropriate, but nobody, no intelligent organization, has ever said that’s all we care about, or behave that way because they, the smart organizations, know that you’ve got to marry that with all the other things too, and that’s why you still need people out there talking to the players. Maybe you’re not going to give them a written test to check their personality. Maybe you are, but what you really need to know is get a sense for who these people are, because they will, and everyone in baseball will tell you this, I don’t care who it is, if it’s Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, they are going to struggle. They are going to face adversity. They’re going to have a tough week or month where things don’t go well, and a huge part of the development process is, how do they respond to that? Do they get down? They do they fall into bad habits? Do they do they ask for help? Do they go back to what got them there in the first place? And the best players over the course of history, they’ve always been the ones who could deal with that tough week or tough month, and then get back to where they want to be. And I don’t know that you can learn find those guys with just the numbers that they compiled when they were 17 years old, playing against maybe not great competition. Yes, TrackMan and tenant tracks and all the other technology that allows you to evaluate 17, 1819, year olds. Those are all fantastic, and every team relies on them. But you’ve also got to get in here a little bit. Well,
18:09
certainly Rob Nyer is here. He gets in here writing writings and doing things. You can find his books. You can find them on the internet. You can find them in the West Coast League. Is the the commissioner. What do you make of this thing at so much is, I mean, Angelos is dead. Angelos is gone. John Angelos is now gone. $1.725 billion later, David Rubenstein is in. He hands out hats and dances on the dugout. Gave enough money to buy ethylene. You know, week ago, when it mattered, Elias is now made this transition from what could only be described as sub optimal ownership to whatever this new thing’s going to be and Rob they’re trying to sell tickets here. They got $65 all month come all you want. $600 million of civic money they’re going to put into the stadium they have. Katie Griggs now Major League Baseball, Johnny bravoed her, and they’re bringing her in to run it the right way and the way Major League Baseball would do it. It is a little bit like the Michael Jackson thriller where I’m sitting there eating the popcorn, saying, I don’t know how this is going to turn out. I’ll say this to you though, 12 days ago, had I had you on the show. Elyn Dominguez, let’s see, I’m just I’m trying to go through all of these different names. Slater, Mayo holiday. I mean, he’s turned over third of the roster in a week and a half for a first place team that was scuffling in July, and they’re trying to figure out the bullpen Rogers and gave up prospects. They’ve just brought a lot of players in here first week of August, and hides. Gonna have to figure this out. Teammates are gonna have to figure this out, and where the shuffle is, especially the aftermath of the westburg injury. Well, it’s just. Such a fascinating season for guys like you and me that like to piece these things together, chapter by chapter as authors. It’s an it’s a fascinating time to pull a baseball nerd like you into Oriole lore right now, and what way this thing’s going to go, because it’s never been more interesting here.
Rob Neyer 20:17
Well, the word I always that always comes to my mind, is dynamic. One of the things that guys like Elias and my doll will tell you, I don’t know Elias at all, I I’ve spent some time with SIG over the years, is that you’ve always, always, always got to be pushing to get better, always, or you will, you will fall behind, or you’re more likely to fall behind. I always come back to this, this meeting I had a long time ago with the general manager of a team that had the previous fall been in the World Series. And I actually don’t remember, I can look and see if they won the world I think they did win the World Series. And I had this meeting and the roster that next spring, when I met with his gym was exactly the same as the World Series roster, except for 125, of the guys out of the 25 guys in the World Series, 24 were back the next spring, and the only one who was missing was it was because he signed a free agent deal with somebody else. They just couldn’t quite justify spending the money to keep him and not a not a big not a role player. And I said to the GM, I said, I said, Are you, are you concerned at all, or did you give any thought to sort of upgrading a few spots here and there? And he said, No, we got to the World Series. We wanted to be exactly the same. We wish we could have kept all 25 and I didn’t agree with it, then this is going back more than 20 years, by the way, and I certainly don’t agree with it now, I think you’ve always got to be pushing because, just to give you an example a hypothetical, you’re always going to every good team or great team, part of the reason that they’re good or they’re great, is that they’ve got a few players who are playing better than they really are. All right, go back and look at the long list of teams that was in the World Series of the playoffs one year and didn’t even come close to making it the next year, the Texas Rangers this season, great example, World Series last year. Lot mostly the same guys this year not going to be in the playoffs. Most likely, they probably had a bunch of guys last season who were playing a little bit over their heads. You’ve always got to be looking at your and I hate the word churn, because it makes it sound like you don’t care who your players are, that they’re just numbers. Unfortunately, the truth is, if you want to win year after year, or in the Orioles case, this season, month after month, there’s got to be a certain amount of churn. Where you say, is this guy the best we can do, given our situation, given our farm system, given our budget, is this the best we can do at this position, at this at the 23rd spot on the roster. Can we be better? You’ve always got to be having those conversations. So I feel bad for the fans. We have to sort of process all the change. I feel bad for the players sometimes, like, wait a second, we’re in first place, and you’re sending me to the miners. I haven’t been that bad. Well, no, but we could be better, and it is a tough business. But Hester
23:24
kerstadt would say that he came up at 300 they shipped him back out Absolutely.
