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He's the GM of this team, and refers to it as "the old Montreal team?"
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's Jaret.
Not if Oakland gets two teams. Then again, maybe if they split the current A's into two squads, the others would have a chance.
Also, what would they do when teams build new stadiums? Do we just keep changing divisions every year, or would the Mariners still be in the low revenue division if this were implemented 15 years ago? What a dumb idea.
"I thought I heard...the sound of a million schedule-makers screaming in terror..."
Every team he mentioned has small(er) revenue streams because they've been run with varying degrees of incompetence, so you're not setting up a "low revenue stream division", you're setting a division of ineptly run teams.
I hardly think aspiring to ineptitude as a way to reach the postseason is a good idea.
I'd tell Jim to shut and do his job - but then, I have no real animosity towards Washington fans and between Guzman and Castilla, they've suffered enough.
Your team, probably not so much.
I can see the Marlins promotional schedule now - "Stay away from the park night".
People like Jim Bowden are proof that if God exists, he's definitely not a baseball fan.
What a ####### stupid idea.
Option Jaret?
Still nauseating.
Is there a recent (or old) study that has looked at team revenues vs. population?
Hey, the Yankees are doing their best to close this gap. You don't think they're bringing Doug Glanville to camp to get better, do you?
My crystal ball says that the Yankees are 1-3 years away from reverting to the '80s 85 win per season Yankees.... and I wouldn't be suprised if the pumpkinification happens this year.
This also works with smart people and dumb people, though from what I can tell the smart people are moving to Maine...
I'm not sure if I have a point, just sayin'.
PB
or Canada....
The only study you need is Seattle's population relative to other teams (I believe they're 16th, but don't quote me) vs. their revenue stream (they've been 2nd since about 2000).
If you really want a study, though -- I'm sure Doug Pappas has something... don't recall his webpage address, though.
Imagining not being able to compete in that division, though. If you lost and your competition was the Devil Rays and Brewers, wow.
How about relegation, though? Have a Div 1 and Div 2 arrangement and then compete for spots with the Div 1 teams. A team that wanted to rebuild could drop back to Div 2 until they could compete again. It'd be an unbalanced schedule (they would play each other), but it would not be drawn along revenue lines. Just competitiveness. You want to be a crappy Div 2 team - so be it.
Well, that's why I qualified it with "right now". I don't expect the current situation in the AL East to last forever. The other three teams do have a shot to win the division, though I think that window is still a few years down the road.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'd love to see some sort of reform to keep payrolls within a fairly reasonable distance of each other, the payroll gap, particularly with New York and Boston, is getting ridiculous. But before MLB or anyone starts complaining about the teams at the top, something needs to be done about the BOTTOM of the spectrum. Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay? The Steelers and Bucs are doing just fine drawing fans in these markets. Milwaukee? I don't hear the Packers complaining in Green Bay. Showing competence and fielding an enjoyable team to watch is working pretty well for the Cincinnati Bengals. You can't say it's just a football thing since the Bucs and Bengals had poor attendance in their bad years, just like the Arizona Cardinals do now. I'm not even asking for owners to put their own money into franchises. Just hire competent GMs and use all your available revenue sources to make the team better. It's not that difficult.
I say this as a Devil Rays fan.
"Worst Idea, ever"
Almost snorted water all over my keyboard at the smart people moving to Maine comment. You may well be right but I've got to tell you, I was in the Air Force with a guy from Maine and you couldn't have got him to move back there at gun point. Different strokes I suppose.
I'm not sure Bowden's team could compete with the MLB riff-raff. And if they couldn't what would they complain about then? New stadium?
Based on my DMB sims, ZiPS wouldn't be surprised either.
Yankees/Red Sox fans don't care, but teams like A's Twins, even us Royals fans can at least hope to be in a pennant race most years. As opposed to teams in Yankees/Red Sox division (hopeless for next 5 plus years?. I feel sorry for Blue Jays fans. With the scheduling the way it is, traditional rivals would still play each other often enough.
I know baseball is no less competitive than in past, but not much fun when home team is always out of the playoff race by May.
