This Year, Spring Training Doesn’t Hold The Same Excitement

We have made no bones about the fact that baseball is our favorite sport. And usually, this time of year has us excited. Spring training is about to begin, and like many fans, we put together potential lineups in our head and think about what young prospects could make a difference for the Guardians.

We don’t have that same feeling this winter.

Part of it is the sports itself and how it is covered. When MLB Network first came out, we loved it. A station that talked nothing about what used to be the “national pastime.”

Much of the winter was spent showing old games, where we could show our children players like Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Roberto Clemente, and even Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.

Now, the network has turned into group think, where no one has diverse opinions and much of the talk is solely about sabremetric statistics, which we do pay attention to, but we are starting to see “analytics” as a justification to make a decision.

For example, the Guardians played Gabriel Arias at shortstop most of the last two months because he has an outstanding exit velocity, meaning he hits the ball hard. The problem for Arias though, is he rarely hits it.

None of the guys we grew up playing baseball with think Arias is a good player. None.

There is a place in the sport for these numbers, but it would be okay if someone talked about runs scored, RBI, and disagreed that a good player should make the Hall of Fame.

Besides, how many times can you watch Little Big League?

But it is the local situation that really has us not looking forward to the season with the same zeal.

The Cleveland Guardians won the AL Central Division in 2022, and at the all-star break last season, were still in the race. Then, at the trading deadline, they moved one of their starting pitchers, even though they had two starters injured, and moved one of their middle of the order bats.

When the division leading Twins failed to pull away in August, and Terry Francona announced he was going to retire at the end of the season, they did claim three pitchers to bolster the staff to make a belated run.

It failed.

The Guardians’ offense is the chief problem, ranking 12th in the American League in runs scored. It would seem to be the area where the club could improve and vault into the post-season in 2024. However, the organization did nothing.

Yes, we know, in fact, we all know about the broadcast deal with Bally Sports. We all know because the ownership through the media tells fans about it all the time. We have said this often, if the people who pay the bills put as much energy in trying to make the team better and/or get more fans to the park as they do making excuses why they can’t spend money, the Guardians would be better off.

The team couldn’t even make a big announcement that the equipment truck was leaving for Arizona yesterday, a glimmer of spring hope in northeast Ohio, until several media outlets reported it was happening.

We lived through the Vernon Stouffer years, the Nick Mileti years, the Gabe Paul years, etc., and through the naivety of youth, still believed the Indians could contend. Fifty years later, and nothing has changed.

It used to be because the old decrepit base park that the team couldn’t compete. Now we have Progressive Field, and outside of the first ten years it was built, the excuse is the same.

We understand the finances of the game is a problem, and smaller markets are at a disadvantage, but we are certain the family who owns the Guardians is doing quite well. A good businessman finds another way.

We still love baseball, but we feel let down by it. We are sure someone will read this and say “go root for another team!”, but we grew up with the Cleveland Indians, and we are born and bred here.

The owners are the stewards of the franchise. Yet they continue to let us down. Fifty years from now, will there be fans like the guys we grew up with?

Guardians’ Off-Season Moves Are Puzzling

It seems the entire “Hot Stove” portion on the Major League Baseball calendar was delayed by the whole Shohei Ohtani situation, but with the holiday season here, the norm for most teams is to have their major moves made before the calendar changes.

It has been particularly slow in Cleveland, where the offices on the corner of Ontario and Carnegie have been quiet, and when a move has been made, confusing.

The latter part of that statement is more concerning. We sometimes wish the organization would put as much effort in improving the team on the field as they do come up with reasons they can’t spend money.

For example, one of the first moves the Guards made this off-season was claiming Alfonso Rivas off waivers. Rivas has played in 167 big league games, hitting .243 with a 673 OPS. Last season, he played for San Diego and Pittsburgh, and had a 725 OPS. He did hit .332 at AAA El Paso with a 1043 OPS.

