Eminor3rd

Right. I’ve been careful to keep saying “average” team. Outliers on both ends.

The only way those revenue figures are accurate is if they are counting all concession/merchandise revenue 1:1, which is only true for teams that run their own concessions operation. Most don’t, using legends or Aramark or Delaware north or whatever, and those deals are profit sharing models. There are also a very wide range of parking arrangements, which are very lucrative because they are high margin. It’s not safe to assume the team sees all of that revenue, or even any in some cases if they share or utilize facilities controlled by the city. 2024 was also the final year before most of the RSN deals imploded. Knock 30-60M off those numbers and the percentages increase quite a bit.

I can tell you with the utmost confidence that one of those numbers is very wrong.

I don’t disagree with this at all. But it’s just important to point out that the players were getting like 40-50% of the revenue then and they’re getting 80-90% of the revenue now. Which, good on the players and their union. Only point I want to make is that there is not the same amount of fat to trim off anymore, and that leads to a fundamentally different set of circumstances. But yes, revenue is not the same as wealth. The owners are doing fine. But “owner” does not equal “team” in terms of revenues/P&L/etc.

Yeah, I have also struggled to come up with the best solution from a fan experience perspective. The hardest part is that no matter what you go with, you won’t know if it sucks until you try it

A totally free market would be best for labor, for sure — unless having that totally free market upsets the apple cart to the point that the money goes backwards. For example, if the dodgers and Yankees could buy every player they wanted, literally, at any point in the players’ careers, like normal jobs work, would that ruin competitive balance to the point that overall interest in the game waned? I don’t know, legitimately. But it’s an important question. How high do salaries need to get to make the loss of choice pre-free agency worth it? Would you agree to do your job at a random place on the country for three years for $780,000 a year? Theoretically the bargaining should lead to approaching the right number. Obviously it’s difficult to put a fair price on what an entertainer “should” make, but I feel like “practically all the revenue the entertainment produces” is probably about it. And even while that’s the case, the owners can continue to watch the valuations increase in exchange for taking the investment “risk” and running the business side. And that’s why I think the player’s and the owners need to be careful about how hard they each push — ultimately the best way to make more money is to continue to grow the product.

As good as that book is, it’s from 1994, which is a period of time that doesn’t represent the current economic model well at all. The TV bubble began to form soon after that, right around the turn of the century, leading revenues and salaries both to shoot up rapidly. The Braves we’re an early outlier prior to that time, with their unique shared ownership with TBS, an extremely lucrative situation that was a competitive advantage, particularly in the fact that it allowed them to effectively capture a drastically larger fan territory than any other team in the league (in terms of geography), which coincided nicely with their extended competitive run. I want to make it clear that I do not think the owners deserve “sympathy,” and I would never suggest that they aren’t doing very well with their investments. I would suggest, however, that the economic balance between the players union and the teams (which is subtly but important different than “owners”) may actually in a pretty good/balanced place. The players union has done an incredibly good job of ensuring that the players are getting about as much of the pie as they can without destabilizing the teams and toppling the business model entirely. This shouldn’t stop either side from continuing to fight aggressively, if only to keep the other in check. But in general, I don’t think fans should put much stock in any of the narratives they are subjected too, because that’s all they are: PR leverage points designed to manipulate the fans into supporting someone who isn’t really taking their own interests into consideration at all.

Primarily, it’s the RSN problem. The MLB actually protects the teams fairly well for external catastrophes like Covid by maintaining investments that serve as “rainy day” funds for the teams. I’ve got direct firsthand experience in this realm. From what I’ve seen, I think most fans would be surprised at how much of the top line revenue that the average team earns goes to player payroll. There is very little, if any profit leftover unless a team is openly tanking, Yankees/dodgers/Red Sox excepted. Many teams actually do give their GMs the ability to tap into whatever revenues are available, meaning that the budget is effectively cash neutral. Some insist on maintaining a profit, but unless you’re the marlins, it’s a relatively slim one. The pop of the TV bubble has created a real problem. The average team just watched ~$50m of easy, fixed revenue disappear over the course of a couple years, which is something in the neighborhood 10-30% of the total depending upon the team and market. Player salaries have not gone down in a reaction to that, of course, and so it’s absolutely the case that teams have had to choose to cut payroll or take on debt. Now, that does NOT mean that the owners are victims. The value of their investment is found in the appreciation of the franchise asset itself and the opportunities and leverage it creates to make other types of investments. But it is still true that operating on the thin liquid margins of the franchise itself does expose them to taking on debt when market conditions tank.

It was a bad pick at the time, even if Smith would have turned out as good as advertised, because they chose a college pitcher who already had Tommy John instead of any of the plethora of high upside hitting prospects, the most notable of course being Konnor Griffin, but there were other options too. To be at the absolute nadir of a rebuild and make the choice that had the highest bust potential and the shortest time window of return potential was, I think, the type of thing that would have gotten certain people fired at other organizations. No one in the entire league would have argued that Smith was clearly the BPA at that slot, there were many players in the same talent tier. It was a dumb pick the second they made it, and I still believe he’s gonna be a productive major leaguer.

Team is watchable for sure. You can dream on the offense. The pitching unfortunately is just not MLB-caliber. Still sorting through guys there.

UCLA isn’t REALLY the big 10 though

Technically we can’t be absolutely certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Japanese media reports on BP sessions and especially preseason bullpen sessions with painstaking detail. It’s a strange non-sequitur, almost like the MLB tradition of reporting that every player is in the best shape of their lives as if it bears an outsized influence on how the season will go. Reduced leg kick is an interesting observation.

I went with my (now) wife in maybe 2013? Absolutely awesome trip. We made it a two-leg thing where we started at the Grand Canyon for two days, stayed a night at arcosanti on the way down to phoenix, and then stayed in phoenix long enough to see three games (each at a different venue) by day and restaurant/bar hop by night. Definitely rent a car, and know that some of the games do sell out, so if there’s a venue you definitely want to see, try to buy in advance. Otherwise you can just choose from what’s open each day. We also squeezed in a hot air balloon ride. One of my favorite vacations overall. If I wasn’t traveling to ST for work each year now, I’d do it again as a fan for sure, with or without the Grand Canyon part.

Pardon if this was mentioned already, but I just saw on mlbtr that Vasil is preparing as a starter?