All week I have been looking for one player to break down what’s going with baseball fairly and honestly. Not one that sounds like a crybaby like Blake Snell and Trevor Bauer. One that will give honest, reasonable answers. Selfishly, I hoped that would be Ryan Braun or Christian Yelich. The two ‘leaders’ of the Brewers. What surprised me is that Brewers reliever Ray Black provided all the right answers for a local Pennslyvania paper. Here are a couple of highlights with my thoughts behind it.

Black is happy with the 82 game schedule. I didn’t know this was a potential point of contention for the players. That seems like something the players did like about the plan. Baseball threw around a lot of ideas that include built-in doubleheaders. This part of the plan along with the universal DH seems to appease the players. It does seem like people think the players absolutely hate every part of it. That’s not entirely true. Black also would prefer to train in Milwaukee versus Arizona with the weather being hot in Arizona. My guess with the Miller Park roof that they’ll stay home especially with the Milwaukee Bucks opening up their facilities.

The issues with it are the ones we’ve heard all week – the revenue split and the concerns over the family. The revenue split is something that isn’t going to work, so, the owners are going to have to go back to the drawing board versus digging their feet in. The family part is curious to me. Anyone who will be going back to work in Wisconsin, whether it’s May 26th or June 8th or June 22nd will likely put their family in some sort of danger. That is the new normal which is scary as hell, but that’s how life is at the moment. I get the concerns, but at the same time wonder why basketball players haven’t expressed the same issue? LeBron James is a family man in all shapes of the word but we haven’t heard him once say he’s worried about his family.

Good for Black for providing some actual context versus crying to your video game friends. It’s time to hear from other Brewers players.

Charlie.