Saw this stat on the news last night regarding the payroll of the 2003 Yankees compared to that of their WS rival Marlins…
Yankees - 164 Million
Marlins - 54 Million
This differs a bit from wolfman’s linked figures but the point remains the same.
Word to the wise, DON’T WEAR A BOSOX JERSEY / CAP. I’ve seen shit in the Bronx that makes your famed soccer riots look tame by comparison.
1a. They draft well, have a good farm system but scout the old-fashioned way. Part of the A’s, Twins and Marlins success can be attributed to modern (PC-based) scouting, which has replaced a notepad, ERA & Batting Average with a laptop, AHW and OBP.
4a. I don’t think exposure has much to do with it. It probably has more to do with the mytique, the tradition, the history and success of the best know franchise in the history of the sport.
I concur with George Will, whose passion for the game is almost unrivaled. When comparing Baseball to the other 3 professional team sports, some interesting distinctions arise (paraphrasing):
Baseball, (Unlike Basketball, Football and Hockey[ol][li]Is not played against a clock. Each team gets 27 offensive chances, which leads to unpredictable outcomes. There are no ties. There is no fat lady who takes the form of minutes and seconds. A team can be down 8 runs with one out to go and still come back and win. Such a prospect in unheard of when there are only minutes to go and a huge lead is on the board.[]Is an individual’s sport. One offensive player at a time faces 9 opponents.[]Has action spread out across of the entire field of play, unlike 10-20 players crowded around a tiny focal point.[]The defense has control of the ball.[]Is played in the warm months of spring, summer and fall.Is perfectly symmetrical: 60’6/90/90/90/90 is the perfect distance exciting plays.[/ol][/li]
Like it or hate it. You can’t argue the fact is truly is unique.
The Yankees buy their status. They spend half again as much as any other team. It is no longer a sport.
I will give you that it is now very easy to be a Yankee fan because they are winning, I have been a diehard Yankee fan since the 60’s. At the time I found them, they still had Mickey Mantle playing, but they were not a championship team by then. i rooted for them each and every year - first place or last place.
This what makes me slightly angry about Yankee haters. One of thier arguments is that they are always winning. The Yankees were born in 1903. They do not have 100 championships.
As far as the rest of the world suddenly loving the Florida Marlins? Hell, in July the Marlins played the Expos in a three game series that just about 35,000 people attended. Total. Average attendance for that series was around 12,000/per. The Marlins were in a race for the wild card WITH the Expos. S. Floridians didn’t care then, but now… can you say bandwagon?
Success breeds success… confidence is half the battle. It has nothing to do with money.
Right. Money has nothing to do with the Yankees success. :rolleyes:
There’s nothing quite so delusional as a Yankee fan discussing his team’s finances.
Give me a break.
By what objective standard did baseball reach the peak of its popularity in the 1980s? Attendance is quite a bit higher now than it was then.
Well, of course they do. Yankees payroll dominance did not stop Anaheim from beating the hell out of them last year, and so far the Marlins doesn’t look very intimidated. While I agree the scope of payroll is becoming a competitive balance issue, you’re way, way overstating the case.
The Yankees are NOT invincible - the team, frankly, looks really beatable in 2004 and beyond, due to the age of the pitching staff and lack of obvious candidates to replace them - and most fans have plenty of reason to cheer because almost all teams have a legitimate shot at winning the World Series if they’re smartly run. If you don’t believe that, please explain how Florida is this close to winning it all. They were one of the teams everyone said had no chance to win in March because of the economics of the sport.
In an eight-team playoff system, there are virtually no teams who cannot win the World Series if they manage themselves reasonably well. Anaheim, Arizona and Florida prove that case. I’ll grant Montreal hasn’t a chance in hell.
To answer the OP, it’s rather easy to explain Yankee success. It’s
45% Money. They can spend a lot, and they can outspend their own horrible mistakes. They traded for Raul Mondesi, the baseball equivalent of just piling up $12 million in large bills and setting it on fire. It didn’t hurt them because it didn’t significantly impact their budget. They’re ridiculously rich, thanks to a huge income from cable.
45% Smarts. If you think a stupid organization can win with just money, ask fans of the Dodgers or Orioles how that worked out for them. The disparity in baseball in terms of smart use of money is truly amazing.
My favourite team is the Blue Jays. The Jays this year spent $50 million and went 86-76. Two years ago they spent $80 million, and went 80-82. How does the same team, three years apart, drop its budget by almost 40% and win MORE games? Or how do the A’s win a hundred games a year on $50 million while the dodgers win 83 on twice the budget? Brains. The Yankees went through a number of years there were they drafted very intelligently and in some cases let guys play through their growing pains - key players like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera and others. If they didn’t have the money they could not have ept them all, but if they hadn’t developed them in the first place, there’s no way in hell they win all those titles.
10% Managing. Joe Torre IS a terrific manager; he used to not be so great but he learned from experience in other cities. He has done a phenomenally good job and keeping the team’s egos in check and he’s a very, very, very smart postseason manager who has clearly out-managed his opponents in several big series.
