77 Hitmen

One thing that I really feel bad about for Pirates fans is that Bob Nutting (the team owner you are referring to) is only 63 years old. He could be the team owner for the next 20 years. At least we have an end to JR's ownership in sight with the plan to sell to the Ishbias between 2029 to 2034. Still not soon enough, but at least it's in the foreseeable future.

Perhaps Jerry should send John Fisher a box of cigars as thanks for keeping him from being the worst owner in sports?

The argument is whether Moreno is worse that Jerry Reinsdorf, not whether he's a bad owner. I don't see anyone suggesting Arte Moreno is a good owner for the Angels. I have a hard time concluding that he's actually worse than Jerry Reinsdorf.

It would no doubt be very damaging to the sport. It won't be like 1994 for Sox fans since JR's leadership in tanking what could have been a World Series season for his team totally sunk support for the Sox, but it would be bad for the sport as a whole. I'm not rooting for a lockout, but I also don't want the status quo to be maintained either. We currently have about half the league doing well and have the league in perpetual rebuild-at-best mode.

I've said this before - since I'm stuck in baseball hell as a White Sox fan, I'm not going to lose sleep if the 2027 season is wiped out. As far as I'm concerned, the last 3 seasons have been a total loss to me with an unwatchable team anyway. I don't expect many Sox fans to be the ones lying in front of the proverbial bulldozers to stop the 2027 season wrecking crew begging MLB to keep the status quo at all costs.

It looks to me that there's really about a dozen major market teams that can spend like crazy and land elite free agents to astronomical contracts. Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Phillies, Red Sox, Braves, Astros, Rangers, Cubs, Angels, Padres, Giants, Blue Jays. I actually counted 13. These are all major market teams that have enormous revenue streams....and yes, that includes Atlanta and Boston due to their massive fan bases and the size of their overall market. San Diego is probably the one team that doesn't neatly fit into the major market status in this list. Sort of a unique situation there where their market not being super huge as it's blocked in by LA, the ocean, Mexico, and desert. How many times has a team not on this list won the World Series in the last 20 seasons? Four. Major markets have won 16 out of the last 20 titles. The only small market team to win in the last 2 decades was the Royals. I'd argue that the Nats are a medium market team and that the Cards were a medium market team back when they won 2 titles, though with the collapse of RSN money, St. Louis is sliding into small market status. No, being able to spend a huge amount on payroll doesn't guarantee championships (hello Angels and Mets) and teams do have to invest in player development, but it's clear to me that being a major market team DOES matter and it is the biggest factor in success.

Nothing really new in this article, but it provides a good summary of where the various Chicago sports teams stand in terms of quests for new stadiums or, in the case of the Blackhawks and Sky, new practice facilities. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/22/chicago-sports-stadiums-who-is-moving/ This comment from Danny Wirtz is noteworthy: “We’re sitting on a lot of parking lots, right?” Wirtz said. “And we see parking has continued to decrease with other modes (of transportation) to get here. We’re absolutely thinking about what the future could look like.”

....and even with that down year, they're still averaging 88 wins per season over the last 5 years in a very tough division.

Jerry has been running a 2nd-rate operation with the Sox for years. They were perfectly situated to sign either Machado or Harper, but that was never going to happen with JR as owner. Only one of two franchise that has never signed a player to a $100M contract with the other franchise being literally homeless now. Passing up on Hinch in favor of brining TLR surely earns him lots of points towards the "worst owner in sports" award.

Nitpick here: he's actually 89. And yeah, he's long had a adversarial relationship with both the media and fans who are critical of the team. He's not swayed by what we think. He's got plenty of yes men around him to tell him that he's right.

JR's biggest success as Sox owner, of course, was the 2005 World Series championship. But, if I'm not mistaken all but a handful of MLB teams have won at least 1 WS title since he's been owner. Five expansion teams, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are the only franchises who haven't unless I'm missing someone. Two of those expansion teams didn't even exist until 1993 and 1998. What's so maddening is that he failed to build on that 2005 title to make the Sox more of a "big market" team. Instead, we've had 20 years of keeping or promoting loyalists who weren't very good at their jobs and failing to invest properly in this franchise to let it start developing enough talent to compete.

I don't blame you. I haven't relinquished my fandom, but I have mostly tuned out their performance on the field these last 3 seasons. Life's too short to let my anger at how JR ran this franchise into the ground affect my enjoyment of summers. What you say points to a concern I have about this franchise. How many other life-long Sox fans have simply given up on this team. It's going to take a lot of hard work to win these fans back. Just being good enough to make the wild card or win a weak division and then get quickly bounced in the first round isn't going to be good enough. And like I said, I'm not criticizing your decision or your loyalty in any way.

The Rays? You mean the team that has won 2 pennants in the last 17 years with a small fanbase, a terrible stadium, and chronically low attendance? I know of another team that has won only 2 pennants over the last century. Their fans shouldn't be casting too much shade on the success of the Rays.

The Dodgers' TV deal alone is worth something like $8B. There's no way in hell the Brewers would ever get a $8B TV deal in the State of Wisconsin. And that doesn't even get into other revenue streams like corporate sponsorships that just aren't comparable in Wisconsin than in Southern California. This ain't the Packers going up against the Rams in the NFL. You can shout that the Brewers should be handing $600M in contracts all you want, but it doesn't make it any more realistic. The Brewers along with the Guardians and the Rays are the best-run, most successful small market teams. What you see from them is the best you're going to get in MLB. They're not a failure, their franchise is a success story. MLB's competitive balance is what is a failure.

