Fire Everyone! - The Whole Damned System
by Ryan on Sep 29, 2009 12:00 AM EDT
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PrintThis is the tenth installment in a 12-part series.
We've been parceling out the blame for this dreadful season among Cleveland Indians management, coaches, and even fans. Let's turn our scolding fingers to the economic environment the Indians operate in.
Any discussion about baseball economics has to include the New York Yankees, the highest-valued franchise in Major League Baseball, and one of the highest-valued sports franchises in the world. They share the largest media market in the United States with the National League Mets, but even a split New York market dwarfs most other markets in baseball. And the Yankees have used every bit of their market size to their advantage. This is not a recent phenomenon, as the Yankees were paid a disproportionately high percentage of the revenue from early national TV contracts. However, the recent explosion of local cable revenue via team-owned networks has increased the revenue inequality between franchises, as even though teams like the Indians have their own captive RSNs, the potential revenue is ultimately based on market size. Furthermore, this arrangement allows teams to "hide" revenues that would otherwise go into the current revenue sharing plan.
This revenue disparity naturally shows through when it comes to payrolls. According to Cot's, the Yankees' 2009 payroll is roughly $207M. That's about $66M higher than the second-highest payroll (naturally, the New York Mets), and double the payrolls of twenty Major League Baseball clubs. This payroll allows the Yankees to not only keep the star players that they do develop, but also sign top free agents on a regular basis. So not only will Yankees fans see future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera in pinstripes their entire careers, but also the cream of other teams' farm systems. The high payroll also allows the Yankees to recover easily from player evaluation mistakes, whether they be bad contracts (Carl Pavano, Hideki Irabu) or failures in player development. The Yankees can also throw their financial weight around in the First-Year Player Draft, where they snap up talented amateurs that fell because of salary demands.
Although the Yankees haven't actually won a championship since 2000, they've missed qualifying for the postseason only once since 1995. The MLB postseason may be a crapshoot, but the Yankees are always there at the table rolling the dice. That consistent competitiveness is a draw to fans, further augmenting purchasing power through increased ticket revenue. Having a good player-development system isn't a requirement for a large-market club, but it is a necessity for medium and small-market clubs, for only through developing their own pre-free agency talent can they compete with the big payrolls of baseball. And that supply line of talent has to be consistently producing in order to replace the home-grown talent that inevitably leaves for large-market teams via free agency.
The Indians, fortunately, compete in the AL Central, and don't face the type of payroll disparity that, say, the Tampa Bay Rays face in the AL East. However, they do have to compete with the Yankees, Red Sox, and other large-market clubs in player procurement, whether that be in free agency, international amateur signings, or the First-Year Player Draft. The Indians have very rarely won a bidding war in any of these arenas with a large-market club, and because of this, they generally allow their home-grown free agent stars to leave, or trade them away while still under their control. Although this practice is rational, it has a nasty side effect: it suppresses attendance, which drives revenue lower, and if the club's decisions don't turn out correctly, the cycle continues, with losing taking the place of trades as the cause of lower attendance. The Indians are currently facing this dilemma. Because their player development system didn't deliver enough young talent to the majors, they were forced to trade several of their star players to make up for it. Trading a popular player like Victor Martinez is never going to be a popular move, and it's extremely likely that attendance will again fall in 2010.
We're seeing firsthand what happens to a medium-market team when they make poor player-development decisions. The Yankees have likewise had trouble developing starting pitching; however, they were able to fill that gap not by trading established stars for prospects, but by signing the top two free agent starters on the market. The Yankees and Red Sox making the postseason is considered good for baseball, at least in the short term, so the economic system that encourages their success will remain in place as long as MLB revenues continue to grow and enough small-market teams make runs in the postseason.
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got married this weekend.
Our first date was at the Jake in 04. We cemented our relationship in 2005 with our late season push. We got engaged in heritage park on opening day 2008. This team has been an obsession of mine since the days of Doug Jones, Brook Jacoby, and Rich Yett.
Before we had to leave Cleveland to find work, we were exactly the fans who would go down to the Jake just because they were playing.
I’m done until MLB gets a hard salary cap. So is she. Being a fan of the Indians in the current system just hurts too much. I don’t see a sunny horizon coming any time soon.
So if they have lost me, what help is there for the casual fan?
