So if we get both revenue sharing and a salary cap, as some poeple seem to think is necessary to keep baseball viable, we then have 30 teams (unless more have been added since I started writing this post) that will all have the same income and expenditure, correct? So then it won’t really matter who wins or loses a game, correct? Oh, boy. That should make the World Series almost as exciting as the All-Star game.
And a second question: Just how big a market is Atlanta? I understand the team down there does pretty good sometimes.
True enough, “small market” is often a misleading description of unsuccessful teams. The WHite SOx are in the third largest city in the U.S., and the Phillies are in the 5th largest market. The fact remains, many teams play in markets where they can’t and won’t draw fans no matter how well they perform on the field. Oakland proved that this year. Success on the field does NOT translate into financial success in Oakland. And the simple truth is, there is NO promising alternative location for the A’s.
The solution? Let them fold. There’s no demand for what the A’s are selling, so let them die. Unsuccessful businesses close every day- what makes baseball teams sacrosanct?
The same is true of the Expos, Royals, Twins, et al. Let them die. Hardly anyone will miss them, and the major leagues will be healthier, on the whole.
Yes, HEALTHIER! Sure, the richer teams need other teams to play against, but there will be plenty of competition once those weak sisters are gone. With those glorified Triple A franchises gone, the Yankees can play more games against the Red Sox, the Mets can play more games against the Braves, etc. In short, there will be more attractive matchups between teams that fans can actually care about.
Of course, my hard-headed solution probably won’t happen. More likely, lunkheaded fans will keep on forking over their (and their naighbors’) tax dollars to keep propping up moribund teams.
I have heard Pirates owner Kevin McClatchey ( sp? ) muttering darkly about the Washington area while he was answering a question about how to get big revenue teams to agree to reform.
The problem with letting the smaller teams die is that the taxpayers are left holding the bag.
In manny cases we are still paying for these parks.
GKittridge wrote:
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So if we get both revenue sharing and a salary cap, as some poeple seem to think is necessary to keep baseball viable, we then have 30 teams (unless more have been added since I started writing this post) that will all have the same income and expenditure, correct?
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Sure. Ideally the success of a given baseball team should be based on good drafting, trades, free agent signings – as well as the skills of the players and managers. It should not be because there are more people living in New York than Kansas City.
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So then it won’t really matter who wins or loses a game, correct? Oh, boy. That should make the World Series almost as exciting as the All-Star game.
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I don’t follow you. Are you saying that dynasties are good for the game and that there should be a definite pecking order in baseball that is never breached?
To HELL with that. As a fan of the New Orleans Saints I suffered through an 18 year stretch of Frisco teams basically kicking the crap out of everyone else in the division. What makes it possible to entertain the notion of following the sport at this present date is the fact that my team can get better with some competent management. The fact that New Orleans is the smallest city in the NFL has absolutely no bearing on what happens on Sunday. Parity in the NFL’s current format is the greatest thing to happen to a fan of a previously lousy team. This is completely against the mindset of the MLB. Completely.
TV Executives dislike parity because they feel that “the public” will have a difficult time understanding what the “good” teams are. A lot of fans of successful teams dislike parity because they, frankly, don’t want there to be any chance of their teams sucking. The vast majority of fans who do not happen to follow a team that was “good” in the 80s or 90s embrace it. Sports are all about risks and taking chances. Two first round picks for Sean Gilbert? Five for Chris Gratton? Do you trade for Rickey Henderson at 41? These are the decisions that championships should be based on. Not previous momentum.
I’ve never understood how seeing a couple “new” teams (“new” in terms of, neither of them used to do real damage in the playoffs) like the Rams and Titans put up a dogfight in the Super Bowl is supposed to be an obtuse, boring example of parity-inspired mediocrity while seeing Yankees / Braves for the third time is a high-flying, wholly exciting, gripping escapade.
If “parity” in baseball means that all 30 teams have a fair chance to make the post-season before the season starts then yes: baseball needs parity.
Parity is a nice concept if all the players were robots. If you get a bunch of talented players together, you’ll still have dynasties. And there’ll still always be teams like the Cubs, much beloved but never the champs.
There’s been so much made about the Yankees huge payroll and how their post-season appearances are a given. But this year, the Yankees only won 87 games. The division was there for the taking, but neither the Blue Jays or the Red Sox could step up and take it. Would they have if they were paid more?
Monterrey is also closer to the US than Mexico City. Imagine how long a road trip between MC and Seattle or Boston would be. Also, MC is higher above sea level than Denver, Colorado. You think the balls fly out of Coors Field?
Honolulu presents a simlar travel problem. Not only is it so far away, you also cross more time zones. (Mexico City is in Central Time.) Honolulu is six hours behind New York during DST because Hawaii does not observe DST. People in the East complain now when one of their teams plays a night game in California or Seattle that starts at 10:35 PM Eastern Time. How many people are going to watch a game on TV that starts at 1:35 AM EDT?
