Our longtime SABR pal and baseball historian Rob Neyer has made visits from Oregon to talk baseball most of the century and is now the Commissioner of the West Coast League, which once hosted a young Adley Rutschman. It’s getting late early for the stumbling Orioles but here’s some wisdom on young players and pitching pitfalls for anyone who loves the Orioles.
Nestor Aparicio and Rob Neyer discuss the Baltimore Orioles’ current struggles, particularly their pitching issues. Neyer highlights the difficulty of building a team on young pitchers, noting the low success rate and high injury risk. They also touch on the broader challenges in Major League Baseball, including the impact of free agency, the rise of regional sports networks, and the need for a salary cap. Neyer promotes the West Coast League, where he serves as commissioner, emphasizing its role in developing top talent like Adley Rutschman and Travis Bazen. The conversation also covers the Orioles’ attendance issues and the need for a sustainable business model.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Orioles, pitching issues, Adley Rutschman, West Coast League, baseball history, injury rate, free agency, competitive balance, revenue challenges, media rights, fan engagement, minor league baseball, player development, baseball analytics, team strategy.
SPEAKERS
Rob Neyer, Nestor Aparicio
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T AM, 1570 towns of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are taking the Maryland crab cake tour out on the road, as we always do. We’re going to be on Wednesday at Cooper’s pub, Cooper’s north in Timonium. Don’t go down to Fells Point. I mean, you go to Fells Point. It’s nice down there, but I will be in the one at Timonium and may chapel. We got some great guests coming out. Then on the 30th, we’re going to be at Coco’s pub in laraville. I’ll have some scratch offs in the Maryland lottery. Back to the Future scratch, I think, go back to the future right now. This guy has been coming on the the radio airwaves here as long as we’ve had W, n, s, t versus a midday guest. And then for years, any like, he’s weird, he’ll do am stuff, even though he lives in Portland, Oregon, and I’m like, you sure you’re not in Portland Maine. But then I had lunch with him in Portland, Oregon, and I realized he really is out there. He’s got all the insights on Adley rutschman and the West Coast League and all the baseball comings and goings, long time. ESPN, writer, insider, author, professor, all that good stuff. We welcome Rob Nyer, our defending champion, back on baseball season, dude and and the Orioles are scuffling right now. So I wouldn’t have guessed that that at this point, I’d be like, we got to talk about fixing the Orioles. But I know you’re getting ready for your own baseball season out there in Portland, right?
Rob Neyer 01:20
Well, I’m lucky in that I have all spring to enjoy Major League Baseball, and in this beautiful weather that we’re having right now in Portland, my season doesn’t really well. It doesn’t get started in terms of games until the very end of May, and then it’s very intense for 10 weeks. But I do always look forward to this sort of time before the season, when I can enjoy the wider baseball world, before I get completely sucked into my actual day job. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 01:52
we’ll get into the day job and all that and the baseball side of things. Can you give me like a little bit of a briefing people would know you and listen you hear from the ESPN era and whatnot, your baseball pathway in Portland, because you’re a historian of the game and where it is, still as avid as ever, in a general sense of watching baseball as much as you did 1520, years ago, when it was like your job. That’s what you did at ESPN like like me watching baseball all day every day, is kind of what I did when I was nationally syndicated. Well,
Rob Neyer 02:25
8you know, it’s funny. It’s, it’s, it went from being a hobby or a passion for when I was young to an actual day, all day long job when I was at ESPN, and then the various places after that, and now it’s gone back to being sort of a part time passion where I don’t need to know who the closer is for all 30 teams. In fact, I don’t know who the closer is for more than about three teams.
Nestor Aparicio 02:56
Well, that’s what I was getting at, because I’m the same way, right? I went through that period most of my life, starting with bubblegum cards in 1973 until such point where the Orioles became so irrelevant in my own community that it wasn’t even worth it to know it. You didn’t need to know it, because they were so bad for so long. You know what I mean, that nobody knew it, nobody cared. And look at the football team, and look at the football team, and you know there was, there was another bright, shiny object here for sports fans. Well, when
Rob Neyer 03:23
I was a kid, and this is not me saying it was better in those days, because I think there are a lot of things in baseball that are better now. Not everything that’s true of the world of life, right? Some things aren’t as good as they used to be. Some things are better. I think, generally speaking, ideally, most things are better than they used to be. Certainly, dental care, for example, is one great example I always think about. But one thing that has made it difficult for me to have that same sort of passion for the current game is that it’s so much more difficult now to keep track of of the teams and the players. It’s easier in the sense that you can watch or listen to every single any game you want to. It’s more difficult for me, because, again, not that these were the gory days, but when I was a kid, teams might use 3035 players of the season. There was one year the Royals used, I think, 12 pitchers the whole season, the Orioles.
