For the first time in two offseasons, the Baseball Winter Meetings will commence, bringing the industry together before the holidays as roster construction and preparation for the season ahead take center stage, and MLB Network has planned dozens of hours of live coverage.
Several of the sports biggest starts could be on the move, and several issues involved in the game’s pace of play and the future of the sport will be decided. All in all, MLB Network will bring fans 38 hours of live on-site programming from the Winter Meetings, which is being held from the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego.
The broadcast outlet’s robust team of hosts, analysts and insiders will report and analyze the latest breaking news, transactions and rumors, bringing fans the information they need to know about “our national pastime, all the time.”
Additionally, the network figures to welcome various guests from the baseball world onto its set and will also provide coverage of other industry events, including the reveal of the 2022 All-MLB Team and the inaugural MLB Draft Lottery.
“The Winter Meetings is a battle, but we want to own the week with our coverage,” said Doug Jaclin, coordinating producer of news at MLB Network. “You’re chasing news the entire time. We’re obviously trying to make sure everything we’re getting is accurate – that’s most important – because there can be a lot of false information out there.”
The baseball world has not been gathered under one roof since before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, accentuating the paramountcy of reconnecting with people and cultivating new relationships with those in the industry. After all, part of good journalism and reporting comes from being able to develop and maintain professional relationships with those involved in making decisions with the potential to shape the future of the game.
“You have to constantly balance the demands of your job every day and getting on the air with new material [while] also realizing that this is a profoundly important week to network and meet new people,” said MLB Network Insider Jon Morosi. “You probably sacrifice a lot of sleep during a week like this because there are only so many hours in the day.”
Morosi attended Harvard University with the intention of either working in law or education; however, he quickly gravitated towards the sports information department and kept statistics of various sporting events on campus. Around his sophomore year in college, he began writing for The Harvard-Crimson and has continued doing so for a wide variety of outlets, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Detroit Free Press and, eventually, as a national baseball writer for FOXSports.com.
Today, Morosi works with MLB Network and has worked hard to consolidate information to a format compatible to its mediums.
“You have to be able to synthesize the really key points that you’re trying to communicate to your audience and then speak them in a digestible way,” Morosi said. “That also involves a little bit of detail, but also pacing it out so that way the listener or the viewer can understand it without feeling as though they just sat through an hour-long lecture.”
“We’re able, at the network, to be totally immersed in baseball so we’re able to kind of formulate opinions and ideas and philosophies,” added Brian Kenny., host of MLB Now and other studio programming on MLB Network. “I’d rather try hard and get out a ton of information than just not do that. We like to have fun; we like to have laughs, but we also want to find out interesting things that a viewer would find interesting and fascinating.”
While breaking news and staying on top of everything in real time may be central to broadcast coverage at the Winter Meetings, the element of storytelling is at the root of effective journalism, keeping readers captivated and informed through all of the chaos. Storytelling within the parameters of a standard Major League Baseball game evidently differs from the practice during the offseason – yet the importance of establishing a setting, evoking imagery and communicating in a way tailored to your audience all remain central.
Perhaps no one better embodied what it means to be a storyteller than the late-Los Angeles Dodgers play-by-play announcer Vin Scully. Working with him during her time with Spectrum SportsNet LA, MLB Network host Alanna Rizzo implements what she learned from the Radio Hall of Fame member and 1982 Ford C. Frick Award recipient into her hosting style.
“I think he was such a man that was absolutely revered not just with Dodgers nation having been behind that microphone for 67 years, but also with baseball and sports in general,” Rizzo said. “He will never be replicated in the way that he went about a broadcast. I think the biggest thing I learned from Vin was to be yourself and really just tell a story and be conversational.”
Rizzo works on High Heat with Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo, longtime host of WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog and current host of Mad Dog Unleashed on SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio and contributor to First Take on ESPN. Rizzo feels that High Heat, which is also simulcast on MLB Network Radio, is presented as a show built for radio and garners a specific type of audience – largely due to Russo’s uncanny ability to recall past events.
His effervescence and energy is hardly fabricated, for it is his genuine personality that is communicated especially when he welcomes guests on to the program, although he tends to lean more towards tradition in his opinions about the game. The Winter Meetings give both Rizzo and Russo the opportunity to interview veteran baseball personnel and budding superstars across the industry, and the dynamic of having a co-host who has frequently interviewed players helps modernize the program amid a crowded media landscape.
