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snyttri

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Everything posted by snyttri

  1. snyttri
    According to the letter once you buy your tickets you can't login again at regular prices. You're supposed to put the the tickets in a shopping cart. I had the same problem.
  2. snyttri
    I think it's reasonable to give insiders considerable credit for knowing what is happening in baseball. The players knew what was happening. Coaches and managers, who are part of management, are not that insulated from players. Here's something Bud Selig said about amphetamines from the article linked above. "There's a lot of anecdotal stuff that's gone on," Selig said. "I was a young kid who walked into the Milwaukee Braves clubhouse and I heard about it. That was 1958, so that's 47 years ago. You can talk to people that go four, five and six decades back." The public will never fully catch up with what insiders have long known about the scope of steroid use. MLB was tipped off in 1995 by the FBI and "looked the other way". If the powers that be didn't know what was going on at the time it was only through their strenuous efforts to imitate ostriches.
  3. snyttri
    The tests did not pick up everyone who was a PED user. Some PEDs were undetectable by the tests. PEDs can leave the system in a day or two. Some players may have been taking PED breaks. MLB excludes many drugs banned by the Olympic Committee from its tests. It has been claimed there were tip offs for the tests through parking passes for testers. Now MLB gives 8% of players exemptions for ADHD.
  4. snyttri
    While that is true, it's also true that in all the years since then, not one clubhouse guy or gym rat or personal trainer or drug dealer or down-on-his-luck ex-athlete has ever come forward to name Aaron or Mantle or Frank Robinson, etc. Not One. Mantle admitted he needed greenies to take the field after his frequent hangovers. John Milner said he got amphetamines from Willie Mays's locker. "At the mention of greenies, Washington Nationals manager Frank Robinson, a Hall of Fame player who is among the most astute observers of the game, tightened his lips in a half-smile and drew his thumb and forefinger together across them as if to keep his lips zipped." ergogenics.org In the amphetamine era, since drugs were left out in the open for all to use like the post-game meal, it seems sensible to presume players guilty until proven innocent.
  5. snyttri
    Not to mention I'll throw out the fact that steroids have been around longer than Hank Aaron has so there is no way to even know if your 'old time' greats were clean or not. Some players of the prohibition era probably acquired cocaine for use as a performance enhancing stimulant (probably not very effective) where they engaged in other illegal activities.
  6. snyttri
    I do know, however, that the players take no financial risk over and above what any American employee does. The value of players is established in the marketplace. CC's value was established at $161MM. Using the same measurement for labor and capital is comparing apples to oranges. Isn't the Cubs projected sale price around $900 million or something like that. That's not a financial risk? That includes a stadium and a cable company. The sale was concluded during the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression so it shows there is probably not much risk.
  7. snyttri
    Baseball seems to have become a very low risk business once it got established. They are exempt from the anti-trust laws so that they can have a legal monopoly on MLB. The public subsidizes them with stadiums and tax breaks. Revenue sharing allows teams to sit back and collect checks without competing for the playoffs and still turn a profit. The Brewers weren't really competing for most of their history but were probably turning a profit just on the appeal of MLB itself despite what they told the public.
  8. snyttri
    Would the MLBPA cry collusion? I wouldn't put it past 'em, not for one second. They're notorious for pressuring the owners but taking none of the blame for it. The question is whether the owners will collude again. The owners have been caught red handed colluding before. Steinbrenner withdrew an offer to Fisk after a call from Reinsdorf. The players cannot logically rule out the possibility that the owners will use the deep recession or depression as cover to artificially hold down salaries again; just as they used their purported industry wide losses as an excuse in the 80's. Some of the colluders from the 80's are very influential today. From Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders Well, with some owners calling for a salary cap due to the actions of other owners, I doubt a collusion case would hold much merit. This is a reason to watch out for collusion. The salary cap and collusion are two strategies for owners to hold down salaries. I don't think the owners are colluding. Because there are good reasons not to spend money and because the owners are still under well-earned suspicion.
  9. snyttri
    250
  10. snyttri
    Prince Fielder is the biggest baby in the world! Prince mailed back an autographed card for free this October. A year after it was mailed to him.
  11. snyttri
    Even though developmental expenses are high for MLB (is NHL and NBA scouting cheap?), the problem doesn't seem to be that MLB salaries are excessive as a whole compared to revenues or compared to other sports. As your post and the trend since 2003 illustrates owners are capable of limiting MLB salaries without a cap by signing fewer excessive contracts. Baseball's record revenue season doesn't necessarily cry out for change even if a team spends the record revenue extravagantly.
  12. snyttri
    There's not much justification for a salary cap to achieve financial balance when the owners can't even agree among themselves how to equitably divide revenues. When they figure out how to get some teams from just pocketing the revenue sharing they already have and how to better even out revenues, the salary cap proposal might sound more timely. Here's an article that proposes the luxury tax distribution take the form of an interest free loan instead of a donation. If a team doesn't spend the money on payroll it goes to the league office. Solving Baseball's Financial Inequities Maybe Bud is the wrong commissioner to force the stingiest teams to compete. It doesn't seem that he always scoured the nation to find the best possible management for the Brewers. Overregulation led to the collapse, especially of the housing market. Head to BF.net Political Scene if you want to discuss it. Also, the black is white debate. Sometimes there's a tendency not to want to blame the people in charge. Who would the MLBPA even negotiate with? The Steinbrenners, Mets, Sawx, Cubs and LA teams probably don't want to lower their player expenses to what the Marlins spend if it means giving up their competitive advantage in signing players. MLB already spends less on player salaries as a percentage of revenues than other sports, down 11 per cent since 2003. MLB players' share of leaguewide revenue at about 52 percent. This Sports Business Journal article also mentions that the NFL is considering giving up its salary cap.