Nestor Aparicio 04:25
With the first decade I was on the air, 91 to like, oh, one. When the Ravens won that Super Bowl, like, who would come north from Fort Lauderdale, was like, Oh my God, they’re gonna bring Mark Williamson. They’re gonna bring Todd froward. You know, he’s like, now it’s just sort of like, I wouldn’t even discuss that in the same way that, like, who’s an all star, or even who’s going to the Hall of Fame, like, just a Hall of Fame conversation now is more like blah, blah, blah, and my last name is Aparicio, you know. So these conversations we used to have that had a lot more gusto about them, or meaning even, like, who’s going to be in the play? Playoffs this year? Well, the Orioles kind of stink, but you don’t have to be great to make the playoffs anymore. So that’s made it either more interesting with more teams, or less interesting, because the Dodgers are going to be there anyway.
8Rob Neyer 05:10
Yeah, that’s That’s right. And for me, the the Ford, for a long time, my my primary interest in the current game was the analysis, the analytical piece. And by the analytical, I don’t necessarily mean sabermetrics and all those fun things that we hear about, but just like, who’s going to win the pennant this year? Um, who is the who is going to be the closer for this team? But you’re right. It doesn’t really matter who the the ninth or 10th guy on the pitching staff is because he’s gonna be back, and he’s gonna be off the roster next week anyway, and they’ll bring somebody else up. It doesn’t really matter who those guys are, unless you’re like, if Sure, if you are, if you are obsessed with your favorite team, and sure you could spend all an hour talking about the eighth guy in the bullpen, but, well, the
Nestor Aparicio 06:02
amount of access we have in the you said, I can watch every game, see every stat, look everything up. It’s all sitting there, if you want it. I’m just not immersed in it in that fashion, because I don’t find it nearly as interesting, maybe as I used to find it against the world and democracy and all of your writings, of writings and things that life can, can bring to you, I’m in a market where they’re trying to fix this and heal it and grow it, and all of that amidst modern media and attention spans, and it’s sitting in the city and the money they’re getting, and there’s a new owner as a bobble industry. So it’s kind of interesting until it’s not any good, until they can’t, you know, it’s it’s good until you’re 10 games under 500 Memorial Day, and then you’re like, Oh no, this isn’t good. And that’s where the weird part of me is the attention span of everyone to say, we’re going to be good this year, and then you’re not. People don’t stay in it the way we did in 78 thanks fellow parks.
Rob Neyer 06:58
That’s right. And I think that the twins are going through this right now. The twins had supposedly 10,600 last night at their game, but that was paid, so it was less than that, right? And they had a resurgence of the great market that they support their team, but people expect you to be competitive, and if you’re not competitive, or you’re not spending money for too long, they will lose interest. Just getting back briefly to what we were talking about before. For me, I realized, and I’m not a nostalgist by nature, but I realized that for me, Major League Baseball is sort of a nostalgia play, because when I turn on the Giants game and I hear John Miller’s voice, it makes me feel good. It brings me back to a younger time in my life when that was all I wanted to do was turn on the radio and listen to the Royals game. That was like as good as life could possibly get. It isn’t as good as life gets. Now I have all sorts of other things in my life which are great, but when I listen to John Miller, and you know, another half dozen or so broadcast, you had to
Nestor Aparicio 08:02
8bring him up, didn’t you? You know, you’re in Baltimore, right, kicking the balls. Or is that?
Rob Neyer 08:07
No guys, he’s my guy. I
Nestor Aparicio 08:10
my guy too. I mean, everybody’s guy. What Peter Angelo’s guy, but he was our guy, you know, right?
Rob Neyer 08:16
No, but the, you know, the beautiful thing is, if you’re in Baltimore, you can still listen to John Miller. You can get those games. It’s pretty cheap. So that is one thing that is just a phenomenal change in the game, is that we get, we have it all. We have whatever we want. You get there. There’s literally four radio broadcasts for every single game, or No, three, usually including the Spanish language ones. And then you have all the TV stuff too, if you want that. So it’s just great.