Rob Neyer 23:29
But as a fan, I would, I think at this point in my life anyway, rather than my team always be trying to get better than to make sure that I get to see the same guys on the field, day after day all season long.
23:43
Rob Nayer is our guest. He writes baseball, thinks baseball, commissioners, baseball and all that good stuff, N, E y, E R, you can find him if you’re unfamiliar. Rob’s been coming on. We’ve had the station 26 years. I think Rob’s been here for 25 and a half of those years, but it’s been a little while. Boy, the Orioles, just if you are writing the book on this, the Corbin burns thing and the ownership thing happened within 48 hours of Lamar Jackson and the Ravens losing the championship game. It’s just crazy timing in January and then the death of Angelo since spring training, week before baseball season began, just all of it has been, I mean, it’s been 30 years of same ownership here. So a lot of places that doesn’t happen. I don’t think Mr. Rubenstein is going to own the team 30 years at age 74 I really at the beginning of on the field and off the field, and your commissionership of the WCA, the real reason I reached to you was just watching this from 3000 miles away. And I think you have a little heartstring with rushman, as well being involved in this thing and just being a baseball guy watching the Orioles just deteriorate and become, you know, a third division team at various points when they finished the last place for a decade that that they’re crawling to walk. So much has changed with television networks. Massen deal, where that money is going to be. The Nationals now exist in a way that really will serve to punish the Orioles forever, as Mr. Angelo’s predicted at one point. But the orals are trying to figure out, are we small market? Are we mid market? What kind of market are we were in the Al east? You know, it’s not going to last forever. How do we afford Henderson and rushman? What happens if holiday works out, and what, how, what is the payroll going to be, and where’s the I listen. I live here. You don’t. I can tell you this, there are no fortune 500 companies here. There’s nobody running over the hill with a whole bunch of money, other than the T Rowe Price patch that they now have, that everybody else has. They haven’t named the stadium yet. But just on a revenue basis, I’m trying to figure out what the new normal is going to be for Mr. Rubenstein, for the Orioles, and for what this year, next year, the year after that, they can steal two, three World Series here, right? They can. They’re good enough. They’re good enough this year to do that, as you pointed out with Texas and Arizona last year. But long term, I’m trying to figure out what a mature Katie Griggs, Rubenstein, Mr. Angelos, has been, you know, washed away. What’s the potentiality of this franchise, by
Rob Neyer 26:12
the way, thank you for bringing up Arizona. I still can’t believe they were in the world series last year, but another great example. So I appreciate that. I think what we’ve seen over the years is that the are there small markets? Yes, but can small markets, if they’re winning and if they invest in their teams? Can they can they thrive? Can they sustain that, that effort, I think so. I mean, look what we’ve seen in San Diego. San Diego, 10 years ago, was considered a small market. They really couldn’t compete. Also not that many big, big corporations may I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone in San Diego.
