I thought this was an error the first time I saw it:
(Alex) Rodriguez, who at the age of 37 will be paid $28 million this year — about $6 million more than the entire Astros payroll, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts — and is on the books for another four seasons and $86 million.
But here’s some payroll info from Deadspin:
New York Yankees $228,995,945
Houston $24,328,538
Amazing.
Bailey
A-Rod has always had grotesque deals. Back in the day when he first signed for the Rangers, The Onion ran a headline to the effect of “Alex Rodriguez makes more money than all the other Rodriguez’s in Texas combined.”
J.
In honor of Opening Day, here are some baseball haiku:
On opening day
Every team has a chance
Even the Astros
So, how’s that A-Rod
contract working out for
all you Yankees fans?
Redshirt
Good job, if you can get it.
Can you? Highly unlikely.
Red Sox gonna win it all this year!
ranchandsyrup
Ahhh, the benefits of a strong union that can get guaranteed contracts.
Tehanu
Oh, it’s an error all right. Made by the same Yankee front office that dumped Russell Martin. Go Pirates!
JPL
Why are the Astros playing in the American League? Just curious.
Hill Dweller
I always love when NBA and NFL fans call Obama a socialist, not realizing their favorite sports league are far more socialist.
The MLB tries to mitigate the payroll disparity with the luxury tax, but it doesn’t seem to be all that effective.
Amir Khalid
There is no way a professional athlete could be worth that much to society. Even if his team turns a profit on him i.e. he brings in more money for them than they pay him.
Tone in DC
The Astros fans oughta sue for lack of (owner) support.
JCT
Let’s Go METS!
Yankees SUCK!
Redshirt
@Amir Khalid: On the one hand, I agree. On another, I don’t. This is a business, and you can be sure the owners of these businesses are making profits. Thus, what they pay the talent is a function of the success of the business. The Yankees are very successful, and thus can spend a lot to continue that success.
Rustydude
At least ARod on the DL, collecting 28 large, isn’t damaging the world economy like these high finance CEO’s and hedge traders are, at similar earnings. You gotta give him that.
Irish Steel
Bad news, Northsiders. The Cubs have already been eliminated.
Wait’ll next year!
Corner Stone
Hey! Lay off man. My Astros are on top of the AL West right now!
Irish Steel
@JPL: Probably to balance out the divisions. There were six teams in the NL central and only 4 teams in the AL west.
Scotty
@JPL: When they played in the NL there was an imbalance of teams between the two leagues- 14 AL, 16 NL. You had one division in the AL with 4 teams and one division in the NL with 6 teams as a result. By moving them over to the AL there is an even number of teams in each division and an equal (ideally) chance for teams to win their division.
Hill Dweller
OT: Why is Obama missing some jump shots at the Easter Egg Roll the biggest news story with the Village? Andrea Mitchell led her show with it.
The giddiness with which these hacks reported it is sort of weird and creepy.
Corner Stone
@Tone in DC:
Fuuuuccckkk that motherfucker. What an asshole. At least lie to us with a smile on your face you jerkoff.
shortstop
@Irish Steel: I am immune to your barbs. I didn’t get this far in life by crying every time the Cubs fuck up. Besides, we’re in our second rebuilding century.
Ben Grimm
And here you have why the NFL replaced baseball as the national pastime.
shortstop
@Hill Dweller: But if he had made them, he’d be the ghetto president who only cares about basketball.
Corner Stone
Our starting day pitcher was completely gassed after 80 pitches and we used our 5th day starter out of the bullpen to get us home.
We don’t have one 25HR hitter on the roster, and we’re playing in a park built for the pull HR hitter.
Oh, and the total roster is actually about $18.5M if you believe the broadcasters last night.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.
El Cid
He has created
Jobs beyond imagining.
We owe him tax cuts.
West of the Rockies
This spending disparity is one of a number of reasons I’m not a sports fan anymore. Time was, I watched a couple hours of ESPN almost daily (back when I was in my 20’s). As an Angels fan who glances at the standings once every couple weeks, I should be pleased — the team owner does spend a lot of money trying to
buybuild success. But for the fans of teams that don’t do this, most of the time the season is lost before it begins.Are there demonstrably more crummy humans involved in sports today? (To say so without proof would make me a get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon.) There seems to be so bloody much cheating, corruption, greed and venality in sports now. There are so many really crummy human beings in management and on the field/court. I don’t think I could name more than two or three hockey players, not a single college basketball player, and only a couple guys on the baseball teams I follow. Again, time was I could have recited the batting averages of most of the players on the teams I followed. Well, like power, money corrupts. Lots of money corrupts, well, lotsly!
Redshirt
Anyone know if MLB players have made any appreciable difference in the Dominican Republic? There are so many big time players (making big time money) from the DR I would hope so. But I don’t know.
Lavocat
Imagine how different baseball (or any sport) would be with a truly level playing field among teams re total payrolls. The game would be unrecognizable.
Now imagine how different our “democracy” would be with a truly a level playing field among individual Americans and zero corporations. It, too, would be an utterly different game.
I think Cindy Lauper said it best: money changes everything.
shortstop
@Corner Stone: On the other hand, Barbara Bush comes to your games and chews with her mouth open. So there’s that. I only wish my beautiful mind hadn’t had to think about it.
ranchandsyrup
@Scotty: @JPL: Larger backstory includes Commissioner Bud Selig switching the Brewers (ran by his family) to the National League (just because he wanted them there) when they realigned. He sold the unbalanced divisions by saying that no team wanted to switch to the AL and that having unbalanced leagues (16 v 14 teams) ensured that interleague play would be limited to special weekends. Now that there are 15 and 15, there is an interleague game every time all of the teams are playing.
cintibud
Here’s a baseball brain teaser for you all:
The starting pitcher got rocked early in the game. He gave up 7 runs in the first two innings and was pulled in the third inning with the bases loaded, two outs and a 3-0 count on the current batter.