You're always going to have wierd competetive imbalances no matter what you do; just look at the NBA this year. And, as has been pointed out, the best teams ought to go to the playoffs, no?
The Bowden idea -- which would amount to having the best teams and the worst teams equally rewarded in the standings at the end of the year -- is monumentally stupid but extremely telling about owners' real attitudes. As somebody (John Brattain?) once said, they want free money.
I don't know, would Brian Cashman's team have a better chance of making the playoffs every year than Billy Beane's?
Here's what you do. Pool all revenue. Teams in one league are given the money to afford $100 M payrolls. Teams in the other league get money for $30 M payrolls.
Which league gets which?
THIS TIME IT COUNTS!!
That's right, we let the All-Star game decide revenue distribution. Also, to make sure the starters play more of the game, whichever team supplies the AS MVP gets an automatic playoff berth at the expense of the losing league. This will also guarantee more star players in the playoffs, thereby boosting TV ratings.
In perhaps 20 years, there will likely be at least 8 million people along and just beyond the I-4 corridor, from St. Petersburg and Tampa, through Orlando, to Daytona Beach. The Devil Rays ignore several million potential fans at their own peril.
As for Vaux's comment in post 35, I think there will always be a limited number of really good front office executives, even after most teams have some sort of statistical analysis being done for them. Some teams will continue to hire boobs, even if they are sabermetric boobs.
Ahh, the classic "If everything goes right, the Yankees will fall apart this year" arguement. Sorry, not going to happen. Don't they have $50 million coming of the books this year, with that money they can buy some more pitching. This team will be at 95+ wins for as long as George is alive.
This coming from a Jays fan who last year so wanted to believe that the Yankees were a few sprained ankles away from falling out of contention. The Jays and Rays will need a miracle to ever compete in this division. This is not saying Bowdens idea is good, he's rewarding mediocrity, which is bad.
17 days to Spring Training
Ahh, the classic "If everything goes right, the Yankees will fall apart this year" arguement. Sorry, not going to happen. Don't they have $50 million coming of the books this year, with that money they can buy some more pitching. This team will be at 95+ wins for as long as George is alive.
As much as it pains me to agree, I think this is correct.
There is a payroll advantage, and then there is a payroll domination.
Payroll advantage can be squandered. Payroll domination, well, can also probably be squandered, but it's far more difficult.
Bad contract after bad contract is what the Yankees have accumulated, and what has it gotten them? Well, that 101 win team they had last year is back, plus Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, and Carl Pavano.
Fine, I'm dubious of Wright and Pavano as well, but this is not a team that looks to be on the verge of collapse.
The way I see it, they win 95-105 games per year for a while, until they smarten up/George steps back, and they start winning 100-110 games per year every year.
That's just the way it is. And it's more interesting that way too.
What's going on in New York and Boston is the very definition of excess profits. If there were two t-shirt manufacturers in New York and each was making hundreds of millions of dollars - much of it above and beyond their cost of producing said t-shirts - plenty of other companies would move in and begin tearing away at their profits.
The answer isn't a salary cap and that's been beaten to death -- it only penalizes the players. The answer is putting teams in North Jersey, Brooklyn, and Boston or Hartford.
But. For exactly the reason Oggman points out in # 51 -- a lot of $$$ coming off the payroll in the next two years -- if it happens, it shouldn't affect the long-term ability of the Yankees to stay in strong contention. They clearly will have to retool an aging, unstable roster, but they just as clearly have the resources to be able to do that.
So I see a one-year vulnerability, which may or may not bite them in the ass, depending on whether their starters can stay reasonably healthy. To forecast their demise after that is awfully speculative.
Wow. I thought I was the only Primate from central Florida.
Only one team has a truly unfair competitive advantage. It doesn't make sense to change the entire structure of a league because of one team. Especially since that problem could be solved via expansion or team movement. If the NHL can have three teams in New York than so can baseball.
The Montgomery Biscuits?
What kind of a name is that?
Each team then keeps half its own local broadcast revenue, and then gets a cut of every other opponents' revenue.
