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MLB trade rumors and news: We’ll have 28-man rosters in April and the ghost runner for all of 2022
Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Doubleheaders will be back to nine innings this year, and there’s a new rule that will benefit Shohei Ohtani. Thought MLB had already finished making changes for the 2022 season? Think again. Accord…
Doubleheaders will be back to nine innings this year, and there’s a new rule that will benefit Shohei Ohtani.
Thought MLB had already finished making changes for the 2022 season? Think again. According to a report from the New York Post’s Joel Sherman on Tuesday, several adjustments are in store this year, with most of them being made in an effort to keep players healthy following the lockout and a shortened spring training.
Teams will have 28-man rosters in April, a key adjustment as pitchers continue to get built up after an unusual offseason. While teams will be limited to 13 pitchers when rosters return to their usual 26-man limit in May, teams will be able to carry as many arms as they want for the season’s first month. While doubleheaders will return to nine innings, which seemed likely once teams resumed scheduling split twin bills and giving fans less bang for their buck, the ghost runner on second base in extra innings will remain in place this season. MLB says that change is only for 2022, though we’ve heard that same refrain to some extent in each of the past two seasons.
Finally, in the only long-term measure of the bunch, starting pitchers who bat for themselves will remain in the DH slot even when their day on the mound is over. That’s significant for Shohei Ohtani, who awkwardly moved from the mound to the outfield on several occasions last season as the Angels tried to get him another at-bat.
- Tuesday was the deadline for players and teams to exchange arbitration figures, inspiring most clubs to reach deals with their arbitration-eligible players. Here’s all the info on which players settled and which ones appear to be headed to trial.
- As part of the arbitration deadline happenings, Juan Soto agreed to a one-year, $17.1 million deal with the Nationals, Trea Turner got a one-year, $21 million deal with the Dodgers, and the Blue Jays bought out the remainder of Matt Chapman’s arbitration-eligible years with a two-year, $25 million extension.
- The Rockies made an interesting long-term investment, signing infielder Ryan McMahon to a six-year, $70 million extension.
- In a deal going down 2AM EST and shocking most, the Minnesota Twins have signed Carlos Correa to a monster three-year, $105.3M contract (that contains opt-outs after the first two seasons, just in case).
- The Braves, who literally cannot be stopped nor contained, have signed reliever Kenley Jansen to a one-year, $16M deal.
- The Phillies have signed Nick Castellanos, who was kind enough to break his own relocation with an artsy Instagram shot of Philadelphia. The slugger heads there by way of a five-year, $100M deal, which absolutely makes hearing “wutter” for the next half a decade worth it.
- In a very interesting and possibly drama-laden turn of events, the Yankees have traded Luke Voit to the Padres for pitching prospect Justin Lange.
- Freddie Freeman was not the only top player to find a new team. Kris Bryant finally got his payday as the Rockies signed him to a seven year deal worth $182 million. A nice payoff for a guy whose service time was shamelessly manipulated by the Cubs.
- The Phillies find themselves in a very tough division with both the Mets and the Braves making big moves. However, the Phillies are always willing to spend to try and keep pace and they did so as they signed Kyle Schwarber to a four year, $79 million contract.
- We all remember Joctober and how important Joc Pederson was to the Braves turning around their season and making their World Series run. Now, Joc is headed back to the west coast as the Giants signed him to a one year deal.
- A federal judge has ruled that minor league players are MLB employees throughout the year, rather than seasonal apprentices as the league claimed, meaning that plaintiffs in the trial are entitled to nearly $2 million in damages. This could be a major development in minor leaguers’ lengthy quest to be paid a living wage.
- The Yankees have brought back Anthony Rizzo on a two-year, $32 million deal with an opt-out after 2022 — certainly a solid deal for the three-time All-Star, but probably not nearly what he thought he’d get a couple years ago.
- As if the World Series champion Braves weren’t already intriguing enough, they went out and signed one of baseball’s best relievers in 2021, agreeing to a two-year, $10 million deal with right-hander Collin McHugh.
- The Brewers, who always seem to have four or five starting-caliber outfielders, added former MVP Andrew McCutchen to their outfield mix. He’ll join Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, Tyrone Taylor, and Hunter Renfroe on a club that is looking to replace slugger Avisaíl García.