A relief pitcher came in, worked the count on the batter to 3-2 before finally walking him, bringing home one run.
The next batter hit a sacrifice fly, bringing in another run and recording the first out.
The next batter grounded out, advancing base runners to second and third. Two outs.
The next batter hit a hot grounder to the shortstop, which he flubbed for an error. Another run scores.
Next batter strikes out to end the inning.
With the score now 10 – 0, the manager keeps the long reliever in the rest of game and he allows no more runs. They lose, 10-5
How many runs are charged to the relief pitcher?
Trick question. The starter was a republican and the reliever a democrat. ALL 10 runs are the fault of the reliever since he finished the game, any attempts to blame what happened early in the game is just a ploy by the reliever to avoid responsibility for the loss. He needs to stop blaming his predecessor, Wolverines Also Too!
Hill Dweller
@shortstop: I find the whole thing weird. They’re acting like Obama, who is a decent player, can’t play basketball.
RaflW
Pretty clear to me why we need to have a higher top marginal tax rate. But that’s prob not the point of this thread.
Ash Can
@Irish Steel:
Go tell Anthony Rizzo that.
shortstop
@Redshirt: There’s the MLB Dominican Development Alliance and The Players Trust. Rarely do we see quantifiable stuff on them, though.
schrodinger's cat
@Hill Dweller: They hate Obama, the so called liberal media.
From the AP this morning:
Obama ‘Limiting Press Access In Ways That Past Administrations Wouldn’t Have Dared’: AP
dedc79
The Mets have 7 runs through five innings. I wish they could keep 3 or 4 of them in reserve for use in later games. They’re gonna need them once they’re no longer playing the Padres…
jonas
I’m not as shocked by how big the Yankee payroll is as I am by how puny the Astros’ is. How can you even begin to run a professional league team with that kind of payroll? Houston is a huge city and a major media market, too. WTF?
MattR
@Lavocat: Football is pretty close with both a team salary cap and floor (I think it is 90% of the cap, but the floor is actually based on a four year average and not a yearly requirement)
shortstop
@Ash Can: That was nice, eh? More of that, please.
schrodinger's cat
I just think that baseball is a shorter but a more convoluted form of cricket.
Suffern ACE
@JCT: Really? Mets rhyme with Jets for a reason.
In my adopted home town, I’m surrounded by the old creaky yankees (whose biggest story this year will be the retirement of their closer) and the Mets team who still has Bobby Bonilla and Jason Bay on their payroll as its highest paid outfielders. You know you’re in for some great baseball when your team’s front office has made “come watch them develop into real players” as its major selling point.
My birth home town Brewers are going to lose a boatload of games once their stud player is suspended for steroid use. I’ve got nothing to root for, except that the Cubs continue to suck so much that my Brewers won’t finish last. I’ve already written off the season.
shortstop
@schrodinger’s cat: You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Zifnab
@JPL: Because they thought getting their asses handed to them in the National League was too embarrassing.
Ash Can
@cintibud: LOL!
ranchandsyrup
@Hill Dweller: Pardon me, but I speak wingnut. It’s a big deal because teh blah people are all supposed to be excellent basketball players. So, Obumbo is a fraud at everything QED YEAH!
schrodinger's cat
@shortstop: Not a bad thing, I just prefer the original thing. Have to love a game with breaks for tea. How purrlite.
joeshabadoo
If the players don’t get the cash its just going to go to the owner.
Better someone actually playing the game get it.
Corner Stone
@jonas: The new owner paid like $640M for the club. What an idiot.
He’s now got a beautiful stadium in a great location and all the concession rights. How to extract the most value from this situation? Obviously it is to field a product that loses 100+ games for 5 years in a row with a lineup no one outside of Houston has ever heard of!
I have zero issue with using young talent, developing your farm system and taking some risk to find what value you have. That’s all great. But when you’re playing 80 games in a park made to punish pitchers who miss their spots AND you have a lineup full of potential contact hitters and no power threat…that’s a recipe for hard cider fail juice.
Oh, and did I mention you also shifted to the most HR power hitting stacked division in baseball? The AL West.
Schlemizel
@JPL:
Because a few years ago the crook that owns the Milwaukee Brewers thought he could make better money playing the Cubs than the White Sox (seriously). That crook also happened to be the commissioner of baseball so he got what he wanted. That left the NL with an extra team. Why Huston? Who knows?
Also, want to guess which of the two teams mentioned (NY & Hus) has the better winning percentage. Baseball is all about the money. If you arrange the teams by average annual salary you get almost the exact same order as if you arranged them by winning percentage over the last decade. Fuck the owners
shortstop
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s necessary to keep blood sugar level after so many hours. I actually like cricket a lot.
Paul J B
Shed no tears for wealthy owners poor mouthing about over-priced athletes as they vacuum cash from the proles through preferential tax laws and taxpayer financed stadia. Their spokes models in the sports media do enough of that already.
schrodinger's cat
@shortstop: I do too. Sachin Tendulkar is the bestest.
Ash Can
@shortstop: Those South Pacific islanders are going to be awfully confused when a dented baseball splashes down in their lagoon next week. :)
Amir Khalid
@cintibud:
I am not sure I understand why Americans constantly invoke a superhero who is Canadian, and who is played in the movies by an Australian actor.
MattR
@Schlemizel:
Because the Houston team was sold recently and MLB used that opportunity to force any new owner to accept a move to the AL. Much easier than trying to fight one of the existing owners.
@Amir Khalid: I don’t think the WOLVERINES!!! cry from Red Dawn has anything to do with the comic character.
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: It got too embarrassing for Yankee wingnuts to openly adulate the SS in films about WWII.
trollhattan
Houston’s message: go ahead, by all means mess wiff Texas.