Bingo.

2nd longest drought without a post season series win in MLB. Only the Reds have gone longer (1995) without winning a post season series.

How does the upcoming expiration to the CBA affect his free agency? Does some rich team rush to lock him up to a huge contract before the lockout begins? Or does his and other free agencies next fall get stuck in limbo until the impending labor impasse is resolved?

I'm a day late on this, but yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the White Sox winning the AL pennant. It seems like only yesterday and seems like ancient history at the same time to me. https://www.mlb.com/video/white-sox-win-al-pennant-c19971067 I guess we're now half way to a third consecutive 40+ year pennant drought.

When (or I should say "if") MLB fixes its competitive balance issue. If it ends up being a LA vs. Toronto World Series, that'll guarantee 9 big market teams winning the WS in the last 10 seasons. The lone exception was the 2019 Nationals, who are arguably a "medium market" team. Go back the 10 seasons before that and it was almost all big market teams too except for the Cardinals and Royals. Maybe Seattle fans can have more hope as they're also arguably a medium market team, but the small-market Brewers have run an outstanding organization and this is about as far as they can go under the current system. They can outdo the Cubs, but they just can't keep up with $400M behemoths like the Dodgers.

The Bills are going all in on "snow games" - their new $2B new stadium will be outdoors. But about 2/3 of the seats will be covered by a canopy and it'll have a heated playing surface. On the other hand, the Broncos intend to have a retractable roof for their new stadium. The Bills are the outlier in the wave of new NFL stadiums. After spending close to $2B, most teams and cities want a facility that can be used year-round for events even in the dead of winter. I like how the stadiums in Arizona and Vegas have natural grass because they have a system that rolls the playing surface outside so that grass can grow. If the Bears do indeed build a domed stadium in Arlington Heights, it would be nice if it had that kind of playing surface arrangement. It looks like US Bank in MN conveys some of that "day game" feel thanks to its glass roof. However, based on what I've seen on TV, Allegiant Stadium in Vegas has a roof that's more opaque translucent as if it were a completely cloudy day outside. Perhaps that's to block out more of the intense Nevada sunlight?

The Browns and the city of Cleveland have reached a deal to settle their legal dispute regarding the team's plan to build a domed stadium in suburban Brook Park. The team will pay the city $100M as part of the deal. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46585926/haslams-cleveland-reach-deal-move-browns-brook-park

He's been alienating fans almost from the get-go and his numerous PR blunders have been discussed ad nauseum. But Jerry really squandered a couple of golden opportunities to build the Sox into a marketable, big-market team. First when the State of Illinois gifted him a new stadium at gun point and he had a soulless dud of a facility built that focused on luxury suites and corporate clients over the regular fans. Then second was after they won the World Series. Instead of building on momentum from that championship by pouring resources into the farm system and high-quality free agents, we ended up with 2 decades of mostly teams that were underachievers at best. I wonder how much lack of corporate sponsorship factors into them having the 2nd lowest revenue in the league.

And those aren't cheap seats. Right behind home plate in what looks to be Toronto's version of Scout Seats at an ALCS game. How much do those cost?

Yeah, and there's also the whole Twins sale debacle where the Pohlads had one buyer back out and then couldn't find another buyer for the team before they decided to keep the team and bring in additional investors. That doesn't happen because of "paper losses". So much for the theory that there are lots of billionaires out there waiting in the wings who would jump at the chance to join the exclusive club of owning one of only 30 MLB teams because they're all such huge money makers and great investments. Hey, don't get me wrong, I don't feel sorry for Jerry Reinsdorf one bit. He squandered away a respectable market share and strong fan loyalty over the years with all his terrible decisions and actions and has essentially turned the Sox into a small market team within a major market. His predicament is self-inflicted. But just pulling up tables with team revenue vs. major league payroll and saying "SEE!! ALL THE SMALL MARKET TEAMS ARE MAKING HUGE PROFITS " isn't painting an accurate picture. As I've said before, I find it to be an incredible coincidence that the "cheap" MLB owners are almost exclusively in smaller markets and the ones willing to spend huge amounts on MLB payroll are almost exclusively in the major markets. Sure, you have some major market teams who are flops (Angels) and some small market teams punching way above their weight (Brewers), but those are definitely outliers. Does that make Bob Nutting in Pittsburgh a good owner? Hell no, he could at least make his team as competitive as the Royals have been in recent years, but that's not saying much.

That's not correct according to the article linked within the article I linked above. It IS part of the Pirates total revenue of $292M while their total expenses, even with their small MLB payroll, are $294M. https://dkpittsburghsports.com/team/site-stuff/feed?page=0&content=pirates-losing-money-bob-nutting-investigation-mlb-dk All 30 teams are required to pay 48% of that local operating revenue into a general pool that gets divvied up evenly later. That way, the super-rich teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets give up a ton, and the poorer teams like the Pirates, Marlins and Rays get back way more than they submitted. It’s part of baseball’s attempt at leveling the financial playing field. So the Pirates, per this formula, put $70.4 million into this pool, and what gets distributed back to them is $121.9 million. The difference between those two amounts is a plus of $51.6 million, a figure that’s now essentially part of their national revenue. The next two streams are much simpler, as they’re the same for all teams: National TV brings $61.1 million, and sponsorships, merchandise and other elements add up to $24.8 million. Sprinkle on top $8.3 million from a portion of the luxury tax that’s distributed only to lower-revenue teams. Total operating revenues: $292.4 million. .... Total operating expenses: $294.6 million Difference between operating revenues and expenses: Minus-$2.2 million