26:54
It depends how much Mr. Rubenstein wants to make. Well, he bought it, the press franchise that came quickly, $600 million of free money. It’s when’s he gonna sell it? What’s his out he’s gonna get he’s gonna make tons of money. Does he want to go upside down 50 million a year to try to win for three four years? I mean, if he went upside down 100 million for five years, I’m still under the thought that, if the thing got healthier and it started making some money that he’d flip it for 3 billion and all the money, but come back anyway, and it’s well, yeah,
Rob Neyer 27:25
I’m not convinced that anybody loses anything like $50 million a season anywhere. I think that if you’re San Diego, I remember where San Diego was, whatever it was six, seven years ago, when they were drawing 15,000 per game. They they made a huge splash on the free agent market and jumped immediately up to whatever it was, 30 35,000 a game. And I’m just these figures are I’m making up the chato came along too. Yeah, absolutely. And even though they’ve not been super competitive over the years since they continued to draw. Why? Because they play in a great stadium, which Baltimore has. They invest in the team, which I believe Baltimore is going to do. They’re the only game in town. Yes, there’s another one, and there is Baltimore has a, I think, a greater wellspring of goodwill in the community historically than San Diego has with their team. The Padres were never particularly popular, whereas the Orioles have been when they’ve been successful and willing to invest in the product. So I don’t know how much upside there is in Baltimore because of all the things you you’ve outlined, but what they what they’re doing right now, is pretty impressive, and I think that as long as they continue to invest, they can sustain the attendance and the revenues that they that they’ve got now. Does that mean you can afford to sign all of your young players to 10 year contracts when the time comes? Maybe not. But the great thing is that the organization, as it stands now is smart enough. If they decide they they I never wouldn’t say they need to flip somebody, but let’s say they say, Look, we just can’t afford to sign all of these incredible young players to multi year deals. You have a lot. You got to trust the organization to flip one or two of those guys for incredible young players and restock the farm system, etc. So I just think that that the future is incredibly bright with the organization as it currently stands. And I don’t believe in saying this is a dynasty about anybody, because we’ve all seen that said about so many teams over the years, the Cubs, when they won the World Series, oh, they’re going to be a dynasty. How many have they won since then? The answer is zero. Well, that’s
29:44
my your you said something about places thriving. I saw Kansas City Thrive 10 years ago when I was there and everybody had a blue jersey, and then they went to and they went away, and they renovated their stadium, and they signed some of the players, but not every hosmus came was thought they couldn’t do that. Right? And I’ve seen where San Francisco has been, where the Cardinals have been, some of these other Mar you know, where the teams are perennial will be a football team here that’s perennially competitive. Tampa would be a place where they never draw, they never have any money, and they figured out how to make baseball sort of kind of work there. I don’t know that that’s a real good model, or a popular model, or a fun model to watch that happen down there. I’m trying to figure out what this model. I mean, look at how bad the White Sox are all of a sudden, right? They one year, they win. They’ve been nothing for 20 years that that that’s not good, that’s not what that they should want here, or what’s going to be sustainable here. And Rob, this would bring me to the bigger point where you mentioned San Diego, and I mean, they were the first place to have the whole media model fall apart, and Major League Baseball is to come in with a welfare model for their media. This was the place where Mr. Angelos was going to get wealthy, and he did, and his boys got wealthy. Mama, all of them cashed out with hundreds of millions of dollars of hidden money, maybe billions, honestly, over the course of 20 years, all the money that they siphoned out of it that never went anywhere near either one of the baseball teams that the media models busted up in baseball. And they’re really gonna have to figure that part of it out, especially in places no problem for the Dodgers or the Yankees, places like Baltimore, where they got this good team now, this young team, how many subscriptions? How much? What’s the plan? What am I going to do? Because grandma paying $3 a sub off the cable company from 20 years ago that’s gone. They’re going to have to be funded like hockey by their own advocacy and their own fan base, and that’s going to cost fans more money. And I don’t know how, but I they’re not getting a whole lot of money from me. And you know what I mean, like, if they want my money, if $15 a beer and $50 a seed and 40 to park and the Birdland discount and all of that, I’m wondering how big that Club’s really going to be of people that give them money to subscribe to 160 games on television, because they they really have challenged this sport has challenges trying to figure out what the right way to do this is. And I don’t know that anybody has that answer.
