Lady Bug (Ashley) and Alice in Wonderland (Kristi)
What is/was your Halloween costume this year? One of my followers on Twitter was going to be a Dawg catcher…can’t wait to see the pictures from last night! Congratulations to my Gators on a big win in Jacksonville!
The judge ruled on the Motion for Continuance I told you about yesterday from a Ranger’s fan.
The motion was granted!
Via email, the attorney who filed the motion told Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer:
In a display of judicial temperament befitting the celebratory atmosphere that has gripped the metroplex the judge has granted our emergency motion to continue the pre-trial hearing.
Love it!
It has come to my attention that a lot of you only read my baseball work here. No problem, I’m glad you stopped by.
However, if you’re a college football fan, and especially if you’ve read Death to the BCS, you should check out my newest piece on SportsMoney on Forbes.com: Did They or Didn’t They: the Sugar Bowl and Charitable Donations.
I previously blogged this on Comcast Sports Southeast, but I wanted to repost here for those who don’t follow all my blogs.
Eight Men Out is one of my favorite baseball movies. No matter how many times I watch, my heart still aches for Shoeless Joe. I choose to believe the portrayal in the movie is completely accurate, and I’m devastated by how his baseball career came to an end.
Perhaps my affinity for this particular film is why I find the division of baseball’s postseason proceeds so interesting. Have you ever wondered where all that money goes? Who benefits more, the players or the clubs?
First, there’s a distinction between required and non-required games. This is where Eight Men Out comes into play. Required games are those that must be played: the first three of the Division Series and the first four of each of the League Championship Series and World Series. The remaining games, that may or may not have to be played, are non-required games.
Under the current collective bargaining agreement, the players receive 60% of gate receipts in required games. All of the proceeds are put into a fund, which is not distributed until after the postseason is completed. Those profits are then split according to this formula:
World Series Winner 36%
World Series Loser 24%
League Championship Series Losers (2) 24%
Division Series Losers (4) 12%
Non-Wild Card Second Place Teams (4) 4%
That last one is the most interesting. Clubs who finish the season in second place in their division and who do not win the Wild Card and advance to the postseason still receive a share!
There are also set minimums to be distributed if the above formula does not achieve the desired result. Here are the minimums:
World Series Winner $2,416,450.00
World Series Loser $1,611,000.00
League Championship Losers (each) $805,500.00
Division Series Losers (each) $644,400.00
Non-Wild Card Second Place Clubs $161,100.00
Once the funds are distributed according to the above formula, the players on the recipient team vote to decide how funds will be divided. Players entitled to vote are all of those who were eligible for World Series participation and who were with the team as of June 1st. Attendance at the meeting is limited to players. However, Major League Rule 45 states that the field manager is entitled to give his opinion on the distribution before leaving the room. The players may also choose to allow him to stay for the meeting.
One of the more interesting provisions of Major League Rule 45 is with regards to a player who has been with more than one club during the season. If more than one of his clubs from that season is in the postseason, he can actually receive a share from each club that participated in the postseason. However, there are provisions that limit his total amount received to the amount he would have received if given a full share as a player who was eligible and with the team prior to June 1st.
The players may also vote to give cash distributions to non-uniformed personnel, although it may not exceed the value of a full share.
What about the clubs? There is no distinction made between the home and visiting team. Instead, the two clubs playing split the gate receipts evenly. For required games, they receive the remaining 40% share after payout to the players fund. For non-required games, however, they split 100 percent. Why the distinction? Think Eight Men Out. It appears the concern is that players might be tempted to throw games in order to play more games and earn additional money.
Think it’s only the players and clubs who profit? Think again. The Commissioner’s office receives a flat 15% off the top on all World Series gate receipts. It also receives a percentage of all gate receipts from the League Championship Series. That percentage is set each year by the Commissioner and approved by the Major League Executive Council.
Of course, the real money is in the increased ticket/box sales each club might experience the following season, increased advertising revenue, a larger fan base and other sources of revenue that are bound to see a spike as a result of a club’s postseason appearance.
My life in the legal world and in sports has been merging a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote for Comcast Sports Southeast on a (frivolous) lawsuit filed against the University of Georgia and essentially any and everyone ever associated with the football program.
Today, I come to you with an even funnier legal document. Generally, a Motion for Continuance is boring. Sometimes an attorney has another case being heard on the same day. In other cases, an attorney needs more time to prepare. There are a million reasons to ask for a continuance.
This is the first time I’ve seen a Motion for Continuance citing the World Series as the conflicting obligation.