- The Mariners acquired one of baseball’s best hitters in a deal that was essentially a salary dump, as Cincinnati sent Jesse Winker to Seattle and shed the remaining three years and $35 million on Eugenio Suárez’s contract in the process. The Mariners’ lineup gets significantly better with the addition of Winker, who posted a .949 OPS last season, and though Suárez struggled to make contact and get on base in 2021, he still provides some intrigue after hitting 31 homers for the season and posting a 1.268 OPS in September and beyond. The Reds get right-hander Justin Dunn, outfielder Jake Fraley, and minor league lefty Brandon Williamson in return.
- Fernando Tatis Jr., who apparently had several minor motorcycle accidents this offseason, suffered a fractured wrist at some point during the lockout. His inability to communicate with the Padres’ medical staff while the league was shut down delayed a resolution to the issue, but now it appears he’s headed for surgery and could be out as long as three months.
- The Cardinals have signed Drew VerHagen to a two-year, $5.5 million deal.
- The Cubs have given manager David Ross an extension through at least 2024.
- The Giants signed Carlos Rodon to a two-year, $44 million deal.
- Rejoice Dodgers fans! Los Angeles is bring Clayton Kershaw back on a one-year deal.
- The Rangers have acquired Mitch Garver from the Twins for Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Ronny Henriquez.
- The Blue Jays have signed Yusei Kikuchi to a three-year, $36 million deal.
- They did a thing! The Mets have acquired Chris Bassitt in a trade with Oakland.
- In a move shocking literally no one, the Nationals are determined to extend young phenom Juan Soto.
- The Nationals have signed veteran slugger Nelson Cruz, who is going to be so fun to watch this year in the NL East.
- The Yankees have acquired Josh Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and Ben Rortvedt from the Twins in exchange for Gary Sánchez and Gio Urshela.
- Apple and Major League Baseball announced that two games will air exclusively on Apple TV+ each Friday night beginning this season. It’s another obstacle to MLB fans being able to watch their teams’ games, as the games will be blacked out on MLB.tv and will only be available through the $4.99/month streaming app. However, it gives the league another infusion of cash and was likely a factor in MLB’s decision to increase their offers in CBA negotiations.
- After just four seasons running the Marlins, Derek Jeter has stepped down as CEO and will sell his stake in the team. It’s a surprisingly quick end to what seemed to be a long-term vision for Jeter in Miami.
- The Red Sox have signed right-hander Tyler Danish to a minor league contract, Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors reports. The contract contains an invitation to Boston’s big league Spring Training camp. The RHP adds some low-risk, high-reward depth to Boston’s staff. The 27-year old has sparsely seen time on a major league mound, making only 11 appearances between 2016-2018, pitching a 4.85 ERA over 13 innings. He did, however, strike out 11 batters in those 13 innings, a promising glimmer of what the Red Sox hope is a diamond in the rough.
- Ryan Zimmerman, the only player from the inaugural Washington Nationals roster who still remained with the team — and, in fact, the only player from that team who was in the majors at all — announced his retirement last week. Zimmerman, 37, made his major league debut less than two months after becoming Washington’s first-ever draft pick in 2005, and he spent the entirety of his 17-year career in D.C. (though he opted out of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Zimmerman finishes his career as a two-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, and 2019 World Series champ. In 1,799 career games, he posted a .277/.341/.475 slash line, and he finished his career on a strong note, hitting .243/.286/.471 with 14 homers over 110 games in a part-time role.
- Trevor Bauer will not face criminal charges in the Los Angeles court system resulting from a sexual assault case that was opened last year. While the decision likely increases his chances of pitching at some point in 2022, MLB’s investigation of the incident remains open and is unlikely to be resolved before the end of the lockout.
- David Ortiz was the lone player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the BBWAA. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, all of whom have hovered near the 75% induction threshold in recent years, did not receive the necessary voting total in their final year on the ballot, and now the only chance for any of them to be enshrined in Cooperstown is through a veterans committee.
- MLB has killed a deal that would have split the Rays’ time between Tampa Bay and Montreal.
- Amid a flurry of hirings and promotions, the Dodgers announced that they have promoted assistant GM/vice president Brandon Gomes to general manager. He’ll report to the president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and is the first person to hold the Dodgers’ GM title since Farhan Zaidi left for San Francisco after the 2018 season. The hiring of Gomes, who pitched for the Rays from 2011-15, continues a recent trend of MLB teams re-integrating former players into senior management roles. He joins Phillies GM Sam Fuld, Rangers GM Chris Young, Athletics VP of baseball operations Billy Beane, and Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto as former major leaguers who are now in front-facing executive roles.