Rob Neyer 32:06
I don’t either. I do think that there somebody, there’s enough money out there to, for example, pay I don’t know how many hundreds or 1000s of employees at major league baseball. Every major league team has When, when, when, when I was a kid. Major League Baseball teams had, not including the scouts and the coaches. With all the minor league teams, they had front office staffs of a few dozen. Now it’s a few 100, right? That money is coming from somewhere. And I don’t understand economics of baseball right now. I don’t know that anybody does who doesn’t work in baseball, like in Major League Baseball, but I think you see all these corporate partnerships that they have. You see the signs when you go into the stadium. I think there’s a huge amount of money, billions and billions, sloshing around within Major League Baseball, both at the MLB level, which some of it filters down to the teams, and within the teams themselves. But it’s
33:14
not coming from the TV revenue the way the NF No, just dumps $400 million off the first
Rob Neyer 33:19
year. You are absolutely right, and that’s what baseball is trying to figure out, right? Is where the TV money is going to come from. But even if that goes way down, which it seems like it probably is, there’s still money coming in from all these other places. It’s not clear to me exactly
33:33
where the mouth, though, it’s not just falling off a tree the way it has for 50 years. I mean,
Rob Neyer 33:39
I think there’s a lot of money coming from international media deals, probably that we people don’t even talk about. I just don’t believe that any team, from year to year is consistently losing money. Now, you made a good point. The question isn’t, are they losing the question is, how much are they willing to not make? Right? And you’ve seen that with so many teams where the owner, who’s a multi billionaire, says, Oh, I can’t afford to sign this guy. Well, no, you could. You just would make a little less. Well, you know, what
34:09
fascinated me on the trading deadline is that I sat here wall to wall Major League Baseball network. It’s a good thing, because they made a lot of deals, right two weeks ago. And everybody’s talking about the threshold, the threshold. And I’m thinking that used to be the, you know, wedding, you know, they’re passing the threshold, right, or dying the threshold. Now the threshold is the giants are going to deal guys off to get under the luxury taxes. They don’t want to pay the tax. And, you know, I’m from the generation where they all this, the Padres and the pirates and the Royals just took the money Angelos and pocketed it and didn’t put it back into the team to say we’re not going to sign Jeff Conan and David Seki anymore. Let’s just take that luxury tax money and pocket it. There’s been so much of unscrupulous behavior going back to Lords of the Realm three decades ago, and who owns these teams to your point where all the money comes from the Players Association with. Agree with you that there are flush and so with Boris, right? And but it used to just come in office, media deals and off the sky boxes, and now they’re begging to give those things away. I’m I’m in Baltimore, man, I see it all, and I see what the Ravens do against the baseball team. And you mentioned thriving for a place like San Diego. It’s different, having two sports in a small market that’s combusted between Philly, Pittsburgh and Washington in the timeline, where New York is, where we’re gonna give money to Washington, Philadelphia, New York. What about Baltimore? Oh, wow, we don’t. Our airline doesn’t fly there. Our train doesn’t go there are and Rob. I see the international money you talk about when I put on television, I see Japanese ads behind home plate, and I’m thinking, well, they’re paying more than royal farms willing to pay right? That’s
Rob Neyer 35:48
right. I mean, I would love to get an accounting somewhere, even if it’s just somebody who is smart and can dive into the media reports, see what, how much money is flowing in. And MLB, I think they do reported the revenues every year, the overall revenues, and it goes up every year, and it’s significantly higher than it if you look at revenues this season, I guess I guarantee it, or this year, it’ll be 50% 100% higher than it was, say, 1520, years ago. So that money keeps flowing in now, a lot of it goes out. Goes to the players. It goes to those massively larger front office staffs that I mentioned. And MLB siphons off a lot for all the people who work at the offices in in in New York. So other media
36:34
companies now, like the football team’s got 50 people over there making, literally making hard knocks, making video for everybody and taking my press pass away while they do it.
