Month: October 2023

Notes: Rangers spending, Royals secret stadium costs, antitrust suit

The Astros spent, too, despite what their fans think, the Royals’ stadium plan is even costlier than imagined, and thoughts on what to do about the antitrust suits inching their way toward SCOTUS.

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After the Rangers defeated the Astros in the ALCS last week, there were a surprising number of fans of the latter that essentially said, “Texas only won because they spent so much money to defeat Houston.” Which, first of all, who cares if that’s true, and second, that’s also not true. The Rangers did spend a lot of money, yes, and much of it on free agency instead of on extensions to established, homegrown players, but they barely spent more than the Astros did. As I got into for Baseball Prospectus [subscription required], the only reason the two payrolls weren’t even closer than they are is because the Mets covered a big chunk of what was still owed to Justin Verlander, a midseason trade acquisition for Houston, for the 2023 season.

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Notes: Marlins, A’s stadium board, Brewers’ subsidies

The Marlins want to go cheaper (again), the A’s Las Vegas journey takes its next step, and the Brewers got hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate their stadium.

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Kim Ng left the Marlins last week, and because it happened early on a Monday morning and the team was the first to send out the news, there was little in the way of detail. We know now, though, that the Marlins attempted to hire someone to oversee their general manager after she managed to bring the Marlins record way up and help them to their first full-season postseason slot since the 2003 World Series championship campaign. (You can count 2020, by all means, but realize that if the season had been the length it was supposed to be, that team probably wasn’t playing ball in October.)

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Notes: Trevor May’s retirement speech, MLBPA and the antitrust exemption

Trevor May has parting words for his old boss, and the MLBPA formally supports a lawsuit challenging MLB’s antitrust exemption

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MLB relief pitcher Trevor May retired earlier this week, and he did not go out quietly. The A’s pitcher took to Twitch to deliver his retirement speech, and it was a pointed one. Something tells me this guy doesn’t like A’s owner John Fisher very much (transcription courtesy Neil deMause at Field of Schemes):

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Notes: Kim Ng leaves, Alyssa Nakken interviews, NBA scoopsters

The first woman to be an MLB GM leaves her position, the first potential woman manager in MLB gets an interview, and why can Shams and Woj act the way they do without being punished for it?

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Sure, the Marlins made it back to the postseason in no small part because the barrier for entry is so low these days. And yes, they made it with a negative run differential while sporting a 38-50 record against teams with records better than .500. Consider the restrictions placed on general manager Kim Ng, though, in terms of spending and actually being able to improve the team with ease, and the job she did in Miami is probably a whole lot better than what those figures alone suggest.

Which is why Ng declining her side of a mutual option with the Marlins is an intriguing bit of Monday morning news, since it opens up quite a few possibilities. Does she not want to work with the Marlins at all, when jobs in locations such as with the Boston Red Sox are now open, and rumors of their interest in her have already been swirling? (The Red Sox don’t spend like they could, no, but after running a team with “stadium debt service” holding everything back, their brand of penny-pinching is going to feel a lot different.) Is this simply a standard option decline in order to negotiate a better deal with the Marlins, now that she has more leverage than she did back when she first became the club’s general manager — the first woman to be an MLB GM at all, and the first woman GM in any of the four major sports leagues in North America?

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The Orioles probably should have upgraded

The Orioles were legitimately good, but just one of those teams wins the World Series each year. Why not strive for more?

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Let’s jump back to late-July for a moment, shall we?

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