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Podcast: How baseball’s new deal may affect the Orioles

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The players’ union and Major League Baseball have agreed on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that will continue labor peace in the sport for the next five years.

If you were by a TV or a computer in the past 36 hours — and you care at all about baseball — you already knew about the new CBA.

What we wanted to do here at BaltmoreBaseball.com was help you understand what some of the changes in the new contract might mean for the Orioles.

A quick snapshot: Tweaks in international signing pools and luxury tax structures should have no bearing on the way the Orioles do business. Changes in draft-pick compensation for signing free agents could change things a little bit, but not majorly.

The shortening of the minimum stay on the disabled list, however, will be something worth watching in Birdland in 2017.

Adam Pohl, the voice of the Double-A Bowie Baysox, decided to switch gears this week and talk about the new CBA with me on his Minor League Podcast.

Let’s face it: what affects the Orioles, affects their minor-league affiliates, too. So, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to talk the CBA.

I hope this gives you a little glimpse into what the new contract may mean for your favorite team. Give it a listen.

Dan Connolly

Dan Connolly has spent more than two decades as a print journalist in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Baltimore native and Calvert Hall graduate first covered the Orioles as a beat writer for the York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record in 2001 before becoming The Baltimore Sun’s national baseball writer/Orioles reporter in 2005. He has won multiple state and national writing awards, including several from the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 2013 he was named Maryland Co-Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. And in 2015, he authored his first book, "100 Things Orioles Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." He lives in York, with his wife, Karen, and three children, Alex, Annie, and Grace.