He’s a left-handed hitter (not an area of need) and plays 1B (also not an area of need) and the OF. And he’s 27 years old, and not a home run hitter. He’s also survived a bunch of roster moves where players had to be moved off the 40-man roster. That’s strange to us.

They let a serviceable starting pitcher, Cal Quantrill go rather than offer him arbitration, where he likely would have been awarded $6 million. Keep in mind this week, Kansas City signed Seth Lugo, a pitcher who pitched a career high 146 innings last year, to a contract worth $15 million per year.

A couple of days ago, they said they added depth to the rotation (depth they had with Quantrill) by signing 32-year-old Ben Lively, who had a 5.38 ERA for the Reds last year. We know Cincinnati has a hitter friendly park, but Lively was worse away from Great American Ballpark.

They claimed Christian Bethancourt, a catcher with some pop (11 homers in each of the last two seasons) from Tampa, only to deal him to Miami when they brought back Austin Hedges, a good defensive catcher who cannot hit. And they are paying Hedges more than they would have had to pay Bethancourt!

We will say the Guardians are probably the only team in baseball who can say Hedges is a better offensive option that the backup catcher they had a year ago.

The only move that makes sense was getting Scott Barlow from San Diego for Enyel De Los Santos. Barlow is a higher leverage reliever, with closer experience whereas De Los Santos kind of struggled when used in the late innings.

We wonder if a more substantial move is yet to come. There are still rumors surrounding Shane Bieber, but we think his return could be better in July if the Guardians aren’t in the race.

Right now, we can’t see the Guardians as being improved. They also seem reticent to move a couple of veterans to more key positions, such as Andres Gimenez to shortstop and Steven Kwan to centerfield, to open up spots for some hitting.

There’s still time, but the inactivity is certainly frustrating to a fan base that keeps remembering this number: 1948.

Loving Baseball’s Pitch Clock

There is no question the older people get, the more they complain about change. With spring training games being played, we have heard a lot of former MLB players and current veterans complaining about the pitch clock.

We love the game of baseball and its traditions. We also love the pitch clock.

Some of the recently retired players have waxed poetic about baseball not having a clock, the only major professional sport not measured by time. Hate to break it to these folks, but it’s still not.

Baseball is still measured by 27 outs. If it takes three and a half hours to get to that, then that’s how long the game will be. There is still no time limit like the 60 minutes of game time for football and hockey or the 48 minutes for basketball.

All the pitch clock is doing is preventing the ridiculous adjustment of batting gloves, jerseys, batting helmets. and other protective equipment by hitters, and the constant fidgeting on the mound by pitchers, taking extra time so can “recover” from the previous pitch.

When Mike Hargrove was dubbed the “Human Rain Delay”, he was an anomaly. Now, pretty much every hitter in the game was stepping out after every pitch redress themselves.

It was a ridiculous amount of non-action. Both the hitters and pitchers abused the system and the powers that run Major League Baseball, usually clueless in matters both on and off the field, made the correct decision here.

The sport is trying to get the casual fans back. The hardcore folks are going to be engaged no matter what happens. However, the inaction caused games to be averaging three hours long, and because the action came in spurts, the casuals found something else to do.

Professional sports are in the entertainment business.

As for the other rule changes? We still don’t like putting a runner on second base to start an inning in extra frames. With the pitch clock trimming time off the game, we don’t see a need to change the rules of the sport now. A compromise could have been playing under the regular rules of the game up until the 12th, and then using the “ghost runner”.

The bigger bases aren’t a big deal and likely won’t be noticeable, but limiting the number of pickoff throws a pitcher can make again changes the fabric of the baseball.

And we don’t like banning the shift either. We know that both basketball and football have tied the hands of the people playing defense, but we feel baseball is better than that. The reason for the shifts was hitters being taught to hit with “launch angles” to go over the defenders instead of exploiting that the opponents were leaving a vast part of the field wide open.