David Koch
Yankees = Romney
schrodinger's cat
@MattR: I had never even heard of the movie before I started frequenting Balloon Juice.
cintibud
@Amir Khalid: See the movie “Red Dawn” Tea party fantasy.
shortstop
@schrodinger’s cat: By the way, the notion that baseball came from cricket is disputed by some scholars who cite not insubstantial evidence that they evolved separately from common ancestor games, if you will. I haven’t really looked into this but keep meaning to.
JCT
@Suffern ACE: Yeah, I know — but I grew up a rabid Dodgers fan and when I moved to NYC in the 80’s there was no way in the world I could root for the Yankees. I think being a Jets fan this upcoming season may be worse than being a Mets fan, though.
True story — when my son was about 4 or 5 I got comped some awesome box seats at Yankee Stadium so I took my boy to his first baseball game. He spent most of the game looking grumpy and declined all offered souvenirs . Finally I asked him what the problem was and he said “I’m a Mets fan, mommy, I hate the Yankees”. To this day we have no idea how or when he decided that he was a Mets fan — but today was the first opening day at Citi or Shea that he has missed in over 12 years. But he did text me from his first class this AM (he’s at UCLA) to wish me a “Happy Mets Opening Day” — so he’s a lifer.
I still think anything can happen in baseball.
SatanicPanic
@Ben Grimm: A-Rod deserves a lot of criticism but blaming him for the fact that baseball is now less popular than football seems a bit harsh
Amir Khalid
@MattR:
I do but snark, good sir.
MattR
@schrodinger’s cat: It was really not that terrible a movie at the time, though it did not age too well. But then again, I looked at the plot as a horrible nightmare situation while many on the right saw it as a way to live out their fantasy of “taking back their country”.
Roger Moore
@Hill Dweller:
Baseball has deliberately avoided implementing any kind of salary floor (other than the league minimum salary) as part of the deal that prevented any kind of a hard salary cap. And it makes more sense to do things that way than you’d think. Houston decided it was time to rebuild by trading a bunch of their expensive mediocre veterans for young prospects. Now they need to play those prospects so they have a chance to get some experience and get better. Forcing them to spend more money with some kind of salary floor would only encourage them to waste money on expensive veterans who would take playing time away from their developing prospects. In 3-4 years when the current crop of prospects is starting to perform, Houston’s salary will be back up around league average. Low team salaries are only a big problem if it’s the same teams playing lowball year after year.
Punchy
The “new” prob wit da bizbawl is the unfuckingly insane the new TV contracts are, and how diff they are among markets. The LA Ain’t-gels are gettin $150-ish mill a year just from their local TV contract. IIRC, the Dodgers are getting $200 mill+. Meanwhile, the Royals get $4 mill a year, I believe, until somethin like 2020. If the Dodgers only spent their TV contract scratch and bagged all the rest, they will still outspend the Royals every year by at least $100 mill, sometimes outspending by $150 mill.
Just cant compete in that system of haves/broke asses.
FlipYrWhig
I think MLB is the only professional sports league where player contracts are guaranteed. In other words, in any other sport, if you have a career-ending injury, even if you have years left on your contract, you’re S.O.L. — you never see that money.
MLB isn’t particularly uncompetitive, either: teams bubble up into playoff contention, then settle back down. Last year’s playoffs had a bunch of non-standard teams.
The league that is spectacularly lopsided in terms of competitive balance is the NBA. The good teams win 2/3 of their games or more. The bad teams win 1/3 or less. And the number of people who complain about that is basically zero.
Ash Can
@Schlemizel: I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer to “why Houston” is that Houston is a team with low attendance that’s sufficiently geographically isolated that it’s without any effective attendance-goosing rivalry, and that previous matchups with the only team that is within their geographical area (viz., the Rangers) did in fact boost attendance. Like you said yourself, Selig figured he’d see higher attendance at Brewers-Cubs games than at Brewers-Chisox games, and I do believe this is in fact happening (a big part of the reason that White Sox fans are so vehemently anti-Cub is that the Sox don’t have anywhere near the brand appeal that the Cubs do, and they know it). That plus the disparity in the number of teams between the leagues makes it understandable why it would be the Astros making the switch.
Eric U.
didn’t the Marlins owner build world-series quality teams twice only to sell them off?
FlipYrWhig
@Punchy: Funny, I don’t remember the Dodgers or Angels dominating the recent history of baseball.
Roger Moore
@cintibud:
Zero. Runners who are on base when he comes into the game are charged to the starter. Even the runner he walked would have been charged to the starter had he come around to score, since the count was already 3-0 when the reliever came in to face him.
IowaOldLady
I love opening day. It’s my equivalent for the voice of the turtle being heard in my land.
SatanicPanic
@Punchy: If the Dodgers continue to make trades that include guys like Carl Crawford I will continue to not worry about how much money they have to spend.
catclub
@Redshirt: SF Giants may have something to say about that. Also Detroit seemed at the end of last year, like a dynasty in the making.
This is the extent of my baseball expertise.
Ash Can
@shortstop: The story I’ve always heard is that baseball evolved out of a game called rounders, so I definitely agree with that.
Corner Stone
@Schlemizel:
The answer to the question of Why Houston is because it is due to a bribe, or blackmail, depending on your perspective between the former Houston owner and the Commish.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
I didn’t know until last weekend that the “advisor” who is single-handedly destroying Blackburn Rovers is Malaysian. Any comment?
Ash Can
@IowaOldLady: Both Opening Day and Election Day should be national holidays. :)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Eric U.:
FIFY
There is nothing new about this sort of thing.
The crying shame about this is that in the era of the unbalanced schedule, the AL West teams who get to face this Astros team more than, say, Tampa or Baltimore, now have an edge for the wild card playoff slots.
Amir Khalid
@Punchy:
One could solve that by having broadcasters negotiate TV contracts with MLB, rather than with individual teams. MLB could then distribute the revenues to compensate for the disparity in the size of local markets. This is like what they do in European football, although there the leagues deal with nationwide broadcasters/pay TV providers.
