Congratulation! - You now own a baseball team.

The Game Room
1

For the purposes of this exercise, assume that that: the owner(s) of the MLB team of your choice have decided to give the team to you, lock, stock and jock. Frank McCourt said “Silenus, I’m tired of listening to you bitch. Here, the team’s yours. May Og have mercy on your soul.” You can reconstruct the team/ stadium/etc. any way you wish.

What do you do now, hotshot?
I’ll chime in with my ideas later, if there is any interest in this thread at all.

2

"Hey, thanks McCourt…I’ll take those Yankee guys. I understand they’re worth a pretty penny.

Now then, everyone, the bidding starts at one billion dollars."

3

Somehow, I don’t think the owner of the Dodgers would have anything to say about giving you the Yankess. :smiley:

I’m more interested in what changes you would make to your favorite team if you had control. Not necessarily restricted to players, either. Full rein. (Or is that full reign?)

Plus, you probably wouldn’t get quite that much for the Yankees. Forbes puts their current worth at $950 million.

4

Umm, I’d hire someone to make those decisions and just wallow in my newfound income. Perhaps Silenus would like the job, I hear he has some ideas. :smiley:

5

I sit corrected. Current worth is $1.3 billion. Oops.

6

All right: I’ll take the Yankees.

Then I’ll replace all of the current players with my sister’s softball team.

7

Pretty much this. The only thing I would do on my own is make public transportation access to Dodger Stadium happen as immediately as humanly possible. Then I’d step back and give someone else the reigns, as I can guarantee you I wouldn’t have a clue what I was doing.

Oh, well, maybe I’d put a few better restaurants up on Top Deck. :slight_smile:

8

Cool, I was just given the Cubs. That’s awesome.

  1. I would make every effort to hire 3 to 5 people from places like Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Times, etc and create a statistical scouting group and divide their time between free rein type of analysis and specific tasks around free agency, the draft, and player valuation.
  2. I would increase the budget for draft/scouting talent evaluation and acquisition and set forth a fairly firm policy of valuing college proven pitching over high schoolers.
  3. I would make sure my high level baseball decision makers understand things like market inefficiencies, ballpark effects, results based contract valuation, long-term decision making impact, player ability trends, and a host of other things that both fit and fly in the face of conventional baseball wisdom.
  4. I would increase ticket prices 5% across the board in year one, but promise a 3 year hold thereafter.
  5. I would have guaranteed seating for me and one guest in the left field bleachers for all home games.
  6. I would let the manager manage. I would never give a public vote of confidence or distrust because they never mean anything.
  7. I would have a blog.
  8. I would end the 7th inning celebrity Take Me Out To The Ballgame fiasco. I would replace it with a tape of Harry Caray.
  9. I would OK a mid-season salary bump for a trade to improve the chances of playoff success any time we were within 5 games of first place one week before the trade deadline, especially if the player is a fairly proven performer below the age of 29.
  10. I would spend a lot of man hours understanding the types of players that succeed best in Wrigley and do my best to bring those players in.
  11. I would offer Rob Neyer an obscene amount of money as an Assistant to the GM.
  12. I would use the coming off-season to trade Aramis Ramirez because I think he’s going to fall off a cliff stat-wise at some point and I’m inclined to follow the Branch Rickey line of thought when it comes to star players and their ability levels.
9

Owner of the Mets:

  1. Give John Maine a multiyear contract.
  2. If a player complains to me, I’d say, “talk with the manager.”
  3. Build up the farm system.
  4. Re-sign Ollie Perez (though it’s doubtful this is possible – Perez will be testing the market)
  5. Go hard for Mark Texiera in the offseason.
  6. Valentino Pascucci a shot.
  7. See if Pedro will take a one-year contract for 2009.
10

As what? Hopefully not as a pitcher.
Plus, you can’t own the Mets because I own the Mets.

  1. Limit Omar Minaya to only ONE “over-the-hill, usually Hispanic, high-character, once-good-now-in-decline guy” on the roster at a time.

  2. Deny clubhouse access to any beat writer who refuses to refer to the team as “your New York Metropolitan Baseball Club” at least twice per article. Offer a padded pressbox seat and a buffet upgrade to any sportswriter who will refer to us in the Sunday Paper as the “New York Metropolitans of Queens.”

  3. Texiera, which gives the added bonus of helping Minaya get closer to compliance with Rule # 1.

  4. Immediately begin referring to Hank Steinbrenner as “that bitch,” or “my bitch.”

  5. Sign Russell Martin. Just because stealing Dodger catchers and getting a few spectacular years out of them is fun.

  6. Mets Midtown Ferry. Water-link with beer served on board. GOLD MINE.

11

:mad:

12

Great, I’ve finally liberated the Orioles from the clutches of that bastard Peter Angelos.

  1. Immediately rehire Davey Johnson as manager with complete authority to reshape the team as he saw fit.

… and that’s it. Putting Johnson in charge and leaving him free to do his thing would be the best possible solution for that once-proud club, IMHO.

13

Hey, slow down there, Scrappy. I own the Mets, and I am a greedy bastard who does not wish to share. Here’s the plan:

STEP 1: Fire Omar Minaya. Sorry, Omar. You’re not even a bad GM, but you’re not really an amazingly good one and your style is definitely wrong for this team at this stage of its life-cycle.