If Honolulu wanted to join MLB, they’d have to play all day games.
As for Portland, OR, http://www.ballparks.com has a page devoted to the proposed Portland stadium. (It’s listed under the Future American League Ballparks section.) Because of the climate, they are almost certainly going to need a park with a roof. But I think Portland is going to serve mostly as leverage when a team wants a new park, the way Tampa was used so often by the White Sox and the Giants.
TRIVIA QUESTION: Name the four oldest stadiums now in use in MLB. The fourth one may surprise you.
[STADIUM RAMBLING]
Working from memory, I’d say after that comes Shea Stadium, and then Anaheim Stadium/Edison Field, then the spate of multipurpose stadia that were built in the late 60’s-early 70’s: Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Three Rivers in Pittsburgh (though I think the Pirates are agitating for a replacement), Riverfront/Cinergy in Cincinnati, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Jack Murphy/Qualcomm in San Diego and the Oakland Coliseum. Don’t know what order those were erected in. I think Joe Robbie (I forget what the Marlins call it now) was built then too.
Then comes Royals/Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, which is probably the only stadium built later than the big three (mentioned first) that its fans will have developed an attchment to. Then Olympic Stadium in Montreal, which I think is up for replacement (or relocation of team) soon.
The only new stadium in the early 80’s, I think, was the Metrodome in Minnesota.
Then, in '89, came the new staidium boom, which is still continuing: SkyDome in Toronto, New Comiskey in Chicago, Camden Yards in Baltimore, the SunCoast Dome/Tropicana Field in the Tampa Bay area, the Ballpark in Arlington, Coors Field in Denver, Jacobs in Cleveland, PacBell in San Fran, SafeCo in Seattle, Turner in Atlanta, Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, Comerica in Detroit, Enron in Houston and Miller in Milwaukee.
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Soup wrote:
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The division was there for the taking, but neither the Blue Jays or the Red Sox could step up and take it. Would they have if they were paid more?
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I don’t follow the Red Sox closely enough to say either way, but I’d have liked the Jays’ chances this year with a salary cap. They had to trade Shawn Green for Raul Mondesi because Green was going to be a free agent and the Dodgers were willing to put him out of Toronto’s price range to get him. Mondi ripped apart his arm in RF, so they went down the stretch with no real right fielder. Maybe they make a move with Green there, maybe they don’t, but at least with a cap it comes down to player performance and not economics. The Yankees play really well as a team, there’s no denying that. I just think the division crown means more if you’re playing against teams that can afford to keep the guys they’ve drafted and developed.
VERY good. You even remembered not to include Milwaukee’s County Stadium, which hosted its last Brewer game this season. However, the correct ORDER is:
That’s right, folks; there’s a 39-year gap between #3 and #4. Fenway will most likely be demolished by 2003 and Yankee Stadium may not be far behind.
(I won’t dissect the rest of CMK’s post. I shall simply take the lazy way out and refer everyone to http://www.ballparks.com IMHO, they have the best site on the web devoted to ballparks, stadiums and arenas.)
About the Cubs: Call me crazy, but it seems like they make as much money now, being a “lovable loser” as they ever would being a champion. The White Sox simply do not have that cachet. Also, some people I have talked to say they never went to Comiskey because it’s in a bad neighborhood. Having never been to Comiskey and not being that familiar with Chicago, I cannot evaluate this reason.
Parity is caused when the better players take more money to play for a another team. In the NFL, the Rams were considered lucky ( although it’s more likely forsight ) to only lose a couple starters to free agency. Usually a Super Bowl champ loses more.
Perhaps if the White Sox or the Blue Jays had each taken a player from the Yanks things would have been different.
I’ve been a Braves fan for at least a dozen years now, and this kind of statement always makes me scratch my head. Whatever portion of the Turner empire’s coffers were devoted to the Braves in the 70s and 80s didn’t do much good – until Bobby Cox and then John Schuerholz took over the GM role. In 1991, the big money free agent on the Braves roster was Terry Pendleton, who didn’t represent an enormous outlay, even by 1991 standards. I don’t recall whether Charlie Leibrandt, Otis Nixon and Rafael Belliard were free agent signings or acquired via trade (though I’m pretty sure they were FAs), but they’re not exactly what most people think of when they talk about “throwing money at whatever shortfalls their team has”. Lonnie Smith had been with the Braves for a few years already without making any difference in where they finished. Otherwise, on that 1991 team, nearly everyone was a Braves farm system product or was acquired in a trade. Cox, and later Schuerholz, built the Braves up from the depths the old-fashioned way. Yes, Pendleton had an MVP year in 1991, but no one (except possibly Cox and Schuerholz) expected that. Yes, the Braves had some money to spend, but not dramatically more than many other teams of the time. Keep in mind that in the late eighties and 1990, even into the first half of 1991, Braves’ attendance was abysmal – below 1 million at times in the 80s. For 1992, the Braves added no free agents of note (well, there was Jeff Reardon), and went to the Series again.