I can’t wait for my honeymoon so I can post on LGT at night.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
I’m done until MLB gets a hard salary cap. So is she. Being a fan of the Indians in the current system just hurts too much. I don’t see a sunny horizon coming any time soon.
You’ll be back.
Because baseball will get a cap, or because it’s too hard to leave baseball behind, even if the system is just patently screwed up?
Il faut d'abord durer.
Because things will be looking up for the Indians at some point in the next year or two, some way to rationalize that the pain won’t be so bad, something to make the team fun to watch again. It might even be something as simple as a Jake Westbrook start.
I should have said, it could be something as simple as Wedge getting fired and Masterson throwing a 12 K complete game.
by Jay on Oct 1, 2009 1:23 PM EDT up reply actions
A hard salary cap isn’t going to happen, and I think it cause more harm than good. I think that the better target is local TV revenue.
What harm are you talking about here? And I ask not from an accusatory stance, but from an uninformed one.
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
It would create parity, but in a very ham-handed way, with NBA-style capology at work. Teams that grow their fanbase would be penalized as well. I’d much rather see a sharing of local media (market-based) revenue than a hard cap. I don’t think it’s a big deal that the Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, but I do think there’s a competitive balance issue when their payroll is so much larger than the average payroll.
Even if the time comes when not enough small-market teams consistently not make the playoffs, what can possibly be done about it?
A players strike certainly seems out of the question since the theoretical promise of a big-money payday on a major-market team would make most small-market players grin and bear it rather than bite the hand that feeds them.
The owners of every team not anywhere near the coasts banding together and demanding some kind of leveling of the playing field seems a bit more feasible, but once again how can they leverage a change? Keeping their teams off the field and holding a season for ransom could just as easily be a complete disaster as a bargaining tool, not to mention the players union could freak out and possibly force a strike as a retaliatory measure.
An organized movement by the fans to boycott the games until the situation is changed is a romantic idea, though so farfetched that I hesitate to even mention the idea. Even if the fans dug in and stayed home in droves and didn’t even watch the games on TV (like ours are right now), I’m skeptical that this would do much in the short term than force a few teams to change ownership and move to another city in response.
For right now, the silly numbers show no signs of slowing down: I can’t wait for when the Sox and Yanks start offering staggering amounts of money to woo Joe Mauer away from the Twins after next year. Who knows, maybe he’ll stay in Minnesota, but imagine the outcry if he decides to chase a fifth of a billion dollars or whatever insane amount of dosh is tossed his way. Maybe that will get the ball rolling, who knows.
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Force quit and move to trash.
Frustratingly, many of the people I talk baseball with at work seem to grasp that, yet still seem to think some (ostensibly) insane billionaire is going to show up, buy the team, and then toss a couple of hundred million dollars into the wind just to see what happens. :-\
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Force quit and move to trash.
Dick Jacobs did more than bring us the Indians of the 90’s and The Jake, he also toyed with our future emotions at the same time.
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
Dick Jacobs never lost money. Dolan has spent more of his own money than Jacobs; i.e., he’s lost more money on the team. I don’t think Jacobs ever outspent revenue by even $2 million, let alone $16 million.
You’re right, I just meant it in the context of Jacobs and the 90’s being the perfect storm and to expect something similar is not being honest with ourselves. His spending looked huge, but yes when you put it in context with what was brought in, it was not. On a related note, I think I had read that the Chief Wahoo logo was one of the top 3 selling sports logos during the Jacobs era, is that true?
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
Here’s what real revenue sharing looks like, and even then the NFL allows for some regional disparity. A thousand posts ago, Jay and I went back and forth on revenue disparity. Jay said it was getting better after the last CBA and I said that was nowhere near good enough. We were both right.
We small market fans see impending doom on the horizon. The Yankee, BoSox fan and their ilk tell us to stop our whining. After all they’ve had stretches of poor play – read non-WS championship – too. So why change a system that they’ve lived with through thick and thin. They just can’t fathom the lot of Indians, Rangers and Nats fans – cuz, you know, they’ve been there too.
I keep sounding like Casandra here, but another prolonged trip to the desert is a real possibility.
