Public Enemy No. 1 Anthony Rendon Is Making Good Points About MLB and Its Schedule

Meg Oliphant/Getty Images

If Anthony Rendon’s goal is to become the least liked player in baseball, he sure has been going about it in an efficient way. You’d think nobody would want to come to his defense right now.

Well, you’d be wrong.

Granted, nobody can say Rendon hasn’t been stepping in it. As he failed to crack even 60 games for the third time in three years, last season would have been a rough one for him even if he hadn’t stirred up controversy. Yet he did just that, first by getting into an altercation with a fan and then into a spat with the Los Angeles Angels over an injury diagnosis.

“The situation has bordered on toxic,” wrote Sam Blum of The Athletic in December. It seemed like a succinct summary of the relationship between the Angels and the 33-year-old Rendon, whose $245 million contract still has three years and $115.7 million left on it.

And then Rendon started talking.

In January, there was the podcast interview in which he griped about there being “too many dang games” in Major League Baseball’s season. The backlash was swift, with fans and even one former teammate coming down on the erstwhile All-Star and World Series champion.

Then on Monday, Rendon marked his arrival for spring training by telling the media that his baseball career “has never been a top priority.” And thus did the dunking start anew.

But on these two fronts, at least, it’s fair to ask if anyone is actually listening to Rendon.

Actually, Rendon Has His Priorities in Order

Google “Anthony Rendon” right now, and you’ll be barraged with headlines zeroing in on the same quote about his priorities that I called attention to up above. It sounds bad, alright.

Then again, so do a lot of things when stripped of context.

Here’s what Rendon actually said: “This has never been a top priority. This is a job. I do this to make a living. My faith and my family come first before this job. So if those things come before it, I’ll move on.”

FOX Sports: MLB @MLBONFOXAnthony Rendon on if baseball is a top priority for him:

“It’s never been a top priority for me. This is a job. I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before this job. So if those things come before it, I’m leaving.”

🎥: @BallySportWest pic.twitter.com/T7VMYyi9F1

So faith and family first, job second. Does anyone really have a problem with that? Does anyone really find it unreasonable?

It’s certainly not unusual, at least as far as putting work second. According to the Pew Research Center only four in 10 workers say their job is extremely or very important to their identity. A generational divide is at play, with only 45 percent of workers aged 30 to 49 finding their jobs fulfilling. To this end, Rendon represents the norm.

If you’re going to insist Rendon should love his job more than the average 30-something because he gets paid a ton of money to play a game for a living, well, that’s just projection.

You want him to love being a baseball player because you think you’d love being a baseball player. And maybe you would, but you’re not him. And it’s never been any secret that baseball isn’t everything to him.

This is the same guy who said in 2014 that he doesn’t watch baseball on his own time because it’s “too long and boring.” And also the same guy who, even in the midst of the Washington Nationals’ championship run, referred to it as “just a game” in 2019.

If there’s a reason those comments didn’t cause as much of a fuss, it’s probably because Rendon was in his star heyday at the time. The combination of his plummeting productivity and escalating salaries have since turned him into a punching bag, but neither the messenger nor the message have changed.

You could also say that if Rendon is so unhappy, he could simply retire and be done with baseball. But please do so only if you would leave $115.7 million on the table, because that’s what he’d be doing if he voluntarily chose to hang up his spikes.

Ultimately, he’s not wrong in suggesting what really matters is showing up to play. He may not like it, and you may not like that he doesn’t like it. But at least he’s doing his job.

And Yes, the Season Is Too Long

As for what Rendon said in January about lopping games off MLB’s 162-game season, it calls to mind a quote from 2018:

“I think we play too much baseball. Yes, guys are going to take pay cuts. But are we playing this game for the money or do we love this game? I know it’s both, but in the long run it will make everything better.”

This wasn’t Rendon in a moment of relative contentment with his career. This was Anthony Rizzo speaking. Not everyone agreed with him, but there was nothing like the furor caused by Rendon’s “too many dang games” comment. To play the messenger/message card again, it’s as if the problem had more to do with the former than the latter.

Jack Vita @JackVitaShowLos Angeles Angels 3B Anthony Rendon was asked what he would change about MLB on the Jack Vita Show.

“We gotta the shorten the season, man. It’s too many dang games… We gotta shorten this bad boy up.”

Catch the full, 70-minute interview: https://t.co/JScTHSCW8K#Angels pic.twitter.com/BYyLFaSi7J

Despite the angry reaction to Rendon’s comments, a survey by The Athletic in 2022 found that a small majority of fans want a shorter MLB season. And Rizzo and Rendon clearly aren’t the only players who can get on board with that.

“We’ve made proposals in the past for shorter seasons,” Tony Clark, head of the MLB Players Association, said in October. “They weren’t necessarily against the backdrop of expanded playoffs, but shorter seasons nonetheless, whether that was 162 games, 158 games, 154 games.”

Shortening the season to 154 games, specifically, doesn’t seem difficult. As it stands, the season lasts about 26 weeks. With one guaranteed off day every week plus two more for the All-Star break, you’d have a straightforward means to get from 162 games down to 154.

Where Clark and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred naturally differ is in what a reduction in games must mean for players’ salaries. For the latter, eight fewer games must equal a 5 percent pay cut. For the former, not necessarily.

“I’m not talking about raising ticket prices,” Clark said in 2015. “I’m talking about as a fan coming to the ballpark and I know I’m going to see my guys, as a result of XYZ being done to make improvements to their overall health and ability to be on the field.”

Though there are more off days in the MLB schedule now than there were when the 162-game slate went universal in 1962, we’re still talking about the most grueling schedule—and not just in terms of games, as MLB’s travel requirements are also brutal—of any of the four major North American professional sports leagues.

And mainly because of injuries, MLB’s player participation is actually trending down.

Whereas it was 41 in 1962, the median number of games for position players in 2023 was 31. And since MLB expanded to 30 teams in 1998, there’s been a 13.2 percent drop in hitters playing in 120-plus games and a 24.8 percent drop in starting pitchers making 25-plus starts.

The pitch clock probably didn’t help pitchers stay healthy in its debut season, but it obviously doesn’t explain the trend as a whole. What might is the outlawing of performance-enhancing drugs in the mid-2000s. Amphetamines, in particular, were purportedly used by 75 percent of all players at the turn of the century.

It’s thus not beyond the pale to think that a shorter season with more off days would help players stay on the field in lieu of the bench or the injured list. And if so, the overall quality of the product would improve enough to potentially offset any quantity-related losses at the gate and in broadcast rights fees.

This, of course, is to say nothing of the financial benefits of an expanded postseason.

Such a thing would be more of a necessity than merely a good idea if the regular season were shortened, and accomplishing it could perhaps be as simple as expanding the early rounds. Instead of a best-of-three, what if the Wild Card Series were a best-of-five? And instead of a best-of-five, what if the Division Series were a best-of-seven?

If a shorter season does come to pass, it almost certainly won’t be before the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2026. And because his contract also expires that year, Rendon may never get to experience the shorter season he craves.

But if such a thing does come, those comments are going to make him sound not like a pariah, but a prophet.