Reports have come out that the Phillies lost $145 million during the past season. Maybe it’s true, although my advice is to take that number with a gigantic grain of salt. According to Forbes, the Phillies in 2019 had $108 million in gate receipts, which includes club seats. Forbes also shows the team with $73 million in operating income in the last season with fans. How many hoops do you have to jump through to get to a difference of over $200 million when player salaries alone were about one-third of what they were scheduled to be?

Maybe the Mets should help them out and offer to take Zack Wheeler back.

13 comments on “Sunday catch-all thread (11/29/20)

  • NMK

    Trade them Sugar for Wheeler 🙂

  • TexasGusCC

    Glad you have an open thread today, as I have something I’d like to paste. Two snipets from today’s Newsday:

    “Matz struggled despite, or maybe because of, his higher-than-normal velocity. His fastball averaged 94.5 mph and topped out at 97.

    “He told me because he was throwing so hard, he thought he could pitch up a lot more than he did in the past,” Regan said. “I think as a result, he overthrew the ball a little bit and tried to throw the ball by guys. Even though you throw 97 mph, you gotta pitch. You gotta be able to hit those spots.””

    And later in the article…

    “When Matz was setting up to throw a pitch, he would position his head above but behind his feet, “which I don’t teach,” Regan said. He prefers to have pitchers keep their head over their feet.

    At the other end of Matz’s delivery, Regan had him land on the ball of his foot instead of his heel. When he was doing the latter, he wound up falling — off-balance — toward the third-base side.“”
    ———————————
    Healey continues to write how lessons Regan learned as a young pitcher could help Matz to relax when things get dicey and believe that he will get out of the jam. However, if I understood Matz’ problems, it always had to do with worrying about base runners. I never got the impression Matz didn’t trust his stuff, but rather that he was always worried about them running all over the place and making him look bad. Hopefully this dumb rumor about non-tendering Matz goes away because if Brad Hand can get at least $7, Matz should be able to do that job easily at $5.5. The catch and throw mentality will overcome any pacing and planning a starting pitcher needs to worry about.

    • MattyMets

      Thanks, Gus. I have a lot of respect for Phil Regan, but I believe Matz’ biggest issue is between his ears. He has to trust his stuff and not come undone every time he coughs up a homer or the ump makes a bad call or a fielder behind him makes an error. That’s Little League b.s. Andy Pettitte didn’t have the stuff Matz has but he consistently threw strikes, trusted his teammates and battled.

  • Name

    Gigantic grain of salt is still phrasing it too nice in my opinion. It’s an outright lie and deceptive.

    Logic dictates if a team’s loss was projected to be truly 9 figures, then there’s no way that owners wouldn’t have raised hell during the negotiations and they wouldn’t have had a 2020 season. These guys aren’t in the charity business.

    But the fact that they agreed to play a season means that at worst the high payroll teams took a “small” (my guess is less than $25 mil) but my guess is that most broke even and the small payroll teams probably were in the black.

    • TJ

      Ha, my thoughts as well. I saw Bill Madden originally reported it as a $2 billion loss for Philly last year, he actually typed that before changin it. I mean, can lying become any more fashionable than it already is?

  • Mike W

    Matz has basically been mediocre to lousy his whole career. Love Phil Regan, but it is up to Matz to make the changes. Players “make changes” in the off season. Remember the off season when Lagares changed his swing to get a better launch angle? How did that work out?

    I think they should give Matz the contract and trade him. Someone will take a flyer on him and give up some prospects for his $ 5 million salary.

    Watch the hot stove heat up after Wednesdays non-tender deadline.

    This is really fun. Which free agents will we sign first.

  • HOF19

    Headline from MLB Trade Rumors >>>>> Alderson: Mets Will Focus More On Free Agency Than Trades……Article link https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/11/alderson-mets-will-focus-more-on-free-agency-than-trades.html

  • José

    You guys need to see the following video (on Stark Raving Sports’ YouTube channel) titled, “Meet the Wilpons: How the Mets Became a Professional Mess.”

    I was actually unaware of the some of the ugliest details. I have never wished ill will upon anyone, but damn I came close

    • TexasGusCC

      Thanks Jose for sharing this video. Interesting for sure.

  • JimO

    Well we lost our chance at signing Michael Taylor. He went to the Royals.

    • TexasGusCC

      Did you really want him Jim? We need to start accumulating winning players, not players we need to hope may come around.

  • HOF19

    Anthony Dicomo reporting >>>>>>> Sources: The Mets are deep in talks with free-agent reliever Trevor May. The former Twin ranked seventh in MLB with 14.66 K/9 this season, to compliment a 3.86 ERA. May has a 3.19 mark since returning from Tommy John surgery in 2018.

    This is not a done deal, but there is smoke.

  • HOF19

    And now MLB Trade Rumors >>>>> The Mets have agreed to terms on a contract with free-agent reliever Trevor May, …….Article link >>>>> https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/12/mets-sign-trevor-may.html

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