Cup of Coffee: November 20, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

I swear the Nuzzi item today is much shorter than yesterday's.

The Daily Briefing

Rob Manfred's ineptitude cost baseball a billion bucks and he's spinning it as a victory

Pretend you walked into a casino with $1,000. You start gambling and quickly lose all of it. On the way home you pass a pawn shop and sell them your watch, getting $1000 for it. When you get home and your wife asks you how your night at the casino went, you wouldn't take out the $1000 you got from the pawn shop and say you broke even, would you? That'd be crazy, right? I mean, it'd be a downright lie.

Apparently no one told Rob Manfred that, because that's basically what he's telling people right now about MLB's TV money.

I draw that conclusion from Andrew Marchand's latest piece in The Athletic, which talks about about MLB's new broadcasting rights deals. Specifically, the part about the league's interaction with ESPN over the past year. The summary:

• When MLB and ESPN struck their last deal, Rob Manfred demanded an opt-out clause for the league. It's unclear why he wanted that because, historically, sports teams and leagues almost always end up on the better end of long-term rights deals than the networks. Indeed, MLB stood a great chance of being in a great position, financially speaking, on that deal as time went on, while ESPN risked being in a bad position. But he wanted the opt-out, ESPN said sure, you can have it, and quite understandably demanded an opt-out of their own. Manfred agreed;
• Early this year ESPN opted out of the final three years of its deal with MLB. And, as suggested in the previous bullet point, it made a lot of sense for ESPN to do so. They still owed MLB $1.65 billion over the final three years of the deal and that's a lot more than the deal was truly worth. ESPN dodged a bullet and MLB was forced to scramble; and
• Scramble MLB did, assembling a patchwork of new TV deals out of the game inventory that ESPN abandoned. A little with NBC/Peacock, a little with Netflix, and a new replacement deal with ESPN, all of which was formally announced yesterday (see item below). They did not, however, come close to making up for what was lost in the ESPN opt-out. Indeed, it only amounted to $750 million. A nearly $1 billion loss that would not have happened if Manfred had not insisted on an opt-out. Oops!

Per Marchand, the sale of MLB.tv to ESPN, which we discussed yesterday, was largely aimed at making up for the lost revenue from ESPN's opt-out. Indeed, it is netting MLB $1.65 billion which will be paid in three annual installments of $550 million. Which is exactly what and over how long ESPN would've paid MLB if they had not opted out.

Manfred is attempting to characterize all of this as breaking even. In Marchand's words, "MLB’s spin is that it is now making similar money, seemingly overlooking that this is the case by auctioning off perhaps its most premier rights of games outside of the playoffs." Meaning MLB.tv, which is the pawned watch in this scenario. He goes on:

If [MLB] hadn’t done the extra ESPN deal, the differences would be unspinnable. And if MLB had kept the pre-opt-out ESPN $1.65 number and then done a new MLB.TV deal, it would, in theory, have twice the money in its pocket now. In MLB’s view, if not for the opt-out, it would not have added 30 national games and would not have been in the market to create more value from MLB.TV.

Manfred sold off MLB.tv to cover for his blunder. A one-time sale, of course, that he can never undo. That he now has the gall to act like MLB came out even on that is frankly insane. If the guy hadn't already announced that he plans on retiring in January 2029, I'd expect he'd have an owners' coup on his hands.

The new TV deals are announced

As mentioned above, Major League Baseball announced its new TV deals with NBC, Netflix and ESPN yesterday. This is on top of national deals MLB already has with Fox, TNT Sports, and Apple, and the side deals some clubs have with Amazon Prime for select local games. The broad strokes:

