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I know I’m starving for some baseball action when on the the first day that pitchers and catchers report, I’m feeling almost as good as if it were an hour before the start of a Redbird/Cubbies series in mid August.
It’s pretty simple. When you don’t spend, it makes my team look better. But when you overspend, it makes me look bad. And we can’t have that!
Acute team tanking has been a problem for baseball for a decade — without public complaint from other teams, without even out-loud acknowledgement of the practice. Now the Mets and Padres spend big and they're forming a special committee? Really?
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 20, 2023
Seriously, if the owners want to discuss a salary cap then there should be discussion of a salary floor also.
Never say never. If the fans stop paying the money that teams need to function as they have been, then the economics of baseball will change. For now, the fans are tacitly approving of MLB’s economic system, and that’s what’s preventing change to it, IMO.
That is a good take mudville, but it probably won’t end in our lifetimes. I like to joke about needing a fans’ union to help protect ourselves from ourselves. In general, fans are much dumber than the owners and players’ reps about keeping their money, so it will continue for a while. Just look at the general population/consumer debt, lack of emergency funds to handle an unexpected $400 expense, many with a school loan total > 5X annual salary, lack of retirement funding and no plan, etc. Young and old. It’s in our DNA, or at least our culture. Did I say debt? Yet, fans still spend it. Fans deserve it.
Yeah, why not an abitration process for the nexus that in reality supplies every cent that’s funneled into the entire process? It’s really pretty simple and was easily recognized during the protracted flu event. No fans, no game…
The public as a bloc is of the opinion that their derived joy from professional baseball is worth the cost. It would be near impossible for a mass exodus of fandom to occur to the point of changing the economics of the industry.
Revenues streams are so diverse as well. At one time it was primarily ticket sales that kept an organization operating. This has evolved into game sales plus cash returns from concessions, broadcasting rights, merchandise and a variety of licensing agreements.
Thus while us fans are usually the last stakeholder considered in decisions regarding the state of the grand old game, we always come back to get our fix, buying $10 beers and $7 hot dogs in our Cardinal jerseys and caps. Or maybe we are there on a company’s dime, which is budgeted into their marketing or entertainment expense.
There are just too many ways teams have to get a little bit of our hard earned cash. But that little bit comes from a wide swath.
Yep, as long as action pains exist, there’ll be action to treat it. In another few weeks, I’ll begin another round of treatements…
1td – Would you expand upon your idea of ‘arbitration process for the nexus’? I know it’s something hypothetical. But I’m still curious about what you mean by that.
Well, what I was driving at is that fans are the nexus or primary component that holds together and drives the entire flow of funds. The fans not only pay both the owners and players, but also provide the funds for the venues. Obviously if they’re unhappy they can certainly opt to stop watching, but that’s in essence the only option available to them. There’s no formal process that hears and considers what the fans feel they’re worth. And as you stated, the entire idea is a hypothetical one.
Regarding the varying sources of a team’s income… I just read an informative article on Five thirty eight.com, about Bally sports financial problems. It has a breakdown of the sources of MLB total revenues for 2019. Here is a link
I’m not sure if this will post it as a link, but I copied the above text as a link.
It simply deleted the text of the link that I had in the middle my post… Sorry, still a newbie here, guess you’ll have to trust me or hunt it down. 🙁
Its not just fans that pay.
Any person who purchases any product from any company that pays for any form of advertising associated with MLB is paying a portion.
I am not an advocate of the Cardinals going after the mega-stars. There is a reason the one of the players association wants to have free agency earlier. Many of the players have reached their prime when they are eligible, particularly a late bloomer like Carpenter and Fowler.
But I think the Cardinals do a very poor job of signing good free agents. I refer to most of their signings as “Mo’s Misfits. Most of them fail even at the AAA level. When I looked at the other contenders and the players they signed I see many missed opportunities. I wonder whether the reason for signing such poor quality is scouting or management philosophy. In all fairness they have picked up some helpful guys at the trading deaeline.
How often they have signed guys like Holland, Miller and Cecil who was coming off a bad year and was worse. Or the guys who were never that good and still perform poorly. The reason we perform poorly in the playoffs is that our constantly low draft position prevents us from getting the high upside players that are the players needed for playoff wins.
I don’t know if the problem is Mo or DeWitt or both. But DeWitt could solve the problem. Mo will continue to sit idly and rely on the farm system.
I just read an informative article on Five thirty eight.com, about Bally sports financial problems.
Thanks for the tip, Jedi.
Here is the link.
Never say never, Tony. You already agreed to caps for the draft and international signings. But I guess they don’t count.
MLBPA's Tony Clark says spending should be 'celebrated not questioned' and no, there will never be a salary cap. https://t.co/dt8FrU4QUa
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) February 27, 2023
Here is another $400 million at a minimum flowing into MLB’s coffers over the next five years for resale of tickets.
The article is subscriber only, but you can get the gist from this.
MLB will be paid a minimum of $400 million over the course of the five-year deal. Baseball could receive much more based on sales volume.https://t.co/qMYqg9k0qs
— Sportico (@Sportico) February 27, 2023
So, each team makes money upon the initial sale of its tickets and then MLB makes at least 80 million / season on tickets resold through Seat Geek?
No matter how much money is available, I’m still an advocate of filling mainly from within. Otherwise, why have an expansive minor league system? And why have something like TCN, that concentrates on the prospects?
The world is often about finding the optimal balance between extremes. It would be erroneous to suggest that those who want more money spent on the MLB team are against the minor league pipeline or that the two have to be traded off against one another. There are far more spending variables than them and we all know that both are important. In terms of rosters, there haven’t been so many prospects in the pipeline to date that future MLB stars are being blocked. And there is no reason to suspect this will change.
Further, the minor leagues are basically a known cost that really isn’t variable much. Player salaries are set to a scale and the number of players under contract at any point in time is capped by MLB. The Cardinals sign relatively few minor league free agents, players who might cost more than homegrown ones. The number of Cardinals affiliates have already been cut by three to just six teams, tied for the fewest in MLB. So the system is no more expansive than any of their 29 competitors and is actually smaller than more than a few. Both the draft and international signings also have hard caps and even tanking teams generally take full advantage of their allocations. Some other teams may use more of their minor leaguers to trade for MLB talent, which the Cards have done at times, but not at others. Where would they be today had they not used young players to acquire Goldschmidt and Arenado?
The relatively few dollars that could be saved by penny pinching in the minors would not be enough to sign any big league free agent of note or to take on a large salary via trade. Trading the two off is not a realistic idea. And placing less focus on the minors would accomplish what?
So, each team makes money upon the initial sale of its tickets and then MLB makes at least 80 million / season on tickets resold through Seat Geek?
Yes, maybe, no. Replace your actual numbers with “x” to be safe. The $400 million reported by Sportico is questionable since the terms are private and not released. Sportico attributed their number to anonymous people who know stuff. Forbes later had a story saying the number was $100 million for 5 years according to their people who know stuff.
MLB will obviously no longer be making money from the previous official reseller deal with Stubhub. The terms of those deals were also private, so only anonymous people who know stuff really know what the net $$$ effect of all this is.
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