8Nestor Aparicio 08:41
Well, I and what is great at this point about baseball, Rob niar, which, what’s keeping your attention to say, I’m interested in this. I mean, I, I come AB at it from I have this franchise here that is, have been, Woe be gone forever. Now has this owner who’s very out in front of it and throwing bobbleheads, but really isn’t a baseball fan like can’t sit in any way and have a conversation with you and me about baseball. He just doesn’t. He’s been making money and running money at Carlisle forever, but they’re trying to anti Angelo sit yet they have employees here, and I still don’t have a press credential, by the way, we had an empty seat on Jackie Robinson day. So crazy enough, but I it’s coming at me weird right now, because they’re really trying to rebuild it here, but they’re not doing anything. You know, they didn’t buy any pitching. They ran a stupid little caravan in the way that they’re not all in or vested in the way that maybe they’re trying to Johnny Bravo it@orioles.com and people aren’t going and I went to look at tickets and how much it is, and they have a value menu where it’s five bucks for beer and stuff, but it still was like 30 bucks to get in the other night. So I’m thinking, like, that’s a cover charge. Everybody sort of knows you can walk around wherever you want, right? And it’s early and the weather, you know, hear all of that, but like, this thing needs real pollination. To grow. It needs prosperity. It needs integrity, again, after the 30 years where most of the years they weren’t even trying, right? So I’m watching it from a fresh look, and I’m a year into it, and it’s not going well. You know what I mean, like for the reclamation project that you and everybody who’s ever loved the Orioles wants it to be outside of town to say, Man, that’s a great baseball town. And I and then I say, is it, it’s really good lacrosse town too.
Rob Neyer 10:27
Well. When I was at in Baltimore two years ago, shortly after Adley rushman was called up, the ballpark was full that for that game. It was, it was, it was a Saturday afternoon, they were playing reasonably well, and everybody was wearing Adley T shirts or buying Adley T shirts. And it seemed to me like the the organization was well on its way to relevance again. Now I’m not there, so maybe Angelo showed the team at that time, right? So yeah, that’s right, yep, uh, no, that was that was part of that was believing
Nestor Aparicio 10:56
they had pitching. Part of that was believing Bradish was coming and Rodriguez was coming and and then at some point they would purchase it. I mean, the Corbin burns then was brilliant last year, the Zach EF thinks kind of brilliant, right? And they’ve spent money. And Charlie Moore, we could talk about him, we could talk about Chicano, and now they’re waiting on Kyle Gibson to be the Calvary. I mean, there is a point when we watch baseball, as long as you and I have, you can’t win with number five starters. I mean, you can’t not, not every night, all night, unless you got the bullpen. Of, you know, the greatest bullpen ever.
Rob Neyer 11:26
8One of the things that I come back to as a study I read a long time ago, which I think is still the case, and that is that it’s incredibly difficult to build an organization on young pitching. And the reason for that is because the success rate of pitching prospects is so low, at least in the short term, that you’ve got to supplement your staff. I don’t care if you have five Grade A prospects in double A you’re probably only get one or two of those guys actually making real contributions in the major leagues within five years. And I’m those are ballparking figures that I’m coming up with, but it is. The problem is that while those guys often do pan out, it can take them. Look at hunter green, for example, with the reds. Last year was his first good year, good, productive season in the major leagues. This was, I believe it was six years after he’d been drafted, or seven years it and he had a couple years where he struggled a little bit, you know, up and down, inconsistent. He’s as talented a pitcher as there is on the planet right now, but even him, it took him six years in professional baseball, basically, to get to where he is right now, and of course, he’s fantastic right now. That’s sort of what the assumption that he’s healthy and doesn’t get hurt like so many of them do. So between the injury rate and just the general learning how to pitch against the best hitters in the world, you can’t count on those guys. You want to stockpile as many as you can so that you have one or two, ideally, who wind up helping you in a significant way, or that you can trade for veterans. But remember the Astros, they didn’t really do what they be where that they didn’t get where they wanted to be until they brought in Justin Verlander, the veteran of veterans, right? And he was phenomenal and and help them to the World Series, etc, but it’s just almost impossible to get it done with 2223 24 year old pitchers that you’ve drafted and developed. It just doesn’t really happen. So you You’re right. You have to go out there ultimately and either spend money on a veteran, uh, free agent and hope he stays healthy, or trade some young players for a Justin Verlander. But it’s not, it’s not an easy thing to do.