- The Yankees have hired Rachel Balkovec as manager for their low-A team, the Tampa Tarpons, making her the first female skipper in affiliated professional baseball. The 34-year old has already made a massive name for herself in the baseball world, starting out as a strength and conditioning coach for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. In 2016, she made the jump to the Houston Astros as Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator—a position she learned Spanish for. From there she moved on to become the strength and conditioning coach for Double-A Corpus Christi and has served as a hitting coach in the Yankees organization for the last three seasons.
- When Fanatics came somewhat out of nowhere to snag the MLB license to make baseball cards out from under Topps, the writing was on the wall for the future of Topps as a company. Without the MLB license, Topps did not really have anything going for it except name recognition and that would not be able to compete with actual licensed cards. As a result, it was announced that Fanatics is buying Topps outright, which should make the transition much smoother and could preserve many of the Topps brands fans have grown to love.
- The Athletics have hired Mark Kotsay as the team’s latest manager. Kotsay played for the team from 2004-2007, diving into coaching after retiring in 2013. After spending some time as San Diego’s hitting coach, Kotsay took on the bench coach role for Oakland, following that up with positions as quality control coach and first base coach.
- The Mets have hired Buck Showalter as their new manager. The 65-year-old has a 1,551-1,517 career record, and will be taking his place in Queens for the next three years. He’ll be the Mets third manager in five years, and just like he was able to do in Baltimore, can hopefully bring some hope to a team whose has fighting chance potential.
- Six new members have been elected to the National Baseball Hall Of Fame, revealed by today’s special selection committee meetings. Cooperstown will now have new residents Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, and Buck O’Neil, who will be officially inducted on July 24 along with the players to be voted in by the standard writers’ ballot.
- One of the easier types of deals to do when faced with a hard deadline like the expiration of the CBA is to bring back a player that was on your team last year. Without concerns about medicals or background checks, there are far fewer hurdles for the moves like the Dodgers bringing back Chris Taylor on a four year deal to overcome with a tight window.
- The Giants continued assembling their 2022 rotation, signing right-hander Alex Cobb to a two-year, $20 million deal with a club option for 2024. Cobb has largely struggled since leaving the Rays following the 2017 season, but he was pretty good over 18 starts for the Angels in 2021, throwing for a 3.76 ERA with 98 strikeouts and 33 walks in 93.1 innings. The Giants are betting on Cobb getting the same San Francisco boost that pitchers like Kevin Gausman, Drew Smyly, Anthony DeSclafani, and Alex Wood have received over the past two seasons.
- The Rangers have been arguably the most aggressive team in free agency this offseason. After already locking in Marcus Semien to a seven year deal among other moves, the Rangers got another high profile infielder as they signed Corey Seager to a massive 10 year, $325 million deal.
- Everyone has been waiting for months for the fate of Marcell Ozuna in the wake of the domestic violence charges against him. After a winding tale during the legal process that saw his charges downgraded and saw him enter a diversion program, the league finally weighed in as they gave him a 20 game retroactive suspension. He will not miss a game during the 2022 season.
- Normally, the reigning Cy Young award winner signing with a new team would be the headline for most baseball news cycles. That it wasn’t speaks volumes to how crazy it was on the transaction front. Robbie Ray does, in fact, have a new squad as the Mariners inked him to a five year, $115 million.
- The Rangers are close to signing Jon Gray to four-year deal. The 30-year old showcased some amazing breaking pitches before his success trailed off at the end of the 2021 season. But for the Rangers right now, any kind of pitching is good pitching.
- Kevin Gausman has agreed to a five-year, $110 million deal with Blue Jays. While Gausman struggled in the second half of last season, posting a concerning 4.42 ERA after the All-Star Break, he still finished sixth in Cy Young voting and was undoubtably the Giants’ ace at one point. We all go through rough patches, right?
- Marcus Semien has signed a seven-year deal with the Rangers. The star infielder put on quite the show last season, slashing .265/.334/.538 with 45 home runs. Now, the Rangers have locked him down until 2028 — the year he turns 38.
- The Twins signed Byron Buxton to a massive seven year, $100 million extension,because ‘tis the season for astronomical contracts. The Twins are rolling the dice on their homegrown talent — while Buxton is a powerhouse of a player, he is beyond injury prone. If Minnesota can keep him healthy for more than 90 games a season, their risk will be well worth it.
- The Rays and Wander Franco both took major gambles, agreeing to an 11-year extension with a club option for a 12th year that will pay Franco a guaranteed $182 million. If all goes right for the Rays, they’ll control a generational superstar through his age-33 season. They’re betting big on a player who has played in just 70 major league games, though, while Franco is sacrificing the possibility of signing a deal that could be twice as big in exchange for more financial certainty now.
