Baseball in 2025: Storm Clouds Forming

Some things to keep an eye on

As I was in a fog at 3AM waiting for the MLB season to start in Tokyo this week, I was browsing the sports section and came across three articles that help describe the states of MLB and the sport of baseball as we head into to the 2025 season:

1. Eugene Emeralds plan to relocate after stadium efforts fall short (Oregon Live): “After four years of extensive efforts to secure a long-term home in Eugene, the Eugene Emeralds have reached a difficult conclusion: the future of professional baseball in the Emerald Valley is coming to a certain end,” a release from the Emeralds said. “The organization has explored multiple options, including a proposed stadium at the Lane County Fairgrounds and potential renovations to PK Park.”

   

   Look at that graphic. Their current stadium was just built in 2010! It was good enough by MLB standards then. How is it not good enough today? This article goes into the modern amenities of PK Park: MiLB: PK Park.

   It’s a shared facility with the University of Oregon Ducks, so it’s going to be state-of-the-art with that Nike funding. For the fans, it’s got 4,000 seats, easy parking and a hi-def scoreboard. The players get plush locker rooms and a synthetic playing surface that won’t turn into mud puddles in the Oregon rain.

   So what changed? Starting in 2020, MLB realized they have to start treating minor leaguers like people, not equipment. They got pay raises and other benefits, one of which was requiring the stadiums they spend their summers in to meet certain standards. The stadiums were graded on a points scale detailed here. Locker rooms were to be expanded, weight rooms and nutrition departments added, field quality upgraded, lighting improvements, etc.

   Even newer parks like PK Park needed to be upgraded. For an older park like Municipal Stadium in San Jose, it makes sense to do things like “instituting padded outfield walls”. The new ones were already mainly funded by municipalities or counties for tens of millions of dollars. And now they’ve been forced to come up with funding for these new additions that in some cases there isn’t even space on the property for.

   

   Built in 1942, Excite Ballpark in San Jose, CA needed some upgrades

   I’m all for minor leaguers being given the resources needed to succeed and grow their careers as they pursue a life in the big leagues. A livable wage, nutrition, weight rooms, a field with proper drainage so you don’t end up like Mickey Mantle tearing your knee apart chasing a fly ball. But the low-level minors are still the equivalent of your first job. My first job? I had to relocate to Salt Lake City, move into an apartment complex on the basement floor where I was the only tenant who didn’t speak Spanish (I relearned all the words related to clothes and laundry quickly, though), with kitchen cabinets that fell apart and no closet space to store my hockey bag, so it sat behind my couch fouling the air like a Febreeze air freshener with their worst-selling scent: Jock Strap. Was it first-class? No, but it’s what I could manage as an accounting clerk.

   

   It wasn’t pretty, but it worked (actually this is a screenshot from The Sims from Reddit)

   My point is that these minor league teams and cities already operate at razor thin margins and are really doing their best to provide entertainment and also a good home base for players to develop. But not every level needs to be the Big Leagues, especially if it forces teams to sell or relocate. When you have a rich daddy (aka MLB) and they still refuse to help upgrade a stadium to their standards that they just changed, then we get the second worst thing in minor league baseball today: Diamond Baseball Holdings buying all these teams (over two dozen so far) and merging them into one huge portfolio, which is a story for another day. Hopefully the Emeralds are able to come to a solution that doesn’t fuck over the city of Eugene and their fan base that’s been coming to the park since 1955.

2. Tampa Bay Rays announce they won’t move forward with stadium deal (Tampa Bay Times): “After careful deliberation, we have concluded we cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment," (Rays owner Stuart) Sternberg said in a statement. "A series of events beginning in October that no one could have anticipated led to this difficult decision. Our commitment to the vitality and success of the Rays organization is unwavering. We continue to focus on finding a ballpark solution that serves the best interests of our region, Major League Baseball, and our organization."

   

   Tropicana Field currently with the top blown off

   Major League Baseball, a multi-billion dollar enterprise in 2025, will begin this season, and possibly one or two more afterwards, with 2 of its 30 franchises playing in minor league facilities. Sutter Health Park in Sacramento (capacity 14,000) and George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa (capacity 11,000), both outdoor parks in climates with brutal summer weather, will house the A’s and Rays.