IMHO, where and how the Braves spent money in the late 80s and early 90s was more important than how much. They invested in player development and scouting, particularly internationally. They became leaders in scouting and signing players from Latin America and other parts of the world, and didn’t have to pay premium signing bonuses for some of the top talent acquired this way. While all of this didn’t happen for free, the expenditures required were, I suspect, less than what many teams with less money were spending chasing the elusive franchise-making free agent.
Even over the last several years, the Braves’ financially significant free-agent signings have been Greg Maddux, Brian Jordan, Andres Gallaraga, and Marquis Grissom (I suppose re-signing Fred McGriff ought to count in there as well). All were well-paid, but only Maddux approached being the highest-paid player in the game. Meanwhile, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Javy Lopez, Kevin Millwood, Rafael Furcal, Ryan Klesko, John Rocker, Kerry Ligtenberg, et al. have come up through the organization, while other key spots have been filled through trades (with varying success). The Braves’ payroll has grown to be one of the highest in baseball, but the vast majority of that money has gone to re-signing players they’ve developed or acquired via trades, not to buying solutions to their perceived problems (the record there is little better than anyone else’s). It’s been funded largely by the increased success they Braves have had in marketing a successful baseball team, not by ownership suddenly deciding to buy a World Series (a la Wayne Huizenga).
As for there being no risk involved, I don’t see how you can claim that there’s no risk in doing what you allege the Braves, Yankees, Dodgers, etc., to have done: namely, signing free agents to lucrative multi-year deals. More often than not, these deals are a disappointment to the clubs involved. Only Maddux and Gallaraga stand out as successes among the Braves’ FA signings over the last decade; Jordan has played fairly well but been injured a lot, Marquis Grissom had one decent year and one mediocre one, and none of the various relievers the Braves trotted through as FAs panned out. IMHO, real GM skill shows through in the moves that don’t get a lot of attention or cost a lot of money, but that put the right role players in place around the core of the team. As examples from Atlanta, since that’s the team I’m most familiar with: picking up Terry Mulholland from the Cubs in a late-season trade, getting Mike Remlinger from the Reds as part of the Neagle/Tucker/Boone deal, signing Bobby Bonilla to a bargain-basement deal in the offseason, picking up John Burkett off waivers, picking up Ozzie Guillen a couple of years ago off waivers, adding Luis Polonia and Mike Devereaux in 1995, finding Ligtenberg in the independent leagues, etc. You can say the same about the Yankees the last two years. And if all there is to it is spending money, what about your other two examples, the Dodgers and Orioles? Where’ve they been at the end of the season lately?
By and large, that’s true. But by and large, it’s always been true. The current crop is not significantly better or worse than the class of, say, 1920.
And have NFL-style rosters, with a couple of superstars getting the bulk of the money and as many cheap rookies and journeymen as possible? No thanks.
Aha. We do agree on something.
Agreed. Out it goes.
I agree that the trend in signing bonuses has been a very disturbing development over the last few years. I almost wonder if the old “bonus baby” rules weren’t a better system: pay 'em a bonus if you want, but you have to keep 'em on the major league roster for the next couple of years, taking up a roster slot and probably not contributing much. If clubs just want to pay 18-year-old kids big money to do absolutely nothing for them, fine, but I suspect that the smarter players would rather improve their long-term prospects and play reguarly.
Whether baseball is doomed depends largely on how you view what baseball and professional sports in general should be.
Should it fall under the same survival-of-the-fittest realities of any other business? Or should there be more recognition of the unique role of sports in our culture, and an idea of preserving the notion of pro sports teams representing most all of our major cities and populous regions?
Judging by how offended astorian’s “let 'em die” view made me, I guess I lean more toward the latter.
It is gray rather than black-and-white, however. With parity, there somehow has to be financial and managerial accountability. Take, for example, an idiot like former Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, who found a way to lose money with a pro football franchise for which it should have been virtually impossible, then simply jettisoned one of the most storied franchises in the game for a sweeter deal, leaving his mess behind. It was MODELL’s mismanagement that left the Browns precarious, not Cleveland. Situations like that shouldn’t be allowable.
First off, Green was NOT a free agent until the end of this season; the Blue Jays could have kept him. Trading him to Los Angeles actually cost them money in 2000 - a lot of money, since Green would have made about $2 million, while Mondesi made $11 million.