Banning the shift won’t stop the increasing number of strikeouts plaguing the game, but the success the Guardians had last year might. Cleveland’s contact approach paid off for them and if they have another great season in 2023, maybe other teams will adopt putting the ball in play.

Can’t understand why anyone would be against the tedious dead time during a game though. It doesn’t make any sense. Get on the rubber and pitch, get in the box and hit.

Pretty simple to us.

No Need To Fix Baseball, It Will Fix Itself. We Hope

We love the game of baseball. We’ve loved it since we remembered seeing our first game way back in 1965.

And despite living in northeast Ohio, where a winning baseball team didn’t come around for 30 years, our love for the summer sport never waned.

However, right now baseball is under attack and the surprising thing is, it seems to be attacking itself. Over the last few years, they have enacted and proposed some rule changes, and some we like, and others seem to be gimmicky.

For example, we like the universal DH. The argument that the National League game had more strategy is hogwash. For the most part, if there was a runner on base with less than two out and the pitcher was coming up, he was bunting. That’s not deep thinking.

And the “double switch” isn’t rocket science either.

We also like the proposed time clock in between pitches. When people have complained about the length of games, we’ve said for years the problem was batters stepping out of the box after every pitch to supposedly adjust some kind of equipment.

Get in the box, stay in the box and for pitchers, get the sign and throw the pitch.

It seems though like the people who run baseball are kind of just throwing crap at a wall and seeing what’s going to stick: Pitchers have to face three batters, putting a runner at second for no reason to start extra-inning games, and the one we really don’t like…banning the shift.

We find it unconscionable that a rule will prevent a team from playing defense the best way. What’s next, telling Shane Bieber he can only throw his knuckle-curve once per at bat?

This year, we’ve seen the Guardians go “old school” and go back to a contact approach, putting the ball in play. Jose Ramirez is pretty much a dead pull hitter. Teams shift on him in every single at bat.

You know what? He’s still hitting .283 on the season. Why? Because he’s a good hitter. He doesn’t strikeout a lot. Yes, he gets some hits taken away by the shift, and a couple of teams have employed four outfielders against him. He still gets hits.

In our opinion, getting rid of the shift rewards the bad hitters, the ones who refuse to make adjustments and keep trying to pull outside pitches. That’s more inferior hitting than great pitching.

The new schedule also seems weird. We understand that having three wild card teams means playing in a weak division is an advantage because you play teams 19 times, but it wasn’t an issue in the AL East for a long time when the Yankees and Red Sox had the edge because the Orioles, Rays, and Blue Jays were in a down cycle.

The talking heads don’t like it now because the Twins, Guardians, Brewers, and Cardinals now have that advantage.

We’d also like to see if fans really like interleague play. Yes, it’s good to see Yankees-Mets, Giants-A’s, Cubs-White Sox, but is anyone clamoring for Guardians-Rockies? Instead, we think fans here would like to see the Yanks and Red Sox more often. They aren’t getting that with this new format.

It’s like the folks who say college basketball is better than the professional version. Yes, if you are comparing Duke-North Carolina to watching the Kings and Rockets do battle.

But what about the Bucks-Celtics vs. say, Eastern Michigan play Dayton?

We are stuck with the schedule, but let’s hope smarter people get together on the shift and keep it. It will take a while, but eventually, players will learn to hit the right way again and the sport will be better for it.

The Sadness Of Being A Baseball Fan.

It pains us to say it, but the sport of baseball is in trouble. The people who are supposed to be the stewards of what used to be known as “The National Pastime” simply are out of touch with not only reality, but also the people who buy tickets.

The negotiation of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement has simply been a joke. After locking the players out (let us repeat, the players are NOT on strike), they waited 43 days before sitting down and negotiating with the players. 43 days!

No sense of urgency at all.