Dallas-based attorney, Darrell Cook, is not only a diehard Rangers fan with tickets to the games in San Francisco, he’s also a comedian. Even if you’re not a lawyer, this motion is a must read.
Just a few snippets to entice you to click here for more:
Mr. Cook states, “he has developed a love of the Rangers that has gone generally unrequited for thirty-eight (38) years.”
“Everything between Darrell and the Rangers was business as usual this year: a) Josh Hamilton was discovered drunken and covered in whip cream. . .”
“Darrell went to all three games played in Arlington against the Yankees and creid in the stands as the Rangers defeated the Evil Empire known as the New York Yankees.”
There’s so much more, including footnotes that provide further amusement. If you never read another legal document in your life, read this one!
I literally stopped what I was working on when I saw a Google alert pop up in my Inbox that read “Major League Baseball: A broken sport in need of fixing.”
As much as I analyze, and sometimes criticize Major League Baseball, I do not believe it is “broken.” In fact, I stand by a piece I wrote a couple of months ago, proclaiming MLB to be the healthiest of the sports leagues. Chief amongst the reasons for this proclamation is the fact that is the only sport I believe is not in danger of a strike/lockout at the end of the current collective bargaining agreement. And despite all the arguments for a salary cap, I remain firmly against one.
I never do this, but I think I’ll pick apart this article that arrived in my Inbox this afternoon piece by piece. I’m on board in the beginning…
In this writer’s opinion, the revenue sharing system in Major League Baseball is a good concept, but has still not been implemented correctly.
I agree. You can see my piece in The Hardball Times on how the leaked financials showed revenue sharing needs some work.
I believe that teams that generate substantially higher revenues should have to contribute significantly more into the revenue sharing pool than they do.
How much more? Oh, probably anywhere from about 200-400% more.
Sound insane to you? If it does then your mentality is probably part of the overall problem and not the solution to the colossal mess we have in Major League Baseball right now.
And now he’s lost me. Revenue sharing should be increased by 200-400%? I don’t think so. While the leaked financials did illustrate that revenue sharing is necessary, they also showed that teams may be relying on that money to cover operating expenses while pocketing revenue. Not to mention that owners of clubs in larger markets pay significantly more for their club, and deserve to reap some benefit with that. In 2002, three teams were sold and bought. The Red Sox, who are obviously in a large market, sold for $380m (taking on about $40m in debt). The New York Mets, another large market team, sold for $391m. The Marlins, the poster child for small market teams, sold for $158m. Ever heard you get what you pay for?
If you want to call this counterbalancing solution “socialism” then …so be it.
Hell, call it whatever you want to.
I call it restoring a competitive balance in Major League Baseball, which has been hijacked, primarily, by a virtual cabal of corporate entities that operate within the framework of the broken system that MLB has implemented.
I don’t know where to start, but I’ll stick with that last paragraph at this point. Obviously the author is insinuating there is no competitive balance in balance. Untrue. I’ve shown this chart before to demonstrate how the leagues compare from 2000-2009:
| Percentage of Teams Participating in Playoffs | Number of Different Participants | Number of Different Champions | |
| MLB | 27% (8 of 30 teams) | 23 of 30 | 8 |
| NFL | 38% (12 of 32 teams) | 29 of 32 | 7 |
| NBA | 53% (16 of 30 teams) | 29 of 30 | 5 |
| NHL | 53% (16 of 30 teams) | 30 of 30 | 7 |
The biggest difference? I’d argue it’s the playoff format. Baseball allows in the least number of teams. The NBA and NHL let in more than half their teams. So, at the beginning of the season, you have a better than 50% chance of making the playoffs. Does this mean the NBA or NHL is more balanced competitively than MLB. Nope. In fact, as you can see above, MLB has had the highest number in terms of different champions during this time period. No competitive balance, huh?
To put it bluntly, MLB, the Players Association Union and the New York Yankees are all greed mongering power players that are in collusion, have ruined the game of baseball, and have threatened the very fabric of professional sports in the process.
Thank God that the NFL, NBA, and NHL have all implemented some form of salary cap that has prevented their sports from becoming the ridiculous and idiotic mockery that MLB has become.
I feel that MLB is probably the closest thing to Professional Wrestling that has ever existed in the history of organized sports, and I even hesitate to call MLB a real sport anymore because the results of the games and seasons are nearly as predictable as hokey wrestling matches, where the conclusions are all scripted and ultimately predetermined.