Mondesi is one of the highest-paid position players in baseball (and the most overpaid by far, but that’s another issue.) If the Jays were trying to save money, why did they trade for him, of all people? Bobby Higginson was available for less. The yearly difference in salary even with Green’s new contract is only $3 million, and given that some of Green’s money is deferred, there’s no difference at all for a few years.
The reason Green was traded, of course, was that he demanded a trade and the team figured they’d may as well get something for him, reasoning (probably correctly) that he’d leave anyway after 2000. They got the highly-paid Mondesi because they were willing to pay top dollar for a slugging outfielder - it’s just that Green didn’t want the job.
As to their chances with or without Green, the Blue Jays simply did not play well this year, and the difference between Raul Mondesi and Shawn Green isn’t five games. If the Jays had snuck in they would have been arguably the worst team in baseball history to make the postseason.
They can complain all they want about money, the the Blue Jays AND Red Sox both made horrifyingly bad moves that were unrelated to salary. The Jays had huge holes throughout the team, especially at second, short, backup catcher and just about the entire rotation, that they were unwilling to address for a variety of personal reasons; for example, they’ve brought in several old players from the 1993 NL champion Phillies just because Jim Fregosi liked them. The Red Sox brought in a vast array of horrible players with big contracts for what reason I cannot imagine.
The Yankees tend to pay atttention to detail that other teams do not; you get the sense that Joe Torre and Brian Cashman carefully consider every possibility in terms of deciding what players they need, whereas the Blue Jays just sort of tossed the team together at the last minute, counting on the stars to make up for the terrible backups. When the season began the Blue Jays did not have a single bench player who hit lefthanded. Not one. How can you overlook that?
Toronto has a new owner and the scuttlebutt now is they’re prepared to make a splash by going after big names like Alex Rodriguez or Mike Mussina. My guess is that either would help the team but not as much as people hope.
Toronto has a new owner and the scuttlebutt now is they’re prepared to make a splash by going after big names like Alex Rodriguez or Mike Mussina. My guess is that either would help the team but not as much as people hope.
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I think the Dodgers and Angels have proven, time and time again, that a big money free-agent doesn’t get you into the play-offs.
“Also, some people I have talked to say they never went to Comiskey because it’s in a bad neighborhood. Having never been to Comiskey and not being that familiar with Chicago, I cannot evaluate this reason.”
The neighborhood situation around Comiskey Park has been a point of discussion in the last year. The ball park is essentially next to the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Red Line subway that runs down the expressway median. On the east side of the Ryan is the infamous Stateway Gardens housing project. On the west side of the expressway – the same side of the road as the ballpark – is middle-class blue-collar Bridgeport.
Which one is causing the trouble for baseball fans? Bridgeport. So long as people stay right by the ballpark, they’re OK. But if they decide to patronize the nearby bars or park in the neighborhood instead of the stadium parking lots, they risk being beaten to a pulp by gangs of Bridgeport teens who attack any “outsiders” that dare to cast their undeserving shadow on holy Bridgeport. :rolleyes: The issue came to prominence when a radio sports announcer and his friend were viciously attacked, managed to call the cops afterwards, and another person was attacked separately in the long period before the police finally arrived. AFAIK, the cops never arrested anyone for these or any other Bridgeport attacks.
Baseball needs to speed up the game - that is, return the duration to 2.5 hours on average in the 1970s from the current 3.5 hours. Basically, this means compelling the umpires to stop needless dawdling (easy) and to call strikes within the rule-book zone (very hard).
While I agree that baseball needs more revenue sharing, getting rid of free agency (and higher salaries) isn’t likely to do the job. The Yankees dominated that era of the sport, mostly through the skill of their scouts and farm system - and the willingness of teams like the As to be the Yankee farm team. The teams that are unsuccessful now would be equally so in that era.
It might be possible to put a salary cap on the teams that make the playoffs - set at the highest level. Thus the Yankees would have to let Cone, Neagle and Canseco go to bid for Mussina, while the lower salary teams could make any bids.
Moreover, teams that make the playoffs and do not exceed the playoff-team cap could receive a higher payout of the TV revenues these games provide. Thus the Yanks would get $0 of this bonus money with the Mariners, White Sox, and Athletics splitting up the rest.
Exactly. While I’ve been no fan of the Yankees most of my life, I do like Torre and admire what he and Cashman have done. Having money to spend helps, but it’s not enough. That’s the point I was trying to make in mentioning the moves that Cox and Schuerholz have made that aren’t headline-grabbers but that do more to influence the team’s ability to win games than most of the big-dollar free agent signings we hear so much about.
Isn’t there a way to electronically detect – with greater accuracy than a home-plate umpire’s eyeballs – whether a ball passes through the strike zone or not? I’d think that would settle a lot of off-the-field good call/bad call disputes.