“I think today’s fans for the most part, especially if we want to move the game along and grab the attention and the audience of the younger generation, they want to hear from players; they don’t want to hear from analysts as much,” Rizzo said. “I think there’s certainly a place for our analysts, and there’s no better analysts in my opinion covering Major League Baseball than ours, but I think it’s also important to hear the perspective of the current player.”
Dan O’Dowd brings the perspective of a former general manager and baseball executive to the panel on MLB Tonight, providing fans insight about the gravity of the Winter Meetings amid the offseason. Following a stint as vice president of baseball operations and assistant general manager with the then-Cleveland Indians, O’Dowd nearly joined ESPN but decided he wanted to remain in the game. As a result, he was hired by the Colorado Rockies to be the team’s general manager, a role he served in for 15 years and made prominent decisions guiding the direction of the franchise.
“We really lost something not having the Winter Meetings,” O’Dowd said. “I think it’s the one time over the winter that we own the winter. Since the network’s inception, it’s taken that perspective for me to a completely different level. We really are nationally front and center because everybody wants an insight to roster development, trades [and] free agent signings. It’s just a fascinating part of the game and nothing will be as interesting as this particular week with everything that’s going on.”
A preponderance of communication today is mediated in scope, meaning that it takes place through some technological means including emailing, texting or talking over the phone. Yet there is an ostensible tangibility to face-to-face communication through its power to seamlessly blend credibility, emotion and logic into one’s parlance – indelible pillars to rhetoric and persuasion.
“It’s rare to have the entire industry in one spot,” Kenny explained. “You have baseball operations departments, managers, scouts; everybody in one place [and] I think [that] makes for a fascinating mix…. A lot of work can get done – I think we’ve learned this through the pandemic [that] there’s real value in physically being in one place in being in a spot where everyone can communicate face-to-face.”
Unlike during the baseball season when the structure is more predictable per se in terms of games and storylines, the Winter Meetings is very much sporadic in nature. News could break at any second, meaning that everyone involved needs to be prepared to discuss any possible topic related to the action – and have the right questions ready to go when welcoming a guest on set, often at a moment’s notice.
As a former host of SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight at ESPN, along with reporting in news earlier in his career, Kenny knows the value of comprehensive preparation and adaptability while also implementing his ability to interact with people.
“A lot of times you find out that day or just before the show who’s available; who can make it; who can’t make it,” Kenny said. “It’s last minute. As far as doing the prep, I try to get as familiar as I can with the free agent market and where there’s teams that have needs and where the free agent market has a surplus [and] where it has scarcity.”
It is a goal of the network to utilize the time it will be broadcasting live from the Winter Meetings to talk to people across the industry – whether they be owners; team presidents; general managers; managers; players, etc. The meetings are a genuine actualization of the activity that usually takes place from afar, but for these few days in the place referred to as “America’s Finest City,” the industry tries to take advantage of the in-person element underscoring the event’s return.
“We always want to have the team personnel visiting our set across all the shows,” Jaclin said. “You want to get a perspective from a manager or a general manager on where they think their team stands right now, where they need to improve and where they want to be different [from] the year before.”
It is fundamental, though, not to mislead an audience; therefore, one must be truthful with the information they know to be true with sensible aplomb. Conversely, one should disclose when there may be some ambiguity in reporting and/or may not completely know the facts of a situation.
After all, much of the industry watches MLB Network, according to Morosi, and through healthy relationships and periodic conversations with those connected in the industry, storylines can be reasonably posited, checked for accuracy and subsequently reported. This helps the network and its insiders extrapolate what may be going on behind closed doors, somewhat craving the seemingly insatiable propensity for access and information.
“I think it’s important to be a good steward of the information that you’ve got in front of you that you know to be accurate,” Morosi said. “I think that to me is one of the great challenges when things are happening really fast and everyone’s around you and stories are breaking.”
The nature of the conversations being had differs depending on one’s role, along with the longevity of certain relationships. O’Dowd has been involved in the game for many years and is looking forward to touching base with people rather than trying to find out the intricacies of negotiations and contents of germane conversations.
