The Audible: NWSL’s new player freedoms, a Rams trade, and Ohtani for MVP?

Jim Alexander: Mirjam, I loved your Sunday piece on the National Women’s Soccer League, its new collective bargaining agreement, the question of how might this work in the other leagues that we know and love, and the conniptions that I’m sure will result once the heads of those older, more established leagues realize the revolutionary stuff that’s in there. No draft? Full, unfettered free agency? Completely guaranteed contracts? No trades without the player’s consent? Why, what kinds of communists are running this league, anyway?

The NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS and MLB – essentially, the old white dudes who run those leagues – probably looked at that and swore that none of that would ever happen on their watches. Full disclosure: I’m an old white dude, and I think it would be a fantastic experiment. Let the market play out. Maybe there are teams in those sports that use the current regulations to avoid spending money and might have to change their methods of doing things if the rules were liberalized.

Conversely, maybe we’d get what they have in the Premier League – three or four teams that can honestly aspire to win a championship, and everyone else striving to either hang on (or, in their system, avoid relegation).

And I thought the greatest part of that NWSL contract is that the league opened the CBA up for negotiation voluntarily, spurred by the fact that the countries who provide most of the NWSL’s players didn’t do so well at last year’s World Cup.

Mirjam, do you have any additional thoughts on that column, and that agreement? Are there things hidden below the surface that could make this riskier than it seems?

Mirjam Swanson: Hmm. The more I thought about it, as I thought about it last week, the more I liked their ideas – even if they’d be a massive departure from what we’re used to in most pro sports. So much so that it’s still hard to imagine them actually happening in those sports, which are different enterprises …

But I found myself thinking, for example, about how college sports don’t have drafts – though we do now have outright highest bidders – and how programs in various sports have managed either to build powerhouses or to rebound or achieve relevancy, all without drafting players.

And so that makes life without a draft seem doable, to me.

Of course, there’s the other side of that coin: Does, say, women’s basketball star Aliyah Boston go to South Carolina if A’ja Wilson is there? Because in the pros, franchise players don’t cycle out the same way … and so would that mean that there’d be a natural draft, where incoming stars pick teams that aren’t at the top but where they’d have a larger role? I don’t know … that’s just one of the thousand questions that started rattling around my head last week as I mulled over the NWSL’s sorta-radical new CBA.

The no-trades-without-consent thing seems an even far-out concept for leagues like, say, the NFL – where the Rams can ship out star linebacker Ernest Jones IV and a 2024 sixth-round pick for … just a 2026 fifth-rounder in return. It was a “football decision” – for the “short and long term,” Coach Sean McVay told our Adam Grosbard on Tuesday – to move on from the player who set a franchise record with 145 tackles last year.

I’ve watched a ton of Sean McVay press conferences and for the most part he’s
always been cordial with the media. Some of the questions asked by our beat writers appeared to get under his skin… specifically this one by @AdamGrosbard. “You guys are funny. Lets hurry this up”. pic.twitter.com/5WY8jfuQhL

— Allen Sales (@AllenSales) August 28, 2024

Of course, Jones might have consented to the deal, if the NWSL’s rule was in place, because the expected leader of the Rams’ defense who’s on the final year of his rookie deal asked for a contract extension the team wasn’t eager to give, though they did reportedly give him permission to seek a trade.

Jim: Comparing the NFL system to that of not only the NWSL but any other professional league in the world is not an apples to oranges comparison. More like apples and laundry baskets. The NFL Players Association is probably the least effective in pro sports, the result being that the NFL has the best of all worlds for ownership: a hard salary cap, as little in the way of guaranteed money in contracts as they can get away with, and a draft that not only controls talent flow but also helps create a culture where the league is a topic of discussion 24/7/365. (Or, in leap years, 366)

And parity. That is the alleged reason for such a restrictive environment, and while it works that way more often than not, the other issue here is that it is impossible to be an NFL owner and lose money on your team.

Players, meanwhile, are widgets. You want the security of a contract extension or more money? Too bad. What if you wreck your knee next week? You want us to still have to pay you beyond this year? Todd Gurley II had that very thing happen – he was the best running back in the league, and in fact coming off an NFL Offensive Player of the Year season when the Rams signed him for four years and $57.5 million in 2018, with $22 million guaranteed. A year later, he was no longer a Ram, his knee having betrayed him. Two years later, he was out of the league. This is the disaster scenario that every organization now fears.

