Are the Brewers destined to suffer regardless of how the work stoppage goes? (09.03.2026)

0:00Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why TradePros trust Fiber cement, Party Backer Board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking, and help block moisture. Chosen in over 40 million Kitchen's and bathrooms, Party Backer Board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating Home Depot, Lowe's, and floor into core stores. For more information, visit JamesHearty.com slash HeartyBacker. Hello everybody, welcome to MicroBrew Midweek Edition. My name is JR Radcliffe, host of the show I am with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and what a start to the week for the Milwaukee Breweries against the Chicago Cubs. This would have been a very different conversation after Monday's game when the Cubs absolutely destroyed the Breweries. Hit nine home runs, several of those runs off of Andrew Vomit.

1:02It was a disaster from the jump and that, you know, you could feel the unease maybe creeping in a little bit. The Breweries still had a seven-game lead in the National League Central. You could maybe feel like, is there a scenario where the Cubs win all four games and things get a little tight? No, that's not what happened. The Breweries bounced back from an early 30 deficit with Robert Gaston on the mound and come back to win nine to four on Tuesday. Wednesday night, Jacobus Ravsky, not good. It did not. It was not a good outing for him at all, but they still piled up the offense in complete Breweries fashion. All these singles and walks and Cooper Pratt doing a ton of stuff and everybody contributing they win nine to five on Wednesday. They are now nine games up in the National League Central. If you can believe it on September, it'll be September 3rd. They have a magic number of 14 to clinch the division. It is single digits to grab a playoff spot. It's of course happening for them in Waukey Breweries. The question, the question we're left with, though, is the pitching. Kyle Harrison and Jacobus Ravsky both really struggling in their outings this week.

2:05Those are obviously two of the guys you expect to rely on when you get into October. And we did not see Harrison in a position where he looked good. He has not looked good really since he came back from injury or at least some of the results have been good, but he himself has not looked fully calibrated. I didn't think for Jacobus Ravsky really since the all-star break. Now, some of that you have to wonder, are they ramping down a little bit? They're not going to tell you their pitching plan. So it's going to be a little bit complicated to try and parse exactly what's happening, but we haven't seen Mr. Ravsky hit those top flight velocities in a while. We haven't seen his comfort level with any of the visiting mounds, which I think is kind of a growing concern through his bullpen on the mound on Monday to try and get the feel for what was going on at Rigby Field. He seemed to be battling that again Wednesday, you know, controls an issue. He was walking some guys, give up a home run. It just we just haven't seen the best case scenarios for either one of those guys now in a while. And that is something to watch because you'll need those two guys to be at their very best if you're going to make a run in October.

3:05Even this Cubs team that the brewers are on the cusp of winning the season series against one more win. I'll do the trick. Even this team I think is still a really bad matchup for them if they get into the postseason. Any one of the NL teams that qualify will be very, very good. The Padres we saw that they're very good. The Phillies are red hot. They lost on Wednesday, but they're red, red hot. They'll be a very tough team to be. You know, the diamond backs are kind of the only team on the fringes there that I guess I don't feel too worried about, but there's a pretty big line of demarcation between those teams and everybody else in the NL. You're going to get some really good teams in the NL. So obviously that's all something to be concerned about with the brewers. If you didn't think they were winning the central before, you got to feel it now. They're odds of winning the central are well north of 98 percent at this point, both both fan graphs and baseball America, where I should say baseball reference, giving them pretty much every benefit of the doubt to win the division at this point. What an excellent couple days at Wrigley Field for the Milwaukee brewers. 18 runs in two days. Nothing just needs that after giving up 17 and losing 17 to three on Monday.