But I suppose you’re going to explain to me that this is too sosialist an approach for American team owners.
Ash Can
@Roger Moore: Psst — read the final paragraph of cintibud’s comment.
shortstop
@Ash Can: So did cricket, probably. I believe the only point of contention is whether rounders (and similar games) spawned cricket spawned baseball, or whether cricket and baseball evolved separately from rounders (ASG).
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
This isn’t quite as true as you think. Baseball contracts can be guaranteed, but they generally aren’t until the players have some negotiating leverage as free agents. Even then, the longer contracts almost always end with one or more option years that are explicitly not guaranteed. And in the NFL, those non-guaranteed contracts frequently pay a substantial percentage of the total contract value as a signing bonus that effectively give the player a guarantee.
J.
@JCT: I think I love you.
shortstop
@Ash Can: Not in this climate. I almost got hypothermia at Comiskey one long-ago Opening Day. Give us an extra day around the Fourth of July instead.
burnspbesq
@FlipYrWhig:
Even the NBA can’t hold a candle to the Spanish Primera Division (aka La Liga) in terms of competitive imbalance. Since 1970, Barcelona and Real Madrid have won 32 of 43 championships.
Anya
@Hill Dweller: They’re the kings and queens of triviality. Reporting on a trivial issue with an Obama failed angle is their specialty. This reminds me of all the brohaha about Obama’s bowling score during the 08 election (in the middle of the financial collapse).
Irish Steel
@shortstop:
Ha! I lol’d.
@Ash Can: Bring back The Hawk!
raven
Interminable baseball gets a fucking thread and not ONE for the whole NCAA Basketball Tourney. Schmucks.
cintibud
@Roger Moore: You must be a member of the reality based community!
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
Which is probably not true. The oldest references to baseball (e.g. Northanger Abbey) are quite a bit older than the oldest references to rounders. It’s probably true that the older versions of baseball were closer to contemporary rounders than contemporary baseball, but the best evidence is that a game called baseball came first and rounders was created as an atavistic version of it. In either case, baseball and cricket are probably cousins, both descended from earlier ball, stick, and base games like stoolball, rather than ancestor and descendant.
Ash Can
@shortstop: Hell, I don’t know if even that would do any good. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve almost gotten hypothermia at Wrigley Field in the summer when the wind comes blasting in off the lake.
shortstop
@cintibud: He’s a very lit’ral boy/The kind you don’t take home to moth-ah! Just kiddin’, Rog; we love ya.
schrodinger's cat
@shortstop: I was just making an observation, without any research besides being a spectator and noting the many similarities between the two games. They do seem to have a lot in common.
similar concepts, different names
batter – batsman
homerun – sixer
bases- wickets
catcher-wicket keeper
pitcher-bowler
similar concepts, same names
bat
ball
innings
umpires
runs
and so on..
Ash Can
@Roger Moore: That’s interesting. Thanks for the info!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Amir Khalid: The high school mascot in the town in Red Dawn was the wolverine.
dedc79
@JCT: Such a great story. My dad and grandfather were both NY Giants fans back in the day and kept rooting for them even after they moved to San Francisco. When I started watching baseball, my dad’s only request was that I didn’t root for the Yankees, so I became a Mets fan, and have been ever since. Back in 1985 that didn’t seem like any big sacrifice. Little did I know that 1986 would be the high point.
Suffern ACE
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yeah, but five of the six divisions have an Astros. It balances out.
Irish Steel
@Ash Can: You could retire on a store front that sold jackets on Clark or Addison.
shortstop
@schrodinger’s cat: They do. I wasn’t challenging you so much as wondering what the actual lineage was. Take with the usual large grain of Wiki-reading salt…looks like Northanger Abbey‘s not the first reference. I must look into this more using better sources. I love this stuff.
@Ash Can: Oh, now, once June’s over you can pretty much count on at least two months of beautiful ballpark-sitting days.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Ah, you’re referring to Serbegeth “Shebby” Singh. Defender for Johor state FA’s team and captain of Malaysia’s national team back in the pre-professional 1980s. Spent the 2000s on the pundit’s couch at ESPN being a proud Tottenham Hotspur fanboi. Knows fuck-all about playing as a pro, running a pro club, or keeping a civil tongue in his head. A couple of years ago, Blackburn’s new owners hired Shebby as an adviser. Ever since then, he has alternated between insulting players, the manager, fellow executive staff and the supporters; and apologising to them. I’m amazed he’s still there.
Hill Dweller
@Anya: But unlike the bowling nonsense, there is ample evidence of Obama being a solid basketball player, especially for someone who plays so infrequently.
Granted, Obama missed a lot of jumpers today, but the Village didn’t just breathlessly cover it, which was pathetic, they giddily claimed the President can’t play basketball.
The sequester coverage was very similar. The Village knowingly mislead the public. Republicans bore little to no blame for it as far as they were concerned. It was all on Obama.
I don’t want to say it’s solely racial, although I suspect that’s part of it, but I’ve never seen someone engender so much irrational hatred as Obama. Even some on the Left absolutely hate him.
Before anyone says it, I’m not suggesting Obama doesn’t deserve any criticism.
shortstop
@dedc79: A friend of mine heard Ruth Bader Ginsburg say she was still a Dodgers fan…left over from her Brooklyn fanship. I loved that.
Roger Moore
@cintibud:
How dare you! I’m enough of a baseball fan to know the scoring rules. Does that sound like a member of the reality based community? It may be a different unreality based community than Karl Rove’s, but that doesn’t make it reality based by any means.
Ash Can
@Irish Steel: And how. The sweatshirt and lap-blanket concessions inside the ballpark are a fucking gold mine.
@shortstop: Sure. But there are always those wonderful summer afternoons when a front blows through, it rains like hell for about 20 minutes, and then the wind changes and those of us who are nuts enough to hang around in the rain and wait out the delay are then sitting there soaking wet with the lake breeze blowing in our faces. :)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Suffern ACE:
Oh, there are some bad teams alright, but not one that’s that hapless.
