MLB denies Winter Meetings credentials to Jared Carrabis

According to Jared Carrabis, Major League Baseball denied his credentials for next week’s Winter Meetings. The baseball podcaster and content creator posted about it this week on Threads, where he also indicated in the replies that Dallas Braden, his current co-host and current A’s broadcaster, had his credential request turned down, too.

Carrabis has built one of the most recognizable brands in baseball content over the past decade. He started at Barstool Sports in 2014, where Section 10 became essential listening for Red Sox fans, and his Baseball is Dead podcast attracted a broader audience. When he left Barstool in 2022 for DraftKings, he proved he could succeed outside that ecosystem. Now at Underdog Fantasy, he’s relaunched Section 10 and continues to produce Baseball is Dead while contributing to MLB Network and NESN’s alternate broadcasts. His work has reached millions of baseball fans who don’t consume the sport through traditional media.

And there’s Braden, who threw a perfect game in 2010 and has been calling A’s games on NBC Sports California since 2017, after working at ESPN.

The Winter Meetings credential process has always been selective. The league uses the credentials as a way to control access to executives, agents, and the hundreds of industry insiders who converge on the host city.

So not everyone’s going to get credentialed, but it’d be fair to assume that a guy who contributes to MLB Network programming and another who calls games for a regional sports network would make the cut.

So what happened here? Maybe Underdog’s betting ties created a conflict MLB wasn’t willing to navigate. Maybe the credential requests came in too late or got lost in the process. But without MLB offering any explanation, it just looks like the league decided two prominent baseball media figures don’t belong at its biggest offseason event.

Baseball has spent years wringing its hands about its inability to connect with younger fans. The sport trails the NFL and NBA badly with audiences under 35. Carrabis and Braden have actually built substantial followings in that demographic. They reach fans who consume baseball through a different lens, one that’s more conversational, more personality-driven, and more focused on the culture around the sport.

The Winter Meetings will happen either way. Deals will get done, and reporters will break news from Orlando. But this was a chance for MLB to show it values different types of baseball coverage, and the league seemingly went in the other direction.