Most of you guys became fans in the 90’s or even the 80’s. I don’t think that collectively LGTers appreciate the Miracle of the 90’s. I’ve read countless posts exhaulting Mr.‘s Shapiro and Antonnetti. And they deserve the respect they get here for their innovation and baseball acumen. But they aren’t the guys to get us where we need to go. Given our resources we need and out-and-out baseball genius, making flawless decisions with a good bit of luck to get us from where we’re at to where we want to go. The Yankees can get there with a doofus like Cashman running the show. That’s the real imbalance.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Since Steinbrenner actually let Cashman do his job, he’s actually been quite good. The team has been developing some quality prospects.
Given our resources we need and out-and-out baseball genius, making flawless decisions with a good bit of luck to get us from where we’re at to where we want to go.
I agree, but I don’t think this is in th realm of possibility. Baseball can never have flawless decision making, it is too fickle. And one cannot plan for flawless decision making when the model requires a bit of risk taking.
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
the model requires a bit of risk taking
This is an interesting point and one I’ve been trying to unwrap in my head for some time. Going back to Jay’s piece on Shapiro and “the plan” I wonder if it is possible that when resources are limited in baseball (as in the case of Cleveland or other small-market teams) doing the “right thing” all the time is actually a recipe for failure. Basically, whether or not minimizing risk is really the right strategy, or whether or not you need a plan which intentionally doesn’t minimize risk and therefore allows for luck to occasionally be a more positive factor. I don’t know….like I said, I wish I could unwrap this thought a little more.
Ever since I read that piece I’ve become more and more convinced that some risk taking is necessary. Obviously it must be done so that the rest of your plan is not compromised, so the degree would fluctuate depending on current situation. I think that if this is actually true as well, that it isn’t something that Shapiro is probably willing and eager to embrace, though the trading for what some might call power arms might show otherwise. I’m also starting to talk way over my element here…
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
There was something written about a month ago that included a dissection of “the plan”, right? If not you, then who?
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
Yes, but when anyone does the Wrong thing (even if purposely as a matter of policy to switch things up or hope and pray with originality as you seem to be advocating), they will get hammered by all the fans and the media. And if doing a “wrong by design” move does not work out favorably… their job is out the window, no?
In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).
by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 29, 2009 8:47 PM EDT up reply actions
the way it is
For longtime fans, it’s hard to attach to prospects because we can assume their ultimate fate. If they get good enough over time, they’re gone. This is not necessarily true in other small markets, although the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox etc. will always be predators. There remains in Cleveland an assumption that it will be unable to sign stars (Sabathia, Lee, etc.). And when they are written off, traded for prospects, the return tends to be much less than it ought to be (for Lee and Martinez, for example). That latter fact is the responsibility of the team leadership — not the Tribe’s status as a small-market team.
by just a bit outside on Sep 29, 2009 6:43 AM EDT reply actions
The reason that we don’t get fair value in these trades is that the Yankees know they will scoop these stars up as FAs even if we don’t take the deal. They are dealing from a position of strength and we aren’t.
See below. The history shows that we do, in fact, get fair value in these trades. Maybe I’m just not remembering, but the Yankees haven’t actually signed an Indians free agent in at least 15 years if not much longer. Sabathia was the closest, but he went through the Brewers first.
I think the Indians dealt from strength in every major trade except Victor — the strength of a high-leverage pennant race and multiple bidders. Shapiro held out on that deal and refused to pull the trigger unless he got back some decent value.
Victor was (is) a 30-year-old catcher and not an impact hitter from the 1B position. He spent a little time on the DL almost every season of his career, including half of last season, and in his final 10 weeks as an Indian, his line was .193/.284/.340. Over his last 162 games, it was .278/.355/.425.
So let’s not talk in bitter generalities here. The club has many problems, but getting good value in trades has not been one of them.
Your assessment of what we receive in return for stars is selective. We don’t receive all the years of players careers that you assume. We get the part of their careers that is their development and then, we have to trade those guys again. What we get to keep in those trades is the right to develop future stars that get traded in their prime. How is that extracting full value?
I assume nothing. We receive “(potential)” big-league seasons, which is what I said in the first place, and the clock doesn’t even start running on those years until they actually make it through the minors.
For the vast majority of players, their first 6.5 years in the majors are, in fact, the most productive years of their careers, and trading a player at the tail end of that stretch of time for anything of value is, in fact, “extracting full value.”
You may not find that palatable, but hose are the facts. As a general rule, a player’s arbitration years tend to be their peak performance years as well, a confluence which in part produces the exceptionally poor value inherent to free agent signings.