4:08What about us back now for this episode of the podcast bringing in a guest Eugene Friedman. You may know him from social media. He is a lawyer, a labor lawyer in particular, has worked with a number of outfits works with air traffic controllers right now, but previously had written about baseball for a couple prominent publications. And he follows the labor stuff in baseball, which of course, as we get closer to the end of the 2026 season in our eyes turned to 2027, that will be the prevailing storyline. Hopefully we're brewers fans. There is a storyline of a deep postseason run as well. But what comes next in 2027 right now? Lot of pessimism for that. And it sure looks like we're going to get a work stoppage, probably going to leak into deep into next year in terms of like February, March. Lot of people are afraid we'll miss some games. Some people will tell you that we're going to miss maybe even the whole season. I personally, as negative as I could be, I would never get there. I just don't think that's going to happen. I think it's crazy to think that it will.

5:10However, it's difficult to know what to make of it because everything that gets reported is essentially somebody posturing. It's one side or the other saying that they're unhappy with the other. And it's very difficult to know where they stand, what the timeline would be, what the ultimate stumbling blocks are going to be. If there is a way forward, even though the players insist that there will never be a salary cap, you know, can there be a system developed that allows for that? If there is no salary cap for the owners to still be happy, these are very difficult questions to answer. I'm not sure anybody even has those answers yet. I think you got to get much closer to the deadline for anyone to come up with some semblance of a plan here. And so I brought in Eugene Friedman because one thing, one question I feel like I don't have the answer to, maybe still don't, is what specifically is going to happen here for the Milwaukee Brewers. And really it's the Brewers, really the Tampa Bay rays and Cleveland Guardians are the other two teams in this boat. Small market teams that do spend because my personal feeling is that this is maybe pessimistic.

6:12It feels like they are doomed either way. Either we come through this process, there is no salary cap and teams like the Dodgers and the Metz and the Yankees can still walk around with impunity and spend, spend, spend and they're still an inherent disadvantage for the Milwaukee Brewers and teams that legitimately are a smaller market that want to compete at the highest level in the world series. Or they do get some version of a salary cap and the compromises hurt the Brewers just as badly. Some of the obvious ones would be a reduction in the number of years that a players under team control before they hit arbitration or before they become free agents. The Brewers make the most out of, I mean, they're rosters full of pre-arbitration guys. This is what they do. And to lose some of that control would hinder their ability to compete at a high level. The other thing is you could see an international draft or implementation of a broader draft scheme that could negate what the Brewers have done, the inroads that they have made in Latin American countries. They put a lot of resources there and they have, you know, obviously Jackson Churrio, Hazel Smade, Luis Pena to name a few.

7:12They've seen some fruit from those laborers. Now, you know, some of you could talk about morally, some of these things make sense. Like, you know, maybe there should be an international draft. There was, I think, was it the Tigers or is there a report this week of a 12-year-old kid with a preliminary agreement with one of these teams? That seems nonsense. And there's always been sort of an opaque feel to what goes on in Latin American countries when it comes to, you know, finding talent, signing talent. Maybe it's a good thing to have an international draft. Maybe it's a good thing that players don't have as, you know, have one less year of team control before they hit free agency so that they can get paid fully what they're worth. But if the Brewers, again, I've called this a single issue voter thing before, if the walkie-brewers are your single issue, those two things losing some of that stuff is going to hurt the brewer's ability to compete. And then throw in the fact that if there is a salary cap, there's also going to be a salary floor and teams like teams that are struggling right now, like the pirates and the Rockies. They're going to be spending on players, whether or not they're even competitive, that's kind of a separate issue.

8:13But they're still going to be throwing contracts at guys that the brewers might want to get for cheap. I know no one is a fan of Luis Renghifo right now, although he just tore his ACL, which is still, I think, kind of a bummer. But he obviously wasn't very good for the Brewers and then went to the Padres and had more success. But that's the type of player that they just wouldn't be able to get if there's a salary floor because somebody will have already given him a two-year deal, one of the smaller teams. I do think the Brewers and any well-run organization can still find sort of those inefficiencies, those ways to succeed in pretty much any system. I think that ultimately they would figure it out, but it sure feels like no matter what happens, whether there is or is not a salary cap. The Milwaukee Brewers will come out at best in the same place where they are right now, which honestly they probably would prefer. But it still would be a system that hurts them in some way, shape, or form. I do think being a small market team that spends and tries to compete, they are at a unique disadvantage here through these negotiations. I don't know what the system looks like where we come forward, get back to baseball in