- The Giants had themselves a busy day as they, at least partially, sought to get the band back together for next season. They were successful on a couple fronts as they inked starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani to a three-year deal and shortly after that, his fellow member of the Giants’ 2021 rotation, Alex Wood, joined him on a two-year deal.
- Despite all of the drama surrounding the tenure of manager Alex Cora with regards to the sign stealing scandal that impacted both his time with the Astros and Red Sox, Boston seems very keen on keep the manager on that won them a World Series title AND helped them put together a surprising run this season deep into the playoffs as they went ahead and exercised their options on his deal for 2023 and 2024.
- Giants first baseman Brandon Belt was the only player in the majors to accept the one-year, $18.4 million qualifying offer from his previous club, and he’ll return to a San Francisco team that he helped propel to 107 wins in 2020.
- Justin Verlander rejected the qualifying offer, but he quickly re-upped with the Astros, agreeing to a one-year, $25 million deal with a $25 million player option for 2023. That’s an impressive commitment on the part of the Astros, who will bring back a future Hall of Famer but will gamble on an aging starter who has pitched in just one game over the past two seasons.
- The Mets tendered the one-year, $18.4 million qualifying offer to Noah Syndergaard, but instead of sticking with the club he’s spent his entire major league career with, the oft-injured starter opted to take on a new challenge and a slightly more lucrative deal, signing a one-year, $21 million deal with the Angels. After making just two appearances over the last two years, Syndergaard is gambling that he can stay healthy in 2022 and help turn around a franchise that has struggled badly at evaluating free agent pitchers in recent seasons.
- The Blue Jays turned some heads when they gave up highly-regarded prospects Simeon Woods-Richardson and Austin Martin to acquire starter José Berríos at the trade deadline this year, but now they’re in it for the long haul with the former Twins starter after signing him to a seven-year, $131 million extension.
- The Mets have pretty famously struggled to find someone to take their general manager job. After getting turned down by a number of candidates, New York offered the position to former Angels GM Billy Eppler, and he accepted the job.
- The Giants have extended Gabe Kapler’s contract through 2024. It makes sense for the Giants to keep the party going with Kapler; he’s taken a team that was seemingly short on talent in 2020 and transformed them into the most winning team in 2021 (107, to be exact).
- Starting in the 2022 season, all 30 teams will now be required to provide housing to all minor league players, ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan reports. Last month team owners held a vote on the subject that passed unanimously. The intricacies are still being worked out on if teams will be giving players stipends for housing or if they will provide it directly. Considering the conditions that an overwhelming amount of minor leaguers have been subject to, this is a welcome improvement to the quality of their lives.
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Default: San Francisco Four Seasons Hotel Investors $3 Million Late On Loan As Foreclosure Looms
Default: San Francisco Four Seasons Hotel Investors $3 Million Late On Loan As Foreclosure Looms
Westbrook Partners, which acquired the San…
Westbrook Partners, which acquired the San Francisco Four Seasons luxury hotel building, has been served a notice of default, as the developer has failed to make its monthly loan payment since December, and is currently behind by more than $3 million, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
Westbrook, which acquired the property at 345 California Center in 2019, has 90 days to bring their account current with its lender or face foreclosure.
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As SF Gate notes, downtown San Francisco hotel investors have had a terrible few years - with interest rates higher than their pre-pandemic levels, and local tourism continuing to suffer thanks to the city's legendary mismanagement that has resulted in overlapping drug, crime, and homelessness crises (which SF Gate characterizes as "a negative media narrative).
Last summer, the owner of San Francisco’s Hilton Union Square and Parc 55 hotels abandoned its loan in the first major default. Industry insiders speculate that loan defaults like this may become more common given the difficult period for investors.
At a visitor impact summit in August, a senior director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group reported that there are 22 active commercial mortgage-backed securities loans for hotels in San Francisco maturing in the next two years. Of these hotel loans, 17 are on CoStar’s “watchlist,” as they are at a higher risk of default, the analyst said. -SF Gate
The 155-room Four Seasons San Francisco at Embarcadero currenly occupies the top 11 floors of the iconic skyscrper. After slow renovations, the hotel officially reopened in the summer of 2021.
"Regarding the landscape of the hotel community in San Francisco, the short term is a challenging situation due to high interest rates, fewer guests compared to pre-pandemic and the relatively high costs attached with doing business here," Alex Bastian, President and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, told SFGATE.