STEP 2: Hire Indians Assistant GM Chris Antonetti as the new general manager, before Seattle or Toronto beats me to the punch.

STEP 3: Offer Bobby Valentine however much money it takes to get him back from Japan and into the Mets dugout as manager. Valentine was the best manager the Mets have had in the last twenty-five years - yes, better than Davey Johnson - and his firing was nearly as big a mistake as Zambrano-Kazmir (but only nearly).

STEP 4: Hire Keith Hernandez as the bench coach.

STEP 5: Give Antonetti complete control over personnel, with the following caveats:

5A - Carlos Delgado needs to go away. Can’t hit, can’t field, goes out of his way to piss off the fans who are buying tickets and therefore giving me money? Thanks for the memories, Carlos, and enjoy Seattle or wherever you end up.

5B - Billy Wagner should be traded at the deadline. Not because he’s a bad closer - he’s a good one - but because closers are comparatively easy to replace, and bring a good return. Heck, Eric Gagne got two useful players out of Boston last year, and Gagne’s basically the Delgado of the bullpen. So put Wagner out there, and scam Bill Hall out of Milwaukee or Rich Hill out of Chicago. Hell, Brian Sabean’ll probably trade Tim Lincecum for Wagner, if you throw in Moises Alou and, like, Lee Mazzilli.

5C - Antonetti and Valentine will be encouraged to decide in collaboration whether Aaron Heilman should be a starter in the major leagues. If their answer is “yes,” he will be placed in the rotation. If their answer is “no,” he will be traded immediately, or alternatively shot. I’ll leave that to Chris and Bobby.

5D - David Wright stays a Met forever. So does Johan Santana. Pedro will not be resigned at season’s end. These are non-negotiable terms.

STEP 6 - Step back, shut up. Offer reduced-price or free parking for the 2009 season to make up for three seasons of nightmarish parking around Shea.

STEP 7 - Profit!!!

14

Here’s a game where you can indeed run a baseball team. Baseball Mogul 2009

15

Since I got here before Jim, I’ll assume Hank went postal at a family BBQ and had me on a sticky note as his successor…

  1. Sign Cashman to a 5-year deal with complete power over baseball decisions
  2. Unleash my lawyers to break the contract with the Hard Rock Cafe at the new stadium
  3. Institute $10 bleacher seats for the new stadium
  4. Record every word Bob Shepard says until he finally leaves us
  5. Get Paul O’Neill to be 3rd Base Coach
  6. Overpay for Sabathia, 'cause we can
16

My team is sitting out any interleague games on the schedule. We may have to forfeit, but at least we’ll be playing baseball.

17

If your team is the Angels, then your interleague games would be the only REAL baseball you play.

Nice park y’all got, though.

18

Actually, if my team is the Angels, I’m batting my pitchers. All of them. Every time. And I’m not carrying a DH on the roster.

There’s something in the wording of the DH rule that might be interpreted as a requirement that both teams bat their pitchers if one of them does.

Yes, Dodger Stadium is a real gem of a park, isn’t it?

19

It’s a cheap shot, but I’d start the process of firing J.P. Ricciardi. I was a big supporter of his years ago, but he’s steered the team into a corner.

This would take a few months, though. There’s no rush; he can’t make them any worse this year. I need to find a general manager who has the connections and skills to rebuild the team. I’d prefer to get Terry Ryan, and I would pay good money for him, if he’s still available when I get the keys to the team. If he isn’t, Antonnetti if the Mets haven’t snagged him first, or Paul DePodesta, who was very unfairly treated in Los Angeles. If Ryan is my man I’d probably hire a top sabermetrician to run numbers; Antonnetti or DePodesta would want to make that hire themselves. Either way, I want strength in both scouting AND statheadery.

I assume the new GM may want to appoint his own manager and staff, but this isn’t a problem in Toronto since Cito Gaston is a caretaker manager and would simply move back to his previous job as a senior advisor and public rep. I would strenously object to replacing Brad Arnsberg (the pitching coach) though, and I do like Dwayne Murphy being with the big league team; long term I think Murphy is managerial timber, and he’s a very useful coach.

I would want a team that emphasized rebuilding the farm system and getting rid of as many of its expensive position players as possible. (There are no contracts to move in the pitching staff; Burnett’s gone this year, BJ Ryan is untradeable, Halladay is a God, and the rest of the staff is cheap.) Some of the money would be invested in better scouting, especially overseas.

I would also change the uniforms slightly, replacing most of the black with blue. The Toronto Blue Jays should have blue uniforms, for Christ’s sake.

Beyond that there isn’t a lot to do; the stadium is fine and doesn’t need any more work done to it right now beyond normal upkeep. I think I’d probably hire some consulting to see if the team couldn’t do something a little more innovative vis-a-vis marketing, but I’d have to research the numbers on that.

Long term, I wonder if the team wouldn’t benefit, from a marketing standpoint, from having its farm teams more geographically proximate, but that’s ten-plus years out. I need to fix the big league club first.

20

Even if there is, you could easily get around it. If the DH is substituted for a position player, the team loses the DH and must bat its pitcher. So you could dress your first baseman, for example, as the DH but substitute him for the scrub you dress as the starting first baseman before the first pitch.