After all, the Yankees would have no broadcast revenue without an opponent (even if it was just Tampa Bay).
This is a fair way to balance some of the revenue inequity that results not from incompetence, but from demographic differences that a team has little influence over.
If the NHL can have three teams in New York than so can baseball. (#59)
The last time there were three MLB teams in New York, the Giants and Dodgers took turns playing the Yankees in the World Series.
As I've said before, I doubt that stocking New York with teams would reduce revenues for the Yankees and Mets; it'd just create new revenue monsters in the NYC metro area. And it'd give the Mets and Yankees more "home" games and more "cross-branding" with local rivals.
Also, last time I looked, the NHL didn't have any teams playing in New York :)
There is talk and politicking about where the next Orlando minor-league team should go; the Disney site and Tinker Field, the downtown ballpark that has a long minor-league history, are the two primary candidates. I'm afraid that the conflict between the two sites might be similar to the conflict between Tampa and St. Petersburg about which city should actually have the stadium--both cities refused to cede to the other for years, to the detriment of the entire area.
I believe this will be the second year in a row that Orlando will be the largest U.S. city without a professional baseball team at any level--especially ironic for a city that potentially could have its own major-league team, if circumstances had developed differently.
Is either of you that guy who shouts all the time? He's a card.
But the Yankees will still be constrained in terms of what talent is available. They needed pitchers this year and all they could dredge up was Wright and Pavano because that's what was available.** More payroll flexibility wouldn't have helped them much this year on the FA market -- given all the money they did throw around and the money they've got coming off the books, they probably could have gotten Pedro this offseason if they (and he) really wanted to. And they have nothing left to trade.
For the next 3 years, they have about $80 M per tied up in Giambi, Jeter, AROD, Posada, and Johnson -- declining assets all, though Jeter, AROD, and Posada have a long way to go before they're useless. Add about $15 M per for Wright and Pavano and that's half their payroll with (I think) a real danger that they'll be getting next to nothing out of half those guys.
2007 is the year to really watch out. The Yanks have been willing to spend like this despite a huge luxury tax. But if there's no new CBA at the end of 2006, the current contract holds for 2007 but the luxury tax goes away. The Yanks can spend like crazy that year, then will have Wright, Pavano, Johnson and I think Posada all coming off the books by the time a tax surely comes back into place in 2008. What does the 2006-2007 FA pool look like?
Anyway, my point is that, even with $200 M, living just on the FA market is not easy. Most of the players available will be past their prime, yet the Yanks will still give them multi-year, over-priced contracts. In this scenario, the Yankees are almost always going to be carrying around something like $50 M in crappy contracts and probably another $50-100 M in badly overpriced contracts. When you're on the FA market and handing out guaranteed multi-year contracts, I'm pretty sure the returns on your investment decline quickly such that, as we've seen, the difference between a $200 M payroll and a $120 M payroll may not be that great even if you make pretty good FA decisions.
But I will say the Yanks seem to be following a slightly different strategy. Since Giambi/Posada, I don't think they've given out anything over 3 years. This may just be temporary or a sign of what was available to them, but it could be they're consciously avoiding the Jeter/AROD/Giambi-type contracts as much as possible. This will give them some protection against albatross contracts and if there's not much talent available to replace their guy whose 3-year contract is ending, then they can sign him up for another 3 years.
** Yes, I know they got Johnson, but that cost them Vazquez, a couple prospects, a bunch of money to the D-Backs and a bunch of money to Johnson. They paid a fair talent price in that deal (unless Vazquez is hurt).
The situations between these two teams are in no way comparable.
Green Bay needs to fill its stadium for only 8 games, with 2 or 3 pre-season contests thrown in. That is a far cry from filling a stadium for 81 games. And Green Bay gets a huge hunk of their money from the national NFL broadcasting contracts. In baseball, the local broadcasting contracts are far more important.
Bowden's exactly the guy that Twain(?) had in mind when he said his line about better to have the world wonder if you're a fool than to open your mouth to remove all doubt.
I'm not sure the Yankees would go on a binge at that point unless they had an idea of where negotiations are headed. If another luxury tax were added following the addition of a bunch of new contracts in 2007 then the Yankees would suddenly have to pay a lot more than they bargained for.