Heightened Risks
In January, the owner of the Hilton Financial District at 750 Kearny St. - Portsmouth Square's affiliate Justice Operating Company - defaulted on the property, which had a $97 million loan on the 544-room hotel taken out in 2013. The company says it proposed a loan modification agreement which was under review by the servicer, LNR Partners.
Meanwhile last year Park Hotels & Resorts gave up ownership of two properties, Parc 55 and Hilton Union Square - which were transferred to a receiver that assumed management.
In the third quarter of 2023, the most recent data available, the Hilton Financial District reported $11.1 million in revenue, down from $12.3 million from the third quarter of 2022. The hotel had a net operating loss of $1.56 million in the most recent third quarter.
Occupancy fell to 88% with an average daily rate of $218 in the third quarter compared with 94% and $230 in the same period of 2022. -SF Chronicle
According to the Chronicle, San Francisco's 2024 convention calendar is lighter than it was last year - in part due to key events leaving the city for cheaper, less crime-ridden places like Las Vegas.
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Correcting the Washington Post’s 11 Charts That Are Supposed to Tell Us How the Economy Changed Since Covid
The Washington Post made some serious errors or omissions in its 11 charts that are supposed to tell us how Covid changed the economy. Wages Starting with…
The Washington Post made some serious errors or omissions in its 11 charts that are supposed to tell us how Covid changed the economy.
Wages
Starting with its second chart, the article gives us an index of average weekly wages since 2019. The index shows a big jump in 2020, which then falls off in 2021 and 2022, before rising again in 2023.
It tells readers:
“Many Americans got large pay increases after the pandemic, when employers were having to one-up each other to find and keep workers. For a while, those wage gains were wiped out by decade-high inflation: Workers were getting larger paychecks, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with rising prices.”
That actually is not what its chart shows. The big rise in average weekly wages at the start of the pandemic was not the result of workers getting pay increases, it was the result of low-paid workers in sectors like hotels and restaurants losing their jobs.
The number of people employed in the low-paying leisure and hospitality sector fell by more than 8 million at the start of the pandemic. Even at the start of 2021 it was still down by over 4 million.
Laying off low-paid workers raises average wages in the same way that getting the short people to leave raises the average height of the people in the room. The Washington Post might try to tell us that the remaining people grew taller, but that is not what happened.
The other problem with this chart is that it is giving us weekly wages. The length of the average workweek jumped at the start of the pandemic as employers decided to work the workers they had longer hours rather than hire more workers. In January of 2021 the average workweek was 34.9 hours, compared to 34.4 hours in 2019 and 34.3 hours in February.
This increase in hours, by itself, would raise weekly pay by 2.0 percent. As hours returned to normal in 2022, this measure would misleadingly imply that wages were falling.
It is also worth noting that the fastest wage gains since the pandemic have been at the bottom end of the wage distribution and the Black/white wage gap has fallen to its lowest level on record.
Saving Rates
The third chart shows the saving rate since 2019. It shows a big spike at the start of the pandemic, as people stopped spending on things like restaurants and travel and they got pandemic checks from the government. It then falls sharply in 2022 and is lower in the most recent quarters than in 2019.
The piece tells readers:
“But as the world reopened — and people resumed spending on dining out, travel, concerts and other things that were previously off-limits — savings rates have leveled off. Americans are also increasingly dip into rainy-day funds to pay more for necessities, including groceries, housing, education and health care. In fact, Americans are now generally saving less of their incomes than they were before the pandemic.
This is an incomplete picture due to a somewhat technical issue. As I explained in a blogpost a few months ago, there is an unusually large gap between GDP as measured on the output side and GDP measured on the income side. In principle, these two numbers should be the same, but they never come out exactly equal.
In recent quarters, the gap has been 2.5 percent of GDP. This is extraordinarily large, but it also is unusual in that the output side is higher than the income side, the opposite of the standard pattern over the last quarter century.
It is standard for economists to assume that the true number for GDP is somewhere between the two measures. If we make that assumption about the data for 2023, it would imply that income is somewhat higher than the data now show and consumption somewhat lower.
In that story, as I showed in the blogpost, the saving rate for 2023 would be 6.8 percent of disposable income, roughly the same as the average for the three years before the pandemic. This would mean that people are not dipping into their rainy-day funds as the Post tells us. They are spending pretty much as they did before the pandemic.
