Major League Baseball wants to change its debt rules

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Just a day after Forbes released a story about Major League Baseball teams in debt trouble, the New York Post reports that baseball is changing its debt rules:

Major League Baseball is working to cut how much debt its teams can carry, The Post has learned.

The move, aimed at avoiding a Mets-like cash squeeze or a Texas Rangers bankruptcy-type scenario, will be centered on widening the definition of team debt, sources close to the situation said.

For example, MLB wants teams to include holding company loans and not just what is directly on team’s books when determining total debt, a source with direct knowledge of the talks said.

This is apparently part of collective bargaining. Makes some sense given that a team’s ability to take on debt has a direct relationship to how much it can spend on stuff, salaries included. I’m sure it’s a tough balance for the union given that they want teams to be both free-spending and solvent.

Whatever happens, there isn’t much murkier in the world than the finances of professional sports teams, so it’s hard to see all of the different directions in which this kind of thing can break. But this seems like a good idea.  One Tom Hicks situation is enough. And by the time this is all said and done, we may have had three of them.

Dodgers place pitcher Noah Syndergaard on injured list with no timetable for return

dodgers syndergaard
Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports
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CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers placed pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the 15-day injured list Thursday with a blister on the index finger of his right throwing hand.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the timetable for Syndergaard’s return is unknown despite the 15-day designation.

“The physical, the mental, the emotional part, as he’s talked about, has taken a toll on him,” Roberts said. “So, the ability to get him away from this. He left today to go back to Los Angeles to kind of get back to normalcy.”

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night, raising his ERA to 7.16.

Syndergaard (1-4) has surrendered at least five runs in three straight starts.

Syndergaard has been trying to return to the player he was before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the better part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Roberts said Syndergaard will need at least “a few weeks” to both heal and get away from baseball and “reset.”

“I think searching and not being comfortable with where he was at in the moment is certainly evident in performance,” Roberts said. “So hopefully this time away will provide more clarity on who he is right now as a pitcher.

“Trying to perform when you’re searching at this level is extremely difficult. I applaud him from not running from it, but it’s still very difficult. Hopefully it can be a tale of two stories, two halves when he does come back.”