Look at it this way: the fact that Boston and NY are in the same division is a good thing. They keep each other in check to a certain extent and they beat up on each other 20+ times a year.
If i'm the Devil Rays owner, i would not even consider attempting to make a run at the division. Billy Beane has to basically be perfect just to have a fighting shot of the playoffs...and he doesn't have to face the Redsox/Yankees 47 times a year. Any dollar spent by the Devil Rays in an attempt to "go for it" is wasted, pure and simple. Sure, they can still be fun to watch and draw revenue by finding cheap, exciting players, but if their sales pitch to their fans is "come watch us make a run at the pennant", then nobody will show up.
In a division that consisted of the Yankees, Redsox, Mets, and Phillies, the Yankees huge payroll advantage would be minimized. You could thereby kill multiple birds with one stone. Instead of a luxery tax or salary cap, these teams would be allowed to duke it out both on the field and with their check books.
I don't see the logic in some people's comments where they, on one hand, suggest that divisions based on Revenue would allow inferior teams to make the playoffs and then follow up with "just b/c you don't have a huge payroll doesn't mean you can't be sucessful". You can't have it both ways. And while there are obviously examples of small market teams doing well (Twins, A's, etc), they have a very small margin of error.
So, i really think a combination of massive realingment (which takes market size into account), along with a salary floor (to make sure the small market teams aren't resting on their laurels) could create a lot more competition.
I know that, in theory, there's always going to be that new form of OBP that's undervalued in the market, but the days of Billy Beane being able to take advantage of non-saber GM's might be drawing to an end. Boston and LA have two of the biggest markets in the league, and it's only a matter of time before they really put together some serious juggernauts (if they haven't already).
For anyone who took a shot at Bowden and called his idea the worst idea ever, I'd be very interested in hearing what alternative solution you suggest. B/c, in my opinion, the worst idea is not to have one.
I think you pointed out a number of flaws in the current system that haven't been touched upon thus far. The biggest one that jumps to mind is the unbalanced schedule, and I think most Primates acknowledge that as a mistake. In fact, the entire divisional structure is probably an error and we'd be all better off if the top four teams period made the playoffs.
I know its hip to bash Selig whenever he comments on this, but you cannot say with a straight face that gross revenue inequity doesn't hurt the game. Beane had his run thanks to ingenuity, and soon the GM offices around the nation will be mostly saturated with like-minded thinkers. If every GM is of the Beane/Epstein/DePodesta mold, of course the bigger payrolls win.
The other day someone linked to what I remember being a Prospectus article where the top 1/3 of teams in terms of local markets had to pay into a pool and the bottom 2/3 collected from it on the basis of record. Meaning the Brewers can have their revenue sharing money, but only if they play well enough to deserve it. What is obvious is that revenue sharing cannot be a merit-blind system, doling out cash to teams who gladly continue to lose.
On top of all that, Bill James' recommendations concerning paying half of all broadcast and gate receipts out to the other teams should be a no-brainer.
The demographics of certain teams create economic rents -- that is, profits that don't have to be earned. In order for MLB to thrive competitively, those rents need to be removed.
I'm an ardent capitalist, and many of my ilk have problems with some of the above concepts, where you could argue that rich teams are essentially subsidizing poor teams. I would never want to see this between corporations or private citizens, but the purpose of Major League Baseball is not for six or seven teams to thrive. The purpose of MLB is for the sport of baseball to thrive, period.
That's what is better for the teams, players, and owners in the long run.
I didn't take a shot at Bowden, but I don't really like his idea either.
There are a variety of solutions, all of which have problems. The best idea I've seen is the combination of more agressive revenue sharing with a salary floor. This would satisfy the players, because it would not be an artificial hold on salaries. It would be fair to the big spending owners because they wouldn't be just donating to the cheap owners. It would be fair to the lessor spenders who aren't necessarily cheap because they get help signing big players.