Credit Card Debt
The next graph shows that credit card debt is rising again, after sinking in the pandemic. The piece tells readers:
“But now, debt loads are swinging higher again as families try to keep up with rising prices. Total household debt reached a record $17.5 trillion at the end of 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And, in a worrisome sign for the economy, delinquency rates on mortgages, car loans and credit cards are all rising, too.”
There are several points worth noting here. Credit card debt is rising, but measured relative to income it is still below where it was before the pandemic. It was 6.7 percent of disposable income at the end of 2019, compared to 6.5 percent at the end of last year.
The second point is that a major reason for the recent surge in credit card debt is that people are no longer refinancing mortgages. There was a massive surge in mortgage refinancing with the low interest rates in 2020-2021.
Many of the people who refinanced took additional money out, taking advantage of the increased equity in their home. This channel of credit was cut off when mortgage rates jumped in 2022 and virtually ended mortgage refinancing. This means that to a large extent the surge in credit card borrowing is simply a shift from mortgage debt to credit card debt.
The point about total household debt hitting a record can be said in most months. Except in the period immediately following the collapse of the housing bubble, total debt is almost always rising.
And the rise in delinquencies simply reflects the fact that they had been at very low levels in 2021 and 2022. For the most part, delinquency rates are just getting back to their pre-pandemic levels, which were historically low.
Grocery Prices and Gas Prices
The next two charts show the patterns in grocery prices and gas prices since the pandemic. It would have been worth mentioning that every major economy in the world saw similar run-ups in prices in these two areas. In other words, there was nothing specific to U.S. policy that led to a surge in inflation here.
The Missing Charts
There are several areas where it would have been interesting to see charts which the Post did not include. It would have been useful to have a chart on job quitters, the number of people who voluntarily quit their jobs during the pandemic. In the tight labor markets of 2021 and 2022 the number of workers who left jobs they didn’t like soared to record levels, as shown below.
The vast majority of these workers took other jobs that they liked better. This likely explains another item that could appear as a graph, the record level of job satisfaction.
In a similar vein there has been an explosion in the number of people who work from home at least part-time. This has increased by more than 17 million during the pandemic. These workers are saving themselves thousands of dollars a year on commuting costs and related expenses, as well as hundreds of hours spent commuting.
Finally, there has been an explosion in the use of telemedicine since the pandemic. At the peak, nearly one in four visits with a health care professional was a remote consultation. This saved many people with serious health issues the time and inconvenience associated with a trip to a hospital or doctor’s office. The increased use of telemedicine is likely to be a lasting gain from the pandemic.
The World Has Changed
The pandemic will likely have a lasting impact on the economy and society. The Washington Post’s charts captured part of this story, but in some cases misrepr
The post Correcting the Washington Post’s 11 Charts That Are Supposed to Tell Us How the Economy Changed Since Covid appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.
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Women’s basketball is gaining ground, but is March Madness ready to rival the men’s game?
The hype around Caitlin Clark, NCAA Women’s Basketball is unprecedented — but can its March Madness finally rival the Men’s?
In March 2021, the world was struggling to find its legs amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Sports leagues were trying their best to keep going.
It started with the NBA creating a bubble in Orlando in late 2020, playing a full postseason in the confines of Disney World in arenas that were converted into gyms devoid of fans. Other leagues eventually allowed for limited capacity seating in stadiums, including the NCAA for its Men’s and Women’s Basketball tournaments.
The two tournaments were confined to two cities that year — instead of games normally played in different regions around the country: Indianapolis for the men and San Antonio for the women.
But a glaring difference between the men’s and women’s facilities was exposed by Oregon’s Sedona Prince on social media. The workout and practice area for the men was significantly larger than the women, whose weight room was just a single stack of dumbbells.
Let me put it on Twitter too cause this needs the attention pic.twitter.com/t0DWKL2YHR
— SEDONA (@sedonaprince_) March 19, 2021
The video drew significant attention to the equity gaps between the Men’s and Women’s divisions, leading to a 114-page report by a civil rights law firm that detailed the inequities between the two and suggested ways to improve the NCAA’s efforts for the Women’s side. One of these suggestions was simply to give the Women’s Tournament the same March Madness moniker as the men, which it finally got in 2022.
But underneath the surface of these institutional changes, women’s basketball’s single-biggest success driver was already emerging out of the shadows.
During the same COVID-marred season, a rookie from Iowa led the league in scoring with 26.6 points per game.
Her name: Caitlin Clark.