The commissioner, Rob Manfred, who is hired by the owners, has revealed himself as a vindictive, petty man. He had one of the premier baseball writers ever, Ken Rosenthal, removed from the sport’s network because he dared to criticize the commish on his handling of the sport during the COVID year of 2020.

He also was laughing during a press conference the other day when he was announcing the cancellation of the first two series of the 2022 season. A somber mood would be more appropriate.

The owners continue to cry poor, when there is a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. Here in Cleveland, we have an owner that is always telling the fans how difficult it is to make ends meet, but meanwhile cuts payroll and leaves ticket prices the same.

Besides canceling games this season, think about what the leadership of the game has given fans over the past three years.

First, one of the things the MLB office does is constantly tell everyone how bad their sport is and how it needs fixing. No other professional sport does this. We aren’t saying baseball is perfect, but would you buy a car if the dealer told you what a lemon it was?

The owners panacea is to expand the playoffs to 14 teams, making it more like the NBA. Apparently, the players balked and they decided on 12 teams, which is still too many considering the regular season is 162 games, and the best team wins roughly 60% of its games.

It’s strictly a money grab for the owners, who have revalued the regular season already and this will continue with more teams in the playoffs.

The ownership group has also given fans a ghost runner in extra inning games and seven inning doubleheaders, and are proposing a rule limiting how a team can play defense (banning the shift). Our opinion on that is you are rewarding players who are not good hitters.

The owners always focus on the payroll discrepancy within the sport. But isn’t that more on the smaller payroll teams? There were only two teams that exceeding the tax threshold last season, the Dodgers and Padres. Meanwhile, there were eight teams with payrolls less than $75 million, including the Guardians/Indians.

We have heard several fans say at least the Dolans want to win. Do they? We think they like winning. Everyone does.

We will say the same thing about owners as we do about players. We’d rather have an owner that hates losing more than one that likes winning.

The owners on the lower end of the payrolls spectrum are happy spending little, and even happier if they happen to win while doing it.

Fans who love the sport say something has to change, and they are right. Someone with some common sense needs to be in charge. Until that happens, we are afraid the sport will continue to fade in the sports fan’s psyche.

That’s not good for the future of the “grand ol’ game”.

We’d Like To Be Watching Baseball, But…

We should be watching or listening to a baseball game today. Mind you, not one that counts, but the thoughts of Opening Day would be dancing in the heads of any baseball fan.

Instead, the sport is still dealing with a lockout, not a strike, as many in the media have portrayed the absence of players in Florida and Arizona. The owners are causing this.

We do understand their reasoning, they lose leverage if the season started and the players decided to walk out let’s say, August 1st.

However, the lockout started in early December and the owners basically sat on their fat wallets and didn’t have any negotiations until the calendar turned to 2022.

So, fans of the grand ol’ game are left watching the snow fall or melt (hopefully) instead of seeing how the Cleveland Guardians will be answering the questions they have concerning the roster that starts the regular season, no matter when it starts.

By the way, we are sure there will be a flurry of trades and free agent signings (probably not by the Guardians) as soon as an agreement is reached. We are sure general managers have been talking to agents and other front office executives throughout the lockout.

What will Terry Francona do at the keystone positions? Amed Rosario hit well enough last season, but his defense was wanting. Does he move to second base, or is he traded? Does Andres Gimenez take over at short in ’22 with the battle taking place at second, between Owen Miller, Yu Chang, and Richie Palacios.

In the outfield, who plays the corner spots flanking Myles Straw? Veterans Bradley Zimmer and Oscar Mercado would seem to have an edge because of experience but to us, most of that experience has not been pleasant for the fans because it has been filled with outs, and lots of them.

Where does Josh Naylor fit in? First, the Guardians have to determine if and when he can play, and once he can, does he stay in the outfield or does he become part of the first base competition.

How does the rest of the bullpen shake out? We are sure some arms will sign minor league deals to come to camp and compete for spots to join Emmanuel Clase, James Karinchak, and likely Anthony Gose, Nick Sandlin, and Trevor Stephan among the relief corps.

