Balta1701

I agree and have been expecting that. However, Texas also traded for Chapman in the middle of last season, so they're clearly willing to tolerate that to some extent.

WTF seriously? Tampa Bay spent $73 million last year. Baltimore $60 million. For the Orioles this may rise to $81 million in 2024. 2024 Projected Red Sox payroll potentially $200 million (https://www.pressherald.com/2024/01/20/red-sox-brass-expects-lower-payroll-in-2024/). But a day may come when Boston has the 4th highest payroll in the division? When exactly will this day be?

The Rangers making this move right now would also be rather bizarre. While they could use starting pitching right now, it is reasonable to expect that one or both of DeGrom and Scherzer could be available in the second half. They still have to get through the first half, but paying a big prospect price when they have a decent likelihood of starting help in the second half and for the playoffs doesn't seem like a very smart strategy. Similarly, they're going to have to at least try DeGrom in 2025 with the money he's making. This is the kind of place that should sign a Clevinger or something like that.

For a good long while the Cubs were owned by the publicly traded Tribune Co. I can specifically recall how one of their earnings reports in 2004 wound up having to specifically cite the buyout of Sammy Sosa's contract as an expense affecting their bottom line. Sometimes the motivations get a bit different, there's less willingness to go into debt for any reason for a team like that for example, income might be required to stay in the black. I don't think though that it affected the way the GM was thought of - the GM is basically still in charge of the baseball side. There's little reason for example to believe that the Mets new president is directly involved in their efforts to try to secure a casino associated with Citi field for Cohen, it might affect the budget he has to work with but nothing else.

But...and hear me out...he has played for the Royals.

I'd have to imagine some amount of parking would be built at this site but would probably be in coordination with whatever else is being built. Digging a deeper hole for a parking garage might actually find you some of the fill you need for the stadium foundation, but you'd have to make sure you had watertight walls. You could then potentially throw a hotel or apartments on top of that.

First, a report at the end of 2023 said that MLB had a record $11.6 billion revenue in 2023. That would be 38.7% of revenue going to players, not 50%. Greedy owners and underpaid players, clearly, you've demonstrated that super effectively. https://heavy.com/sports/mlb/sets-revenue-record-11-6-billion/ And the teams that regularly have the best records have payrolls #2, 5, 8, 10, 15, 17, 20, 25, and 28. A couple missed the playoffs this year, but that covers the Dodgers, Yankees, Rays, Minnesota/Cleveland, Astros, braves, Cardinals, Brewers. That's about as random of a set of numbers as I can find. 3 in the top 10, 3 in the next 10, 3 in the bottom 10.

I do believe there are genuine problems with the way Oakland, Pittsburgh, Florida run their franchises. The fact that a handful of teams rake in money from revenue sharing and never put that back into their rosters is a bad thing. However, that isn't a driving force for competitive balance. Like you show here, the correlation between winning and spending in baseball exists but it isn't super strong. The Yankees and Mets missed the playoffs last year. The correlation between having a smart front office and making the playoffs regularly is much, much stronger. The correlation between having a dumb front office and missing the playoffs is way stronger than the correlation with spending. This is why baseball has a minor competitive balance problem, but all the time we have small franchises making the World Series. Literally 3 months ago people were complaining because the World Series was going to get such poor ratings because no big market team is there - that's Competitive Balance right there!

They do to some extent, but in most cases it doesn't offset what is spent building it, so government buying the whole thing is a bad investment. That remains true at this site, but this site has something else different from almost all these cases - this is a truly blighted, undeveloped property right at the heart of the city. The benefits here of turning this into something as opposed to a negative on the city, and the long term benefits of making this land developed and back in the tax base, when it's currently not generating anything at all, should be significantly higher than the funds you make by building a new ballpark on the outskirts of a city. This has some serious additional benefits as an urban renewal project. I can think of very few ballpark projects that statement applies to - maybe Pittsburgh, Cleveland since they're right downtown and walkable, but even then the land wasn't just blighted like this spot is, for Pittsburgh there were buildings on the site that eventually led into the parking lots for the old stadium. Here there is nothing and realistically no prospect of anything unless something major is put there to drive the development project.

Fwiw, I find it extremely interesting that we hear complaints about the lack of competitive balance in baseball, a sport with strong contract guarantees, while the NFL, a sport with very weak contract guarantees, literally has a rematch of a Super Bowl from 5 years ago and Kansas City has missed the Super Bowl once in the last 5 years. A hard cap and floor with non guaranteed contracts has left the NFL with the exact same teams on top every year, yet we don’t hear how the NFL needs stronger contract guarantees to improve its competitive balance.

This is a valid question, but it is probably worth thinking that a modern domed football stadium has a much larger footprint than a modern baseball stadium. Google Maps estimates this area to be about 1000 feet across - wide enough for a baseball stadium but it's gonna get sorta packed when you start putting stuff in alongside. Soldier Field itself would fit in here, but it would be tight along the edges, and a modern football stadium is something that typically spreads out as you add more seats. They also host larger crowds, but much more infrequently, which makes the match for land in the middle of the city more difficult - larger parking demands, but stuff that sits unused most of the time. A good, domed, modern football stadium that sits in the suburbs but on a highway and with some transit access is much more sensible than a football stadium in a spot like this. A baseball stadium brings in way more people total and will drive way more local business to the area.

David Stearns.

Chris Sale would like them to be rid of the ‘83s

Huh?

We haven’t heard it in the playoffs because they’ve been on the road but I will give the Tomahawk Chop still being a thing in the 21st century as a major ugh.

Using the hotel tax to cover the facilities doesn’t strike me as the most controversial part of the previous deal - not compared with Reinsdorf taking all of the parking revenue or the taxpayer backstop if his team doesn’t draw enough fans

That seems more confusing to me I will grant.

Polanco is slated to make $10 million this year. The Mariners probably are trying to turn a couple of their young guys into a Twins player and have the Twins pay most of the contract, based on the statement that cash is also involved.

This is specifically the Astros. They open their roof so rarely that I have no idea why they paid for it.

I was hearing that Seattle was likely to grab Dan Quinn on the radio this morning, so are we confident this has been decided?

A domed (probably not retractable) stadium in the suburbs that has ample parking, builds up event centers around it, and brings in the occasional Super Bowl, Final Four, NCAA football championship, Beyoncé concert is absolutely ideal for the City and the Franchise. There’s no reason why Chicago can’t be an ideal host of those events, it’s a better city to visit than Houston or Phoenix and they get those events all the time. The land development and additional events should definitely be enough to make it possible to do this with limited public funding, with ample profit for the team.

MLBTR had Neris estimated at $15 million so unless there’s some bonus or vesting option not in Passan’s numbers this is a serious discount.

There’s probably several versions of a “done deal”. The city could absolutely know how much they’d put in from previous development offers, that could be an agreement pending funds being raised. Is it easy to quickly raise a billion dollars? I honestly don’t know.