As it stands today, Clark is the leading scorer in the history of college basketball — Men’s or Women’s. Her jaw-dropping shooting ability has fueled record viewership and ticket sales for Women’s collegiate games, carrying momentum to the March Madness tournament that has NBA legends like Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce more excited for the Women’s March Madness than the Men’s this year.
Related: Ticket prices for Caitlin Clark's final college home game are insanely high
But as the NCAA tries to bridge the opportunities given to the two sides, can the hype around Clark be enough for the Women’s March Madness to bring in the same fandom as the Men for the 2024 tournaments?
TheStreet spoke with Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, who has been following sports viewership trends for the last two decades; Melissa Isaacson, a veteran sports journalist and longtime advocate of women’s basketball; and Pete Giorgio, Deloitte’s leader for Global and US Sports to dissect the rise Caitlin Clark and women’s collegiate hoops ahead of March Madness.
“Nobody is moving the needle like Caitlin Clark,” Lewis told TheStreet. “Nobody else in sports, period, right now, is fueling record numbers on all these different networks, driving viewership beyond what the norm has been for 20 years."
The Caitlin Clark Effect is real — but there are other reasons for the success of women's basketball
The game in which Clark broke the all-time college scoring record against Ohio State on Sunday, Mar. 3 was seen by an average of 3.4 million viewers on Fox, marking the first time a women’s game broke the two million viewership barrier since 2010. Viewership for that game came in just behind the men’s game between Michigan State vs Arizona game on Thanksgiving, which Lewis said was driven by NFL viewership on the same day.
A week later, Iowa’s Big Ten Championship win over Nebraska breached the three million viewers mark as well, and the team has also seen viewership numbers crack over 1.5 million viewers multiple times throughout the regular season.
The success on television has also translated to higher ticket prices, as tickets to watch Clark at home and on the road have breached hundreds of dollars and drawn long lines outside stadiums. Isaacson, who is a professor at Northwestern, said she went to the game between the Hawkeyes and Northwestern Wildcats — which was the first sellout in school history for the team — and witnessed the effect of Clark in person.
“Standing in line interviewing people at the Northwestern game, seeing men who've never been to a women's game with their little girls watching and so excited, and seeing Caitlin and her engaging with little girls, it’s just been really fun,” Isaacson said.
But while Clark is certainly the biggest success driver, her game isn’t the only thing pulling up the women’s side. The three-point revolution, which started in the NBA with the introduction of deeper analytics as well as the rise of stars like Steph Curry, has been a positive for the Women’s game.
“They backed up to the three-point line and it’s opening up the game,” Isaacson said.
One of the major criticisms from a lot of women’s hoops detractors has been how the game does not compare in terms of quality to the men. However, shooting has become a great equalizer, displayed recently during the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend last month when the WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu nearly defeated Curry — who is widely considered the greatest shooter ever — in a three-point contest.
Clark has become the embodiment of the three-point revolution for the women. Her shooting displays have demanded the respect of anyone who has doubted women’s basketball in the past because being a man simply doesn’t grant someone the ability to shoot long-distance bombs the way she can.
Basketball pundit Bill Simmons admitted on a Feb. 28 episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that he used to not want to watch women’s basketball because he didn’t enjoy watching the product, but finds himself following the women’s game this year more than the men’s side in large part due to Clark.
“I think she has the chance to be the most fun basketball player, male or female, when she gets to the pros,” Simmons said. “If she’s going to make the same 30-footers, routinely. It’s basically all the same Curry stuff just with a female … I would like watching her play in any format.”
But while Clark is driving up the numbers at the top, she’s not the only one carrying the greatness of the product. Lewis, Isaacson, Giorgio — and even Simmons, on his podcast — agreed that there are several other names and collegiate programs pulling in fans.
“It’s not just Iowa, it’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s all of these teams,” Giorgio said. “Part of it is Angel Reese … coaches like Dawn Staley in South Carolina … You’ve got great stories left and right.”
The viewership showed that as well because the SEC Championship game between the LSU Tigers and University of South Carolina Gamecocks on Sunday, Mar. 10 averaged two million viewers.
Bridging the gap between the Men’s and Women’s March Madness viewership
The first reason women are catching up to the men is really star power. While the Women’s division has names like Clark and Reese, there just aren’t any names on the Men’s side this year that carry the same weight.
Garnett said on his show that he can’t name any men’s college basketball players, while on the women’s side, he could easily throw out the likes of Clark, Reese, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, and USC’s JuJu Watkins. Lewis felt the same.