The biggest problem with this is that it would require a significant amount of rules to prevent "hiding" of revenue. It seems like you'd need a third-party analyst and a lot more open books. There is also the problem of shifting spending from easily measurable things like MLB salaries to valuable things that don't hurt your club. Certainly just measuring salary would encourage teams to find creative ways to help themselves.
There is also the salary cap/salary floor idea. That is a good way to keep salaries somewhat in line. If you set the floor high enough, it doesn't artificially cut salaries.
The only factor used in the system I mentioned earlier was metro area population. I wouldn't restrict it to that, since it ignores the local economy. But something as simple as per capita income multiplied by population would work.
Population would have to be regionally adjusted somewhat. The Boston metropolitan area doesn't account for the multitude of fans in Connecticut and the rest of New England which has to be considered mainly their territory.
But you can do the simple math of figuring out which teams have the greatest economic market and implement revenue sharing from there.
This way, we avoid the undesirable instance of the Indians paying the Phillies to sign away Jim Thome, which is now the classic argument.
The problem with this is that many teams are beginning to form their own TV networks. They then underreport the revenue to the baseball team because of revenue sharing and shift the money to the broadcasting side.
The Cubs, for instance, report about $15 million per year less broadcasting revenue than the White Sox. If you live in Chicago, you would know that this is crazy because Cubs broadcasts draw much larger audiences. The broadcasting revenue idea should have been implemented years ago but changing conditions are rendering it useless. The only way to change it is for MLB itself to take control of broadcasting and implementing something like that would require more votes than they're going to get from the owners making hay off the current system.
From a fan's perspective, unbalanced schedules are great. You get to see and follow the direct competition, often.
But unbalanced schedules don't mix with wild-cards, because suddenly Boston and Oakland (say) are in some notional "race" even though they play very different schedules and rarely play each other.
I could come up with several ideas better than Mr. Bowden's. The next time I have a long weekend with nothing else to do I will sit down and enumerate them for everyone here at BTF. The main reason I don't care for realigning teams into new divisions based on revenue is that it pretty much eliminates any incentive to increase revenues with the goal of improving one's team. You are creating a permanent cast of haves and have lesses, and eventually fan interest will flow away from the lesser revenue division toward the big dollar one. The likely result will be one "super league" of 8-10 rich teams and one or two lesser leagues composed of how ever many franchises are left. I don't see this as progress.
I much dislike unbalanced schedules, mainly because they severely bias teams' records, but also because of the corollary of the above--you don't get to see and follow the rest of the league very much. The teams within your league but outside your division might almost as well be teams in the single division of the other league that your team plays this year.
Sawney is right that Orlando-area residents avoid the attractions as much as they can; that part of town is the tourists'. That meant the O-Rays had no home fans.
So, what Disney did after landing this Double-A team, was "sell" it to families whose kids were playing at the WDW sports complex. Probably as in, have your Pop Warner playoffs here, and we'll throw in some free tickets for a baseball game. Then Disney tried to make a baseball game a Baseball Experience, with tons of sound effects, between-innings promos, organ music, etc. It was SO canned.
I sat behind the plate, next to the Rays' pitcher who was charting the game. I asked if it was this atmosphere every night, he rolled his eyes and replied in the affirmative.
If Tinker is refurbished, that'll be a little better. At least the park is in Orlando, rather than nestled among hotels.
That is based off the assumption that the Rays will always be a small market team. A winning team with a competent public relations department that can reach out to fans in the area and around the state could change that. The Tampa Bay area itself is pretty large, there are lots of potential fans around here. There's also Orlando a little less than two hours away and other sizeable population centers close enough for some people to drive to games. Then there's the TV and radio contracts. Basically the entire state except for south Florida is there for the taking since the Marlins haven't been successful at maintaining a fan base even in their territory. Things only look like terrible for the Rays' market because the team has been so bad and the public relations have been crap.
The fans are out there. The team just needs to give them a reason to come.
Sorry, I do not buy the concept of "No one will ever show up to our games no matter how good we are" in any city.
Even Montreal got great attendance when the team was good.