• ESPN gets MLB.tv, which are the rights to out-of-market games for all 30 teams. It will Also get 30 exclusive weeknight games over the course of the season;
• IMPORTANT: got clarification yesterday on what the MLB.tv sale means, and it's not bad news! To wit, it does not appear that MLB.tv's move to ESPN will lead to a price increase. That's not set in stone, but in the Athletic article linked in the previous item, an ESPN executive said that they plan on keeping it at roughly the same price that MLB charged people for it. So it won't be some added-on thing where you have to ESPN's streaming service too. Also: at least for the first year, the streaming for the six in-market clubs that MLB had been selling as a separate MLB.tv product WILL NOT MOVE TO ESPN. Fans of teams like the Guardians and Twins whose local packages are on MLB.tv will stay on MLB.tv at least for 2026. After that it's TBD. Thank the Lord for small mercies;
• NBC/Peacock will become the new home of Sunday Night Baseball. It will also broadcast the first round of the playoffs, though it would appear that those games won't only be on Peacock, they'll be available on the relaunched NBC Sports Network, on cable. It wouldn't surprise me if NBC also retained the option of moving playoff games to its main linear channel, at least if it doesn't interfere with its NFL rights, but that's just me guessing;
• Netflix's deal is much smaller. They'll get an exclusive, standalone Opening Night prime time game, the Home Run Derby, and the "Field of Dreams" game, which MLB simultaneously announced was being revived.

The current Fox/TBS stuff will remain as it has been, as those deals don't expire until 2028.

And now a final deep thought.

For the first several years I worked at NBC, I was upset that the network did not have MLB broadcast rights. It probably would've been great for my career! Eventually, though, I came to understand how that would, necessarily, have made me something of an access journalist and would have limited what I could say about Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, and the business of the game. As I'm not financially suicidal and I had kids to raise, I suspect that I would've been strongly motivated to keep my job and would thus not have rocked the boat. And I likely would not have published a great many of the critical things I wrote during my tenure at the Red Network, many of which I am quite proud.

So, with a bit of hindsight, it's good that NBC didn't get baseball rights while I worked there. And it's good that I'm not still there as they acquire baseball rights again. Because, dudes, I am pretty sure that they would've fired my ass 27 seconds after this deal got done. Hell, my termination may very well have been a precondition for the deal getting done in the first place.

These TV deals make a long work stoppage less likely

While pondering all of the TV deal stuff yesterday it occurred to me: all of this makes it way less likely that MLB is going to experience a lengthy work-stoppage next year when the current CBA expires.

My thinking: with all of these new deals being three-year deals, literally ALL of baseball's broadcast contracts are going to be up for renewal again in 2028. The new ones, the big one with FOX, everything. It means that baseball's entire financial future is based on a single negotiating window three years from now. There is no margin for error. MLB absolutely has to get that right and maximize its broadcast money haul.

What that means is that it can't have another big blunder like Manfred had with the ESPN/MLB.tv two-step, for example. Money cannot be left on the table. More importantly, MLB cannot be seen as damaged goods. The game has to be barreling into those negotiations in a position of strength, with maximal negotiating leverage. And the one damn thing that will kill Rob Manfred's leverage is if the game is a year removed from a long work-stoppage.

The last time baseball had an extended work-stoppage, in 1994-95, it took several years for the league to gain back fans, gain back trust, and more importantly to the Rob Manfred and the owners, gain back its financial vitality. Indeed, it wasn't really until the era of assured labor peace that began following another threatened work-stoppage, in 2002, that baseball's revenues and broadcast rights fees assumed a truly solid and sustained upward trajectory.

Rob Manfred knows he fucked up the ESPN deal and cost his owners money. They all know they can't fuck it up again. The MLBPA knows this as well. Call me crazy, but I don't think that Manfred and the owners are willing to risk billions upon billions of dollars in money from Fox, ESPN, NBC, Apple, and whoever the hell else might be in the mix just to squeeze out some incremental concessions from the union. And all of that is separate and apart from the massive loss of revenue they'd experience from cancelled games and suspended TV payments and things in 2027.

Simply put: Major League Baseball cannot afford a work stoppage. You may all feel free to throw this newsletter back in my face if I'm wrong about this, but I don't think we'll get one. There's simply too much at stake.

Atlanta re-signs Raisel Iglesias, trades for Mauricio Dubón

The Atlanta Baseball Club and reliever Raisel Iglesias are in agreement on a one-year $16 million deal. Which is exactly what he made in 2025.

Iglesias, who will turn 36 before spring training begins, has spent the last four seasons with Atlanta. In 2025 he appeared in 70 games and posted a 3.21 ERA (130 ERA+), striking out 73 and walking 16 in 67 innings while saving 29 games. All of that came despite the fact that he began the season really poorly, with an ERA up near six through the first two months of the season.