Nestor Aparicio 13:42
Rob Neyer is here. He is covering a great game of baseball and getting ready to run the West Coast League out in Portland. I’ll give him a chance to tell you all about that. Adley rutschman knows about that a little bit. And we saw the whole Oregon thing with Quan the other night. Every time he comes up saying to my wife, that’s a great ball player. And then he just, you know, hits home runs and runs around, does all the things he’s doing for the Cleveland guardians. But you know, I didn’t reach to you this week, thinking the Orioles would be in the doldrums in the pitching and this and that. I mean, certainly I would have planned to have you on a month ago, before I went to Toronto for opening day and thinking that there was more feeling of prosperity, the notion that you read this report and study on pitching and rowing pitching, and that would be right out of sigma Idell blackjack book of, hey, you know, let’s bet on where we are college bats, right? Like, let’s get guys that are ready to go and and even though gunner Henderson wasn’t that guy, but take that guy a little lower, and they all have their system that they play in the casino. But the one thing about the book and blackjack is always, stick with the system. The system never lies. Don’t break the code. You know, if you stand on 17, you’re hit whatever you’re doing. Do it always the same way. And you know that sort of transitions into the lineup with righty lefty and the issues they’ve had with loriano and. Not being able to hit left handed pitching, and also saying holiday and Kirsten, we’re not even going to give you a go at it. But Luke and I have been feisty this week about the young hitting and your guy, rushman, and you know, all of them needing to be elite for this thing to have any level of eliteness at all, because I just don’t think the pitching is going to come around. And the disturbing part for this organization and for judging Mike Elias and even this transition to Rubenstein and everything that they have to sell, is that they that every time they put the i l up about pictures, Rodriguez Bradish, wells, just Batista, just getting back you. Rodriguez is out right now, even McDermott, the guys they have at the bottom of the bottom, and Rogers, who they dealt for last year, it’s just injury, injury, Injury. They’re going to see that when the Yankees come in next week. They’re week up there two weeks from now, and the Yankees have spent a whole lot more money on busted bitching. It’s an industry issue all the way around. So I think you feel the worst when you had a couple of guys that could have been Cy Young candidates, including Corbin burns, that you couldn’t have in hold because he just didn’t want to play here, and the lack of availability of that caliber of pitcher, and then the amount of money it cost to get them, whether they can stay healthy, whether their arm falls off, all of that stuff. But for the Orioles, I’ll even vouch for the fact that they thought they had this figured out, but they didn’t.
Rob Neyer 16:27
Well, I can’t speak to what they thought. They probably thought that their system gave them their their methodology gave them the best chance of success given the talent that they had. I would your problem, which is, I think is what you’re saying, and I think you’re right. It hasn’t worked yet, and it might not work. I mean, if you are not willing or able to go out and pick up one of the top free agent pictures, and there weren’t that many this winter, as I recall, and now the the buy in for a an ace starting pitcher is what 35 40 million bucks a year. It’s difficult to justify that investment when you know what the injury rate is for those guys. So but
Nestor Aparicio 17:18
when you have gunner Henderson and you have Adley when you’re ready to win, right? And you don’t do it, that’s it. When you don’t do it, you go buy Charlie Morton for half price, and what you get is, you don’t get top shelf. You get rail. Well, that’s, yeah, get a hangover. That is the problem, right? That then
8Rob Neyer 17:37
you’ve got to make it up somewhere else. You’ve got to find those innings. And if it’s not Charlie Morton, who is it? You cobble together some guys who are pretty good, and you ask them to give ask them to give you three or four innings instead of six or seven. I don’t know what the right answer is. I can’t have enough of it. I know that. I know that’s absolutely true, which is why, I mean this goes back. I remember writing 1520, years ago that the new paradigm was to enter the season knowing that you needed not five starting pitchers, but six or seven. Because even then, the injury rate was was rising, and you guys were getting hurt all the time, and the smart teams, or the teams that could afford it, were going into the season with five or with six or seven starters instead of four or five. But they didn’t cost as much then as they do now, right? They weren’t. It was. It was six or $8 million to get one, not 35 or 40 million. So it’s just that’s the question that every team now has to answer is, who’s going to pitch those innings? Nobody’s going to give you 250 innings. Hard to anybody’s going to give you 200 so now you’re trying to find a bunch of guys who can give you 160 and be good enough to keep you in the games. And it’s an ongoing struggle. And a big reason for that, as you suggest, is the injury rate is so high these days, baseball is the the the I hate to use this word. I can’t think of a better one right now. The industry is out there trying to figure out a way to lower the injury rate, but so far, nothing that they’ve done or even really suggested out loud, has worked or is going to work. It’s a long term problem that is going to require radical changes to really address, or they could just not address it, and they can, the injury rate will just keep going up, because the one thing we know pitchers are going to keep trying to throw harder and harder, because that’s how you get people out. But it also leads to injuries. We know that. That’s a fact
Nestor Aparicio 19:37
well, and you know, I had a hell of a conversation with Mark Messina last week, Mike’s brother just about whether Mike could have ever thrown the ball 95 or 96 miles an hour, he said, Never. And he and I said, but in if Mike came along now, he would have busted his arm trying to, because he would have needed to, to get the attention of a scout to ever, you know, throw an 8788 89 pinpoint, whatever, even though he saw. Left Handed kid do that against the Orioles on Tuesday night that, you know, there still is a market for the Greg Maddux is in the Scott McGregor types. I guess, if the idea is as Jim Palmer suggested on the broadcast, the idea is to get people out, not to strike them out on pitch one, you know, you know, strike one doesn’t strike anybody out, and having defense behind you. And again, all of this is philosophical in regard to these guys arms falling off. And if my dad, who died in 1992 were to come back, he’d say, that’s why I wouldn’t let you throw a curve ball to your 12 Yeah, or whatever the old adages were. And every time I bring Leo Mazzone on, he’s like, these guys don’t throw every day, and they’re Max efforting, and their arms aren’t ready for it. And, you know, it’s something you need to do every day, like walking. You know, that’s how Leo Mazzone thought. Tom house had a different philosophy. And I know you studied all of this stuff, but I don’t with all this science and all them doctors, you know, and all that measurements, and, you know, they got spin Ray, just all of this that, you know, the science would tell you the arms not meant to torque like that, right? I mean, that’s what doctors would tell you, right?