And the footnote? Shortly after that, teams stopped giving big dollars to running backs, figuring they were expendable after a couple of years anyway.

Meanwhile, they’re gearing up to expand the season once more, from 17 games to 18. Draw your own conclusions about the league’s commitment to player safety.

As for Ernest Jones IV, who turned out to be a pretty important piece to the Rams’ defense in 2023, it’s a reminder that life in the NFL is hard, and you’d better be damned indispensable (i.e., a quarterback or a really, really, really talented wide receiver) if you want to be paid the truly big bucks.

Now to talk about a guy who has such a lucrative contract, he’s deferred all but a small portion of it. But money is not Shohei Ohtani’s concern. The season he has had so far has put him seemingly in the driver’s seat for another MVP trophy, which would be his third in four seasons. And, to be honest, signing with the Dodgers – and getting him away from the American League and Aaron Judge’s large shadow – makes it more feasible.

The issue here, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote: Is Ohtani’s status as strictly a designated hitter this year a hindrance when the time comes for National League MVP voters to choose? No primary DH has ever won an MVP award since the rule was created in 1973. Then again, no primary DH has had a season quite like this one, especially since Ohtani has a good shot at being the first member of the 50-50 club. (His other two MVPs, remember, came with Shohei contributing roughly equally as a hitter and a pitcher, albeit for Angels teams that had no chance of contention.)

Whaddaya think, Mirjam? Is a guy who only hits qualified to be an MVP, over others who have to (try to, anyway) contribute defensively?

Mirjam: Is it going to be a hindrance? History would make it appear so.

But maybe history overrides history?

Paul Molitor was primarily a DH in 1993 and finished second in MVP voting that year, when he led the majors with 211 hits. And then David Ortiz also was primarily a DH in 2005, when he was MVP runner-up after leading the big leagues in RBIs, with 148 … neither of which approaches the feat of establishing a 50-50 club. (Ortiz did have 47 homers – and one stolen base. And Molitor had his own club: 22-22.)

But I also think how the Dodgers finish the season might inform a lot of voters’ perspectives too. If the Dodgers finish with baseball’s best record and Ohtani goes for 50 and 50 … then Ohtani for MVP should be a home run.

How would you vote, Jim?

Jim: I can say because I don’t have an MVP vote, and those who do are urged by the BBWAA not to reveal their choices before the official announcement. (I do have a vote for another award. I guess they don’t trust me with the MVP ballot).

And yes, I’d vote for Ohtani, which might be influenced by the fact that we see him every day beyond just looking at the numbers from afar. As the leadoff hitter, in fact – especially with a bottom of the lineup that for much of the season was something of a drag on the Dodgers’ offensive numbers – his RBI total is an astounding 94. Of his 41 home runs … well, length shouldn’t matter so much, since you don’t get extra credit for how far you hit it aside from the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game. But tell me you didn’t snap to attention when you heard he hit a 473-foot home run earlier this season.

More to the point, in a season in which the Dodgers’ injury list has often been more star-studded than the lineup, Shohei posts every day, and he delivers. You could say he’s helped keep them afloat, during Max Muncy’s time out of the lineup and Mookie Betts’ nearly two-month absence after getting hit in the hand by a pitch. If Ohtani gets hit and gets knocked out of the lineup – and there were lots of held breaths when he got nicked in the hand by a pitch the other day – this team with the high payroll and high expectations could be in big trouble.

And he’s doing all this for a first-place team, one that (amazingly, given the health issues) shared baseball’s best record with Philadelphia going into Wednesday night. The other prime contenders, Francisco Lindor of the New York Mets and Marcell Ozuna of the Atlanta Braves, are excelling for teams that are in the wild-card hunt, but might we point out that Ozuna, as well, is DH-ing this year. (Additionally, I suspect there are some voters who might pass on Ozuna because of his domestic violence arrest from 2021).

And, as I’ve long pointed out, if you have 30 writers voting on an MVP award you’re liable to have 30 different definitions of “valuable,” many of which barely factor in how truly valuable a player is to his team. (The way the Dodgers’ production dipped after Betts went out of the lineup in mid-June would be a classic case in my mind, but I probably place a bigger emphasis on “value” than I do on “ohmigod did you see that” moments or crazily good numbers, be they counting stats or WAR or OPS+.)

Still, I’m calling my shot now so write it down: Ohtani in the NL, Judge in the AL.