Atlanta didn't stop there yesterday. They also acquired two-time Gold Glove utilityman Mauricio Dubón from the Houston Astros for infielder Nick Allen.

Dubón, 31, appeared in 133 games with Houston last season and hit .241/.289/.355 (OPS+ 78) while earning his second Gold Glove in three seasons. Atlanta general manager Alex Anthopoulos said that the club had not yet determined where, exactly, Dubón will play, and that it'll be determined by whatever other moves the team makes. He could play shortstop, which is clearly a need for the club, but he could spend time basically anywhere else, having played a lot of second, third, short, center field and left fied. His flexibility in that regard will certainly give Anthopoulos flexibility as he works the phones this winter.

Allen was Atlanta's starting shortstop. He's a slick defender, but with Jeremy Peña at short in Houston, it's possible that Allen will play second base. That'd make for one of the best up-the-middle defenses in baseball, but Allen is definitely offensively challenged, having hit a mere .221/.284/.251 (53 OPS+) which, oof.

Randy Jones: 1950-2025

The Padres announced yesterday that 1976 NL Cy Young Award winner Randy Jones has passed away at the age of 75.

Jones, a southern California native, was the Padres’ fifth-round pick in the 1972 draft and debuted the following year. After leading the league in losses with 22 in 1974 he totally turned things around over the next two seasons. He won 20 games while leading the NL with a 2.24 ERA in 1975 and he won 22 games while pitching a league-leading 315.1 innings and completing an astounding 25 games in 1976. He finished second behind Tom Seaver in the Cy Young voting in '75 but won it the following year. This despite the fact that Jones was basically a junkballer, throwing tons of slow sinkers and slow sliders that frustrated the hell out of the opposition.

A nerve injury in his pitching arm that he sustained late in the 1976 campaign following a few years of heavy workloads ended Jones' run as an elite pitcher. He continued to be a staple in the Padres rotation and a fan favorite through 1980, however, after which he spent two seasons with the Mets before retiring after his age-32 campaign.

Jones would remain in San Diego for the rest of his life, serving as a team ambassador, a part-time broadcaster, and the proprietor of Randy Jones' BBQ stands, first at Jack Murphy stadium and then at Petco Park. He was always an approachable figure and was always happy to talk to fans, pose for pictures and the like. The Padres retired his No. 35 in 1997 and included him in the inaugural class of the Padres Hall of Fame in 1999.

Randy Jones was a beloved figure among the Padres faithful. May he rest in peace.

Other Stuff

An update absolutely no one wants

Yesterday's newsletter featured way, way, way too many words about Olivia Nuzzi. Somehow I didn't get a bunch of subscription cancellations in the wake of that. Not gonna lie: that surprised me. So why not press my luck!

The whole Nuzzi-Lizza-RFK-Sanford story is already impossibly over-the-top. It's the stuff of bad TV movies. But yesterday it got even worse, when it was discovered that when Nuzzi was a teenager she recorded a pop song called "Jailbait" and published it on MySpace using the stage name "Livvy." She apparently sent it around to music websites and stuff where it just sorta died.

Yesterday someone found an MP3 of "Jailbait" and unleashed it on an unsuspecting world.

If that link doesn't work and you still wish to punish yourself, you can hear the whole song here. I love the smell of Auto-Tuning in the morning. It smells like . . . victory.

At this point of beating a dead horse I would normally promise not to write about this topic anymore. I don't know if I can make that promise in this case, though, because I'm still waiting for Ryan Lizza to drop Part II of his "How I Found Out" saga. If that has some great dirt I am TOTALLY talking about it.

Hmmm . . .

I popped into the grocery store yesterday and was greeted with this:

Do I approve of this? Absolutely not. Would I try it? Maybe. Do I think it'd taste good? Probably. But I didn't buy it. Whether that's because my principles are strong or because I don't know how to have fun in life I'm not sure.

Honestly, I think the highest and best use of this product would be as a prop in the cold open of a TV show – perhaps a CBS crime procedural – which establishes that the person/future victim who is making this is alone for the holidays.