And who becomes the backup catcher behind Austin Hedges. Sandy Leon will be in camp, but hopefully another backstop is brought in as a non-roster invitee to compete.

The biggest thing we are missing is watching the top prospects in the Cleveland farm system getting opportunities in exhibition.

We would be keeping a particular eye on Palacios, OF Steven Kwan, SS Brayan Rocchio, and SS/2B Tyler Freeman.

In our opinion, Kwan and Palacios should get a real shot of not only making the team out of camp but getting some regular playing time.

And yes, we know typically that’s not how Francona and his staff operate, but we can always hope, right?

Instead, we aren’t watching any baseball and may not for the foreseeable future. And that’s a shame. With all that is going on in the world, we could use some diversion.

Unfortunately, we are held hostage by a bunch of people who don’t appear to even like baseball.

And that’s the saddest situation we can think of.

A Baseball Rant On The Lockout And Expanded Playoffs

The end of February will be here very soon, next Tuesday to be exact. Baseball should be on the minds of fans right about now, but the idiocy of the owners (that’s right, they are the ones locking out the players) is keeping us from getting ready for the 2022 season.

Being a huge fan of the sport, we realized how much we were detached when Marcus Semien was mentioned in an article, and we had to look up what team he was going to be with this season (it’s Texas).

It has been so long since any player movement or talk of who will be contenders this season, this kind of news fell out of our consciousness.

And that’s sad.

We aren’t going to get into a huge discussion (at least more than we already have) about who is right and who is wrong in this dispute. We will only say this–if you think small market owners are really losing money owning Major League Baseball teams and can’t spend the same as big market teams? We would strongly disagree.

We do like the universal DH. The so-called strategy involved is overrated. In the National League, if a runner is on base and the pitcher comes up? He’s more than likely bunting. That’s not really mind blowing.

And executing a double switch doesn’t qualify you for MENSA.

However, the expanded playoff system proposed by the owners just makes us shake our heads.

We understand other sports have bloated post-seasons because the networks pay them a lot of money to broadcast them.

How many times does a team that reaches the NBA playoffs as a 7th or 8th seed win a title? We know the Atlanta Hawks were a 5th seed last year and went to the Eastern Conference finals, and Miami went to the NBA Finals the prior year as a fifth seed. But if the league made the cut off the 6th seed, would anyone care?

And that’s with an 82 game schedule.

MLB is proposing seven teams from each league reaching the post-season. Seven! Keep in mind they play 162 games, which is enough games to determine who the best teams in the game are.

You can understand the NFL putting 14 of their 32 teams in the playoffs. They only play 17 games. Look at the AFC North. This year, there were no bad teams in the division, so no division team had the advantage of picking up two easy wins against an inferior opponent.

Add in the nature of baseball. Is it called an “upset” if the Orioles beat the Yankees in a three game series? Of course not. It’s the way baseball is. The best teams in a given season lose 60 games. No one goes 140-22.

Heck, Cleveland has two cases of this in their history. In 1954, the Indians won 111 games, then an American League record, and lost in the World Series in four games to the New York Giants.

In 1995, the Tribe went 100-44 in a shortened season, and perhaps could have broken the ’54 squads’ record. But they lost the World Series to Atlanta as well.

What the sport is engendering is having average teams winning its championship. Why try to win your division? Baseball fans may have to get used to the term “load management”.

Baseball fans have accepted the wild card and even a second wild card. Having 10 out of 30 teams in the post-season isn’t a big problem but playing 162 games to eliminate just slightly over half the teams is going too far.

Unfortunately, all the owners see is dollar signs, and that goes for all professional sports. The integrity of the competition, finding a true champion, not just a playoff champ doesn’t matter anymore.

We are critical of the NBA at times, but at least in basketball, the commissioner works on behalf of the owners and the players. Baseball needs the same thing, but the owners will never let it happen.