Rob Neyer 36:45
But it’s a huge ecosystem of revenues and employees, and at some point you have to keep growing the revenues. And by the way, we didn’t mention the gambling piece, which obviously MLB is making who knows how much off of off of gambling and advertisements for gambling eventually, as you continue to grow, as teams grow, as MLB, as an organization grows, they have to keep generating revenues to keep beating the beast and keep getting bigger and bigger. They’re never going to get smaller, unless there’s an earthquake in professional sports that causes some, some sort of collapse. So it’s just going to keep getting bigger, and I just don’t see the revenues getting smaller. In the NFL, in the NBA, in MLB, in Major League Soccer, there seems to be, I don’t know if there’s an unquenchable thirst among American fans, but there does seem to be an unlimited supply of revenues, whether it’s in the US or whether it’s around the world. So it just we’ve you and I have been talking about revenues for as long as we’ve known each other. And the one thing that hasn’t changed, if the revenues have keep gone, have keep going up and up and up. If you take out 2020, and 2021, both of which were covid, shortened seasons, the growth has been like this, no matter what, every year, even when attendance goes down, revenues goes revenues go up, or,
38:13
as Mr. Rubenstein said, No one’s ever lost money buying a baseball team. So
Rob Neyer 38:18
absolutely true.
38:19
I did have Kurt badenhausen on last week from sportico, who spoke to that we’ve been trying to speak to our smartest baseball people. Rob Nyer, of course, is a writer of writings and a the West Coast League Commissioner. So I went right to the top here to try to get some some more wisdom. You know, I guess around the sport an interesting time. We talk about all the money and different things, but more wild card teams. It affected the trading deadline revenues. We talked about the threshold, luxury taxes, all of that. Pretty good season in progress. And I don’t just measure that, because we might be in first place in the Yankees are trailing us. And here come the Red Sox or whatever. But Phillies getting up and running, here comes Atlanta. Dodgers and Padres are good. There’s been enough shuffling in the seats of playoff teams and sprinkling around even let Dallas win last year. They got Phoenix involved last year as well. Late into October, you mentioned the Padres. You know, they made an NLCS, right? So if the orals were to go to the ALCS this year and really do nothing else the next three or four years, it still would really fortify a franchise to be good for a little while. And baseball has at least had that going on, right? You’ve
Rob Neyer 39:30
got to have, I think you’ve got to have that churn. Use that word again, in the standings, to keep the fans interests all around baseball. You know? I think one of the best stories to me is the Royals, who lost 100 plus games last season, they’ve got a really good shot at the playoffs. That’s one of the better unexpected stories that I think we’ve seen in a long time. I don’t remember what the projections were for the Royals at the start of the season. Pretty sure it wasn’t 90 plus wins. I’m not even sure how they’ve done it. They have. They did, they did change their front office leadership a year or two ago, and it had sort of an immediate effect. Obviously, some things that had to break right for them, but there are a lot of good stories like that, and great story, right, right? So that’s, I think all that churn is great for the game, because said this for a long time, when you, every time you have you create, although it, nobody creates it, it happens organically. A postseason team or a team that’s in the hunt all season long, you are creating new baseball fans. There are 11 and 12 and 13 year olds out there who didn’t care about baseball, but now, oh, my favorite this team in my city, they’re they’re exciting. I’m going to be a baseball fan. It’s happened. It happened to so many of us. We became fans when we were 10 or 11 years old, because of our team. Every kid
41:00
here wants a gunner Henderson haircut right now, and this is a completely new phenomenon.