There are exceptions, of course: Players who make it to the majors at a very young age, and thus reach free agency near the start of their primes rather than near the end. Also, players who extend their statistical primes well into their 30s, well beyond the norms. Sabathia was an exception, and it was precisely that particular element of rarity that got him such an outlandish contract. Manny was an exception, and Grady might be an exception. Thome and Belle were not exceptions, nor were Vizquel and Alomar and Baerga and Alomar and Lofton. Victor and Cliff almost certainly will not be exceptions.
I feel like we just couldn’t hold it together losing both him and Cliff. How many franchises would do well after losing 2 Cy Young pitchers in consecutive years?
I can’t wait to see him choke in the playoffs.
-Erik
by drerikbrady on Oct 1, 2009 1:19 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
This has some obvious appeal, but I would rather both C.C. and the Yankees bomb out in the first round, just as both did in 2007.
by Jay on Oct 2, 2009 7:42 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Thome was not an exception? In what way? He seems to have been a 30-40 homerun slugger well past his prime.
In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).
by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 29, 2009 9:02 PM EDT up reply actions
Isn’t that the point, he was past his prime so he wasn’t an exception?
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
No, he has a point … Thome had a 940 OPS over six seasons after leaving the Indians, and the only dark spot is one lost season in six and the complete erosion of his defensive value.
Even so, would the Indians have been better off paying him $90 million for those six seasons? Instead, we traded Einar Diaz for Travis Hafner, and that worked out great … all the way until we decided to extend Hafner, rather than wait until his walk year and then possibly trade him for the next crop.
Not re-signing Thome clearly worked out better for the Indians, even though (a) he blocked the Indians from trading him for prospects, and (b) he maintained very high-level performance over the course of that next contract. Given the option of doing (a) and a more typical result (b), it becomes a no-brainer.
And a perfect example of brain > heart.
by kennesawmountainwahoo on Sep 29, 2009 9:46 PM EDT up reply actions
The Indians would have been better off to pay Thome. The idea that we were better off not to assumes we don’t have the $90M. This discussion is about how the lacking of the money makes all the difference. We would have been better off to pay most of the guys we traded out of lacking money. Even if we didn’t receive prospects in return, we could compete for FAs on the market “if we had the money”. So, once again, I say it’s fairly improbable to receive fair value when you trade an established star. It’s like thinking you have a fair chance of winning at poker with a short stack. There are too many ways to lose unless you get extremely lucky and make all the right moves. This almost never happens.
But you are operating under the basis of something that is not possible. While many of the people we have traded away have had success after the fact, it doesn’t make it a guarantee. To be able to sign those people you not only need the money to sign them, but additional money to back up the signing in case it tanks. That takes a lot of money.
Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga, Choo Choo!
You are living in a fantasy world. Money considerations affect decisions for 29 teams out of 30, and they dominate decisions for about 25 of those teams.
In my world the teams that spend the most money get to the playoffs most often. These are the teams that trade prospects away for established veterans, use them up, and trade more prospects for the stars they once traded away for veterans. It isn’t a theory, it’s reality.
In the real world, the teams that spend the most money are the teams that generate the most money from local TV deals.
Newsflash, the Expos never made it to the playoffs, and the Brewers washed out in the first round. The Red Sox and Yankees have largely stopped trading away their prospects because it’s simply not a good idea, and they’re smarter than they used to be.
There’s nothing you can say to change the fact that trading walk-year guys for quality prospects is a good idea, regardless of your team’s budget. The issue we now face is that the team got into a position where they felt they had to tank not just the current season, but next season as well. That is a separate issue.
No, that is exactly not the point. An “exception” in this scenario would be a player who performs at a very high level well past his prime.
"Also, players who extend their statistical primes well into their 30s, well beyond the norms. "
In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).
by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 29, 2009 11:01 PM EDT up reply actions
This was a response to USS Choo
In the new Geico commercial, Marte sings "Let me be myself" on Wedge's front lawn (with the cavemen).
by V-Mart Shopper on Sep 29, 2009 11:01 PM EDT up reply actions
“Tends to be” is a funny phrase to use, given that Shapiro is more or less considered the most accomplished GM in the game when it comes to dealing vets for prospects.