Bib, let me introduce you to the most important baseball book in years…
Moneyball, by Michael Lewis.
It’s a year in the life of the Oakland A’s and the approach they’ve developed of overcoming their financial shortcomings.
Basically it boils down to:
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ALL teams will win at least 40 games. That appears to be the floor.
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So to make the playoffs you need to produce between 45-55 marginal wins.
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How does one minimize the $$$/marginal win ratio?
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Draft kids in college. They may not have as high a ceiling but they’ll reach the majors faster and be better when they arrive.
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Realize that you can’t sign big free agents so find out what role players can do and maximize their ability to perform.
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Realize that On Base Percentage is the ultimate statistic. If you have twice as many people on base as your opponents you will score more runs.
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Realize that none of the above matters in the post-season. The playoffs are essentially a crap shoot. Getting there is the important thing.
There’s one hell of a lot more to it. But it’s a great insight into why the A’s can make the playoffs repeatedly spending $40 Million dollars and other teams that spend more than $100 Million dollars can’t.
A brilliant book. I can’t reccommend it enough.
If it is all about the money, how do you explain the Royals, Twins, and even the Marlins?
Its about getting the right people to either a) Come together as a team and play well, or b) Expect to always be competative - therefore always play well.
You give the Tigers $100 million. They still would lose 100 games.
I would just like to add the quote (author unknown) that “rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for General Motors”.
To which I’d add one more, which a friend of mine recently pointed out: it’s one of the few sports in which it is the player who scores, rather than the ball/puck. Think about it: in basketball, both varieties of football, and hockey it’s the object you care about. Granted, in U.S. football the ball may be accompanied by a player, but with only one exception I can think of it’s where the ball is that counts. (The exception is if the ball is thrown to the end zone, where it’s the location of the player’s feet that matter.)
Is it the player or the ball that scores in cricket?
Right, because those three teams have sustained their excellence over a long period of time. :rolleyes:
You give the Tigers $100 million a year for the next 20 years, and you’ll get a couple rings out of it. Move Steinbrenner to Butte, Montana, and he’ll lose 120 games.
Yeah. And while you’re at it, why not start rooting for Microsoft as well?
There are also four more teams (and one of them drew at least 3 million every year except the last 2. And stadiums have higher capacities.
It’s quite telling that the Sox-Yanks Game 7 had the highest television ratings for an LCS game in a decade. In 1989, the Oakland-San Fran series had the lowest rating for a World Series with a 16.4. That was higher than the ratings for every single World Series since 1998.
Moreover, there hasn’t been a series with an average rating of at least 20 since 1992, whereas the average series rating during the 1980s was 25.2. Indeed, the Red Sox-Yankees Game 7 couldn’t even beat the Atlanta-Philadelphia Game 6 in 1993. Game 7 of the 2001 World Series didn’t match the average ratings for an entire World Series set during the 1980s. And I think the Yankees’ dominance has a lot to do with that, frankly. The 1995 World Series ratings weren’t great, but they were right in line with what baseball had been pulling in the early 90s before the strike. But the more dominant the Yankees have been, the lower the ratings have been.
Now, I’ll be the first to grant that there are a greater number of entertainment options on the television right now, but that’s an extremely steep decline to only attribute it to that. Moreover, it’s one thing to go cheer for your own team, especially before they’ve been eliminated, but an extremely good sign of baseball’s popularity would be how many people watch when they don’t have a rooting interest.
You are right, however, that baseball’s demise has been vastly overstated by the media. And I think it’s in better shape than any other sport except football in the US.
The Yankees have only lost 4 postseason series since 1995 out of 20 series played. To Seattle, Cleveland, Arizona and Anaheim. And Cleveland had the 4th highest payroll when they did it and Arizona had the 8th. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the chances for low payroll teams.
And while anything can happen, the chances of your team winning unless you are in the top 10 in payroll is ridiculously slim. And it’s an additional problem if the team is constantly forced to let it’s best players go in free agency.
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Well, of course they’re not invincible. Anything can happen in a playoff series if you get a bit of luck on your side.
As for the Yankees’ pitching staff in 2004, they’ll have Mussina, Contreras, and Lieber at least. Possibly Pettitte and Wells. Look for them to pick up a free agent pitcher - Millwood is a strong possibility.
It’s a lot easier to be “smarly run” if you have a massive payroll.
Montreal has a better chance than Tampa or Detroit.
Increase 45% to around 60% and you’ll have a more accurate estimate. Maybe higher than that.
Indeed. You still might want to decrease smarts by several percentage points. If they were so smart, how come they couldn’t get a competent bullpen together? Remember Mondesi? Or Sterling Hitchcock? Or Drew Henson?
Brains, or getting lucky and having Delgado have his best season since 2000 and Vernon Wells having what may be a career year and singlehandedly saving my fantasy team.
Can a small market club compete? Certainly. But it’s ridiculously difficult and more so to sustain the success. It’s telling that only the A’s have been able to do so and they have been lucky in that the pitching they rely on so heavily has only had one person go down for any real length of time (Mulder) in the last few seasons.