  13. snyttri
    You can be proud they aren't sponsored by the Sportsbook at the Bellagio Casino yet.
  14. snyttri
    Griffey Jr. seems to be only a part-time player player and celebrity at this point. He couldn't hold a regular outfield job when the White Sox had two openings after Carlos Quentin got hurt. He did come through for them at some key times, though.
  15. snyttri
    I agree that certain player development expenses should count. Player development expenditures are things teams like to publicize. If any of the low spending teams had any extra scouts, international academies, or had signed a young high profile international free agent with their revenue sharing money instead of pocketing it it would be very well known.
  16. snyttri
    Why should the players agree to a salary cap? Baseball is making money hand over fist. The problem seems to be that owners can't agree among themselves how revenues should be shared and how spending should be evened out for competitive balance. The owners should be able to work out equitable revenue sharing and luxury tax arrangements. If they can't do it they could try hiring a real, neutral commissioner (instead of a fellow owner) who would be respected by all sides to force an equitable arrangement to share revenue and spending. The owners should get their own house in order, without breaking the law for a change, before restricting the players' access to the market. A floor is the first order of business, not a cap. The only publicly acceptable reason for a cap is to promote competitive balance. Owners have used the luxury tax and revenue sharing to guarantee all owners a profit no matter how incompetently they run the team. The cap would be another guarantee of profits as a reward for failing to compete. Owners should demonstrate they are serious about competition by forcing everyone in their ranks to compete for the postseason instead of just collecting checks (Bud and family may have been in this category) before restricting the rights of others .
  17. snyttri
    Great article, thanks. It's interesting that it says in baseball salaries account for a lower percentage of revenues than they do in the salary capped sports. Apparently some owners haven't been using the record revenues they've been receiving, including luxury tax revenue, to compete on the field. MLB's revenues have been exploding since 2003 and player salaries have simply not matched this increase in revenues. In 2003, players in baseball made 63% of league revenues. In 2008, that number appears to be 52% of league revenues, or less than any of the other major professional leagues in the US, which all have salary caps. For decades, wonks, wags, and wigs have told us that player salaries drive upward ticket prices and that arguments about supply and demand are theoretical constructs for an imaginary world. But in the real world, during a time in which the player's slice of the pie has dropped tremendously (a $400 million loss of the pie in 2008 alone, relative to 2003), ticket prices have continued to gone up unabated. Just as expected, savings from limiting the salaries of those mean old players have been filtered directly into the pockets of owners. Owners who cry poverty and get welfare stadiums.
  18. snyttri
    Swisher proved last season he can't play center field on a regular basis.
  19. snyttri
    The signing is in the best tradition of the Yankees since the 1920's. Periods of the Yankees dominating baseball may coincide with the peaks of baseball popularity. In the entertainment industry it helps to have widely recognizable heros and villains (Damn Yankees). One reason a salary cap never seems to get far is that the owners and players would have to become partners in sharing revenue. The owners have shown in a long series of court cases that they are not very trustworthy. The owners probably don't want to open their books to the players anyway. The owners were not very convincing the last time they cried poor and since they have just broken all revenue records now is not the best time to try again. I think a stronger luxury tax is needed. The initial one Bud got the owners to agree to was a good first step. The new stadium loophole the Yankees are exploiting now might have been a key to getting the luxury tax passed. This off-season may convince some teams to pass a more effective luxury tax the second time around.
  20. snyttri
    Not only was it obvious owners were colluding in the 80's, but convicted felon George Steinbrenner withdrew an offer to Carlton Fisk after talking to Jerry Reinsdorf. http://www.bizofbaseball....lusion_Neyer_Blunders.pdf There are many reasons for baseball salaries to fall along with the prices of other things but it would only be consistent with baseball history for owners to take advantage of the situation to hold prices down illegally. It's interesting that Fuentes price has supposedly fallen to $6M per year while 10 teams are supposed to be interested in him.
  21. snyttri
    It looks like he improved quite a bit in his second year as a starter and he doesn't have many innings on his arm, so maybe he'll be a relatively youthful and still improving 34 next season.
  22. snyttri
    si heyman A Sports Illustrated story lists the Brewers first among four teams interested in Oliver Perez if the Mets don't retain him. • The Mets and Boras seem far apart to start on free-agent pitcher Oliver Perez, so their chances to retain him appear remote for now. The Brewers, Dodgers, Reds and perhaps Mariners are seen as potential suitors for the talented but inconsistent young left-hander.
  23. snyttri
    The Yanks need to make the trade more than the Brewers do. I think with many teams cutting back on payroll teams willing to take on overpaid players are in the driver's seat. It doesn't seem like anyone but the Yankees is interested in Cameron at that salary. The Brewers may have signed him with the expectation that they could acquire a cheaper useful player specifically from the Yankees for Cameron. If the Yankees won't take him for a reasonable return the Brewers may be stuck using money needed for pitching in center field.
  24. snyttri
    On the Saturday White Sox show on 670AM the Sun-Times beat writer said he might make an impact over the course of the season despite being younger than Alexei Ramirez. He pointed out that Viciedo has been playing with full grown men for a long time and that in Cuba they play baseball full-time all year. They expect excellent defense at shortstop from Ramirez because it is his natural position and he was impressive at second base. A Cuban White Sox Interactive poster compared him to the LAA Kendry Morales.
  25. snyttri
    Yes, I was wrong about Cardinals radio being a boon. Attendance remained average despite excellent Cardinals teams. Their success has been attributed instead to Branch Rickey pioneering the modern minor league system with the Cardinals. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/cards.shtml
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