Baseball Needs Leadership, Manfred Ain’t The Guy

Baseball is out of the public eye these days because of the lockout enforced by the owners, and their seemingly unwillingness to sit down at the negotiating table to hammer out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

We have read reports the two sides will return to the bargaining table soon, but hey, it’s no rush guys, spring training doesn’t start until the middle of next month.

When they are in the news now, you can predict it is usually for the wrong reasons, such as when it was announced one of the best baseball writers in the business, Ken Rosenthal, was no longer going to be affiliated with MLB Network.

Apparently, Rosenthal was critical of commissioner Rob Manfred for how he handled the sport during the shortened pandemic season of 2020, and the czar holds a grudge.

Talk about pettiness. Can’t we all agree the commissioner of a major sport should be above something like that?

Rosenthal will be just fine. First, he loves the sports and is a great writer, and he still writes for The Athletic, and he is part of Fox Network’s baseball coverage.

To us, it just is another example of the poor leadership exemplified by Manfred, who we wonder if he even likes the sport.

The problem is the commissioner is hired by the owners, and they look at the sport as a way to fill their pockets with massive amounts of cash, without regard to the future of the grand ol’ game.

All pretenses that the commissioner is the puppet of ownership was put to rest when Bud Selig, the then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, replaced Fay Vincent in the position, because the owners felt Vincent intervened during the 1990 lockout of the players.

The big question to us is why should the selection of the commissioner fall solely on the owners? This automatically means the leadership of the sport favors one side in any dispute, and that’s the side he works for.

How convenient, right?

We know it will never happen, but it would be nice if the commissioner of the sport held the well being of both parties in making decisions. Especially because the players are the game. Ballparks all over the country are not being filled to watch the owners count their money.

The sport needs a strong leader now more than ever, and we have serious questions whether Manfred even likes the sport he is in charge of.

What the game has going for it more than anything else is tradition. Essentially, the game being played today is the same sport that Babe Ruth played, that Jackie Robinson played. You can’t say that about football or basketball.

Baseball needs to change, and the problem is not the way Manfred and the owners want. Right now, we believe the players have more of the sports’ best interests at heart than the people running it.

That’s scary.

Has Manfred made any decisions since he took office that didn’t make you shake your head? And if the owners are putting him up to this, what does that say about them?

Heck, we have severe problems with the owners of our team.

This new CBA would be a good starting point in giving the players some say in picking the commissioner. Or perhaps having the owners keep that power but pick a former player for the job.

Something has to change for the good and for the future of the sport. And we hope the commissioner doesn’t ban us from buying tickets because we criticized him.

A New Investor Means Positive Changes For Guardians? (Fingers Crossed)

Even though Major League Baseball is in lockdown mode (and they don’t seem very anxious in rectifying the situation), fans of the Cleveland Guardians got some good news in the past week.

According to reports, the Dolan family has found a minority owner to take the place of John Sherman, who sold his interest in the team to purchase the Kansas City Royals. The rumor is David Blitzer, who owns shares in the New Jersey Devils (NHL) and Philadelphia 76ers (NBA) and several European soccer teams.

Hopefully, this will inject some capital into the operations of the Guardians, who badly need it, not only in terms of players but we feel in the business operations as well, particularly in marketing and scouting.

We love that Blitzer has experience in professional sports, so perhaps he will share the realization that you need to spend money to make money, a premise known by many people in the business world, but not by the majority owner of the Guardians.

It is no secret the payroll of the baseball team has dropped significantly since Sherman decided to buy the Royals, and we hope having another investor will cause the amount of cash spent on players’ salaries to rise dramatically and hopefully immediately.

Besides the on the field product, we would also like to see an upgrade in the marketing and game day experience at Progressive Field. We know the renovations were supposed to start this off-season, but we would like to see the hiring of more ticket takers and people working concessions stands at the ballpark as well.