9:132027, and there isn't a salary cap. I don't have a vision for what that's supposed to look like since the owners seem so staunchly supportive of it. This is the same week where the Los Angeles Angels just got sold for four billion Arty Moreno who took over that team after they won a World Series in the early 2000s. That team has been one of the worst in baseball. They haven't won a playoff series since 2009. They haven't even been in the playoffs since 2014. They had two of the greatest players of this generation. If not the two greatest in Show Hey O'Tani and Mike Trout and never won a playoff game with them, he has had zero success as an owner. Not to mention, I was at that stadium last year, not impressed. Your mileage may vary. That's not a baseball cathedral by any means. He bought it for 700 some million and now he just sold it for four billion. I don't think the owners are necessarily out there crying poverty, but it's pretty clear to me that they could handle continuing without a salary cap. The fact that they want one, it's to benefit them.

10:13It's to benefit their bottom line and to keep costs under control. This is not owners of baseball teams are not hurting. They are able to turn around for an franchise. It's even the worst of them and make significant profit. That is a very difficult thing for them to try and sell the idea that it would be better for baseball to have a salary cap. You introduce the competitive balance piece. Like what I was saying, I feel like the teams that are already competitive would lose out here. For me, it's difficult to sell that angle, but at the same time, you'd like to see baseball. Specifically Milwaukee Brewer's baseball, successful Milwaukee Brewer's baseball. Better to know what format would best fit them. Wanted to try to get to some of that with Eugene Friedman, who again comes from a very pro labor background. That is not a secret here. I don't want to imply here that he is deeply, deeply neutral and looking at it from both sides. He's looking at it from that lens. Keep that in mind as you hear him talk, but he knows a lot about this stuff and has a really good sense of what this is going to look like and how it's going to shake out. Sunday, I always say Sunday because we record on Sunday, but Monday, I will be back with

11:17Abel Leeve, a special guest who is going to be my co-host for the week. That will be a tease. I'm not going to reveal. Maybe because who knows something could go wrong and it doesn't happen, but we'll be looking back at the week. This Cup series, a lot of fun. I do not know, of course, what's going to happen on Thursday, but even if the Cup's win that game, the Brewers splitting two or the four, perfectly acceptable outcome at Rigby Field and certainly one that has solidified the Brewers chances of just locking up this division very quickly and hopefully figuring something out with that pitching. If they are able to lock it up within the next 10, 12 days, sure is going to help their cause as they try to negotiate, getting guys some innings reductions, but keeping them busy. Tough puzzle for Pat Murphy and for the Milwaukee Brewers to figure out, but it's going to feel a lot more comfortable with Kyle Harrison and Jacob and Zaraoski are truly on point. We have not seen the best versions of them. That is a concern I have. But the Brewers are getting it done on the field. The wins are still rolling in 87 wins heading in to Thursday.

12:17And since I've not even read them, welcoming the Brewers in over the weekend before they before the Cubs come back, American family field that comes will be back on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week. All right. Here is my conversation with Eugene Friedman. It's a labor conversation. But hopefully it's not too much of a bummer in light of the Brewers having this great success on Tuesday and Wednesday in Chicago. But hopefully there is a little insight in there. And we will chat with you again later this week. Bye everybody. My guess is Eugene Friedman. He is with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a long career in lobbying and knows a lot about labor. He knows a lot about baseball, wrote for baseball, perspectives back in the day, heartball times, I believe. He's followed this baseball thing pretty closely and follows the labor side very closely. And if you see him on social media, you've probably seen him. And I thought he would be an interesting impartial observer to what's going on in the labor dispute or pending labor dispute in Major League Baseball between the owners and the players' association. And specifically, as it might impact the Milwaukee Brewers. So Eugene, thank you for doing this.