JD Vance sent to prison

No, not that one unfortunately. But the one who was sent to prison – a 67 year-old man from Michigan named James Donald Vance, who also goes by JD Vance – was popped because he posted online about wanting to kill the Vance we all know and hate. And Trump. And Trump's son. He had ambition, that one.

There were probably some mitigating factors here:

In a filing before Monday’s sentencing hearing, the public defender, Helen C. Nieuwenhuis, wrote that Mr. Vance should receive probation instead of jail time because he was a “first-time offender with serious physical and mental health issues.” Mr. Vance’s lawyer attributed his mental health issues to abuse during his childhood, writing that he was not properly toilet trained.

“Mr. Vance still enjoys wearing diapers,” she wrote of her client, who used the alias “Diaperjdv” on social media.

I don't care. I'd still sooner invite this JD Vance into my home than the vice president.

Here's hoping the headline to this item can be reused one day.

There's a fine line between clever and stupid

People are drinking less these days. Lots of data backs it up. Across the board drinking is down, with it being particularly down among young people. It's something I've seen written about many times over the past couple of years and it's been born out anecdotally among people I know.

There are a lot of reasons why people are drinking less. For one thing, people are much more aware of the dangers of drinking and the deleterious effects alcohol consumption has on one's health. Meanwhile, cannabis in its various forms has become much, much more popular and accessible in recent years with even backwards-ass states like Ohio legalizing it, and many people have substituted weed for booze. A smaller but growing factor is the rise of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. These drugs were not developed to curtail drinking or substance abuse but they have shown a remarkable efficacy in that regard so far. Like any significant social development, the reduction in alcohol consumption has a lot of causes.

Yesterday I stumbled upon an article in GQ from a couple of weeks back about the reduced-drinking trend. It caught my eye because the headline – "The End of Drinking Isn’t Necessarily a Good Thing" – was designed to catch my eye with its contrarian framing. Sure, a lot of us still enjoy a beer or a nice cocktail now and again, but how on Earth could someone cast a reduction in alcohol consumption as a bad thing?

The answer: by turning it into an anti-phone/social media rant:

“I feel like it has something to do with the damn phones,” Molly, a 24-year-old friend of mine who works in finance in New York City, says, explaining that nearly all her peers abstain from alcohol, or have it in extreme moderation. “Being drunk on your phone is just messy—it’s all documented. That’s definitely part of it. The surveillance culture of it all; you lose a lot of self-control when you drink, and I think my generation is all about having a curated image of themselves. We’ve been under surveillance for our whole lives.”

Though Molly is certain it’s healthier to cut down, or give up drinking altogether, the result, she says, is that get-togethers with friends are muted and infrequent.

“We’ll sit at the bar and order an appetizer and just like, talk, or scroll on our phones together,” she says. “But honestly, I also just think people are hanging out less.”

In that way, Purinton says, the decrease in alcohol consumption might be a sign of a more worrying trend—the massive increase in American loneliness: Young people, and especially young men, are increasingly socializing mostly through the internet, or not at all. 

I don't mean to diminish the concerns people have about spending too much time online or the digital surveillance state, but the implication here – "those damn phones have ruined messy binge drinking!" – Is nuts. It reads like a Facebook post from a Boomer or an elder Gen-Xer who says "we used to eat lead paint, smoke menthols, throw lawn darts at each other, and drive without seatbelts and we're all fine! Today's generation is soft!"

At the risk of sounding like a puritan, getting sloppy drunk is bad! It's better that fewer people are doing it! Even if there is a component of it related to phones, such as avoiding posting ill-advised videos and photos or texting people you shouldn't be texting while wasted, that's also a good thing because doing that stuff doesn't go well for most folks! There's not much worse than waking up hungover with anxiety and regret to boot and the less of that the better.

I'm sure that people drinking less has negatively impacted some people's social lives – and it's fair to talk about what younger people can and should be doing to foster offline social cohesion when hanging out in bars is on the decline – but it's a reach to blame phones for it when there are tons of good reasons to drink less that don't require that leap. It all comes off like an GQ editor was in search of a contrarian and buzzy hook for a story. And I guess they did a good job of it, because they hooked me.

Have a great day everyone.