   There’s plenty of blame to go around for these situations (but no, Hurricane Milton was not guided by Jewish Space Lasers into Tropicana Field to help the Yankees… stop scrolling Twitter). Mainly, these are both the results of 25 years of feckless ownership and commissionership on baseball’s side. The A’s had so many stadium brochures over the past two decades it felt like a real estate agent bombarding your email with new listings every week. Some blame the local and state governments. Guess what? Mayors and city councils get voted in and out of office almost as regularly as A’s All-Stars get traded in and out of town. The one constant is John Fisher’s ownership. He had countless restarts with new rosters of politicians at City Hall and never got a shovel in the ground once, all while leaving the Coliseum to rot and pocketing revenue sharing money from his peers. And now, though his Vegas dreams are still not guaranteed, he’s going to have come up with A BILLION DOLLARS from his own checking account to get his stadium on The Strip. I bet some of those deals in the East Bay look pretty good right about now.

   

   Sutter Health Park being renovated to house an MLB team this season

   As for the Rays and Stuart Sternberg, who’s been with the team since 2005, they’ve also operated on a lean budget for sparsely attended home crowds in an inadequate stadium. It’s been known since 1998 that Tropicana Field needed to be replaced (or at the very least maintain the building so the roof doesn’t blow off). The difference is they actually got the government to give them truckloads of cash for a new stadium and they still backed out. Now the rest of the owners are threatening to oust him for fucking up their one favorite pastime: robbing cities blind for overpriced, exclusive, luxury suite-filled new stadiums. Get your act together, MLB.

3. Giants sell 10% ownership stake to Sixth Street, S.F.-based private equity firm (San Francisco Chronicle): “"We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what's only made possible here," Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. "We believe in Larry and the leadership team's vision for this exciting new era, and we're proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success."

   

   This is gross. When you see the words “private equity”, run the other way. These firms are parasites that have been infecting companies around the country for years, getting stronger and more efficient with each sale, leaving behind dried-out husks where decent companies, good ideas, and comfortable livelihoods used to be. Now they’re infiltrating pro sports.

   Here’s the thing about private equity: they don’t give a shit about anything except how much money they can extract out of something before they sell it off.

   Sixth Street isn’t a sports fan. It’s one of those huge alien ships from Independence Day that just parked its destructive laser beam over Oracle Park. You know the GPS on that thing has the coordinates to every other pro stadium already programmed into it (unless we upload an Apple virus in time).

   

   I don’t think Mike Yastrzemski can outrun this (glad my Photoshop skills are still sharp)

   I’ve been in corporate America since 2008 (I graduated during the Great Recession caused by the preying on the working class with those foolish sub-prime mortgages). In those 17 years, I’ve seen it get worse. It’s a horde of high-level executives, with no real talent other than managing to obtain an MBA, moving from job to job, taking huge bonuses, cutting costs, and sending out PR releases with buzzwords like “drive growth”, “navigate change”, and “make an impact” (taken from an actual LinkedIn post). They have no feel for people or culture, just money and shareholder value.

   Here’s what’s coming to MLB and all pro sports as private equity gets its first slimy tentacle in the door: I worked at the corporate office of a national restaurant chain for six years. Despite what some co-workers might think, I did actually enjoy it there. And then in 2019, we were sold to a private equity firm for $700million. Our old, quaint office (with routine javelina sightings and occasional cubicle rattlesnakes) was sold to a land developer to turn into medium-density housing. We were moved into a bright office near TPC Scottsdale, complete with glass walls, half-cubicles and zero privacy. The first thing they did was axe any upper management or executive-level employee, no matter how long they’d been with the company. In their place came a slew of talentless hacks whose resume showed an incredible track record of mediocrity. The company culture went in the gutter, revenues dipped, and good people were either let go or fled a sinking ship. This is what awaits your baseball team.

   And you might not even notice it at first. They know better than to mess with the baseball operations side, just like all those empty suits that PE brought in weren’t involved with the culinary operations. No, we got a new CEO, who happened to be the one-time CEO of Blockbuster when they went out of business (CEOs never get demoted, they just get rehomed). He lasted a few months until Covid shutdowns hit and then he “retired”. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going (out the door). Before that happened, he had brought his Blockbuster buddies aboard, one as the CFO and one as Director of HR. They didn’t last long. The CFO signed on with a lucrative bonus, of which half was paid day 1, while the second half was earned if he stayed for one year. Guess when he sent his resignation in? One year and one day after his hire date, meaning he basically committed white collar robbery because he sure as hell didn’t provide any value other than fucking up our paychecks when his auto-signature wouldn’t load correctly.

   This is what happens now as owners focus solely on maximizing franchise values. Instead of pivoting and attempting to live within their new financial restraints as the TV money bubble shakes out, they are just going to sell the soul of baseball to private equity assholes who don’t see you and me as fans, just as “temporary seat occupants”. Don’t be surprised if, when the A’s finally get to Vegas, they’re just called the Paulson & Paulson LLC Athletic Department.

   

   Happy Opening Day next week!