I hate the Yankees too, but not because I think they’ve ruined the sport. I think most of us just wish we had an ownership group like they do – one that cares about fielding a winning team and isn’t just in the ownership game as a tax shelter or for some other corporate reason that leaves them less inclined to pour their profits back into baseball.
Oh, and the other leagues aren’t a “ridiculous and idiotic mockery” when they reject contracts that fit within the rules of the CBA ? How about when they launch a labor website where they take shots at their own players? Or maybe when they a player air his Decision and subsequent smoke-filled rise from the floor with his new teammates on national tv? Puh-lease.
The New York Yankees (the team with the highest payroll in the league by an incredibly wide margin) have made it to the playoffs 15 out of the last 16 years, while the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals (teams with traditionally the lowest payrolls in the league) have failed to make the playoffs for that same 16 year period …and beyond.
Perhaps even more frighteningly, this trend, or gap between the haves and the have-nots of the league seems to be expanding …with no end anywhere in sight.
So, to all you skeptics of the notion that money cannot buy success, …do the simple and undeniable math.
Ask yourselves, honestly, why does one team succeed and sit in the lofty penthouse of the league while others fail miserably and wallow in the smelly outhouse of obscurity?
What’s the common denominator here?
This isn’t a brain teaser or rocket science, …it’s good old fashioned common sense.
It isn’t too hard to figure out that The New York Yankees willfully and shamefully buy their success.
All of it.
And Major League Baseball allows this to happen because of their greed for the financial revenue that the New York Yankees bring in regularly to the league.
Can money buy you a winning team? Probably. Can it buy a championship? Not necessarily. Can you win without being the biggest spender? Absolutely. Who have the Yankees been battling it out for the division lead with all season? The Tampa Bay Rays, who rank 21 out of 30 in terms of payroll. It’s not the first time they’ve done it either. What about the Red Sox and Mets, the league’s #2 and #5 payrolls? They’re already mathematically eliminated. Meanwhile, you’ve got the Rangers and Padres, at #27 and #29 respectively, very much in the playoff hunt.
And if you want to know why the Pirates aren’t improving, I point you again to my piece in The Hardball Times on the leaked financials and what they taught us.
Why not just triple, or quadruple, the luxury tax and solve most of the problems with the lack of parity and stop the rapid erosion of competition within the sport?
In this suggested equation, none of the revenue would be lost for the sport and the competitive nature of the game would be greatly restored.
This would change nothing. The Yankees would simply continue to factor the competitive balance tax into their budget.
Lastly, I realize that are still many people in complete denial about the very premise of this article (that there is, indeed, a broken system that has led to an environment of gross inequality within the sport).
The people who argue against this premise usually are quick to refer to the Tampa Bay Rays as an example that some teams “don’t need to spend money to win” in MLB.
This is complete and utter nonsense.
First of all, the Tampa Bay Rays are an anomaly that came about in a perfect storm of player development as a result of years of losing.
An anomaly? Really? In 2008, the Rays contended for the championship in the World Series. In 2009, they had their second straight winning season. In 2010, they’re in a heated battle for the division title against the Yankees. One year might be an anomaly. Three years is not.
Unfortunately for the Rays, they will lose Carl Crawford (arguably, their best player) to free agency in the off season; they will lose their closer Rapheal Soriano (one of the smarter trades they accomplished, acquiring him before he attained superstar status), and they will lose Evan Longoria and David Price (their other two franchise players) as soon as their contracts expire and they become eligible for free agency.
And to all the skeptic of this reality, these are not scenarios that are based on speculation, …these are cold hard facts:
The Rays simply don’t have the economic resources to retain these players for the amount of money that the free agent market will ultimately demand.
First, Soriano wasn’t some unknown they took a chance on who surprised everyone with a great year. I’m a Braves fan and was devastated to lose him. He was already lights out, and the Rays paid the not so paltry sum of $7 million for him, along with trading the Braves a reliever.
As for the Rays not having the economic resources…untrue. They showed net income of over $11 million in 2007 and over $4 million in 2008. They’ve also shown a willingness to increase payroll. That’s where the real problem with revenue sharing lies. The Rays have increased payroll (they’re at double their 2007 payroll in 2010) and scouting and development costs, have put a winning product on the field, and have suffered decreased net income as a result of the current revenue sharing system.
That’s where the work needs to be done. And it will not be done by increasing revenue sharing by 200-400%. It will be done by revamping the system to one that rewards teams for putting their money back into the game instead of pocketing it all. It will be done by creating incentives and rewards for people who act more like the Yankees and commit to putting a winning product on the field, whether it’s through signing free agents or improving scouting and developing.