“It’s a lot of information to find out, but a lot of the time it’s really just saying hello; meeting a person; finding out what they’re like,” Kenny added. “It’s a chance for us to be face-to-face and they have a chance to tell me what they think of my work. It goes both ways.”
“It’s very different now because with the onset of technology and smartphones and Twitter, there’s not as much face-to-face with front offices – but we still have everything down to the minute of what’s happening,” Rizzo added. “People are just ready for baseball to start again and this is where at least there’s some juice.”
Rizzo has her undergraduate degree in international business at the University of Colorado Boulder, and had what she calls an “epiphany” shortly after her graduation where she discovered her passion for sports reporting. Because of this, she decided to return to school to earn her master’s degree in journalism and began working with various local stations.
As she continued to refine her skills, she joined ROOT Sports Rocky Mountain as an in-game reporter and host for its live game broadcasts and surrounding coverage for the Colorado Rockies. Now in her second stint with MLB Network after departing in 2012 to join Spectrum SportsNet LA’s coverage of the Los Angeles Dodgers, she has had to use social media through it all – and is vigilant in what she publicizes on its multiple platforms.
“I think it’s a positive tool but you have to be very careful,” she said. “I really caution young people who want to get into the industry about their social media use and what they post on there because it lives forever.”
The Winter Meetings though, through everyone being present, is indicative of a time to look up from phone screens, shed aloofness and relish in interaction free of technology’s limits. Morosi, an insider himself, recognizes that he competes against many other reporters year-round to obtain and subsequently disseminate accurate and precise information. Just as he watches and follows other reporters as a mode of “defense,” he needs to swing for the fences and play “offense,” especially over the next several days in San Diego, Calif.
“The reality is you can’t have every scoop,” Morosi said. “There are too many talented people out there and too many great reporters who are going to have the information. I think it’s a matter of verifying whatever it is that you’re putting out there, and on the intake, you have a good way of collating things whether it’s on Twitter or other services to make sure that the information that you’re bringing in is timely and accurate and current – and also not overwhelming.”
“Be very enterprising and very opportunistic when the chance occurs that you have a general manager in front of you or an agent in front of you,” he added. “….You should never let an opportunity go by to ask a question of someone who is in front of you and in position to make a decision.”
Aside from transactional moves being made on the baseball diamond, the Winter Meetings also serve as a place for aspiring professionals to meet with prospective employers. There have been instances where broadcasters get their start through an interaction at the Winter Meetings, meaning it is imperative they communicate in a professional manner and make an appropriate first impression conducive to success.
“I do pay attention to the young men and women that want to get in the industry that are professional and go about it in what I believe to be the right way,” Rizzo said. “Speaking in emojis and shorthand and ‘L.O.L.’ and no grammar and no punctuation; that doesn’t fly with me because in journalism, you have to know how to write. You have to have proper punctuation, grammar and subject-verb agreement, and I think that gets lost because of social media [and] because of the way we communicate now.”
“You should be immersed in the business of baseball if you want to be in it – have an understanding of it – but also be well-read in things not baseball,” Kenny added. “Just to have people skills and to be well-read; to have a good vocabulary; to have good reference points to understand how things work; to understand how people work…. You still have to bring something to the table, [and] those are still the fundamental skills of reading, writing and being able to articulate your ideas.”
A common maxim noted around media is that a career can be made in who you know more than what you know. Indeed, there are many people looking to work professionally in sports media, and differentiating factors that could determine whether or not someone lands a job could very well come down to skills outside of media and personal conduct.
“The depth and the quality of your relationships will be the depth and quality of the work that you produce with the people you work with,” O’Dowd said. “It’s about establishing authentic relationships with people as deep as you possibly can, and then being respectful of those relationships when you work together to try to put out a product. That’s the best for everyone involved, no different [from] working in a front office.
The network will feature its studio programs from dawn until dusk including Hot Stove, High Heat, MLB Now, Intentional Talk and the multiple Emmy Award-winning MLB Tonight. The studio programming will welcome guests from around the world of baseball and also enterprise and react to news as it happens. Today’s live coverage will begin at 11 a.m. EST with Hot Stove and conclude with MLB Tonight from 9-11 p.m, and includes the unveiling of the 2022 All-MLB Team at 8 p.m.
