Selig eyes MLB 'contraction': Washington's NEVER gonna get a team!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Washington Post story here.

The Windsor (Ont.) Star has reported that MLB plans to buy out the Expos and Marlins after the season, close them down, and have a ‘dispersal draft’ to divvy up their players among the rest of the teams, though the Players’ Union would have to consent. Selig says that contraction is being seriously considered.

Selig says it’s too early to say whether contraction would preclude a team in Washington, but to say that it would hurt DC’s tenuous chances of rejoining the fraternity of MLB cities is a considerable understatement. For thirty years, MLB has shown a willingness to do anything to avoid returning baseball to the Nation’s Capital.

At one time, that was understandable. When the Senators picked up and left after the 1971 season, DC and Baltimore were both economic backwaters, and it was genuinely questionable whether the two cities could support two teams. That’s far from the case today; the DC area would still be a major city if the Federal government picked up and moved to Nebraska. Fact is, the DC/Baltimore area can support two ML teams far better than many MLB cities can support one.

With a number of MLB franchises clearly hurting in recent years, DC’s best bet for a new team was for MLB to admit that the Expos were never going to make it in Montreal, and that it might be a long time before the Marlins could turn a profit in Miami - and let them relocate.

Needless to say, if MLB teams were free to move, DC would probably be the most desirable location to move to, and that fact alone would put pressure on Bowie…er, Bud (like there’s a difference)…to allow an NL team to move here, regardless of Angelos’ wishes.

No MLB team has been allowed to move in 30 years. In fact, the Senators’ departure for Arlington, TX, was the last time a ML baseball team has moved. But with the abject failure of the Expos in Montreal in particular, it was clearly time to let failing teams move once more.

But with ‘contraction’, Selig has found a way to avoid that. Washington’s never going to get a team. :frowning:

2

I am sad.

However, my pain is alleviated when I thinik about The POTOMAC CANNONS!!! Sure, they’re only Class A Advanced, but the park is 15 minutes from my house and you can get in and out for less than $10. ($15, if you want one of those fantastic sausage sandwiches they sell behind the bleachers – get 'em quick, though, as they close down after about the fifth inning.)

–Cliffy

3

Contraction is a spook story being circulated to create an artificial bargaining chip in negotations with the MLBPA. It absolutely is NOT going to happen.

4

Let’s just be reasonable here.

Allow me to introduce a labor group just slightly less powerful than the teamsters: The Major League Baseball Players Association.

You think the MLBPA is going to allow 50+ major league jobs to dry up? I don’t think so. Don Fehr has already announced that contraction is, in his opinion, a matter for negotiation at the collective bargaining table. MLB disagrees. They’ll go to court and the players will win. The players win EVERY time.

And I wouldn’t count on FLA being broken up. That would piss off a certain governor who just happens to have ‘connections’ with the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Also, if that happens I’m figuring that those two franchises are valued at roughly $250,000,000 combined. That means each and every major league team will have to cough up almost $9,000,000 to buy them out. You seriously think Kansas City or Pittsburgh has the resources to make that happen? What about St Louis or Milwaukee? It’s not just Chicago and New York having to pay these bills.

So don’t lose heart. This is almost certainly gamesmanship by the owners for the upcoming collective bargaining sessions.

5

I sure hope so, Rick. After all, I’m not worried about the Players’ Association; they’ve shown repeatedly that they can hold their own.

But I can see it now: Selig will try to win concessions that way, and fail, and then will reverse field. Instead, he’ll use willingness to not demand concessions elsewhere as his bargaining chip to get them to agree to contraction.

Nothing’s gone right for baseball in Washington since that awful fall day in 1970 when Robert Short traded his best starting pitcher and half his starting infield for a washed-up Denny McLain, and I’ve got every reason to believe that MLB will find a way to keep screwing us over.

6

Well, it’s certainly true that they’ve treated us like $2 hookers for 30 years.

But screw them anyway.

I just can’t see contraction happening. In fact, I’d wager some important parts of my anatomy that we start hearing talk of another round of expansion by 2004. The next round of franchises will probably go for $250,000,000 each. That’s $18,000,000 in each franchises pockets.

