Reese Kaplan -- The Brave New World of Online Winter Meetings

An interesting question came up from a reader on Saturday morning about the logistics and machinations of a 2020 era set of Winter Meetings for the baseball executives.  After all, there are no more big conference room tables nor smoke filled rooms where 30 teams’ representatives sally forth with their attention split between the parameters of the game under discussion while simultaneously trying to get quality time alone with their counterparts from other organizations to make or at least lay the ground for future trade activity.  Those meetings would take place in private office spaces, hotel rooms or in other venues that provided privacy for the meeting of however many folks needed to be involved in the decision making process.  

However, in the 2020 era of baseball there is not going to be an in-person accumulation of the best of the best for the front office folks.  Social distancing makes such an encounter of 30-90 folks in the same meeting room separated only by a foot or so of space not only doesn’t make sense but would actually be prohibited in a great many municipalities who are struggling to fight the spread of COVID-19.

This meeting, like a great many for folks in any line of office operation, will be conducted online using Zoom, WebEx, Teams or any of the other popular group conferencing applications that enable a person to turn his/her camera on and off, to turn his/her audio on/off, but most importantly provides that social distancing required to maintain physical health.  No one really questions the efficacy or effectiveness of this type of arrangement when it comes to general lectures, debates on aspects of the game and votes on changes to rules that may need to be made.

No, the real issue is the loss of in-person private meetings with other ball clubs regarding the transactions between two or more teams.  These smoky-room sessions are not as simple as grabbing a fellow GM and/or baseball executive by the elbow and suggesting that a closed-door meeting needs to take place to better understand who is available from your team and who is desired from their team.

So if the in-person option is not available, what will teams do? 

 

Well, the same video conferencing technology used for the large scale meetings with all of the team representatives at one time can be used on a smaller scale for one-on-one or small group upon small group meetings.  They are private between the participants just as if it was an in-person meeting and these platforms also allow the sharing of desktop applications such as spreadsheets, contracts, health reports, statistics and salary information.  I don’t see that other than some cleaner air that it provides much of an impediment to progress.

However, there is another transactional issue that may be a bit tougher to finesse.  After all, team front office personnel are not the only ones in attendance at the Winter Meetings.  The ancillary folks who offer services such as printing, marketing, specialty advertising and other things that would be of interest to the team representatives are not going to have their own exhibit hall.  I don’t see that missing out on an array of bobblehead manufacturer options is going to have a major impact on team decisions due to the fact they would instead have to look at videos or receive samples in their offices.

No, the issue here is the fact that the Winter Meetings also provide a venue for teams to meet face-to-face with player agent organizations who would certainly send representatives to fraternize with the decision makers.  Wouldn’t Scott Boras and his ilk be missing out on a huge groundwork opportunity without the benefit of having everyone in the same place at once?

Now the agents can do what the front offices must do, setting up private video conferences (or old fashioned conference calls) to discuss the prospective mutual interests of the team and the players they represent.  Obviously these same meetings could be repeated 29 other times with other clubs, not that different from what would have to happen if the meetings were still conducted in-person at the same location.  However, it will take a bit more organization and time to set these online meetings up properly and with all prospective interested teams.  

Well, later today when the big guns of baseball meet we will see how this new way of doing business affects teams and players.  I don’t expect the usual quick flurry of transactions like happened at previous traditional meetings, but I don’t expect the waiting period to extend beyond the Christmas break.  I think it’s just a matter of the Major Leagues necessarily embracing the same constraints any of the rest of us in business have had to adopt.