Baseball is not broken.
Check out my in-depth look at what the leaked financials of several MLB teams has taught us about how the current collective bargaining agreement is working on The Hardball Times!
First, if you haven’t read it before, please read this post: click here. It contains my thoughts on why MLB fans are always in search of more competitive balance and why mechanisms like a salary cap or hard slotting are not the answer. It makes a number of the points that the Pirates have now helped me prove….
Today’s post is where I get to say, “I told you so!” Thank you Pittsburgh Pirates. Put simply, just because a team is in a smaller market and not winning does NOT mean that Major League Baseball needs a cap or hard slotting in the draft or anything else to improve competitive balance. The current system is actually pretty great (see here for how MLB compares with the other pro sports in terms of competitive balance), and MLB as a whole is doing exceedingly well. In fact, as it turns out, at least one of the “poorer” clubs isn’t doing so poorly after all.
The real thanks goes to the Associated Press, who obtained financial data for the Pirates from 2007, 2008 and 2009. Not surpringly (at least not to me), it shows the Pirates have turned a profit. While losing.
The Pirates eighteen-season losing streak is the longest in professional sports history. In the years covered by the financial statements, the Pirates received just slightly less than half its income from MLB in the form of revenue sharing, national television revenue, MLB.com and MLB merchandise sales. Meanwhile, their payroll lingered at the bottom in the Majors. In fact, their 2010 payroll is only $2 million more than their 1992 payroll.
Nevertheless, MLB officials say the Pirates are complying with revenue sharing rules. I’m sure they probably are. So, what’s wrong with the Pirates making money at being a perennial loser?
I’ve said it quite a few times…baseball is a business. Owners face decisions about where best to allocate their resources, and the answer is not always club payroll. Sometimes they have to placate investors. Other times they have another business venture that produces a greater return for their dollar. There are hundreds of reasons an owner might not choose to pour money into payroll, or into the club in general. It’s his/her/its prerogative as the owner of a business.
Perhaps the problem isn’t with the Pirates or even with baseball. Maybe it’s simply a paradox created by the relationship between teams and fans. Here’s what I’ve said before on this (and still whole-heartedly believe):
I’ve thought about it, and here’s an analogy that illustrates the problem. If your favorite grocery store in town wasn’t giving you what you wanted in terms of stocking your favorite items or keeping the prices competitive, you would simply start shopping in another grocery store. You could abandon the one you originally preferred with little thought or remorse. You can’t do that in baseball though.
I’ll use myself as an example. I’m a Braves fan. If the Braves were a club who spent less on payroll than they received in revenue sharing, I would be irritated. But would I stop going to games or stop being a Braves fan? Probably not. See, there’s not another team in town, so I can’t just go watch another MLB team play on Saturday. And even if there was, I have an emotional attachment to the Braves. I remember going to games in the late 80s with my dad when the Braves were bottom-dwellers and no one was in the stands. Then I remember the worst-to-first miracle and all of the postseason games I went to for 14 straight years. I’ve lived all over the country, and I’ve rooted for several teams, but I’ve never felt about a team like I do about the Braves, because I don’t have the history with the others. So, even if the Braves owners were spending less on payroll than they received in revenue sharing, I’d probably still be a Braves fan. That’s why clubs like the Royals still have fans and can still increase in value every year.
I don’t think there is an answer, there’s only a problem we can’t solve as fans. Baseball is a business, but it’s one we approach with emotion and history. That’s why there are so many books and blogs and analysts. Fans want a salary cap even though MLB players make a smaller percentage of league revenue than players in leagues with a salary cap. Why? It’s because you want your team to be competitive, because you’re not willing to switch allegiances to another team. You want a payroll floor for the same reason.
The problem isn’t with baseball, it’s with fans. Baseball has seen eight different World Series champions in the last ten years, with fourteen different teams playing in the series. So, almost half of all teams have made a World Series appearance just in the past decade. By comparison, the NBA has only had five different champions in the past decade, and only eleven different teams played in the championship. The NFL has had seven different Super Bowl champions, with fourteen different teams playing in the series. Yet, MLB fans cry out about competitive imbalance far more than fans of the other leagues.
The bottom line is that MLB players share less in the league revenue than the other leagues (without a salary cap) and the championship series has seen just as many, or more, teams compete in the last decade as the other leagues. I think revenue sharing and the luxury tax have been a part of improving competitive balance over the past decade, as has the Wild Card. Remember that competitive balance is not perfect balance.