13:18I think I first just have to hit for our listeners. How does somebody who knows so much about air traffic controllers relate to baseball? I know that's probably something you've had to explain before. Yeah, so I'm a labor lawyer. That's my profession. And I've worked for a couple other unions before coming to Natka where I've been involved in collective bargaining, lobbying, as you've said, also grievance arbitrations and a host of other union side labor relations, lawyer and type activities. And you're an Orioles guy, is that correct? Yes, yes. I live in Maryland. I've been here since 1986. And I was an Orioles fan actually before that. But it actually worked out great. Do your memories go back to 1982 when the Orioles and the Brewers were facing off for the American league east?

14:19So I don't remember 82 much in terms of the Orioles. I actually lived in New York at the time and I was a meds fan, but I had to pick an American league team and I picked the Orioles because I really liked Eddie Murray. Sure. I had to hate the Yankees being a meds fan. I don't think it's the same way anymore. But I do remember that 82 Brewers team. And it was probably at the time it was the first non-New York team where I could name everybody in the starting lineup. So I think I guess I was eight in 82. So. All right. Obviously, I wanted to bring you here to talk about the labor situation. Brewers fans, I think it's a complicated setup for many Brewers fans having lost to the Dodgers last year, a fully fleshed out version of the Dodgers. It's very easy to call for a salary cap. I also think Brewers fans are somewhat aware that if there is any sort of salary cap restrictions is going to come with elements changed on the other side that might also hurt the Brewers

15:23situation as it stands now. But from a bigger picture, I guess I'm curious. I'm sort of led to believe without the media literacy to know some of this stuff, I feel like everything I read is posturing in any reports of here's what the union says, here's what the owners say. I feel like everything is just a game. And I don't actually know where anybody stands. When owners say we're going to miss the entire 2027 season or some people say that maybe it'll only be a couple of weeks. Like I don't believe either side of that. I wonder if you have a sense, like a temperature of where you think this stands, how long you would anticipate baseball being absent from our lives in early 2027. And I mean, if I'm right, if just everything out there is just read it as posturing until we get closer to the deadline. Yeah, so I would say a couple things. First, normally in collective bargaining, the parties negotiate behind closed doors. There's not any kind of public statements unless it's like a public sector entity where

16:24you might be potentially losing services, things like transit. Sorry, my beagle is thinking I'm talking to him. We love a beagle on the podcast. We love that. Yes. So it's unusual to have public statements. That said, most industries don't have 30 groups of media following them around. At all times. Sure, that makes sense. So it's not something where people are even asking questions. If you knew that General Motors and UAW's contract were about to expire, you'd be in infinite minority. But in this case, everybody knows that Major League Baseball and the Plague's associations, the B.A. is going to expire in December of this year and that based on last expiration

17:31and all of the statements from management, they intend to lock out the players, which is a management tactic. It's considered economic warfare. It's the opposite side of the equation of a strike. It's basically management saying, we are closing our doors and we are not going to let you work. You know, it's to an extent, writing off their nose despite their face. But it is a tactic to gain leverage in the collective bargaining process. Now with baseball specifically and other sports, doing it during the free agent period, is potentially create more leverage just because players would be unable to sign new contracts. They would be unable to shop their services around because in a lockout, basically all

18:32work ceases, including the ability to sign new contracts. And obviously the salary cap seems to be the central full-crumble of this. That owners want to see something like that implemented and they don't want to go forward without that. But players seem to be able pretty easily to rally around the idea that they do not want a salary cap. It's a very simple thing to say and easy then to kind of keep your ranks supportive of. Do you think there is any scenario where there is a salary cap as we understand a salary cap to be? I realize everything is going to be compromised. But do you think that is at least possible despite how staunchly against something like that the players union has been? So I have had a couple conversations with people on the players association side. I don't believe that there is a possibility of a salary cap in the sense that we know it in the NFL or the NBA.