The puzzling thing: If the Yankees’ dominance has led to a decline in baseball’s popularity, how does one explain the rousing popularity of basketball during the Chicago Bulls era?
My take: The dominance isn’t really the factor. It is the perception that money is buying the dominance that puts people off.
as a red sox fan you get to learn history. boston won the first world series. until 1918 boston won 6 world series titles. the yankees did not start winning until after “the sale.” that is why you will hear things about the curse of the bambino.
the owner of the red sox at that time (who shall remain nameless) not only sold babe ruth to the yankees, he also morgaged fenway to the yankees. yep, fenway was that close to being owned by the yankees.
the team languished under that owner, parts of fenway park caught fire and were never fixed. finally a wonderful owner took over and things started looking up. ted williams arrived, and things looked like they may go boston’s way again. unfortunatly, even with williams, boston would lose the world series.
williams is the perfect example of a great player during regular season, bad during post season. boston has had it’s share of great players, and chances at the big one.
are they cursed? who knows? all i know is that they tend to lose in the most amazing fashion, that you can feed on for years.
i also know there is nothing better than a sunday afternoon, in early summer, in fenway park, eating fried clams and wondering… will this be the year?
Exactly! I mean, who else are you going to root for, Apple? Give me a break-they’ve been losing market share for years. Glad to see you’re coming around, BrotherCadfael! 
There are some differences between the Yankees’ current dominance and the Bulls’ dominance in their era. One is that New Yorkers (and other peoples of the East Coast) are generally snobbier than Chicagoans (and other peoples of the Midwest). (I did live on the East Coast for 10 years, btw, so I’m not just being a whiny Californian.) This probably partially accounts for the fact that the Cubs are “loveable losers” but nobody loves (or really cares about) the New York teams that do lose (Mets, Rangers, etc.)
Another is that there are certain social factors that have been present in America in the last decade or so that are more conducive to a surge in basketball’s popularity than one in baseball’s; for example, our love of instant gratification and our fast-paced lifestyles. While baseball sometimes allows for more significant comebacks, Big Mo’ (the venerable Mr. 'Mentum as opposed to the chubby Mr. Vaughn) changes sides and usurps leaders more quickly and more often in basketball. There is more hope for a basketball team down by 20 points with a few minutes left than for a baseball team down by 8 runs in the last inning–you certainly see more 20-point comebacks in basketball than you see 8-run comebacks in baseball, anyway. Basketball is much more fast-paced than baseball in general, as well, and you can enjoy a basketball game without watching very much of it (and you can also get the ‘feeling’ of a basketball game from watching its highlights, whereas there are so many subtle plays and momentum changes in each baseball game that a highlight reel can never do a game justice)…while as Tom Sullivan of the San Diego Union-Tribune puts it, “the enjoyment you get from a baseball game is directly proportional to the time and effort you put into watching it” (paraphrased).
Lastly–and I’m not really that sure if this is true, as I wasn’t a big basketball fan during the Bulls era (I missed out, I know)–but wasn’t the NBA more competitive then than major league baseball is now? It’s not just that the Yankees dominate, it’s also that a lot of other teams in baseball just aren’t that great. Believe me, I know…I live in San Diego.
By the way, Bibliovore, I have the same experience as a rugby fan. I’ve never been to a game, and I’ve only seen a couple of games on digital cable TV, on Fox Sports World or whatnot. Anyway, I feel your pain.
Although I can’t quite wrap my head around cricket. No offense, but that’s just an odd sport.
One last thing. The Man will never make me cheer for the Yankees, root for Microsoft or buy Starbucks coffee–not without a fight!
I’d be happy to buy you a ticket (assuming you’d pay me back) but you know you can buy them yourself here.
Tickets for the 2004 Red Sox season should go on sale some time soon after New Year’s, if past experience is any guide. I see they have a way you can be emailed as soon as tickets become available.
Because of their relatively small stadium and large, fanatical fan base they sell out practically every home game, so buy early. I don’t think you can buy bleacher seats (sec. 34 thru 43) online but any of the other sections shouldn’t be a problem. I would avoid sections 1 through 7…in my experience those seats are far from the action and overpriced.
If you have any other questions about buying Red Sox tickets feel free to post them in this or another thread. I’ll answer as best I can, and I’m sure other people would be happy to help too. And if you need someone to go to the ticket window in person I can probably help you out…it isn’t far from where I work.
I’ll just point out the obvious-the table you linked shows that some teams spent a buttload of money this year for piss-poor results on the field and in the standings, and others spent way less and got in the playoffs. So, like I said, it isn’t just the money. There are other factors at work. Also, looking at salary data for only one year just offers a snapshot. You might have something if you looked at salaries over a span of several years.
Look, I admit baseball has a problem. I would like to see more revenue sharing between the haves and the have nots and I would like all teams to have a realistic chance at the World Series every year. But I am not going to apologize if the team I have been following since 1981 gets into another World Series. I remember too many lean years myself (1982 to 1995 or so). And the Red Sox? They had a realistic chance this year. I actually stopped watching Game 7 when they were leading 4-0 or whatever it was because I figured they had the thing won.