Rob Neyer 41:05
And how many kids were wearing Adley rushman T shirts two summers ago and last summer that maybe weren’t even baseball fans or weren’t Orioles fans before he showed up? I thought 35 was Messina. That’s what I always thought. So that’s great. The turnover is fantastic. I’m old enough to remember just barely, but I do remember in the late 70s, early 80s, every time a player set a new record with his free agent contract, half of the media said this is going to destroy baseball. The owners would say this is destroying baseball. The commissioner would say this is destroying baseball. If, with, if you, if you pay players this much money, it’s going to destroy the game, because half the owners will go out of business, and the same teams will win every
42:00
year. What they’ve learned is we’ll pay for it. Yeah,
Rob Neyer 42:05
the owners can afford it. The revenues are there, and it’s actually good for the game. If look, it’s disorienting to me to see a player make 30 million bucks a year. I can’t really wrap my brain around it, except I know that it’s happening in every sport. I know that the teams can afford it, and I know that even though, every time it happens, we think, oh, boy, here we go. Now, the Yankees are gonna win 105 110 games every season. Guess what? They don’t. When’s the last time the Yankees won the World Series? Long time ago? Yes. When’s the last time the Padres won the World Series? Never, never, exactly. So all the predictions, they never come true. They just don’t. I think the one downside of free agency is obviously that it’s tough if you’re a kid or an adult, when your favorite team says, Sorry, we can’t afford to keep our superstar anymore. There he goes, and we’re not going to get anything former we’re going to get a couple of prospects. That’s tough. I get it. But as someone who’s read a lot of baseball history there, there have always been things that made it tough to be a fan, especially a fan of a team and a of a team that didn’t want to spend a lot of money or didn’t have the money. I’ll tell you what, back in the old days, teams were a lot poorer than they are now. The St Louis Browns in 1936 or 37 whatever year it was through 56,000 people the entire season, not for a series against the Yankees Oakland
43:42
thing play out a generation after all. Thing played out after, you know, so there’s always going to be the worst franchise. I mean, they always were the worst franchise for a long time. Look at the
Rob Neyer 43:53
White Sox right now, right? Yeah. If you’re a fan of the A’s, you’re in pain. If I were an A’s fan, I would be hurting, and it would be, it would, it would be something that I woke up in the morning says, oh, man, they’re leaving. That’s tough. And if you’re a White Sox fan, and we’re going to lose every game, it feels like I’m
44:14
going to leave you with this, because I’m going to, this is my Baltimore Colts bolt buckle from my childhood here, Rob, so when you say we’re gonna leave one, people wonder, and you probably wonder for three Why is Nestor such a prick with these teams, these owners? Well, I watched a poll and take my basketball team out of here when I was five. I watched Robert Earth say, take my football team out of here when I was 16, and and then I watched John boy run around here the last five years with his cowboy boots on and his brothers accusing him of trying to take the team to Nashville. So I Oh, and Edward Bennett Williams was always going to take the team to Washington, right? So we’ve lived under that. And, you know, we’ve spent billions of dollars as a as a municipality, keeping the teams here. So holding the. The owners accountable, and holding the sport itself accountable for what has happened here in Baltimore and the city emptying out for 30 years, and now trying to fix it, trying to, you know, make it appear that Angelos was never here, and this is all new and fresh and great and, you know, and and they’re doing a great job of doing that. Winning deodorizes everything. And there’s nothing more fun than a good baseball team, even more so than our football team get go because they play every day, right? Baseball’s fun that way. When it gets good, right? That and it’s about to get really good around here, Rob, for the first time in a long time, we’re
Rob Neyer 45:34
always going to have problems. We’re always going to have complaints. We’re always going to have fans who are who are sad and going through stuff. As long as we have the people who own sports teams, owning sports teams, they like to tell us that they are public trusts, that they are part of the community that only lasts so long as it makes sense for them financially, it’s always been that way. It’s always going to be that way. The best that we can do is hold them accountable. Do the best we can, recognizing that they’re that they’re not thinking about the fans. They’re not thinking about us as baseball fans or as Orioles fans or Royals fans. More
46:13
than that, they almost feed off of you not holding them accountable. And many, many, in many, many cases,
Rob Neyer 46:19