But the balanced schedule that we had before interleague play would make something like this moot. The A’s and Angels would be seeing Boston and Minnesota as many times as they saw the Rays, the O’s, and the Astros. It’s that substitution of games against the Astros for games against the Rays and O’s that gives the non-Houston teams in the AL West the advantage.
Punchy
@FlipYrWhig: The contracts were just signed. Give it 5 years. Or look at the relative dominance of the Yanks the past 15 years to see the effect that much money will have.
Cacti
I hated seeing Albert Pujols leave the Cardinals, but I’m glad they avoided giving him an A-Rod type contract for past performance.
As it stands, Anaheim will be paying him $30 million a year when he’s 40-42 years old.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
Back when I was a member of SABR, I was a member of the 19th Century baseball committee.
shortstop
@Ash Can: Right you are. Got caught in some megathunderstorms just last summer. We live a few blocks away, so we always wait out the huge storms — we’re on foot and it’s not like we can get a cab in those downpours.
JPL
OT.. Sad news to report, one of the Buckwild characters died.
A little birdie did tell me that John has already been contacted
Darkrose
@Corner Stone: I have to say that I was pretty happy for the Astros last night.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
That’s nothing. John Paul Stevens was actually at Babe Ruth’s called shot game in the 1932 World Series and supported Ruth’s claim to have called his shot.
shortstop
Not a Conan fan, but I always liked this.
SatanicPanic
@Punchy: The Yank’s dominance was in large part based on their ability to hold on to the core of players that they developed- Jeter, Rivera, et al. The Dodgers aren’t really developing anyone, and since the free agent market isn’t what it once was, they’re stuck making stupid trades for past their prime players.
dance around in your bones
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
I bet A-Rod not crying.
eta: “Did I ever tell you you look like a pe.nis with a hat on?”
Gravenstone
@JPL: They were basically coerced into it as a condition of MLB signing off on the sale of the club last season. This way there are now 15 teams in both the AL and NL. Of course, this move also necessitates having one interleague series each series throughout the season.
FlipYrWhig
@Punchy: Well, I hate the Yankees, but they also dominated baseball for the 80 or so years before that.
Ash Can
@Roger Moore: That’s an impressive credential!
Schlemizel
@raven:
Maybe more compound fractures would help! At least it would make the games interesting to watch.
Seriously though, as a hockey fan BB season can’t go away fast enough B-{D
ruemara
@Hill Dweller: They like to tear him down. That’s how the media rolls.
shortstop
@Schlemizel: I celebrate the Superbowl as a personal holiday since I don’t have to see freaking football for months. Different strokes.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Hugh doesn’t even use a Canadian accent. This seems odd since Wolverine is from the northernmost territories IIRC.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Hugh doesn’t even use a Canadian accent. This seems odd since Wolverine is from the northernmost territories IIRC.
Yutsano
You know, it does me zero good to look for a comment I made when I don’t push submit on the cell phone. Fail, I haz it.
EDIT: And of course it publishes twice. FYWP.
cintibud
@Roger Moore: That’s meant to be a compliment friend. Meaning the rules are the rules despite political affiliations of the players.
And you are correct – no earned runs for the reliever in the real world.
the Conster
@Redshirt:
If they can hang on one more inning, they’ll be in first place in the East.
Wally Ballou
The sun’s shining brightly on what I assume is a very, very cold afternoon in Bloomington, Minnesota as the Tigers score their first run in the first game of – you heard it here first — an unprecedented 162-0 season. I’ve gotta tell you, I’m looking forward to telling my grandkids I was around for this piece of history.
Schlemizel
@FlipYrWhig:
And that was based on money also. But back in the day the team was actually a business & expected to turn a profit. Once the owners discovered they could generate huge paper loses to hide their other income from taxation the price of a team went into orbit and owners stopped caring about how much the team could bring in and more about how the tax advantages. They don’t want to lose any real money on operations (and they don’t) so there is a limit to how much they will spend but the TV and junk markets bring in wildly different amounts with teams on the coasts doing the best
Captain C
@Schlemizel: It was Houston going to the AL West because Texas had a long-standing complaint about having to be in a division with three Pacific Time Zone teams; this way, they get an in-state rival. The league switch was a condition of purchase set on the new owners of the ‘Stros by MLB. Apparently, the new ownership actually is trying to build the farm system and completely rebuild the team (which has been abysmal the last few years).
Captain C
@Schlemizel: It was Houston going to the AL West because Texas had a long-standing complaint about having to be in a division with three Pacific Time Zone teams; this way, they get an in-state rival. The league switch was a condition of purchase set on the new owners of the ‘Stros by MLB. Apparently, the new ownership actually is trying to build the farm system and completely rebuild the team (which has been abysmal the last few years).
Schlemizel
@Wally Ballou:
Twins have not played in Bloomington for nearly 30 years. They have been downtown Mpls since 82.
colder than a well diggers ass out there today I bet
Tone in DC
@raven:
Since the Hoyas were out in the FIRST FUCKING ROUND, losing to 15 seed no less, I haven’t cared too much about the tournament.
The Nats can make the playoffs in that division, as long as the bullpen can keep the ball out of the dirt and in the park.
JCT
@shortstop: Not a Conan fan either and this didn’t help. Though even I cracked up over the skit where poor Mr. Met finds Mrs Met in bed with the Philly Phanatic.
Meanwhile, the apocalypse is nigh. Not only did the Mets win today, but one of their hapless outfielders hit a GS. The Mets never hit grand slams. I think I better buy a lottery ticket.
Punchy
@SatanicPanic: I dont disagree with most of that (Jeetah, MoRiv) but also, too….they bought A-Rod, Texiera, Fatbathia, Granderson, etc.). So yes, great farm system, but also, they’re paying players shit more than 2/34rds of the league WISHES they could pay for these guys.
