To ring in the New Year, Bobby and Alex bring back Michael Baumann, staff writer at The Ringer, for their third annual State of Labor in Baseball, where they survey baseball’s current labor landscape and examine the key dynamics that will define the sport's coming years. Amid the ongoing lockout, they look at whether the current stalemate tracks with where they thought things would be going, which issues are most important to the current fight, the position the players find themselves in and how it differs from past CBA negotiations, how the plight of amateur and minor league players plays into the ongoing tug-of-war (or doesn’t), whether this current pace of exploitation is sustainable for the sport, and much more.

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Songs featured in this episode:

Clarence Carter — "Slip Away" • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”