In the first place, it's not 'hip' to bash the Bewigged Satan, it is right to bash him unless one is an owner, or a lickspittle of an owner. That's because…
…second, most of us who roll our eyes and think 'there he goes again' whenever the Commissioner (and just about anyone else) moans about revenue inequality in baseball do so because it is being done to excuse another attempt to get Free Money for the owners.
The problem can be significantly addressed by the owners themselves, without any need for a publicly funded new stadium or a salary cap or any other method of securing them Free Money.
All they have to do is to agree to a more aggressive system of sharing local broadcast revenue than the one already in place.
One could come up with plenty of schemes that would transfer money around baseball in an effective way to try an even up the discrepancies. There need not even be a permanent sharing system, as we have at the present. One could use funds to address specific problems in a market. For example, Major League Baseball could easily come up with the $60 million the Marlins have been begging from the state of Florida, as a one-off grant to the franchise to build a new stadium. It is already doing something just like that in the case of the Baltimore Orioles.
On the one hand, you've got the Bewigged Satan destroying the separate identities of the leagues to save money, but when it comes to getting some Free Money, the 30 clubs are separate entities.
It's the rank hypocrisy that makes it 'right' and not 'hip' to do what I do at every possible opportunity.
The reason for the unbalanced schedule is so that the teams in the playoffs are the best of the East, the best of the West and the best of the Central (plus the next best team). That keeps the illusion of the playoffs actually being about deciding who is the best team (chortle).
The alternative (unless you are advocating 2 16-team single-division leagues) is finding out the 4 best teams in baseball, and then disregarding it, and selecting the BestofW, BofE and BofC anyway!
Of course, it skews the WC considerably. But still, isn't a 'skewed' WC better than just flat-out picking a 81-81 team to be in the playoffs over a 90-70 team just because the former team plays in the Central?
Baseball and playoffs is all about the pretence of pennant winners against pennant winners (and WCs, these days!). Obviously, that's all illusory, but since when was the playoffs actually about anything but the illusion, ritual and celebration?
That's the Bill James plan, salvomania."
No, that was the Bob Costas plan, proposed in Fair Ball.
I do like the plan, but it isn't James'. It'll never happen, but I do agree that it's a reasonable idea.
When a team gets a new stadium, they could be given the option* to use Mr Selig's Buddy Bonus™. This allows a team to choose which other clubs play in its division thus giving it the best chance of a smooth passage into the playoffs. It's the least Mr Selig could do after what has happened for the owners involved in his great franchise swap.
The privilege should remain in place until another team takes it away by building a new stadium.
*Offer only applies to stadiums funded by taxpayers' dollars and built by Jerry Reinsdorf's son's company.
We have found this new feature in baseball guaranteed to increase your revenue. It is called "winning."
Respectfully,
Loogy
In the Historical Abstract, James not only proposes the plan but also claims that its eventual passage is "inevitable."
The teams used to do this with gate revenue, but they stopped after the Detroit Wolverines used their road drawing power to buy a super-team.
I'd imagine that the same reason holds true today.
That's where all the contracts that lapse after 2007 come into play. Johnson, Wright, Pavano, and I think Posada all come off the books after 2007 -- that's about $50 M. So what I'm saying is that in 2007, the Yanks could "restock" by making a one-year jump to a $250 M payroll since they won't be paying the luxury tax, then back down to $200 M in 2008. If there are good, young FAs available after 2006, this would put the Yanks in good shape to contend for some time (unless AROD and Jeter have completely collapsed).
So, i really think a combination of massive realingment (which takes market size into account), along with a salary floor (to make sure the small market teams aren't resting on their laurels) could create a lot more competition.
But you also can't have it both ways. If payroll is such an important factor, then it's clear that the level of competition in the low-revenue divisions is of a lower order than in the high-revenue divisions. So this is "more competitive" in a rather empty sense. If revenue is that important, then it's like the difference between the MAC and the ACC ... and once we've all officially labelled 2/3 of MLB teams as being MAC-quality, do you really think they're going to be able to get as many people to show up. This of course is a big part of the problem now thanks to MLB's anti-marketing.