And they’ll like that part a lot.

7

This operates on the assumption that contraction is something the owners actually want. It isn’t. For all the bitching you hear about how poor they are (which is nonsense) what would the Dodgers or the Cubs gain from the Expos not existing? Nothing.

The cost of contracting would be a heck of a lot more than just buying the franchises out, and $500,000,000 is a conservative estimate. Contraction would be a PR disaster of the first order, and would probably trigger retribution from the government in the form of the end of the anti-trust excemption. How can you justify folding one team when several cities are offering to have the team set up shop there? it just lends credence to the claims that MLB is committing stadium extortion.

It’s long been theorized that MLB won’t put a team in Washington because it given owners a place to threaten they’re going to move if you don’t build them a shiny new ballpark. If MLB pays out the nose to fold the Expos, rather than letting them move down the road to DC where they’d be more profitable, that more or less cements the allegation of extortion, doesn’t it? On its face, there’s no reason you’d dissolve the Expos rather than making them the Senators v3.0 - unless you need Washington as an ongoing threat. By letting them move you eliminate the problems of Jeffrey Loria and Olympic Stadium, and you don’t have to pay $200+ million. It’s a simple, cheap, perfect solution. The fact that they haven’t done it yet is puzzling, but if they went so far as to buy them out rather than moving them, it’s no longer puzzling - it’s clear-cut bad faith negotiating on every stadium deal in the last fifteen years. Remember that there is not just one, but TWO groups in Washington, D.C. who have the money and have stated that they will buy a team, any team, if MLB will permit it (The Malek group in DC and the Collins group in NoVa.) They have the cheques ready and plans to renovate RFK stadium. You cannot possibly justify dissolving two teams and leaving Washington high and dry. Congress will revoke the anti-trust exemption faster than you can say “Curt Flood.”

My honest belief is that MLB has absolutely no intention of contracting, now or in the future. Furthermore, I think Jonathan is right; there will be expansion within 10 years. If Montreal moves, Montreal might get another team; it’s a big market that would support a real team in a real stadium. Other possibilities include Washington if it doesn’t get a relocated team, Portland, New York/New Jersey, Louisville, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

8

The argument is that it makes for better baseball, which will ultimately strengthen the current teams’ revenue. And given the state of pitching in the last several years, it’s a reasonably argument. I don’t think baseball will ever lose its exemption, and this wouldn’t do it.

–Cliffy

9

Nate - well, for one thing, the Players’ Association is probably more powerful than the Teamsters. But although they’ve repulsed every effort by MLB to break them (and MLB has done its Neanderthal damnedest), they’ve given up something (e.g. an extra year before arbitration eligibility, or some modest compensation for losing free agents) in every round of negotiations (including 1981 and 1994) to at least let management feel they came out of the deal with something.

This time, it could be contraction.

Also, in today’s climate, I can see a court saying that it’s purely the organization’s decision whether to fold a team or not. Even a pro-union guy like me looks at that and says, “how many employees you have is purely a management decision; what business does a union have, nosing in on that?” Given that the courts these days are a lot more conservative than I am, I’ll believe it’ll be hard for MLB to find a court to see it their way when it happens.

And I have a feeling that MLB clubs are worth a bit less than you think.

Oh, the ones in good markets are worth quite a bit more, actually. Angelos paid nearly $200M, IIRC, for the Orioles, and they’d go for considerably more now. And for the Yankees, the sky would be the limit.

But what are the Pirates worth? The Twins? Let alone the sorry Expos.

Baseball is a sport on the decline. Its playoffs can’t outdraw one of the NFL’s sorriest MNF matchups in years. It has no good cities left to expand into. And given that baseball’s not going to deal with the real problems that are sapping interest in the game, contraction looks like a viable option. As far as more expansion is concerned, I see prospective owners looking at how poorly so many MLB teams fared during the boom years of the late 1990s, and saying, “exactly why should I pay into 9 figures for a piece of that?”

IANAL, and I don’t know much about it even as a layman, but apparently MLB has authority to prevent teams from moving that the other major sports lack. (I remember when the Raiders moved, over the league’s opposition, and won in court.) The value of the Expos is extremely low - near worthless - if they have no right to move out of Montreal.