19:34That said, from my perspective, viewing it externally, the existing system with tax thresholds operates as a soft salary cap because there are disincentives and in some cases significant disincentives to exceed certain thresholds in the budget. Because as you start exceeding those thresholds, you wind up paying as much as double for that one salary because you are at the point where you are paying 100% tax on the additional salary over that threshold. It does feel like there are thresholds in place now and it has not stopped. That seems like the Dodgers or the Yankees from spending spending spending. So I imagine they would have to be a little different than they are now. I will just say this. The Yankees are operating with a very different mindset in the Halstein-Brenner years than in

20:38his father's years. George was a win-win-win. That was the only thing that mattered to him. Hal seems to be of the mindset that this is his income stream and he wants to maximize his income. Winning is not the top priority for him. It is unfair to lump those two together. The Dodgers. They are the North Star. The Death Star of the Milwaukee Brewer's world right now. In the world where there are some of these things get put in place where there are greater penalties for teams that spend beyond a certain threshold. Does it change anything? Do you think, even if there is a salary cap, does it change anything? Do we see a dramatic shift in who has the power and major league baseball? A lot of people have been playing this out and said, maybe not. It is not like the salary cap is going to get so low that the Dodgers are going to have to trade half their players. They are still going to have an advantage there. I don't know if you have thought about that or gained that out. I suspect that if there were a salary cap, like I said, I don't expect there to be one,

21:44there would be a phasing period. Then contracts would have some kind of legacy effect where they would be exempt from any cap. To say, all of a sudden you have to stop at $250 million when the Dodgers are way above that. The bets are way above that. For all of the concern about the Dodgers ruining baseball, the bets are spending more than the Dodgers. They are significantly worse than almost every team internationally. It's true. I do think Bruce fans somewhat have to keep that in mind. I think they understand that the Dodgers are a well-run organization. It is more than the dollar amount. But all things being equal in the minds of Bruce fans who have got two well-run organizations and the Dodgers have the advantage because they have the money. I do think the Brewers are in a unique position.

22:45I think they are in an unfortunate, unique position where this hurts them either way. The Dodgers still have the advantages on the other side of this that make them a market favorite if the two were to meet in an NLCS, let's say. Or they lose some of the things that they themselves take advantage of. The huge number of pre-arbitration players who are on their roster, the way that they develop and draft and have access to international players, things like that, without an international draft. What do you think when you look at the Brewers situation? Because they are a small market team. They don't spend, but they do win. Are they in a situation where they can't benefit here? Like no matter what happens, the Brewers are going to be a loser at the end of the day. I think there are a lot of different things at play. I know we're talking about a salary cap and presumably commensurate salary floor. All of the other leagues have a salary floor associated with the cap. The league has proposed a floor associated with the cap, which would require other teams

23:50presumably to participate more in the free agent market, potentially signing players. There are also other proposals in management's proposals that have been made public. One of them would be creating an international draft. As you said, the Brewers have been more successful than most teams. Creating international free agents. There are other restrictions that they put into their proposal, such as you can't sign a player before a certain age. In terms of the US draft, that potentially I don't know the Brewers' history of drafting, whether they draft more college players or high school players. But not being able to draft high school players means that any scouting advantage that the Brewers have both internationally and domestically, they would lose something there.

24:52Obviously they're doing something right. They're developing players much more successfully than most teams. The Dodgers are actually one of the best at developing players. It's the Razer and other teams that is extremely successful at developing players, both international and domestically drafted players. Those advantages under management's proposal would be significantly reduced because you wouldn't be able to go out and sign those 16-year-old international players. You'd have to wait till they turned 18 and then draft them. The draft theoretically would even be playing field there and the Raeys and the Brewers and Dodgers would all lose something there. On the domestic side, not being able to draft high school players, if you have that scouting advantage and you're drafting better high school players than your competition, you wouldn't be able to do that. You'd see more developed players coming out of college and everybody can see how they're

25:53performing at that higher level. The scouting advantage you might have domestically would also be reduced. There are teams that are just whiffing year after year in the draft and for a decade or more, the Orioles weren't even playing on the international market. Some teams just chose that philosophy. Samuel Bessio is the Orioles first international signee who's made the majors. They've obviously signed him to a longer term deal and I think it's kind of open their eyes to say, actually, we do have to compete on the international market if we want to have a competitive roster. Yes, so I feel like the answer is yes and maybe there's another question for you. This is just maybe your opinion. The Raes have been to two World Series. The Brewers, of course, have not since 1982. Are they disadvantaged? Is this system where they are doing those things you're talking about?

