Balta1701

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.

And literally none of them are expected to contribute directly to a competitive white Sox team.

You mean right now? Yes I remember right now.

I have been saying Cease wasn't likely to move the whole offseason, he's likely to wait until the trade deadline, for the following reasons. 1. Dylan Cease really did have a worse season last year than 2022. Some of the stats show this better than others, but it is absolutely true, his performance notably declined last year. Teams will recognize this and be uncertain what version of Cease they will get. 2. The White Sox are likely to ask for a trade on him based on his 2022, minimizing his 2023. Many teams will correctly look at this skeptically until they know which Cease they are getting - if Baltimore gave up one of their top 5 prospects and they get 2023 Cease, they have seriously hurt themselves. 3. There are substantially more options for teams right now. You have seen this play out over the offseason - the Braves are gambling on Sale being healthy, the Dodgers just signed James Paxton, teams aren't even willing to gamble a contract on a 2x Cy Young winner because he's been so inconsistent. Teams are able to convince themselves that they are better off holding prospects and trying gambles right now than paying a high prospect cost. 4. Teams are not feeling pressure of playoff hunts right now. The Orioles know they could use pitching, but they aren't desperate for it. There are too many things that could happen - if Rutschman were to get hurt early in the season it might not matter if they have pitching, if some pitcher steps up they might have other needs, even for everyone's favorite team there's lots of ways this can go that trading a high talent price for a pitcher right now could backfire on them even if the pitcher is strong. Unless they are getting a guy at a solid discount, teams do not have pressure on them to make moves right now, and the White Sox don't want to offer a guy at a big discount just to move him. 5. Dylan Cease has a strong record of health. He has the most starts in the big leagues over the last 3 seasons. While there is risk in holding him that he will get hurt, if you're going to gamble on anyone it's a guy who has been consistently healthy. If the White Sox can have Dylan Cease recover most of his 2022 form, then that removes a lot of the questions in #s 1 and 2 above by the time the trade deadline comes around. Overall, you're asking teams to pay a high price for a guy who didn't justify that price last year, in a situation where both the opposing teams and the White Sox can well justify waiting to see how things develop. That's a situation that leaves him unlikely to move.

The question is actually answered by the fact that they haven't moved him yet - wait until he forces you to move him. Trea Turner was pretty weak defensively last year, but his bat is strong enough that he still plays as a very strong SS. If Colson's bat plays and he's a slightly below average SS, you keep him there and just deal with it, score more runs to make up for plays that aren't made. If you bring him up in '24-25 and he's just awful at SS, then you ask why no coach said to move him while in the minors, but you move him then. If Ramos is still on a path to the big leagues, maybe you work him in at DH, maybe you shift his position, maybe you're in a good enough position to consider a trade, maybe Colson gets hurt and you're happy you have the depth.

If a guy’s ceiling is “Kris Bryant in his first 6 years” and you think that’s a legit possibility barring injury, you’d be out of your mind to trade that for a pitcher with 2 years of control.

Well, first of all somehow Bryant and Soto have almost exactly the same fWAR in their first 6 seasons, which is rather neat, that’s how I missed that. Now that I have this right - why isn’t player B the number 2 overall prospect in baseball?