Either way, can we all just agree the Yankess can suck ass for the next decade and no one will shed a tear?
MikeJ
Was up at 4:30 this morning to watch Chelsea beat Man U. Now watching the Sox finish up the FY. A pretty good day so far. We’ll see what the Ms do tonight.
Captain C
@Roger Moore:
The Miami Marlins just called, they said not to blow their cover.
SatanicPanic
@Punchy: Them and the Dodgers. I will laugh at their plight.
fidelio
@Amir Khalid: It’s what the NFL does, which is why teams like the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs are not spent into dust by a team like the New York Jets. They lose on their own account, and not because they’re outspent there in the NFL.
I think the problem is that the Major League Baseball COmmissioner didn’t get in there and manage to do that before the individual teams went to work, and as the owners are all too much the Galtian Superheroes and Rugged Individualists that they are, going back and changing the current situation is impossible. Marge Schott was noisier than a lot of MLB owners, but not that different in her attitudes.
The Dodgers’ previous owner was using his team’s income as an ATM to such an extent that the commissioner appointed an overseer to handle the club’s affairs.
Jebediah
@Roger Moore:
Is that played by dung beetles?
Captain C
@Eric U.: IIRC, it was two different owners. The first time was under Wayne Huizenga, who shredded his ’97 world champs so thoroughly that they set a record for worst record by a defending champion (54-108, after a 90+ win season the previous year). The next time, I think, was under their current owner (Jeff Loria?), who didn’t quite shred his ’03 champions the way Huizenga did the ’97 winners, but sold off enough parts that they finished under just above .500 the next year. Curiously, the Marlins have 2 rings, but no division titles (they won both times as a wild card), also, they’ve never lost a playoff series (they won the World Series the only two times they made the playoffs).
D.N. Nation
@Eric U.:
Once. 1997.
(The 2003 team was full of young talent and got incredibly lucky, see: Bartman, Steve. Then they were dismantled. But their creation wasn’t artificial the way ’97 was.)
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Alas, I can’t even tell a Canadian from an American by ear — and I’ve tried — so that distinction is quite lost on me. At least he doesn’t talk Strine as Wolverine. He managed to sound rather Irish, I think, as Jean Valjean.
Speaking of which, I’ve heard he was lobbying Disney to make Wolverine: The Musical, or maybe he was kidding about that.
eastriver
@Redshirt:
hahahahahahahahaha(deep breath of amazing NY air)hahahahahahahahaha
IowaOldLady
@Wally Ballou:
Oh man. Do you remember the year they went 45 and 5 at the start? The Orioles came to town and we were all thinking maybe we’d just been playing weak teams and now Baltimore was going to show us the truth, and the Tigers kicked their butts.
Schlemizel
@Amir Khalid:
HA! When we moved from Minnesota to Florida everyone there said we sounded Canadian to them.
OTOH – I wouldn’t mind being the Southern most province:
l’étoile du sud
JPL
@Redshirt: one game down
I hate the Yankees
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
Not as impressive as it sounds. The SABR committees are more like interest groups; any member who cares about a subject can join the committee that studies it. So I was a member of the 19th Century, Deadball Era, and Statistical Analysis committees.
Schlemizel
@IowaOldLady:
Ah yes, good times – like the last time the Tigers won the whirled series – back oh, what 30 years ago!
even the lameass Twins with their skinflint billionaire owner have managed to win it twice in that time.
Though I suppose they are due, they average once every 20 years
B-{D
Roger Moore
@Captain C:
Yep, and that’s a straight ownership problem, not a structural problem with financial system of the game. MLB should never have let Scrooge Loria get his hands on a second team.
IowaOldLady
“Ah yes, good times – like the last time the Tigers won the whirled series – back oh, what 30 years ago! ”
@Schlemizel: You’re killing my opening day buzz? That’s just wrong!
Roger Moore
@fidelio:
It’s not as late as you think. One of the good things Bud Selig did was to create MLB Advanced Media to handle satellite radio and create an on-line business, and all the profits it generates are shared equally between all the teams. MLBAM has been successful enough that they’re making money by hosting other professional sports’ on-line efforts. IIRC, they’ve also taken some steps to force teams to share some of their local broadcast and cable money. The top teams still earn more than the bottom teams, but the shared revenues have helped to level the playing field a lot compared to where things were when Bud became commissioner.
? Martin
And, uh, FTFY!
As if anyone needed to understand why…
Redshirt
@eastriver: We’re on our way! Go Sawx!
gene108
@Roger Moore:
Baseball owners don’t want revenue sharing. I don’t know why people keep bringing it up.
The NFL is the only major American professional sport with effective revenue sharing and that was put into place over 50 years ago, when the money wasn’t nearly as big as it is today.
EDIT: The NHL and NBA basically need contract, because there isn’t enough interest to support the number of teams they currently have.
EDIT2: Oops didn’t grok what you were saying about revenue sharing. Disregard first sentence.
MattR
No baseball discussion on balloon juice can be complete without video of the Trenton Thunder bat dogs, Chase and Derby.
eastriver
@Redshirt:
I will be here in October to cast scorn upon your band of not-so-lovable losers.
And BTW: fuck the Pats. In the ass. With Belichick’s diseased dick.
Go Yanks. (A-Rod is a waste of money.)
Redshirt
@eastriver: LOL. Objectively, both the Sox and Yankees should be inferior this year. But today, we sit atop the world.
Also, too: NY Football blows. Start Tebow! Go Jesus!
Captain C
@Roger Moore: Agreed. If Loria owned the Yanks, he’d be satisfied with a decade of 79-83 seasons, provided he could pocket the still-huge profits (especially once all the large legacy contracts ran out). Of course, after about year 3, he wouldn’t be able to set foot anywhere near New York City without a platoon or more of bodyguards.
eastriver
@Redshirt: @Redshirt:
Tebow was the stupidest move in professional sports in the past billion years. And I mean that without an ounce of hyperbole.
