Cost Cutting Will Cost MLB Coverage Its Soul

Major League Baseball recently offered long-term employees over the age of 50 a generous buyout package to leave the league and enjoy an early retirement or move on to another career. While any company is well within its rights to do so, the departures have left baseball missing part of its soul.

The Covid-19 pandemic hurt all sports hard, and sports media outlets as well. Still, it is exhausting to hear MLB talk about their losses. Most of the names I knew left MLB Advanced Media after iconic roles with the company. Others were involved in intricate programming that made up the now-defunct MLB Productions, which was morphed into MLB Network before the 2015 season.

When longtime columnist Richard Justice announced that he was departing, it made the rounds in both media and social media. Justice was an executive columnist for MLB for nine years after a long career at the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun, and Washington Post.

Justice alone is newsworthy, but in the days that followed a host of other longtime reporters announced the same thing.

Ken Gurnick, who covered the Los Angeles Dodgers since 1982, and was will MLB since the inception of MLB.COM in 2001. Greg Johns, a journalist with 41 years of experience, his last 10 covering the Mariners for MLB. T.R. Sullivan covered the Texas Rangers for 32 years beginning with the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram before moving to MLB.com. Joe Frisaro covered the Miami Marlins since 2002 for MLB.COM. 

There are dozens of other employees and the purpose of this column was not to simply list them all.  They ranged from producers to IT experts to journalists and much more. They make up part of the soul of baseball.

Upon speaking with a handful of the many people who took the buyout, none of them could speak to me about it as per the conditions of their departure.

“You have a belt-tightening commissioner,” one former MLB executive told me. This person was not part of the 2020 buyout.

“The league needed to dump bodies.  Whatever the reason, older bodies are too expensive. This was a way to avoid layoffs. It’s kind of classy, but the heart and soul of the long-standing tradition are from people who are now going to now find new things. I think you’ll find these people resurfacing elsewhere.”

I worked for MLB Advanced Media from 2001 to 2008. Then, the outlet was struggling to be taken seriously as a journalistic outlet. These writers were instrumental in telling the stories of a sport desperate for good storytelling.

Over the years, MLBAM as it was known, became a tech empire that the league drew profits from.  When I heard owners commenting about the financial losses that the pandemic was impacting, I wanted to reply by asking about the incredible profits from the 2019 season, 2018, 2017, 2016…. How far should we go back?

The games will go on without them, but part of what drew me to work there and cover that sport was the personalities that made up the game. Under former Commissioner Bud Selig, this sport thrived. Sure, there was a fair share of controversies, and I attended two congressional hearings about steroids in the iconic building that was attacked last week horrifically.  Selig was far from a perfect commissioner, but he was a great boss. During his tenure, the league attendance set their all-time high record in 2005.  That record, will not be broken anytime soon.

Current MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said during the 2020 World Series that holding the pandemic-stricken 2020 season cost the sport approximately $8 billion. Any business showing those kinds of losses would be expected to find cost-cutting. 

To be clear, none of these writers were forced to take the buyout. However, offering it at such a young age of 50 (yes, 50 is young!  I’m 46), invites too many talented people to leave when the sport needs the storytellers the most.

For MLB to make this offer, it shows that they do not value the journalism experience. My perception is that this league is more into clicks and tweets than articles and history.

While that might work for other companies in this digital age, that’s not what baseball is about. This sport’s history is a source of great pride for its consumers.

“While this is not good for baseball losing people who have countless years of experience,” one former Wall Street executive told me. “The people who are taking the buyout will look back and understand the economics behind why MLB offered it in the first place.”

The possibility of layoffs still exists in the league offices.

I’ve said on many radio shows.  A station could play a sound bite from Mike Trout to open a segment and give a free station t-shirt to the first listener who could identify him by voice.  Yet, anyone reading this column could recognize the voice of Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, or even Barry Bonds.

Attendance in baseball is on a 15-year downturn. Leaving 2020 out of the conversation (no fans were allowed due to Covid-19 until the playoffs and World Series), MLB attendance is down 1.62% in 2019, following a 4% drop the season before.  When I worked at MLB, we did shows on the attendance records between 2004 and 2007.  That feels like ancient history today.

The labor deal between the players and owners expires after the 2021 season. There have been conflicting reports about the financial viability of playing another season without fans, yet the players are insisting it all starts on time.

The two sides are so diametrically opposed to each other. The sport is evolving with the advent of launch-angle, and pitcher “openers” as opposed to “starters.” The union wants to preserve the old way players were paid.

I was against the 2020 season. I thought the league could have canceled the campaign and used Covid as the reason. Then, Manfred and MLBPA head Tony Clark should meet somewhere and quarantine for 7, 10, or 14 days. Then, don’t come out of a room until they have a new labor deal.

People would have been upset at the idea of no baseball last year. That won’t even come close to the vitriol that sport will see from fans if a vaccine is here and life is returning to normal, and there is no baseball then because of a strike or a lockout.

To the MLB employees that took the buyout. Congratulations. You are in a good position to do some great work in the next step of your individual careers. Or, enjoy a much-deserved retirement.  Your departure is baseball’s loss, not your own.

Still, MLB Network will continue to produce content. MLB.com will have a reporter to cover every team. Without the new “50+” group of former MLB employees, it simply can’t be as good. It won’t have the soul that it is greatly missing.