Rob Neyer 21:04
I think, I think that’s correct. Yes, Eddie fainter would have told you that too. I have, I have a, I have a book signed by Eddie fauna, believe it or not, yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 21:13
8Well, you lucky. You. I saw stemmers run once. I
Rob Neyer 21:17
wish I had seen him pitch. I saw, I met him well after his career? No, I think it’s the science is helping pitchers pitch better, and the medicine is helping pitchers recover after they hurt themselves pitching better, but there’s no way to throw 102 miles an hour, day in, day out, year in, year out, and not have a significantly higher injury risk than the pitchers used to now. In the old days, they hurt their shoulders. I’m not sure why they hurt their shoulders so much, but they did. I’m not sure why they don’t anymore, because I think the exercises they do now are more effective than or the prehab that they do now is better than it used to be. So we don’t see the shoulder injuries when we were kids. Pitchers, not only hurt their elbows all the time, but they also hurt their shoulders all the time. I mean, I can’t even think of all the shoulder injuries, but the one that I remember really well was Kevin apier, who was one of the was there was nobody better than Kevin apier for two or three years, but he blew his shoulder out, and that was it. He was done, essentially. And it happened at hundreds of labrum
Nestor Aparicio 22:28
and then it became Tommy John, right? He was always labrum. Let you know
Rob Neyer 22:34
it was both right. I mean, Tommy John. The first surgery was in the mid 70s with Tommy John, obviously. So there were elbow injuries and there were shoulder injuries. The shoulder injury injuries are now almost gone, but there are way more elbow injuries than there used to be, way more to see the
8Nestor Aparicio 22:50
mechanics of like a Nolan Ryan, who, you saw a pitch and I saw a pitch forever and ever and ever right and the way his mechanic, even Palmer, with the big flare, and Seaver, just guys had these perfect mechanics about them. And then I see, you know, Bauman out there the other day flopping all over and like, and I don’t, and I know they’re being trained by the best, and there’s all the science and all this medicine and all this stuff. But you know, my wife comes in and says, Hey, guy, I work with kids having Tommy John, he’s 15. What like? What like? What, like, what do you what are we asking these kids to do to play baseball? No,
Rob Neyer 23:24
there’s been an epidemic of teenagers having Tommy John surgeries, which, which, I think is a real shame, because how many of those kids are going to wind up making a living pitching anyway, right? I mean, I just had ankle surgery five weeks ago. It sucks. It’s, it’s just, I, there’s no reason to have surgery when you’re a teenager for the if the just because you think you’re going to pitch in the Major League someday, it’s just not worth it, in my opinion. And yet, that’s what we’re pushing these kids to do, to throw harder and harder and harder. And I really think that if, if baseball cannot address the epidemic in the major leagues, in the minor leagues, of elbow injuries because, because those pitchers have to do that if they want to advance in their their chosen field and become millionaires. I get it. They’re professionals, but maybe baseball could take the high road here and really do something important and keep these kids from getting hurt, whether that’s whether that’s RAM riding through rules about usage, you know, kids shouldn’t be throwing the 100 pitches on Thursday and then 80 on on on Friday or Saturday. They just shouldn’t. That still happens.