Enjoy your day in the sun. There won’t be many.
Redshirt
@eastriver: So are your Yankees not gonna suck this year?
The lineup you had on the field today was incredible – in a terrible way. What happened to buying the All Star team every year?
Dupe70
And the Astros are in first place in the AL! Woot! Go Stros!
((Yes I am very much aware this will not last long. The Astros have lost 213 games over the past two years.))
Wally Ballou
@gene108: And the Jerry Joneses of the world would love nothing more than to see the NFL go the same route. Can you imagine the competitive advantage an all-Cowboys cable channel (or an exclusive TV deal with a network a la Notre Dame-NBC) would provide?
Tone in DC
@Amir Khalid:
LULz. In the movies, Hugh has sounded rather American as Wolvie.
As for the, uh, musical… that would be like “Chicago” with claws; bad girls everywhere, out to kill the short guy with the radical ‘do and mutton chops.
MikeJ
@Dupe70:
The Red Sox don’t have that quantity, but they have quality. They only lose when it matters. They have to get your hopes up first.
JWL
It’s TV & radio money that is bound for someone’s wallet. Better it land in the players/entertainers than the owners.
A-Rod lacks character and is a steroid swindler. The hell of it is- and like Barry Bonds, as opposed to guys on the talent cusp who roll the steroid dice- he didn’t have to cheat, but did anyway.
Go Giants!
Jay S
I watched Moneyball this weekend. Shouldn’t the results of that strategy have been a game changer?
Doesn’t anybody know how to pay this game?
ETA Of course the Yankees always have had more dollars than sense.
MikeJ
@Jay S:
Only when nobody else is using it. The Red Sox started managing smarter and got an owner that was willing to spend too.
Redshirt
@Amir Khalid: Watch some NHL hockey – you’ll hear a Canadian.
I can spot the accent a mile away. It’s very noticeable to me. Key word: “About”.
Redshirt
@MikeJ: Well, in the early to mid 2000’s. I question the intelligence of recent Sox decisions. Running Tito out of town being prime among the dumbest moves.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Amir Khalid:
It’s an obscene amount of money, but pro sports is awash with obscene amounts of money. Owners will pay what the market will bear.
At 37, Rodriguez is a graybeard and has probably lost a step or two, but as long as he can put butts in seats (or, more importantly, eyes on the TV screen), he’s earning his keep.
Saw a very sobering documentary on Netflix over the weekend about how so many pro athletes wind up broke by the end of their career, ironically because paydays have become so huge (easy money means easy spending).
Jim Faith
@shortstop:
According to the Ken Burns documentary – baseball was modeled on another British game called Rounders.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Not true. A majority of MLB owners want revenue sharing for local revenues; it’s just that they need a supermajority to implement it. It breaks down about the way you’d expect. The bottom 2/3 or so of the teams (by local revenue) would love revenue sharing, while the top 1/3 of teams are vehemently opposed. Meanwhile, the richest teams would love to break up the revenue that’s currently shared, like the national broadcasting contracts and MLBAM money, but the rest of the league wouldn’t hear of it.
The same basic dynamic is true in the other sports. Some money is shared evenly and some belongs to the individual teams, and there aren’t enough votes to move any existing revenue from one pile into the other. The big difference in the NFL is that they have no local broadcast revenues, and that’s the dominant pile of money. The other big sports leagues have local broadcast contracts that produce most of the revenues and are effectively untouchable.
My suspicion, though, is that for MLB, on-line revenues are going to keep growing until they eventually displace local broadcast and cable contracts as the #1 source of revenue. I have a hard time believing that the latest cable contracts are going to work out for the cable partners. The Dodgers’ new contract, for example, works out to something like $5/month for every cable subscriber in the LA area, in season or off season, whether they’re a sports fan or not. The Angels are set to get a similar amount. That means that every cable subscriber in the LA area is going to wind up paying $10/month just for the local baseball teams. That might have been reasonable a few years ago, but outrageous cable bills are already starting to drive viewers to services like Hulu. As people give up their cable, the per-customer bill to cover those contracts will go up, driving more people away. The whole thing will go into a death spiral.
quannlace
Damn, that’s lot of foldin’ money. Meanwhile, that poor basketball player who broke his leg yesterday; does he get paid anything?
MikeJ
@Redshirt: No argument.
Jay S
@MikeJ: But the analysis wasn’t just that some players were undervalued, it was also clear that others were overvalued. The more teams that adopted the strategy, the fewer outliers there should be. Of course, if you can continue be able to dump overvalued players on suckers, I suppose there isn’t much of an upper bound. OTOH the greater fool theory works only until it doesn’t.
shortstop
Cubs win!
@Redshirt: And what’s funny is that Ontarians will tell you earnestly that only Maritime Province folks have detectable “aboots.” They’re sort of right. All the Ontarians I know say it “abote.” ;)
MikeJ
@Jay S:
It doesn’t matter if you’re paying “too much” if 1) you’ve got the money and 2) you get the results.
Ever buy a beer at a baseball game? You paid too much. On the other hand, you got a beer while the smart guy next to you didn’t. If you’ve got the money, you can overpay for some players.
NobodySpecial
@Jay S: It would have been, except someone wrote a book, and all 30 teams have someone in the front office who knows how to read. Now everyone has ‘the secret’, which makes it easier to tell who’s undervalued.
drkrick
@Amir Khalid: Socialism doesn’t have much to do with it. It just runs counter to the interests of the owners of too many large market teams (the Steinbrenner family being only the most vocal) to ever get approved. Desperation greased the skids for the adoption of the pooled TV revenue arrangement in a much less financially successful league when it was adopted 50 years ago. They could never get a similar arrangement through today either.
JWL
@Roger Moore: Fascinating stuff. I’m old enough to recall being greatly annoyed when the business side of sports began being reported. Nowadays, jeez, it’s just part of the landscape.