the hardest, the hardest thing as a sports fan is to maintain your love for your favorite team while also recognizing who owns those teams and trying to stay objective to the point where you can say, hey, yeah, you’re right. We’re thrilled that you’re here, but remember that we’re your fans, and you’ve got to try to do the right thing at least some of the time. And I think some owners get that, and some don’t. And you want the ones that do at least a little bit,
46:47
and the accountability of having questions afterwards just honest answers. Because, like, our money is honest when they want 12 bucks for a beer, that’s honest money when they want every price for a seat, when, you know when Apple TV comes on on Friday and I don’t have my game and I got to go pay more money to have my game. You know, when I pay for a network that doesn’t come to my phone here specifically, or travel across state lines, or when I drive to Ocean City on a Friday night, I can’t watch the game they you know, there’s a lot broken in baseball that here in Baltimore I’ve shined a light on forever and ever. But tonight, it’s just about how many hits rushman is going to get, because once you start winning, it really deodorizes. Even the fact that I bring it up makes me a prick Rob, just the fact that I’m like, Hey, who’s going to pay for all of this? You know what I mean? And at the end, I do wonder the sustainability of what used to be a model, and the model they’re trying to go to now, which is they’re going to charge me X amount on my credit card next year, and I’m going to get tickets this that discounts because that they’re going to a fan club model. They’re going to have the Pearl Jam fan club model. Really,
Rob Neyer 47:53
yep. Well, everybody needs to, if you want these questions asked and ideally answered. Support Nestor Aparicio asking the questions there’s no accountability whatsoever. Never offer
48:12
truth to you, right? They never call a press conference and say, we just want to let you in on what’s going on. They never do that. They I haven’t seen that in 30 years. But they don’t have any problem taking the $600 million in the stadium gets fixed up and them saying, oh, beers. There $18 not 12, because that’s premium, and it’s behind the perimeter, and you have access to, you know, see Adley rutschman. From there, Rob Nyer is here. He’s been seeing Adley rushman for a long, long time. Are we pronouncing it wrong? Ruchman rushman, how do you pronounce
Rob Neyer 48:43
it? I think I’ve actually spent some time with his dad. I believe it’s rutgerman rushman,
48:48
okay, I getting it right, but I could be wrong. If I had a pressure I’d ask him, you know? I mean, maybe I would, um, hey, I appreciate all of your insights over the years and all the time you’ve given us here at wnst to talks in baseball. It’s great to have you back in the fold. Anything you want to promote. You write any books you doing anything cool, other than your WCL assignment.
Rob Neyer 49:09
Our season ends in a week and a half, and my hope, as always, is to launch into a new book project. Last year I said I was gonna do that, and then I spent the most of the off season catching up on my reading. So we’ll see. My goal every fall is to is to really dive into a book project. But ask me, in six months of y’all have a better and more productive answer. All right,
49:30
I will. I won’t wait six months. I’m gonna call you good playoffs, because we’re making the playoffs this year. I know it. Yep, Rob, I’ve had the radio station 26 years. I’ve been on the air 33 summers now since you know 92 right? And all star week, Fourth of July, Luke’s on with me from the ballpark. We’re making the play. Going to make the playoffs. They’re going to they’re played 630 but they’re going to make the playoffs. And I’m like, we have never in 33 years here in July, not even year. They want wire to wire 97 because of making the playoffs is a little trickier than never in July have we been able to say we’re gonna make the playoffs in October that that’s an amazing admission in Baltimore, that I could have you on the air in August and say, I’ll see you in October. We’re guaranteed to make the playoffs. That’s just that’s a rarefied measurement of air that we should all be happy about here.
Rob Neyer 50:20
And remember, at the start of the season, all the computer projections did not have the Orioles in the playoffs, so they have beat the system, and it’s impressive. Well, we do
50:30
that a lot around here. We’re The Little Engine That Could where it’s Baltimore versus everybody out there, including Portland. Rob Nyer can be found out on the interwebs and E y, E R, he is a long time baseball insider and served us well from the ESPN headquarters about 20 years ago. We’re still friends. He’s out in Portland. Luke is out knowing smells. Look me down at the ballpark. The orals are in Toronto, then Tampa this week. We have plenty of things going on around her. Lots of great guests, even page, formerly the Barenaked Ladies, drop by this week. So we’re doing a little music, doing a little business. We’re going to be down to Mako next week doing the Maryland crab cake tour. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive.