Nestor Aparicio 24:46
And, yeah, you know, I don’t know. I watch Bad News Bears. There’s always some badass manager out there rule breaking. There’s also great writers out there, like Rob nyere Cover the game of baseball and talking about the history. Because. So look, we talked about really key, big topics that we could do that can run for a week or two in my radio format. But for me, the business of this, the sport, and what you’re doing out in Oregon and the West Coast League, and you’re a commissioner of a league, and there’s money and there’s concessions, and where’s the revenue coming from, and are we counting the beans and all of that. I’m spending a lot of time here, and Katie Griggs is coming from Seattle and questioning where the money in the revenue is now that finally, after Peter Angelo said to me back in 1997 in Baltimore and Washington, both have teams, they’ll both be unsuccessful because they won’t have enough people in revenue, revenue, revenue. So this 27 years later, and they’re about to get untethered. After the Angeles family ran off with all the TV money and the mass and money, that thing’s devalued at this point, everything the Sinclair boys over here in Hunt Valley have torn apart with regional sports networks and where we are and the Dodgers and the Yankees and the larges, the big keep getting bigger, although I’m not sure what the Red Sox with their brand and even the Cardinals and the Cubs and some of these other brands that are a little bit behind in those ways and don’t have as many humans, or at least younger humans, filling the void in these places. And then Tampa and whatever the hell the A’s are that even Charlie Finley would be disgraced by. Whatever this is that they and they’re playing in big stadiums with empty crowds, in a lot of cases, I I have not met anyone Rob, and you’re the commissioner, so I’m going to ask you as commission, I haven’t met anyone that really thinks anybody has an elixir or really a strategy, just if you were to hand me the new business plan that doesn’t involve Mr. Rubenstein’s big money in his toy and his bobble heads and whatever he thinks he’s going to sell it for 3.5 billion. At some point. And this our state is given money and money and money in a way that I’m talking about people Ohio this week about what the Browns are trying to do and the heist they’re trying to pull, to move this and that. But like, we have a relatively stable thing here, and what the Orioles are and the Ravens are in the community, and I, and it’s still not good. I look at it and say, Now where are they getting this money to get together to buy gunner Henderson and Adley Rutger and the players are going to need the buy of holiday sprouts and becomes a Hall of Famer westburg. Any of these? They want them all. They all are great. What? How could they ever afford this? How could they ever get in a bidding war? And what’s the ceiling on what the new Orioles, now that the Nationals exist, the new Orioles under a different owner? What? What is the ceiling for revenue in a city that doesn’t have any big industry, doesn’t have any big money, we’re fighting like in every big city, to feed our kids, house our kids, like all of that stuff. I’m really worried about the industry of baseball, and I’ve had a couple of people, two of them recently who ran Major League Baseball teams, who said to me, there’s going to be a work stoppage if Theo is going to come in and they’re just going to have to figure this out, because, like, they can’t afford, in a real way, to pay baseball players $50 million in most of these markets and feel competitive teams, because they’re just, there’s only so much money, and I don’t want to play the contraction game and all of that with Bud Selig. But there, there is a point where I look at what they’re trying to do and how they used to get money off of stadium revenue, tickets and then sponsorships, then club boxes, then media revenue, then local media revenue, then national media, like streaming, all licensing, all I get all that revenue, and I look at it and say, My God, the money’s falling off a tree in a place like LA and here they can work really, really hard, and they have and the pitching can fall apart, and it did, and they’re never going to figure this out. And the billionaires can finance it, I guess. But if they’re trying to run it as a legitimate operation. I don’t know where the maximization of the revenue is. When I was in Toronto two weeks ago, Rob and I didn’t go to the second game of the year. It was a Friday night. How dare I? The game wasn’t on anywhere in the city, because they were on Apple TV. The game wasn’t on in Toronto. It wasn’t on in Canada. And then in Baltimore, same thing, you have to a bar second game of the year. We don’t have Apple TV in this bar like, you know, and they’re, they’re hijacking somebody’s account, the girl that works there, trying to get it on one TV for and people don’t even care that much, you know, they they get, they’re a mess. And I’m here in Baltimore, and they got to fix it, and I want them to fix it. And I don’t think anybody knows how man you know, I don’t think Rob Manfred knows how.
29:24
8That’s a lot to chew on. Sorry, bro,
Nestor Aparicio 29:26
I go through every day.
Rob Neyer 29:30
Let me just inject a little historical perspective from me studying this for a long time, as you probably remember in the late 1970s when free agency first hit baseball, it really hit it in 1974 but it really, really got ramped up in the late 70s, there were predictions everywhere that the sport was. Going to die. Free agency was going to kill it because no, none of these teams could afford to pay players the money that they were suddenly getting. It was going to kill competitive balance. Well, all that happened in the 80s was a different team won the World Series every year, you know, including some small markets, the Orioles won a World Series in 1983 now, and they didn’t have any high price free agents, as I recall,
Nestor Aparicio 30:24
oh, it was a miracle, because they lost all their talent, right? All their talent. Had Doug to senses on two weeks ago. You know, you know, from Des Baylor and grits and just on and on and on. You know, Dennis Martin, just on and on and on. They got ravaged by free agency, and Palmer was the one guy that stayed
8Rob Neyer 30:41