26:53The Raes and Brewers are just two ideal examples here. They are developing. They are finding ways to win on the fringes and then the postseason comes around. We've always been led to believe through moneyball and everything else. Postseason is just its own animal. It's luck. It's a lot of factors, but it's hard to feel that way when you're the breweries and you just have not actually cracked through it. Even when you have home-filled advantage, you haven't cracked through. Are they disadvantaged in the postseason or is this just honestly just a run of bad luck when they get to the postseason that they actually could win the World Series in 2026, having done what they've done? I would say a couple things. I've read a lot of what Joshi and his written on this subject. For those who don't know, he was one of the original founders of baseball prospectus and he writes a newsletter now. He does a lot of analysis, particularly on the area of competitive balance. There is a correlation between salary, expenditure and winning, but it is not a very strong correlation.

28:00There is also a very... In terms of making the playoffs and baseball has fewer teams in the playoffs than the other sports by ratio and raw numbers, baseball does have more teams make the finals. Then other sports do. When you look at other sports, football in particular, you're going to see the same teams going to the Super Bowl year after year after year. Is that because they are inherently better at running their franchise or have they just had a cycle where they've drafted certain players and those players have worked out to be the best in the league? Then they have them for their whole careers because they don't have the same flexibility to leave that they do in baseball. The other aspect of this, I think, that's worth noting is there are plenty of teams that are in the

29:05brewers and raised situations who choose not to compete. Their preference is to just earn as much profit as possible. There is significant revenue sharing in baseball. For example, each team contributes 48% of its local baseball-related revenue to a leave-wide pool that then is evenly distributed. You retain 52% of your local revenue, which is ticket sales, which is your parking that's owned by the team, which is your concessions, which is your souvenirs. 52% is retained and 48% is shared. I don't think most people realize that. They think the Dodgers, well, the Dodgers are a little bit unique because they went into bankruptcy under their last ownership group. They have a court-related exception on their TV package, their local TV package, where

30:07they don't have to contribute quite as much as other teams. Every other team is contributing the same 48% and then receiving out of the league pool the same percent. For the teams that have chosen, and I really feel bad for their fan bases because the Orioles did this for quite while themselves, but the pirates, the reds, markets that are equivalent in size to Milwaukee, and some that are significantly larger than Milwaukee and Baltimore, such as Miami, they've just chosen not to spend resources on team development, on player development, on signing players, on signing their own players long-term. I think those teams are reaping huge profits, whereas the brewers are spending on their own players, they'll sometimes bring in a free agent as well.

31:11They're not at the very bottom of the league in terms of expenditures. They are playing the game, I would say, the right way because they're trying to win and they're making a profit. The Dodgers, of course, are making a larger profit, but if you think about it, they also cost more to buy the team than the brewers cost to buy. The ownership group should be reaping some market-related revenue gains because they invested more money to buy the team. But then there are some owners that have been there for so long, like Jerry Weinstorf for the White Sucks, who is not maximizing his spending and he's in a large market. He is always one of the hawks in the labor negotiations. He just wants to make his bigger profit as possible and really doesn't care about the other aspects. Do you think any changes would activate those teams?