And regardless of Jeb Bush’s feelings on the matter, fact is that Dubya - an organization man to the core - has been part of the MLB ownership fraternity. Since his old club is doing OK, my money’s on Dubya to not do anything to rock Bowie Selig’s boat.

Rick - of all the locations you mention, I’d bet on all of them to be economic millstones for MLB, except for DC and northern NJ. And it hasn’t been that long since the Expos were good, and they were losing money then.

What they gain from contraction is fewer ways to split future league revenues - not to mention a route (other than expansion) past the unwieldiness of a 30-team league. I’m not as familiar with FL, but I expect they could buy the Expos at a fire-sale price - and I bet MLB could get the big-market clubs to pony up almost all the money, as an alternative to revenue-sharing, which MLB will do anything - even go to war with the Players’ Association, as they did in 1994 - to avoid dealing with.

Contraction would be far less of a PR disaster than the 1994-95 labor stoppage was. So it’s well under the ceiling of what MLB will tolerate in that direction.

And nobody’s going to punish them for their bad-faith dealings. Not Shrub, not the Congress, not the courts. No way, nohow.

10

MLB is not particularly interested in a franchise in Washington simply because two teams in living memory lost money there and had to move away. They’d rather go to a new city than to a two-time loser.

11

Well, that certainly made sense in, say, 1976. But surely even the Cro-Magnons who run MLB are aware that Washington of 2001 is a much more affluent and prosperous city than it was in 1971.

So, Chuck, are you saying that MLB is not aware of the city’s changes, or that MLB thinks that the fate of Nats 1.0 (=Twins) and Nats 2.0 (=Rangers), thirty years or more back, are more relevant to the prospects of baseball in DC than are the area’s current wealth and demographics?

Just wondering.

12

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
**
Rick - of all the locations you mention, I’d bet on all of them to be economic millstones for MLB, except for DC and northern NJ. And it hasn’t been that long since the Expos were good, and they were losing money then.**[/
QUOTE]

Well, no. The Expos were last good in the mid-90s, and they were quite profitable. The owners cry poverty, but every reputable study would suggest that almost all teams make money every year, and over the long haul all teams are profitable. The Expos have probably been losing money since 1998 or 1999; prior to that they made money every year.

The question is; why would Jeffrey Loria sell it? Loria has bought the controlling interest in the Expos for far more than a fire sale price; it’s obviously his intent to move them at some point. MLB can’t force him to give the team up for dissolution.

Baseball is NOT a sport on the decline. Attendance in 2001 was up from 2000. Attendance in 2000 was up from 1999. Attendance in 1999 was up from 1998; baseball attendance has gone up every year since the 1994 strike, and is now almost at its 1993 pre-strike level. TV revenues are higher than they have ever been. New stadia are popping up all over, promising long-term revenue increases, and more new stadia are on the way. Interest in the game isn’t being “sapped,” it’s increasing, and will likely continue to increase. There’s no objective evidence baseball is in any sort of financial dire straits, and given the fact that the owners have a 120-year history of claiming poverty while they make money, I see no reason to think anything’s different now.

There’s just nothing in contraction for them, and if “Teams in trouble” was a reality they’d just have Loria ship the Expos off to Washington; Tampa Bay has no obvious solution but that team will be fine in the long haul.

13

If Washington, or Charlotte or New Orleans or Portland or Newark for that matter, were really attractive as new markets, why hasn’t Loria tried to move the Expos there already? Most posters have stated that it’s up to the MLB owners’ council, or at least Selig, but I don’t think that’s the case - there are any number of cases of pro sports franchises that have moved on the owner’s own decision, and not one has been successfully countermanded by their league. I don’t see any reason for them to stand in the way of the Expos moving if that would be good for the Expos, because that would be good for their own franchises, too. But it hasn’t happened, and isn’t going to.

Nope, the Orioles stopped selling out their great new ballpark after the novelty wore off, and attendance is going to drop further with Ripken gone and the team still sucking. But that’s including Washington’s fan base already. Now split the Wash/Balt fan base among two sucky teams and is either one, or MLB, going to better off?