So, what do you think about the information that has come to light with regards to the Pirates? Are you mad? Do you think MLB should find a way to keep owners of losing teams from making money? Is revenue sharing a mistake?
As happens every year following the draft, the airwaves, newspapers and blogs have been filled today with demands for a hard slotting system in Major League Baseball.
If you’ve read my work for any appreciable amount of time (thank you), you know that I’m not in favor of most restraints on player salaries. Accordingly, I’ve spent all day leaving comments on blogs and yelling at the radio voicing my disapproval of hard slotting in the MLB draft.
You can read my thoughts on why hard slotting is unnecessary here. I don’t have much new to say, just want to bring it to the forefront of the blog.
I will say that it was interesting to see seventeen first-round picks unsigned yesterday morning. In fact, thirteen of those guys were still unsigned thirty minutes before the deadline.
One suggestion I’ve heard today is to move the signing deadline up. One disadvantage of signing late is in missing playing time over the summer. It hurts the player and the organization. In that respect, I could support a deadline that falls earlier in the summer. That being said, it won’t solve the last-minute-signee problem. Whenever the deadline is, some players will hold out until the bitter end.
Does that mean we need hard slotting? No. To me, that is not a legitimate reason to restrain a person’s ability to earn money. Why is the owners’ interest more important than the player’s?
What I’ve heard a lot today is that the system should be like the NBA. That’s like comparing apples to oranges. The NBA’s slotting system applies to first-year salary, not a signing bonus (which is the issue in MLB). A first-round NBA pick will be playing on the pro team immediately. The same is not true for a first-round MLB pick. In fact, many first-round picks never make it to the Majors. Some of them don’t get guaranteed contracts either, they only get that signing bonus. You can’t simply take the NBA model and move it to MLB.
**UPDATE: I’ve been following the debate on another blog, and I spotted this comment from Mike Darcy (who granted me permission to republish) that touches on a couple of points I hadn’t previously discussed:
Not only will MLB lose access to legitimate two-sports stars who will smartly decide to take more money from the other sports, but it will have a longer-range impact. There is already a great concern in MLB about the loss of black athletes to other sports. These kids already see the guaranteed money that top players get in other sports, as well as the endorsement contracts many sign before they even play a game, so this will further the perception (and it’s more than a perception) that if they want to make money they should stay away from baseball. This will cause a further drain, because at a much younger age these kids will elect simply not to play baseball in even more numbers than they are already. (And, yes, I know that MLB is more lucrative once a player makes the majors, but this means nothing to a twelve-year-old deciding on what sport he’ll play.)
Last, and probably of greater concern than what I’ve mentioned above, it will also remove the flexibility MLB teams have in luring talented players on the bubble. I’m not talking about legitimate two-sports stars (those will be lost since MLB teams won’t be able to compete with the other professional sports), I’m talking about other exceptional athletes debating what to do. One example is Austin Jackson, who the Yankees drafted in the 8th round. They gave a record-signing bonus to Jackson for an 8th-round pick (800K), because Jackson was going to Georgia Tech on a scholarship to play basketball, which is his favorite sport. I’m guessing by his height (6’3″) that Jackson wouldn’t have been good enough for the NBA, but he was heading off to college to dedicate a lot of his time playing basketball. Even if he eventually signed to play baseball (an unknown), he’d still be in the minors, as opposed to being a MLB player. And while, in this case, some people used to question if the Yankees had an advantage in signing Jackson because they have more money, in reality the Yankees overall don’t spend that much more money on their draft picks than any team. And in Jackson, it was Yankee money, but it’s the Detroit Tigers who are benefiting, since not only do they get Jackson without spending the upfront 800K, they also unloaded Granderson’s contract on the Yankees. The Tigers benefit. The Yankees benefit. MLB benefits here. Jackson benefits.
I’m very excited to share my new website: www.kristidosh.com!
Finally, I have one place that organizes and links to everything I do online: this blog, my Forbes SportsMoney blog, my Comcast Sports Southeast blog, my fiction blog, etc. There’s a live feed on the home page that shows my latest posts from SportsMoney on Forbes.com and from here. My SportsNite segments, radio interviews and media kit are up, information on my book and other publications, and much more to come!
A huge thanks goes out to Mara Lubell of Works Progress Design for my tastefully and beautifully designed website! I spoke with a number of web designers, and I knew when I hung up the phone with Mara that she was the one I wanted to work with. I couldn’t be happier with my website!
Watch soon for a new design here that will compliment the new www.kristidosh.com design!