“Ought to be” is also a funny phrase, and it depends on how well you understand the way player contracts work. We traded the next 1.4 seasons with Cliff for (potentially) 26 big-league seasons among four other players. Of course, since they’re prospects, it’s a gamble. But the whole reason we even had Cliff was because we traded 1.5 seasons of Bartolo for (potentially) 20 seasons with Cliff, Grady and BP.
The bottom line is clubs don’t really trade players — they aren’t slaves — they trade player contracts. So it’s never about evaluating what Victor Martinez is worth in some abstract or intrinsic way. It’s about evaluating the value of our contract with him.
Shapiro is more or less considered the most accomplished GM in the game when it comes to dealing vets for prospects.
This is probably because he has more practice than most other GMs. For some reason, other equivalent franchises don’t do it as often. (The Reds unloading Adam Dunn? The Marlins?)
So OK, he’s got a batting average. Ooops, did I say batting average? I meant OPS.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
The Alomar trade was a good deal for the Indians — and had the Indians been committed to rebuilding at the point, it would have been even better. Prospects are uncertain. If Grady Sizemore breaks his leg and Cliff Lee has one more injury early in his career, what does the Colon deal look like?
I always felt the best way to look at those deals was to consider the Alomar and Colon deals in sum. Both were good, one was exceptionally lucky, and the other exceptionally unlucky.
The main reason is that other franchises are stupid about this. I could name a dozen examples where a star player would have netted a prime haul and the GM just sat on his hands, let the player walk for mere draft picks.
From all appearances, Shapiro was as good at this in 2002 as he is in 2009, so it doesn’t seem like practice has much to do with it.
It seems to me when teams do this, they believe they’re going to re-sign their player, and figure it will alienate him if they trade him away for a few months. In other words, there is some reason for their admittedly foolish behavior.
There’s a reason, but it’s not a good reason. It isn’t all that common for players to re-sign once they get that close to free agency. In fact, I think you’d find that it’s far more common in a situation where the player is re-signing with the team he’s just been traded to, like Casey Blake, rather than with a team he’s been with for years. That new team is more likely to overpay, because they’re still rationalizing what they gave up to get the guy. None of this has anything to do with good decision-making.
In any event. Signing a free agent is rarely a particularly good deal for any club, under any circumstance. Passing up the chance to re-sign your own player as free agent — possibly — simply can’t be valued very highly as an opportunity cost. It is nowhere remotely close to the value of the prospects that could have been had for that player.
I’m all for the Indians FO instituting a policy that forbids signing any FA.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Hafner? Westbrook? McDowell?
Lot more money tied up in those three than your three.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Not sure what you mean about “assumption” – it’s a fact that CC turned down the contract offer fr the Tribe – no assumptions to be made. We also know that signing all of the stars is not a long-term financial option for small market teams.
As for the returns the front office gets on these trades, I’m afraid the developmental time makes it hard for many fans to make a fair assessment. We need a good 4 years before judging any of these deals. Heck, the return on the Colon deal was bad, but today it looks like highway robbery for the Indians.
Additionally, teams are not willing to let go of top tier talent in these deals. They are just too valuable from a talent and contract perspective.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge..." C. Darwin
by Spidey on Sep 29, 2009 9:02 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Yes, I meant to note that above. Prospects who are viewed as close and near-miss have risen in trade value among the 30 teams. That is, the market is correcting, recognizing their true value. Montreal should never have sent us a package that good, and you could argue that in terms of true on-field value, Milwaukee vastly overpaid us for Sabathia.
’I’m fairly satisfied this year is an aberration,’ baseball commissioner Bud Selig said by phone. ‘I still think the basic tenets we have in place will lead to the best competitive balance we’ve ever had.’
you know, i could probably be appeased by simply fixing the drafting/slotting/foreign FA system to not favor the rich.
What’s worse is I now that teams like the Yankees and Red Sox are much smarter in drafting and developing players, the competitive balance is even more out of whack. The fact that those teams were mismanaged so badly and some small and mid market teams were managed so well allowed there to be a better competitive balance than there should have been.
As a long time lurker but first time poster, I hesitated to write this but I thought it might offer a different perspective. As a fan and season ticket holder at West Ham (English Premier League soccer) I look at MLB and long for that kind of competitive balance in soccer.
West Ham finished 9th (of 20) in the EPL last year, and were 5,000-1 with most bookmakers to win the league this season. By contrast we were 25-1 to be relegated (finish in the bottom 3). I pay over $1,000 for a season ticket to watch a pretty good team who will never ever win the league in which they play. This is not considered an issue by the League or the media.
