As of Wednesday, more than 28,000 fans signed a petition on change.org asking Major League Baseball to force Pirates owner Bob Nutting to sell the team.
Source: ESPN.com
As of Wednesday, more than 28,000 fans signed a petition on change.org asking Major League Baseball to force Pirates owner Bob Nutting to sell the team.
Source: ESPN.com
Brian,
Aha, Met fans not the only one’s grumbling over shady ownership wallet behavior. I wonder what that petition looks like down in Miami.
MLB does have a significant problem, one that actually goes beyond the Wilpons, and if you haven’t seen it yet, Jeff Passan has an excellent piece providing lengthy details.
Among his issues, a or the primary issue is with the lack of competitiveness as a byproduct of franchises determining that it is better to tank, gather prospects, and be really bad, than to try an compete with “lesser” rebuilds. And, what makes this most egregious, when smaller market teams take this path they can actually still remain profitable by virtue of very low payrolls and significant cash from revenue sharing. For their fans,this is a nightmare, and for baseball is jeopardizes the recent success of the sport. I don’t necessarily blame teams for acting in their calculated best interests, but this does reflect major problems with the system, from the draft to the international draft to the collectively bargained compensation of major leaguers. No system is perfect, but adjustments are needed to discourage complete tanking (such as no top 10 draft spots in consecutive seasons) to better aligned player compensation with value (changing the model that provides poverty in the first 3 years, and free agency mostly past player primes).
I don’t know what the answer is but my guess is if a non-biased economist looked at the system, his conclusion would be that there’s too much money in the sport.
It’s not realistic to expect the owners to change the playing field because they’re doing great. It’s not realistic to expect MLB players to change things because they’re not doing shabby, either. And organizing minor leaguers into an effective union would be 100X more difficult than herding cats.
The game is fueled by TV money and guaranteed ticket sales. My best guess is the only way to see significant change is by a radical shift in one of those.
The line i took away from Passan’s article is this :
“Tearing down to build up is a business model; that it has the added benefits of job security for front offices and profits for ownership is a feature, not a bug.”
I never thought about it but it couldn’t be more true. For GMs who come in right away and are expected to compete and don’t win, it’s an easy excuse for an early firing. But a GM who comes in and orders a rebuild? Well you have to keep them around to see it through.
And the best example comes from our very own Sandy Alderson. Sandy came in and he set the expectation that we wouldn’t compete for a few years. Even though i repeatedly shown that Mets had opportunities in 2011 and 2012, it now makes total sense why he didn’t go for it. If he had gone for it 2011, maybe even make the playoffs, but then failed in 2012 and 2013, it would have opened up discussions for him to be fired. Most teams usually part ways with a GM after they’ve had one cycle of winning then failing.
Instead he was able to lay low for 4 years doing almost nothing and without needing to be accountable, as it is awfully tough for one to make a convincing case that a rebuild should be been 2 years vs 4. Sandy was brilliant for figuring out how to game the system for a steady paycheck.
Sorry Name, Im not buying that. No owner comes to the table expecting to win and hear a new GM say sorry, we are rebuilding and so you need to keep me. In Aldersons case rebuilding (or whatever halfassed version of it the Mets did) was clear from before he was hired. He was hand selected to down size the budget and keep the team in the hands of the Wilpons. And I completely disagree that either the ’11 or ’12 teams were more than just the total drech we witnessed first hand. Not only were they on the bad side of mediocre, the owners had no money to change anything. Look at their records on trade deadline day as I have previously shown.