TaylorStSox

The small market owner argument doesn't hold much weight when we're talking about $1.5B tied up into 4 contracts. The vast majority of markets aren't going to compete with that - including the team with minority market share in Chicago.

Baseball is at its lowest participation and popularity rate in history. It's not even arguable. A 10% bump in popularity in Japan isn't going to move the needle enough to change that. If the sport wants to regain some of that, they need to figure out a way to have more parity. The NFL and NBA haven't had a problem figuring that out.

Baseball's at it's lowest popularity in history. Only 30% of Gen Z consider themselves baseball fans and follow a team, compared to 75% of Boomers. This can't be good for baseball. Why even bother following the sport when there's so much imbalance?

If you go to r/baseball, the reaction has been pretty universally "this is bullshit." Thousands of posts from fans of every team seem to agree. It has nothing to do with Jerry.

Over the last 25 years, the Padres have had 3 years in the top 15 in baseball and 11 in the bottom 5. The Sox have consistently outspent them over the last quarter century despite having very similar valuations. Also, f*** Jerry.

Damn these businesses with a couple thousand employees for trying to remain profitable.

I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. A team with a valuation of $1 billion can't sign a player for $700 million. There's a real world out there.

The Rays are actually a great example. Probably the best baseball organization in the business that will probably never win a world series because they can't buy the players to get them over the hump.

And f*** Jerry.

The Sox have the 16th highest valuation in baseball and have averaged the 13th highest payroll over the last 20 years. The Sox will never be able to compete with the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets. It's just not realistic. It's MLB's fault more than the Sox.

Yes, the guy already making like $50 million a year in sponsorships is a saint for deferring his $700 million contract. How selfless... The lack of CBT hit is total bullshit and terrible for the game.

Roy Oswalt with a less dynamic rising FB and nasty curve. He throws way, way too many splitters though and already has too much mileage on that arm. I think he'll be really good, but not $300 million good.

The economy is far from bad.

The Dodgers have $1.27 billion invested in Ohtani, Betts and Freeman. That's more than the valuation of 5 franchises.

26 year old, healthy Ohtani might be worth this contract, but 29 year old Ohtani coming off his second Tommy John is batshit crazy.

Duh, hence the term "in a vacuum." Follow along, Wes from Winnetka. This thread was going so well too. Nobody was insulting each other.

And suburbanite meat head sports fans, apparently.

"In a vacuum" is pretty obvious. It means that as a baseball contract, it's terrible as his production will never match the dollar amount, champ. Who the f*** calls people "champ?"

He ended up leaving after 3 fights for a $280M settlement.

Alvarez had a 5 year deal with DAZN for $365M.

How would that translate to quantifiable stats? Soccer and Cricket dwarf baseball. It's not even close.

This list isn't correct. It's missing Ronaldo, Benzima and Canelo Alvarez.

I don't think people realize how low on the popularity list baseball is internationally.

No other team in all of sports has that owner, so don't be too upset. Ohtani is making more than Messi. That's just crazy.

The Dodgers now own the number 1 and number 7 largest contracts in the history of all sports.