right. 85 the Royals won. Now they had a pretty big payroll. Actually, their owner didn’t mind spending money. I don’t think the Royals lost money. They had great attendance for that market, but it was one of the smallest markets in baseball. They won the World Series. It was somebody different every year in the 80s. So that prediction didn’t happen. And then in the early 90s, when all the regional sports networks came in and the money started going started going way up in the big markets. Everybody said, Well, this is it seems like the Royals can’t survive, and they were terrible, but baseball still had pretty decent competitive balance, probably the best in all the major sports if they didn’t, then baseball does. Now there’s more competitive balance in Major League Baseball than the NFL, the NHL and the NBA. Now, why does it How does it happen? How do the franchise values keep going up every year? How do the revenues keep going up? That’s not clear to me for a while. It was because of the regional sport networks, but those are kind of going away now, as you know, and yet the revenues keep going up. I missed an article that came out last week. I haven’t read it yet. I put it in my to do list. Basically read this article, but my understanding is, just from skimming a couple things, is that Major League Baseball has been able to do all these new partnerships, these national sponsorship deals, and there’s just tons of money going to all the teams from all the national sponsorships and the media rights in Japan, things like that. So I think in the short term, the competitive balance will stay where it basically is. Yes, the Dodgers are going to be great every year because a they spend a lot of money, but also they’re really smart. You still need both. You can spend a ton, I think, 30
Nestor Aparicio 32:24
years ago with salary cap, and I was on the air 30 years ago, talking through Lords of the Realm, talking through the I mean, the work stop a chap in here, we didn’t have a football team. Rob, you know what I mean? When the work stop a chap in here, the Orioles were the only thing going on here. So, you know, I got to know it pretty well, and I’ve spent 30 years studying it pretty hard, the way you have on the inside and trying to figure out what it would look like after Angelo’s and if this guy’s Mr. Money Bags and he’s gonna be like the Mets guy gonna be sugar daddy. Didn’t feel that way. He hasn’t talked like he’s gonna be a sugar daddy. Didn’t act like a sugar daddy and go to Corbin burns and say, I’ll give you whatever you want. You know? I mean, I think he’s smart enough, business wise to have never have done that, but I do wonder how, you know, my question out loud is, How good can the Orioles be again? How good can this be again? Book Brooks and Boog and all that are gone. So is Cal Ripken. I mean, I’ve Messina and Brady Anderson. All That era is gone, but they’re about to give them $600 million to kick the media out of the press box and move them to left field to build a club in left field that where they can have leather seats, and I don’t know who’s sitting in them. You know, I see all these new stadia that I go to. I was in Toronto a couple weeks ago seeing Getty Lee in the seats and thinking, well, that’s probably a $1,200 a game. See, I don’t know who that is. In Baltimore, I that that that may exist in Manhattan. It may exist in Chavez Ravine. It may exist in Scottsdale. I don’t think you know. But like, I know my market here, Katie Griggs does not. Nobody here does. And I know the damage that’s been done here, the damage that was done, Rob, I haven’t had you on, and I would if I’ve said this to Katie Griggs. I said this to David Rubenstein’s face the one time I engaged him at Beth to Philo at the at the synagogue, they had 10,000 empty seats at a playoff game. And Rob, it wasn’t price point. It wasn’t because it was too much money, and it was $75 and they were holding ground tickets for 10 bucks. Nobody wanted to go. Nobody wanted to go to a playoff game. And like I, you know, I don’t think much of Angelo’s, and I don’t think much of the new people, honestly, just in the way they’ve treated me, and I’m writing about that this week, but that breaks my heart, right? You know what I mean? Like, it’s a playoff game. We don’t have a lot of that around here. That’s when the moments are made. If you’re vested in and out, or all you call in for sick, you get off of school, you figure it out. You go to some games. It was 10 bucks and nobody wanted to go. It was West Coast League pricing, throwback pricing, and nobody wanted to go to a playoff game, man, like I don’t that’s just a fact that that’s for them to investigate. I’d like to help them investigate by saying, what do they need to do? Where’s the big idea coming from when you’re pitching stinks, right? You know what I mean, and you’re 10 games under 500 instead of competing. Every year, which is impossible. You keep mentioning the Royals and your love of them. When you don’t have the money, it’s impossible to compete every year. The race can hang in a while. Moneyball can hang in a while. But like the other sports, all have this thing where, you know, the caps got to keep a vetch getting that’s one of the reasons it’s kind of cool. The NBA is a mess. I don’t even get into that, but, but in football, Joe, Joe Flacco stayed, Lamar Jackson State. Tom Brady stayed, you know, players, they’ve managed to be able to use that salary cap to keep the players and the agents that everybody happened. I was around baseball in the 90s. I know how contentious it all was, right, and how dug in the Marvin Miller, that whole era was in baseball. And everything i You’re saying, I agree with and talk through in regard to parity, but like, at some point, everybody having the same amount of money to spend would make baseball better. That’s just, that’s my case. I
Rob Neyer 35:53
agree with that completely. The only for me, the real downside of the salary, the only downside of the salary cap, is the players might sit out for a whole year or two because they’re so adamantly opposed to it, but I don’t see a downside to it if it’s done efficiently or if it’s done effectively. I like it. I like a salary cap with a salary floor and everybody spends between this much and this much money. Why not do that? That makes perfect sense to me. And if the Dodge, if you want to make the
Nestor Aparicio 36:25
8game better 15 years from now, they’re gonna have to figure that out, because it’s been effed up for 30 years in that and you can make it. You made the pro baseball case of the butt ceiling case. Everybody wins, Eric, we have more parody than Yeah, and we put more teams in the playoffs. Now. Everybody made fun of hockey for doing that 30 years ago, right? But, and I do agree, but it’s still a great game. My last name is at Paris, you I watch it every night. It’s a great game. It really is. It’s great for the community. It’s great in all of those ways. I’m just waiting for this to be great here, right? Because it hasn’t been great so long, you know? And
36:57
the last year, last year, didn’t do it, huh?