Tampa maybe could be fixed with a decent park in an accessible location, but that ain’t happenin’. Miami should be able to draw with what they’ve got. The other candidates don’t look any better.

Sorry, folks, I have to agree with the contraction idea, and I’d even extend it to 2 or 4 more teams - Minnesota and Tampa Bay for starters, possibly Kansas City, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Anaheim too. Bad attendance plagues most markets, and improving the quality of the product by eliminating some of the excess of minor-league talent in the major leagues is one of the things necessary to fixing a decaying business. There are a lot of others too, but that’s a different thread.

14

This is just the damndest thing. I don’t understand this at all; has EVERYONE been totally suckered by the spin?

Attendance today isn’t bad. It’s GREAT. Oakland draws more fans than Atlanta did in the 1980s; Minnesota draws more than Cleveland did in the 1980s, too. To use an example, average American League attendance in 2001 was 29,025 per game. That’s the fourth highest average attendance in league history; only 1992, 1993, and 1994 were better, and the only difference between then and now is Toronto’s drop in attendance (which accounts for 2000 fans per game for every team! And they still draw okay.) Furthermore, it’s a 14% increase over post-strike 1995. And these are the best attendance years baseball has ever had; nothing prior to the 1990s even compares. 21 years ago (I didn’t use 20 years ago becaus that was the strike season) average AL attendance was only 19,308 per game. And that was the best season the AL had ever had up to that point.

Some teams HAVE to have the lowest attendance in baseball, unless by some insane coincidence they all happen to draw exactly the same number of people; should they contract the lowest two every year until we’re down to two teams? There is no evidence whatsoever that low attendance is a permanent state; even Montreal was once in the top half in the NL, though they may be a genuinely dead franchise now. Teams that appeared dead in the water have become major powers; Cleveland was completely written off as a major league franchise as late as 1992. A relatiely small market, they’re now a powerhouse. It just amazes me that people have suddenly decided that at this moment in time the unsuccessful franchises have to be contracted. Florida and Minnesota have just as good a chance as anyone else to draw three million fans a year two, five or ten years from now. They didn’t contract Atlanta in 1987, Cleveland in 1991, or Oakland in 1980. Why now?

Major league baseball attendance per game in 2001 was the fourth highest in the history of baseball. It was an increase over the previous year for the sixth straight year. All forms of revenue are as high as they have ever been. There simply isn’t any problem with baseball’s popularity here.

As to the talent level, I would suggest that the level of talent in baseball today is as high as it has ever been; I would further suggest that the talent pool is NOT diluted, and that since expansion began, the ratio of teams to talent has remained the same. In fact, I suspect there’s more talent to go around now than ever. Hell, a few more Asian players and we’ll be ready to stock a whole team with them - and ten years ago we had no Asian players at all. (And the ones coming over are mostly really good.) The influx of Hispanic players continues. I simply don’t believe there’s any shortage of talent, and I certainly do not believe for one instant that a lack of talent is affecting attendance - if it is, I’d love to know why attendance isn’t dropping, or why many teams with a lack of talent seem to draw lots of fans. I’ve yet to see any objective evidence that there is a dearth of major league talent, and it is certainly my personal observation that the calibre of baseball today is higher than I’ve ever seen it.

15

Your wording suggests that there have been a passel of such studies. Can you cite one?

I stand corrected on the ‘decline’ issue - in absolute terms. I’d still say baseball’s losing ground relative to the other major sports.

But you’ve only looked at the revenue side of the equation. Baseball’s expenses have grown over the period, too - and I doubt that they’re just getting back to 1993 levels.

16

Just a couple of points.

Kim-

The MLBPA has never lost a point against the owners. If fact, the example you cite, of them giving up a year of arbitration? You’ve got it backwards. In the lockout of 1990 the owners actually gave in and allowed arbitration to the 17% of players between 3-4 years of service time with the longest tenure.

You’re right, their more powerful than the Teamsters. And they each come standard equipped with a bat already. Union! Union! Union!