Kevin Garnett energy towards WBB is unmatched. Sorry for the language but that’s how he talks. Just watch. pic.twitter.com/0yGBRGaF3O
— The9450 Podcast Network (@The9450) March 8, 2024
“The stars in the men's game, with one and done, I genuinely couldn't give you a single name of a single men’s player,” Lewis said.
A major reason for this is that the Women’s side has the continuity that the Men’s side does not. The rules of the NBA allow for players to play just one year in college — or even play a year professionally elsewhere — before entering the draft, while the WNBA requires players to be 22-years-old during the year of the draft to be eligible.
“You know the stars in the women's game because they stay longer,” Lewis said. “[In the men’s game], the programs are the stars … In the women's game, it's a lot more like the NBA where the players are the stars.”
Parity is also a massive factor on both sides. The women’s game used to be dominated by a few schools like UConn and Notre Dame. Nowadays, between LSU, Iowa, University of South Carolina, Stanford, and UConn, there are a handful of schools that have a shot to win the entire tournament. While this is more exciting for fans, the talent in the women's game isn’t deep enough, so too many upsets are unlikely. Many of the biggest draws are still expected to make deep runs.
But on the men’s side, there is a bigger shot that the smaller programs make it to the end — which is what was seen last year. UConn eventually won the whole thing, but schools without as big of a national fanbase in San Diego State, Florida Atlantic University, and the University Miami rounded out the Final Four.
“People want to see one Cinderella,” Lewis said. “They don't want to see two and three, they want one team that isn't supposed to be there.”
Is Women's March Madness ready to overtake the Men?
Social media might feel like it’s giving more traction to the Women’s game, but experts don’t necessarily expect that to show up in the viewership numbers just yet.
“There’s certainly a lot more buzz than there used to be,” Giorgio said. “It’s been growing every year for not just the past few years but for 10 years, but it’s hard to compare it versus Men’s.”
But the gap continues to get smaller and smaller between the two sides, and this year's tournament could bridge that gap even further.
One indicator is ticket prices. For the NCAA Tournament Final Four in April, “get-in” ticket prices are currently more expensive for the Women’s game than the Men’s game, according to TickPick. The ticketing site also projects that the Women’s Final Four and Championship game ticket prices will smash any previous records for the Women’s side should Clark and the Hawkeyes make a run to the end.
The caveat is that the Women’s Final Four is played in a stadium that has less than a third of the seating capacity of the Men’s Final Four. That’s why the average ticket prices are still more expensive for the men, although the gap is a lot smaller this year than in previous years.
But that caveat pretty much sums up where the women’s game currently stands versus the men’s: There is still a significant gap between the distribution and availability of the former.
While Iowa’s regular season games have garnered millions of viewers, the majority of the most-viewed games are still Men’s contests.
To illustrate the gap between the men’s and women’s game — last year’s Women’s Championship game that saw the LSU Tigers defeat the Hawkeyes was a record-breaking one for the women, drawing an average of 9.9 million viewers, more than double the viewership from the previous year.
One of the main reasons for that increase, as Lewis pointed out, is that last year’s Championship game was on ABC, which was the first time since 1995 that the Women’s Championship game was on broadcast television. The 1995 contest between UConn and Tennessee drew 7.4 million viewers.
The Men’s Championship actually had a record low in viewership last year garnering only 14.7 million viewers, driven in-part due to a lack of hype surrounding the schools that made it to the Final Four and Championship game. Viewership for the Men’s title game has been trending down in recent years — partly due to the effect the pandemic had on collective sports viewership — but the Men’s side had been easily breaching 20 million viewers for the game as recently as 2017.
Iowa's Big Ten Championship win on Sunday actually only averaged 6,000 fewer viewers than the iconic rivalry game between Duke and University of North Carolina Men’s Basketball the day prior. However, there is also the case that the Iowa game was played on broadcast TV (CBS) versus the Duke-UNC game airing on cable channel (ESPN).
So historical precedence makes it unlikely that we’ll see the women’s game match the men’s in terms of viewership as early as this year barring another massive viewership jump for the women and a lack of recovery for the Men’s side.
But ultimately, this shouldn’t be looked at as a down point for Women’s Basketball, according to Lewis. The Men’s side has built its viewership base for years, and the Women’s side is still growing. Even keeping pace with the Men’s viewership is already a great sign.
“The fact that these games have Caitlin Clark are even in the conversation with men's games, in terms of viewership is a huge deal,” Lewis said.
Related: Angel Reese makes bold statement for avoiding late game scuffle in championship game
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