The days of frugalness need to end right away.

If you visit this site often, you know how we feel about the Dolan ownership, and you also know we don’t believe for a minute they are losing money. We don’t believe anyone owning a Major League Baseball team is under a financial hardship, despite their claims to the contrary.

We believe one of the reasons fans do not go to Progressive Field is it’s not a fun experience. Hopefully Blitzer (assuming the rumors are true) takes what he learned from his other investments and makes going to a Guardians’ game the thing to do on a warm, summer night in Cleveland, and also does some things to boost attendance during the times when school is still in session.

On the field, the first big decision is with Jose Ramirez. The switch-hitter is one of the franchise’s all-time greats and it would be nice to see one of those types finish his career in a Cleveland uniform.

Remember, Ramirez did not receive a huge signing bonus when he came to the organization, and over the past five seasons, he has been one of the best players in baseball. If he and his agent see this as an opportunity for him to finally get paid, it could be difficult to get a long-term agreement here.

Regardless, the payroll has to increase to a more respectable number.

As part of the investment, Blitzer is expected have the opportunity to become the majority owner when the Dolans decide to sell. Assuming a lease (or by then, a new stadium deal can be put in place) extension. This could be another win for Guardians fans.

For whatever reason (and we don’t buy the reason they give us), the Dolan family decided to take a very frugal approach when it came to running this baseball team, and that wasn’t fair to the fans.

Yes, they had some success, particularly in the last 10 years, but they always seemed to stop short. Hopefully, this deal gets done, and the Guardians can end the longest championship drought in the sport.

No Conversations About Baseball Doesn’t Help It Grow.

It used to be said that baseball was the one sport that had no off season. It was talked about all year long. That’s why the term “hot stove league” was started, to describe the part of the year where the game wasn’t being played, but trades were being discussed and free agents were being signed.

That’s not true now. Other sports have gotten wise to this and have extended the relevance of their games during the periods where the action isn’t on the field.

Heck, in Cleveland, the sports talk shows discuss the Browns 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If your team isn’t playoff caliber, the draft talk starts during the season, as soon as it is evident the playoffs aren’t the goal.

You also have mini-camps and the beginning of training camp. Really, the only dead time for football is the period after the draft until the end of July.

In the NBA, as soon as the playoffs end, usually in the middle of June, you have the draft right after, and then in early July comes the free agency period, and there is a flurry of trades that go along with that as well. Once that ends, basketball kind of hibernates until training camp starts in September.

However, right now, baseball has gone silent because the owners have decided on a lockout to apparently try and break the strongest union in professional sports. So, instead of trade rumors and speculation on where free agents will sign and for what kind of money, we get nothing.

Baseball has disappeared from the sports consciousness, and if the parties can’t come to an agreement, apathy will set in. And for a sport waning in popularity over the last couple of decades, that’s suicidal.

It is easy for writers and broadcasters to side with the owners, because the players job is “playing”, something every kid who likes sports grew up wanting to do.

We side with the players though. Why? Because they are the product. No one goes to Progressive Field to see Paul Dolan own the Guardians. Fans buy tickets to watch baseball, and baseball is played by players.

Unfortunately, it appears the two sides don’t seem to want to get to the bargaining table to work out the differences any time soon.

We are sure the owners figure as long the new CBA is in place by spring training, then everything is fine, but in the meantime, there is no talk about baseball. The game is out of the sports point of view.

Meanwhile, the NBA has its slate of Christmas games, the league will be on TV all day. The NFL is coming down the stretch of its regular season, and there are plenty of games that affect the playoff landscape.

It seems odd that a tactic in trying to grow your sport is taking it out of the public’s eye. As Pepper Brook in Dodgeball said “it seems like a bold strategy”.

Rob Manfred and his owner friends will tell you they are trying to save baseball, but really, they are trying to kill it. Odd, because it makes all of them a boatload of cash. And yes, more cash than any player makes.