Last week, Deadspin.com unearthed financial documents for several MLB teams. Some of the teams, such as Seattle, showed a pattern of making money one season and correspondingly beefing up payroll the next. Others, such as Pittsburgh, cleared profits while maintaining basement payroll levels.
For many fans, columnists, and talking heads, this represents the ultimate affront. It is one thing to cry poor and not compete. It is another to cry poor, not compete, and turn a profit, they argue.
And they could not be more wrong.
For a country that cherishes its capitalist soul, our sports are shockingly socialist. Salary caps, revenue sharing, and luxury taxes all penalize the highest performers and bravest risk takers. The willingest spenders like the Yankees and Red Sox receive mixed messages from their sports: Try to win as much as you can, but you better not use all of your resources to do it.
But for the teams at the top of the revenue pile, these progressive penalties are only the cost of doing their very lucrative business. For every dollar perennial contenders have to surrender for trying too hard, they make back several in the spoils of winning. It is the teams at the bottom who have a tougher decision to weigh.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have not been a factor in the National League in nearly two decades. Since Barry Bonds' exodus to San Francisco, few Pirates have inspired any enthusiasm from Pittsburgh baseball fans. And meanwhile, ownership has recorded profits by balancing payroll and reaping its loser's take of MLB's revenue sharing funds.
To many baseball fans, this is an outrage. To summarize their anger, it seems like the Pirates do not care about winning. After all, if those cheap misers would just spend more money, they would certainly win more games, right?
Unfortunately, baseball economics are not that simple. In today's market, there are two ways to acquire major league talent: grow it in the farm system or pay for it on the open market. The problem for lower revenue teams like the Pirates, Royals, and Astros is that competing for a pennant takes a lot of talent. And when a proven high talent player becomes available to the entire market through trade or free agency, his value is a secret to no one.
But more importantly, the Pirates, Royals, Astros, and their cellar brethren are much farther away from the level of talent needed to win big. For teams on the cusp of contention, spending $10 million on a starting pitcher might be the difference in winning 92 games instead of 89. This might sound insignificant, but that jump in wins very easily could be the difference in making the playoffs or not, earning playoff revenue or not, and winning the World Series or not. On the other hand, the 3 extra wins that pitcher brings to a 70-win team are virtually meaningless. At best, that might be the edge in not finishing last in a division.
And this is why I have a hard time mustering any anger toward Pirates' ownership for not reinvesting a few dozen millions at this point. Maybe Pittsburgh could have budgeted a few million more toward the draft and international signings, but those are not the areas where most critics want to see the Pirates bleed green.
What good would it do the Pirates to dump $10 or $20 million per year into veterans that will not be part of their long-term success? Lower revenue teams have to play boom-and-bust franchise construction. They cannot replenish their major league talent through free agent bidding wars, so they have to collect cheap assets in hopes that they peak in a competitive window of opportunity.
So spare me the arguments about civic duty. Major league franchises are not charities or non-profits. And I do not care that MLB owners by nature had to be rich in the first place to buy their teams. When teams take major losses (as many are in all major sports), where are their safety nets?
When teams perform poorly year-in, year-out, fan suffering is inevitable. But during those dry spells, there is no reason the team's finances should be obligated to suffer annually along with them.
Corrie Trouw is the founder of Pisgkinology.com.
September 3, 2010
Anthony Brancato:
Actually it is our warped, narcissistic culture - epitomized by Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s churlish quip that “second place is the first loser” - that is to blame for the alleged “stinginess” of teams like the Pirates: Before this poison coursed through society, evading a last-place finish WOULD have been considered worth the trouble to spend more money; half a dozen decades ago, if a team was in last place in the then-eight-team NL or AL and the seventh-place team came to town for a series, the games literally sold out.
Today, by contrast, if a team doesn’t “win the big one,” they’re reviled even more than a cellar-dweller by having the epithet “chokers” hurled at them; shortly after former Dallas Cowboys QB Danny White retired, for example, he got into a minor car accident on a Dallas-area highway - and after the customary exchange of licenses, the driver of the other car - a 17-year-old kid - called White “you choking dog” right to his face. Yet no such indignity was ever suffered by Archie Manning, with his 35-101-3 lifetime record as a starter; indeed, Archie Manning is remembered fondly as this plucky, “working-class-hero” figure.
And kudos to Corrie for not using the cliche “small-market teams,” which is factually inaccurate: Houston is the nation’s fourth largest city, while Atlanta - never included by the media in the “small-market” category, is less populous than Staten Island - New York City’s “forgotten borough.”
September 3, 2010
Jonathan Lowe:
I understand the sentiment of what your saying, Corrie. However, being a Royals fan, the frustration level has been high for quite a long time. While I haven’t seen any reports saying such, I had heard that owner David Glass was making a profit on the team, despite their lackluster results. If that’s the case, it just looks like he’s taking us for a bunch of suckers that don’t know any better.
The biggest problem isn’t really spending huge money on free agents…it’s not be able to keep teams together. There are reports that Dayton Moore has put together one of the best minor league systems in the pros. All well and good for people in Omaha, Springdale, Wilmington, and Burlington. But it does no good to the folks in KC if the turnstile keeps spinning ‘round.
That’s what the Pirates and Royals (and when they were there, the Expos) have become…high-end Triple-A clubs for the rest of baseball. It gets hard to stomach when these teams let go of possible franchise faces when they get within a sniff of more lucrative contracts.
It’s not that everyone wants a title, but improvement and a little light would be nice. The Royals signed Zack Greinke to a deal a couple seasons ago. Maybe that’s the first sign of keeping the young talent. But I’ll believe it when I see it.
September 4, 2010
Anthony Brancato:
Don’t take this as unsympathetic, Jonathan, since I’m not.
If I were a KC fan right now, I’d have two favorite teams: The Royals, and whoever happened to playing against Cleveland at the time.
Hey, I’ll carry this one step further: If I were a Pittsburgh fan right now, I’d have two favorite teams too: The Pirates, and whoever happened to be playing against Baltimore at the time!
But when fans of teams like the Royals and Pirates start kvetching about the Yankees etc., they come across as envious and whiny; and look up how the Pirates did throughout the 1950s, and their fans didn’t moan and complain back then.
Then again, people were made of both tougher and downright more virtuous stuff in that era.