Wednesday Bantering: Bits of Blue Jays news

Happy Wednesday.

Jim Callis tells us that the Blue Jays have signed 5th round pick Zach Britton. He’s getting $97,500, which is $312,600 below slot. It looks like they are saving slot money for Austin Martin.

The Athletic has their ‘2020 MLB broadcast’ survey up. The asked readers to rate their team’s broadcast teams on a 1-5 scale on play-by-play, color analyst (Pat did not rate well), field reporting, pre and post game shows and technical quality.

The Blue Jays broadcast team ranked 26th of 30.

Play-by-play averaged 3.4 of 5. Apparently many wrote in that they would like Dan Shulman do more (all) of the games. Not a surprise. I think we all fell that way. The trouble is that I don’t think Shulman wants to do 162 games a year.

Color? 2.83, apparently 3rd worst in among the 30 teams. Pat is not loved. I did have hopes that he would be replaced this season, but we never did learn the Sportsnet’s plans for the season.

The field reporting got a 3.59. Hazel Mae is loved.

Overall average was 3.44.

The lowest rated broadcast was the Tigers, their overall rating was 3.05.

The top rated broadcast was the Mets, 4.91. The few times I’ve seen them I’ve enjoyed. David Cone is terrific.

I think this stuff is unfair:

Just because they are well known, or at least Rowdy is well known, this gets in the news. With only one side of the story told and with Rowdy’s draft signing bonus listed in the story. And telling us that the minimum wage in the MLB is a half million, not noting that Rowdy hasn’t had a full season in the majors yet, and wasn’t likely to this year either.

I get that it is bad that landlords aren’t getting the money they expected. I also think it is bad that I’m not getting the money I expected. I don’t expect my story on CBC.

Tom Verducci, at SI.com, has a story telling us that Rob Manfred and MLB “Still have a way out”.

Of course there is a way out , but that would take real negotiation. So far we haven’t seen any sign of negotiation, we’ve seen ultimatums, it has to be our way.

I do like this bit:

“He’s being the pancake commissioner, where ‘I’ll flip anywhere I want to,’” said player agent Scott Boras, the maestro of metaphor and the sultan of simile. “When you negotiate publicly, once you say it, if you go down a different road you lose credibility. When he said on draft day ‘100 percent we’re going to have baseball,’ the commissioner said there’s a chicken in every pot.”

And I agree with his:

Manfred told me last week that all 30 teams have been unified with him throughout negotiations. If that’s still the case–that no team is splintering in favor of no season–then he should be empowered to make one more offer that continues to move further toward the players. The mere possibility of a grievance has proved to be a powerful force.

But I think the owners have their backs up and don’t want to make any concessions. They want to show they run things.

Anyway, it is a good piece, go read it.

Wouldn’t it be great to get to talk about an actual baseball game again some day?