At this point, I'm holding off on major updates regarding the White Sox's new TV deal until they announce something themselves, but I did want to earmark Jeff Agrest's story from this week, which would seem to tie all the previous reporting together.
Agrest was the first to report that the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks would be moving their broadcasts from NBC Sports Chicago to the Stadium multiplatform network, of which Jerry Reinsdorf's media company has majority control. The Athletic and Chicago Tribune then reported that the three teams were instead moving to a new regional sports network operated by Standard Media, a Nashville company that has virtually no profile.
Agrest then reported on Thursday that Stadium and Standard are working together on a new network,
Yes, a company called Standard Media Group will play a role in the establishment of a new regional sports network in Chicago that will carry the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks. But it will not provide content for the channel. It will invest in the network and help get it distributed, the Sun-Times has learned.
The content, as the Sun-Times has reported, will come from Stadium, an online sports network that’s expected to keep its name when it converts to an RSN this fall and appears on broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming platforms. Sox and Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf did not buy control of the network from Sinclair Broadcast Group to watch it waste away.
It's back to making sense, or at least as much sense as anything involving the RSN business can make right now. The question then shifts to why Standard is necessary -- and I have my own hunches about that -- but if they're looking to launch this thing by October, some official answers should be coming soon enough.
Spare Parts
Besides the whole thing about baseball's top pitching prospect making his MLB debut in front of a nearly sold out PNC Park, two other things about Paul Skenes' debut: 1) The Pirates bullpen issued six bases loaded walks, which still comes up one short of the carnage I witnessed in Birmingham three years ago, and 2) Yasmani Grandal still has some life left in that bat.
Speaking of old friends, Reynaldo López has a 1.53 ERA while averaging nearly six innings per start over his six starts. He's rediscovered his curveball to some effect, but it seems like he's really using his fastball-slider combo as effectively as possible while being very, very, very careful to lefties (.215/.338/.354).
Since this article was published, the White Sox won three consecutive games against the Guardians. That either raises the floor of the division or destroys this article's entire premise.
- Catcher's interference calls are skyrocketing in MLB. It's putting players at risk -- The Athletic
- Willson Contreras broke his arm in the small margins -- Defector
Player safety could be one of the most compelling reasons to switch to an automatic ball-strike system, because while Willson Contreras' broken forearm is a most extreme example, catchers' hands have been getting hit at record rates. The league issued a memo this spring warning catchers to back up, but that just reminds me of hearing Wes Helms gripe loudly from the dugout about Carlos Pérez setting up too far back to snag low strikes in Charlotte. When it comes to fringe players like him, they're going to need every marginal gain possible.
Matt Snyder has a comprehensive look into the state of elbow injuries that tackles all the suspected contributing factors -- velocity/max effort, pitch clock, sticky stuff, youth baseball development are all covered here.
I've listened to and loved the first two installments of Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, a podcast by John Cullen that covered the seismic shift in broom technology that changed the style of play and created genuine animosity in a tight-knit sport. I had just started curling around the time this controversy erupted, so I knew enough to look past the jokes from late-night hosts, but not enough to really understand the strategy or the names involved. The episodes are less than a half hour, and Cullen is a comedian himself, as well as a co-host of Blocked Party, so this is about as digestible as curling podcasts get for non-curlers.