By contrast if a small market MLB team does most things well they can compete with some frequency (Twins) and if they do most things badly they are the Royals.
The system isn’t perfect by any means, but at least there is some attempt made at levelling the field.
At least you have Carlton Cole and Jack Collison.
I kind of agree with this. While MLB is broken, it is by far not the most broken league in the world. The problem is that Abramovich or someone with the first name Sheik is not going to buy an MLB team anytime soon. Because of the gross difference between a Chelsea and a West Ham or Fulham, it becomes hard to regulate the EPL. MLB is dealing with a much more closed group of owners and it should, because of that, be a bit easier to regulate.
Additionally, the EPL is 100% focused on identifying the best team without thought to parity. The MLB makes an ostensible and real – if not 100% effective – effort at making the field even. The EPL does not do this or really even pretend to.
The point is, why is there a league? If it is to identify the best collection of talent, throw away all the salary and economic rules and let someone run rampant in the effort to make his team the team. The MLB tries to blend identifying the best team with entertainment, which is why we have things like divisions and playoffs. As the economic focus creeps farther towards entertainment and away from pure competition, I would expect to see more field-leveling devices put into play. As a fan of a team that needs all the help it can get, I’m hoping that is sooner rather than later.
Everybody should get ice cream every day.
I’ve always figured the European football set-up is blatant enough that it allows for fans to be satisfied with a wider range of accomplishments. For a team like West Ham, qualifying for Europe would be a big deal. For other teams, just managing to stay in the Premiership can be the goal for a whole season. And even the teams at the bottom of the Premiership have something on the teams in the middle of the 1st division table, for instance. And those teams in turn are fighting to maintain their place against the teams below them.
Whereas MLB is a closed cartel of 30 teams with only one real objective in play — the World Series — and some shambolic overtures toward competitive balance. The main factor that keeps the Yankees and their ilk from dominating MLB championships the way the big boys dominate the Premiership table is the basic randomness of the playoffs.
European football is certainly blatant. The authorities don’t even pretend to care about balance – their sole agenda is to make sure that the same big clubs always win, and that the money keeps flowing in the right direction. We could have revenue sharing or salary caps or luxury taxes but ultimately that would defeat the purpose of maintaining the status quo. The problem I have with that, as a fan, is that my money is just as good as those of Man Utd or Milan or Barca.
If West Ham qualified for Europe it would be a great deal and would require us to finish 7th. That is like suggesting Tribe fans should be happy to finish to finish second in the Central every year. Success – but not too much.
The point about players is interesting too. The Indians can keep Sizemore for x number of years under the current arrangement and there is nothing that the likes of the Red Sox can do about that without giving up significant value in return. By contrast West Ham developed, as an example, the current England right back (Glen Johnson). He was bought by Chelsea after making 16 appearances for us.
Some of that is down to our own incompetence, but as a broader point I don’t think Tribe fans appreciate how long the likes of Manny, Thome, Victor, CC, Lee, Grady et al actually played for the club.
Got to agree with all your points, and I say that as an Arsenal season ticket holder.
by Luis (Tribe Fan in London) on Oct 2, 2009 8:33 AM EDT up reply actions
I’ve referred to this clip a number of times an wouldda imbedded the video, but I’m not sure how to do it properly. Start viewing at about 3:36. I especially like OW’s (John Matuszak) description of the “suits”.
This speaks more to the dichotomy of sports as a business than anything I could write.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Frankly I wouldn’t care if the high-rollers/big markets formed their own league and left the rest of the small markets to have their own league.
"You just gotta roll with the ounches." - Clemson58YearOldMan
You wouldn’t care, but the results would be disastrous. You can’t be a major league team if you’re not playing in the major league. Minor league teams don’t draw 30,000-plus.
Not if there’s only eight teams in the TDL. It’s an exclusive club.
"You just gotta roll with the ounches." - Clemson58YearOldMan
But if there’s no labor agreement, Pujols can just let his Cardinals’ contract expire and then go play for the New York Platinum Yankees. This is what happened to the Federal League.
True, but we don’t draw 30,000 plus in the majors anyways.
Maybe more of the Premiership model or something.
"You just gotta roll with the ounches." - Clemson58YearOldMan
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