32:12The pirates and Reds, that's one of the concerns, is that with the salary floor, they could still do what you're talking about and play for the bottom line and nothing else, but maybe there are now more teams like the brewers and rays who are going to be competitive and make things more difficult for the brewers and rays. That is very possible because some of those teams are going to have to step up at least on paper. They won't have to do it the first year, I think it will be the kind of thing that is phased in if it were adopted. But yeah, they're going to be able to compete on the free agent market. They're going to have the ability to sign their own players a little bit easier and not because, and this is the interesting part, it's not because the players become less valuable. It's because the market for those players disappears. So instead of having the maps and the Yankees and the Cubs and the Dodgers and the Padres

33:12who is another relatively smaller market bidding on those free agents, they're not going to be able to because they're going to be added or above the cap. So it will artificially reduce the market for those free agents and then those teams will have a greater ability to sign them. But the players might say, you know what, I don't want to sign here because I'm not getting my market value. I'll just go somewhere else that's closer to my home that I want to live in and perhaps the diamond backs will stop getting a lot of places. People want to live in Arizona and close to their spring training because they get an extra six or eight weeks living at home compared to anywhere else that they might live. So anyway, there are pros and cons with all of these things. I would say that a salary cap is definitely not a penalty and as I explained, for many of the players, it's going to be a huge cut in earning potential.

34:17What are do you think the stumbling blocks to peace? If not just solely the salary cap piece, is there one or two other things that we should be following and you know, to go back to that question, like how bad do you think this is going to be? Yeah, so let me take the second part first. I don't think we know how it's going to be. I would say as these negotiations progress, the most important thing to pay attention is, are they talking about similar things? So right now they're not. The players association is talking about the current system essentially and a soft floor similar to the soft ceiling that exists. The management side is talking about a hard cap and a hard floor. So those things are different topics. They're different solutions. And the players association is also talking about more revenue sharing, which really gets

35:20to the public argument that management is making. They're making the argument that teams can't compete because revenue is so disparate. But they're not arguing. Teams can't compete because they can't spend. They can spend. They're just choosing not to spend. So if you were to try to solve the problem management that's talking about, you would actually go with the players proposal. But you know, it's more philosophical than that. They want salary security, you know, kind of guarantees of what they're going to spend because that raises their franchise value. They know what their future expenditures are going to be. If you're buying a company and you know, well next year, you know, expenditures are going to be $220 million and then you're after 222 and then 226. And then so on and so forth, you don't have to worry about things quite as much as if

36:21it's unlimited, right? So that when they start to get on the same page, then you can kind of diagnose how long is this going to last? The other question is, you know, how likely is this war going to happen, right? And I think, you know, from my perspective, management really hasn't pushed for a hard cap since 1994, right? In 1994, Major League Baseball proposed a hard cap. It bargained a bad faith, which is a legal term under the National A Relations Act that was determined by both the National A Relations Board and then ultimately a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York, who is now a Supreme Court Justice. So all that being said is Major League Baseball bargained a bad faith by unilaterally implementing

37:29before reaching impasse. And I know these are a lot of technical legal terms. But when it did so, the remedy under the law is status quo anted, which basically means you go back to what you had before and then you're required to again bargaining good faith. So since then, Major League, and just to be clear, the commissioner was at the time outside council for Major League Baseball. He was the labor lawyer representing Major League Baseball in that bargaining and in that unfair labor practice dispute. So he's very familiar with what the requirements are, he's bargaining and so on and so forth. He was then, but he is aware of the risks for bargaining and bad faith much more now. I think management is, as you described it, I think posturing a little bit right now,

38:32they have some unity in the management ranks. There are a lot of new owners compared to the last time they went down this road. They did have a lock out last CBA expiration. The issues they were dealing with were somewhat different. They were working on what the thresholds would be, whether there would be additional thresholds, whether players would be compensated earlier in their careers. Anyway, I think ultimately this time, at least management seems more unified that they are going to push the salary cap issue harder and longer than they have before. That does put risk to future games because if management decides to close its doors, that means they're not opening spring training on time. If there's no agreement, that means they're not opening the regular season on time. If there's no agreement, management is deciding that it is not going to earn any revenues,

39:42but also that the players are not going to earn any salaries. Let me ask you one last question. Let's say the brewers in the race are the two best records in the various leagues this year. Let's say they meet in the World Series, or let's just say one of them wins the World Series. Hopefully it's the brewers for the listeners of the show. Does that alter the course of history? Because now the players have this poster child. You don't need to be in a big market to win. Does it change what comes next? Yeah, I think right now, particularly after the scuba trade, there was a lot of hue and cry about the Dodgers being able to do whatever they wanted and nobody being able to stop them. Part of that is the Dodgers had a very strong night league system and they were willing to part with three of their top prospects. Now they were at their top top prospects. They gave up three in their own top 10.