Nestor Aparicio 37:01
Well, listen, I mean, I’ve been on the air. This is my 34th year. 35th maybe summer. I have to do the real math on start in 9092, so it’s 3034 years. Yep, we’ve had seasons in seven of those years at a 34 and when I say seasons, I mean, like, it’s middle of April right now. The season was over before it began in 20 of the 34 years, and mostly in the other ones too. This is a season of hope. This is like, and they’ve built to this Cal ripkens behind home plate every night they’ve got him on their marketing thing, like nationals are kind of irrelevant stink. There’s no reason I want to go see them right now. I just, I want to see this thing blossom and and it’s, it’s disheartening to see what kind of, not just on the field start they’ve had, but just the direction of the whole thing, the sport itself, the direction of, I’m in Toronto, and I can’t watch my team play. You know it’s weird, right? West Coast League. Talk to me.
Rob Neyer 38:02
Well, where are we start? Is that we are as close to the Cape Cod League, which most baseball fans are familiar with, that you’re going to find in the entire western half of North America. You’ve got some great leagues in the east, not only the Cape Cod League, but the New England collegiate league is an outstanding League. I’m forgetting one of the other leagues in the east. There’s the coastal plain League, which is mostly in South Carolina, I believe in North Carolina, a little Georgia too. Maybe those are all really good leagues. But once you get past the Rocky Mountains, we’re pretty much it. This is the best place to see college players play baseball in the summer. And we have, we have 17 teams now, starting this season, we have a team in Edmonton, which plays an old triple A stadium. That’s a they’ve had tremendous, a tremendous response from their fans since, since starting in 2022 we have a team in Victoria, British Columbia, which is one of the most beautiful, incredible cities, not just in Canada, but anywhere in this hemisphere. Uh, got a team right here in Portland, the Portland pickles, who won the championship last season. So we have some tremendous markets, also some small towns, basically to have teams. So we have this amazing mix. And I, you know, for people who want to be out in the Northwest in the summer, which is the time to come. I can’t recommend highly enough finding a West Coast League team or to where you’re going to be, because we’re everywhere out here and going to a game,
8Nestor Aparicio 39:31
well, maybe catch a concert, go out there, have a good time. It’s a beautiful part of the world where you live out there. Rob Neyer is our guest. He is a baseball historian and it just a rushman thing before I let you go. I mean, you know, he’s special to you, right? I mean, oh,
Rob Neyer 39:46
sure. I mean, we, we’re very fortunate because we’re not the Cape Cod League, but we’ve had two players selected number one in the MLB draft in the last five, six years, Adley, and then last season. Travis bizana, who who, like Adley, played at Oregon State and and then with the Corvallis knights and in the West Coast League. So and Travis bizana, if you have people haven’t heard about him, they’re going to hear a lot about him over the next year or two, because he’s right up there on the top one or two or three prospects in the minor leagues. So yeah, we’ve been blessed with with great talent. And Adley comes back to Portland every every winter and and works with with young kids and tries to to raise the baseball at the grassroots level in our area. So we’re very thrilled to call him an alumni. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 40:39
I hope that they have a statue for him out in center field one day. He I mean, just for everybody here. We’ve been waiting a long time for gunner, Henderson, Adley rutschman. I mean, you and I have known each other a long time through baseball circles. It’s just sort of like, you know, it’s go time here, and we got one of your guys and we’re pulling for him, all right. So and I see jerseys everywhere every time I see the 35 I think Messina, but no, it’s I gotta rewrite that. Now Rob Nyer is out in on the West Coast, in Portland. He comes in once, twice a year, talks in baseball with me. I hope to get back out there for a concert to show you, me and Mari, go out, rock out and eat some food and talk about baseball and fixing the world through baseball and all great. Appreciate you. Rob NY are always getting out of bed early on to hang out around here. Actually did a little lunch time turn this time around. We’re going to do lunch next week at Cooper’s north. We’re going to be out in Timonium may chapel, doing the Maryland crab cake Tour presented by the Maryland lottery. I have great guests at Beaumont this week. Then we’re Cocos on the 30th. We’re going to be at red brick station in White Marsh, one of my original places, having a blueberry Ale on the seventh of may and getting ready for the Preakness Stakes here next month, I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, D. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive. I.