As for this:

MLB has what other leagues have wet dreams about: an anti-trust exemption. The Raiders can move, be told they’re not allowed, and sue the NFL because they’re acting like a monopoly. The Expos can say they’re moving, MLB can say no, the Expos sue claiming MLB is acting like a monopoly and MLB can say they get to because they have the anti-trust exemption.

It’s the most valuable part of any franchise. If it goes away I bet the value of every franchise drops by at least a fourth.

Also, I was listening to Marketplace on NPR on the way home tonight and they had a sports economist on who said the cost of buying out the Expos and Marlins would exceed $500,000,000 just to buy back the franchises. That wouldn’t include all the other expenses therefrom.

I do believe that reducing the number of teams would, in the long run, be deflationary in terms of salaries, at least in the short term. But it’s no long term solution.

A long term solution? Eliminate arbitration. Free agency at 4 years of service time. Pay scales for those first four years to be assigned by collective bargaining and to be the same for all teams and players.

And most important (and least likely)…

Full blown revenue sharing. The realization by the owners that they aren’t 30 competing businesses by 30 divisions of a single business: professional baseball.

Put those items in place and watch Nirvana occur!

Um.

Trust me. I’m a baseball columnist!

17

I’ll look something up for you.

Well, which ones? The NBA is not doing well; some good teams like LA, Toronto and Philadelphia are doing really well, but a great many teams are playing well under capacity. The league has never really done well since it was founded, and the surge in popularity from mid-Magic to late Jordan has dwindled.

The NHL has definitely overexpanded and many of its franchises are on thin ice.

The NFL is doing fine, as it always has, but it’s not GROWING, and I can’t see that it’s hurting baseball.

Unless MLS or the WNBA are significantly biting into baseball’s popularity, I’m not sure what it’s losing ground to. NASCAR?

Expenses seem easy to control. Just don’t spend it. The huge jump in salaries strikes me as being pretty good evidence that MLB isn’t as bad off as it claims to be; why would they be spending more and more money if they weren’t recouping the investment?

18

But players were originally eligible for arbitratation before the fourth year, right? Or is my memory completely out to lunch? What was it in, say, 1977?

If it’s that sort of money, it’s not happening, of course. I gather you concur with RickJay that even the small-market clubs have, overall, been making money all this time? Because the only way ‘contraction’ makes any sense is if some clubs have genuinely been hemmorhaging money.

If those studies of Rick’s really show what he says they do, then (a) the threat is BS, and (b) the union knows about them too, and how the Sam Hill does Selig expect the threat of contraction to affect the negotiations, in that case?

If that’s the case, it sounds like he’s trying to score PR points, replaying Bowie’s old ‘we need to discover oil under third base’ BS from 1981, when MLB was totally hiding its books. But all he’s done is made me mad at MLB, and besides, the MLBPA has never relied on winning in the press.

As Reagan said, trust but verify.

'Scuse me while I reach for my copy of Lords of the Realm. :slight_smile:

19

Expenses are easy for whom to control?

If we’re just talking plausible scenarios, here’s mine: the rich clubs are willing to shell out the big bucks because they can do so, and still make lots of money, and it helps them win. (When all is said and done, MLB teams are only partly a business enterprise; they’re also a very expensive toy. If you aren’t playing to win in the on-the-field sense, what’s the point of being an owner?) The small-market clubs have to either follow suit, or give on-the-field success a back seat to profitability.

20

RickJay ignores an important point- most major league baseball clubs have received MASSIVE subsidies from the taxpayers.

Handouts from John Q. Public have hidden a multitude of problems. But it looks to me as if the taxpayers have gotten tired of this nonsense. The taxpayers of Charlotte (one of the places always cited as a promising spot for franchise relocation) have made it clear that they’re not interested in building a new ballpark for millionaire players and billionaire owners. And most of the other possible expansion cities mentioned make no sense at all.

Owners were able to blackmail cities by pointing to “the Promised Land,” in Florida, and threatening to move. Well, now we know that Florida WASN’T the Promised Land… and there is NOPLACE left that they can plausibly threaten to move to.

Unless owners are willing to pay for their own stadiums (wow, entrepreneurs building their own facilities, what a concept!), I believe they’re going to find themselves out of luck.