40:44I think one of them was definitely in the top 100 across the multiple rankings out there publicly. Any others were fringe top 100 types. Other teams could have made that trade. I don't think the Tigers were looking for Dodger prospects in particular. I think they were looking for the best package they could get. But I think that added to this public perception that the Dodgers have all the advantages. I think that that would dissipate quite a bit if the Dodgers lose early in the playoffs. And particularly if the Yankees also don't make or win the World Series. So, if it's as you suggested, the Brewers and the Rae is both in the World Series, it's

41:45a Cinderella scenario either way. Both are relatively low small markets. I'm never going to call anything a small market. I'm going to always put that relative qualifier on it because all of these markets have the ability to generate the revenue necessary to run a major league baseball team. So they're not really small. It's not like there's one in Topeka and another in the NAPOLIS. These are major markets in the United States with large TV audiences and large audiences to fill the box. But all that said, those would be the two Cinderella's. And there are others that may not have had the same historical recency of success that if they were, I mean San Diego is spending a good chunk of money. And they are a small market compared to most of the other major league teams.

42:52They're outside the Los Angeles TV market. San Diego is not as large a city. And they do not have the same suburban population that many of the other cities have because they can't go west. They're right on the floor. They're all there so far to the east and south and not really too many south because Mexico is right there. So anyway, there are other teams that would create the same kind of scenario where a smaller market could win. And like you said earlier, there is a bit of randomness in the playoffs. There is a lot of luck that goes into it. There's a lot of whether your players are injured. And I will say this, the Dodgers do have more depth than other teams. There are money papers over week missing terms of depth. Whereas other teams, if they lose a top starting pitcher, they don't have the same players that the Dodgers have to fill into the rotation.

43:55So I would like to see that just as a baseball fan. As an Orioles fan, I'd like to see the Orioles advancing the playoffs. They've been flirting with the wild card and theoretically they can catch lightning in a bottle and go pretty deep into the playoffs themselves. I'm actually rooting for the Tigers as well to perform well after trading schoolable. After their management debuff on them, they traded schoolable in mice and yet they're in the mix for that last wild card spot in the AL as well. So I'm rooting for a little bit of chaos. And I'd like to see turnover at the top. I'm not really a football fan, but seeing a decade where the Patriots were always in the Super Bowl and now the Chiefs were always in the Super Bowl. And if there's an odd year, it might be the Steelers.

45:03I think baseball is different than that. There is a lot more mix. There is a lot more turnover. And I think the turnover at the top really, even though it doesn't do as well TV wise, which is what Major League Baseball cares about. I think Manfred would prefer that it is always the Dodgers and the Yankees in the World Series because that's going to get the most eyeballs and get the most revenue for their next TV contract. But I think baseball fans would like to see different teams and a little more variety. I think what I'm hearing you say, though, is that if the rays of the brewers do meet in the playoffs or in the World Series, it will probably not change the labor struggle going forward. But brewers, fans won't care. They'll have been in a World Series and they can worry about 27 and 28, 29, go to bat, whatever. The brewers will have been in a World Series. And maybe the list. He is Eugene Friedman. Eugene Friedman knows labor. He knows baseball. Thank you so much for joining me, sir.

46:04We really appreciate it. Is there any, can I direct our listeners to anything in particular that any of your writings, any of your work? So I would say I'm on Blue Sky and my handle is just my name, E Friedman, Eugene Friedman. And I would just say follow me because I will follow the major writers and try to interpret what they say and explain it in practitioners' point of view. Hopefully we don't need to consult you too much that this gets, moves on very quickly. And the 2027 season happens mostly, or fully or at least mostly. Thank you so much, Eugene Friedman. Appreciate your help. Perhaps we'll talk again soon. Thank you. Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters.

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