Go Giants! Go Niners! And RIP Marvin Miller..
Amir Khalid
@Redshirt:
I’ve met plenty of Canadians in person; no matter how closely I listen, I simply cannot distinguish the accent from an American one. I know I can tell a Californian from a New Yorker, for instance, but with Canadians I guess I don’t know what to listen for. I’ve learned they don’t all say “aboot”.
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
Or, to quote Bill Veeck, “It isn’t the high price of stars that is expensive; it’s the high price of mediocrity.” The cap on roster positions is a much bigger limitation for the top spending clubs than money is. What no team can afford is a guy who’s not good enough to play, and you’re a lot more likely to find that type if you’re trying to find bargains than if you’re overpaying for stars.
Roger Moore
@JWL:
I knew, first on-line and then in person, Doug Pappas, the founder of SABR’s Business of Baseball committee. Knowing somebody who could really make that side of things come alive and relate it to what you see on the field made it seem like a more valid and interesting pursuit.
The Ancient Randonneur
One helluva opening day game going on right now between SF Giants and LA Dodgers.
Corner Stone
@NobodySpecial:
Contingent on if you agree what metrics have value in the first place. And we could probably start a 700 comment thread on that. Well, maybe not here as a lot of sports interested people all left a while ago. But other places.
Darkrose
@The Ancient Randonneur: Serious pitching duel there. Kind of awesome, actually, though I have to keep repeating, “162 games. 162 games.”
fuckwit
I’m not a sports guy, but I’ve been told that the NFL is a lot more socialistic, and, as such, it doesn’t have the kind of insane income inequality of teams that the MLB does.
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Well, western Canadians sound quite different from eastern Canadians, further complicating the matter. A native British Columbian, for instance, sounds much closer to what you might think of as a generic “American” accent than someone from Nova Scotia or PEI does.
eastriver
@Redshirt:
Yes, terrible line up. Just horrible. Unwatchable.
But let’s see where everyone is playing in October, eh?
The Red Sucks’ payroll isn’t significantly lower than the Yanks. And they’ve won how many World Series? How many pennants?
I’m sorry, you have to speak louder. I must’ve misheard you. How many?
(that said, it’s not looking like a good year for both Bronx Bombers. But I’ll still put my money on them over Boston.)
Jay B.
Gah. Baseball is awash in money, and that includes a form of revenue sharing. The Royals’ local revenue may be meager, but they get tons of money from MLB/Luxury Taxes. They were near the bottom in terms of revenue (in last were the Rays, who, of course, have had one of the best teams in baseball for the past five years). The Royals, owned by one of the richest men from the richest family in America, brought in $169 million. Their payroll was probably south of $50 million. You figure out what David Glass’ priorities were.
It’s also just not true that a Salary Cap helps with “parity”. It’s bizarre that people think that the NFL is more equitable somehow — the same teams win almost every year. Baseball, despite the large financial gap between the teams has a lot more parity. The Rays can compete with the Yanks every year because they are a smart organization and put a priority on being competitive over profit. That happens whether there’s a cap or not.
shortstop
@The Ancient Randonneur: @Darkrose: I’m riveted. A lotta work on my desk is not getting done today.
MattR
@Jay B.: Parity is not just the teams that wins the championship, but also the teams that have a chance and the ability for bad teams to become competitive relatively quickly. In those respects, I think the NFL does better than MLB. As one example, 8 of the 30 MLB teams have gone more than 5 years without making the playoffs. In the NFL it is 4 of 32.
Jay B.
@MattR:
That’s also because the NFL had 12 playoff spots and MLB during the same timeframe had 8. Now they have a single play-in game, which makes the total postseason number (if even for a game) is 10.
MattR
@Jay B.: True, but even that does not account for the fact that the 3 longest MLB droughts are 19, 20 and 27 years while in the NFL they are 10,10 and 13. Personally, I think the structure of the NFL makes it easier to turn around a bad franchise and I don’t even think its close.
Redshirt
@eastriver: How many titles since 2003? Oh, just the one? Sox have two. :)
And I’ll take your bet: Sox finish better than the Yanks this year. Winner gets unlimited razzing rights for a month.
Gravenstone
@shortstop: I have a friend from BC who was actually a South African emigre as a child. Talk about a fucked up accent.
Roger Moore
@MattR:
There’s some apples to oranges comparisons there, though. The NFL season is only 16 games, so one fluke win or loss has a much greater effect on making the post-season. Also, MLB has the fewest teams make the post season of any of the big sports leagues. Until last year, it was 8 of 30 teams in the post season vs. 12 of 32 in the NFL, and 16 in the NBA and NHL.
And MLB certainly has the possibility of teams turning things around quickly. Just ask the Detroit Tigers. They went from an AL record 119 losses in 2003 to winning the AL pennant in 2006. And while a lot of people don’t like to talk about it, a big part of that resurgence is that they were allowed to tear the team apart and go with a bunch of rookies rather than waste a bunch of money on veterans to meet an arbitrary salary floor.
DTGslu2K
@Scotty: The reason why there was an imbalance in the leagues prior to this season is because the baseball schedule requires every single team to play every single weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun) of the entire season. With 15 teams in each league – an odd number – the only way it is possible to do that is to have at least one interleague series being played at all times throughout the whole season.
Previously, interleague games were generally restricted to the middle of the season just prior to the All-Star Break (mid May through late June). Now, they’ll be going on all season long.
DTGslu2K
@Jay B.: Close. David Glass is an incredibly wealthy man primarily because of his many years serving as the CEO of Walmart, but he is not an actual member of the Walton family.
Tractarian
Johan Santana will also make more than the Astros this year, and Santana won’t play at all in 2013.
Still, as a Mets fan, I have to say that Santana’s exorbitant salary is really a minor error, especially considering the gift he gave us last year.
chris
@Irish Steel:
hey hey hey – Cubs Win!
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, perfect record and leading the division….