Remember, even the D-Rays drew 1.3 M people. That's because they're a bonafide MLB franchise, albeit a last-place one. Officially label them AAAA also-rans and they'll be lucky to draw half that.
Second, there's no guarantee at all that it would be more competitive even in that superficial sense. Teams like the Cards, Astros, A's, etc. might easily run away with their divisions. That is, a lot of times one team dominates the MAC more often than one team dominates the ACC.
Similar revenues or not, the D-Rays, Pirates, etc. are little, if any, closer to the Cards, Astros, A's than they are to the Yanks and the Red Sox. And they're (usually) closer to the Dodgers, Cubs, Orioles, Mets, etc. than they are to the Cards, Astros, A's, etc.
As Bill James wittily put it, MLB's "competitive balance" problems would be solved by contracting the Yankees. Over here in the NL, we don't have one team winning 1/3 of our titles. Heck, we let San Diego win it twice and we haven't let the Cubs win it in 60 years. (Any 60-year anniversary celebrations planned at Wrigley this year? :-)
As a walk up, I got my favorite seat, front row at 3B. The crowd was pathetic. My first reaction was why is Macon losing it's team while Orlando is keeping there's.
One good reason is that the Disny stadium was very nice, while the Macon stadium needed major renovations, especially outfield drainage. But then, Montgomery became the next Rome.
Considering what Triple-A teams are drawing these days and considering the Rays had a bunch of "home" games against the Red Sox and Yankees, 1.3 million sounds pretty close to Quadruple-A.
The Quadruple-A label would disappear pretty soon after the D-Rays beat the Yankees a couple of times in the October crapshoot.
AL Rich: Yankees
AL Middle: Angels
AL Poor: Twins
Wild Card: Red Sox
NL Rich: Braves
NL Middle: Cardinals
NL Poor: Padres
Wild Card: Dodgers
Padres over Astros.
What makes you think the Devil Rays deserve half the revenue from a game against the Yankees? Is half the money earned on that game due to the Devil Rays, or perhaps some smaller percentage? My guess is smaller. Significantly smaller.
The demographics of certain teams create economic rents -- that is, profits that don't have to be earned. In order for MLB to thrive competitively, those rents need to be removed.
And Houston and Florida have an advantage over New York and Boston in that there is no state income tax in Texas or Florida. We hear this all the time during free agent negotiations; people are quick to point out that FL or HOU or someone might be able to get a player for less money because of the lower tax burden. Why are revenue sharing proponents unconcerned with this inequity?
Not to mention that cities like New York, LA, Boston, Chicago are more expensive to live in than Cincinatti, Kansas City, and Tampa. Revenue sharing sharing proponents aren't particularly concerned by this inequity, either.
Then, you have the fact that Arizona or San Diego or LA might be a more desirable place to play because of climate than Boston, NY, Milwaukee or Seattle. There's another inequity. Miami has an appeal to many hispanic players that Minneapolis just can't match; another inequity. New York has museums and nightlife that put most of the rest of the nation to shame; another inequity. Kansas City has a slow, small-town feel that many players who grew up in the country may prefer to Manhattan or San Fransisco. Colorado has a stadium that inflates hitters stats.
Inequities are everywhere. There are a thousand and one factors that give teams advantages, or disadvantages, in assembling a team. Yet nobody ever wants to address any of them other than revenue. Actually, they mostly talk not about revenue, but about Major League Payroll.
Different teams have different advantages and disadvantages. I like that. I think it's good, and interesting. It makes teams, in some small way, more reflective of their community. I don't want 30 perfectly matched teams, with no unique qualities or influences. We may as well move to robot baseball at that point.
Robot baseball in Russia.
Sure they do. And they make a hell of a lot more than the D-Rays do if the Yankees don't show up. And if the Yankees play some team other than the D-Rays instead, they make a hell of a lot more than if the D-Rays have to play some team other than the Yankees.
Your position is that you need two teams to play a game, therefore, they each bring the same amount of revenue to the table. That's like saying Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards played an equal role in generating revenue for Top Gun. Well, no; Cruise + Some Random Guy would have generated a hell of a lot more revenue than Some Random Guy + Anthony Edwards.
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