While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Unlock with PatreonThe trouble with “valuing” exploited MLB players
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to gain access to the rest of my work and allow me to keep writing posts like this one.
Arguing about what the definition of the word “valuable” contained within the Most Valuable Player award means is a time-honored tradition in baseball. Does “value” mean the best player, or does it mean the best player on a postseason team, the one that helped said team actually make it to October with their presence? It’s always a mess, and yet, The Athletic’s Molly Knight wants to throw another version of the word valuable into the discussion, and it’s one that front offices and owners salivate over, one that should have nothing to do with the MVP award or how we view players.
In short, this article is a list of the value players have created compared to their salaries, or, a way to talk about value in a way that leaves high-paid and awesome players like Mike Trout out of the discussion. It’s a list of the most exploited players in the majors, basically, the ones who are most underpaid relative to their production, but for Knight’s purposes, it’s a list of who has provided the most “bang for the buck.” No, really, that’s what the table showing a player’s $/WAR is titled.
Knight does attempt to walk back her own messaging, by making sure to say this is a list that tells you “which players are most criminally underpaid.” Knight also takes the time to explain that she always sides with the players over owners in discussions of compensation. The problem is that saying these things and then writing this article up with the general framing and takeaways it has made those statements almost meaningless, or at least reduced their impact.
Continue reading “The trouble with “valuing” exploited MLB players”
MLB’s young players are better than ever, so pay them
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
The current NLRB is useless, unless you’re an employer like MLB
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Modern MLB team sales make me nervous, and here’s why
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MLB bars players from Venezuelan Winter League, thanks to Donald Trump
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL isn’t the answer he thinks it is
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to gain access to the rest of my work and allow me to keep writing posts like this one.
This whole Jay-Z and National Football League partnership is only getting weirder and more disappointing. As explained at The Root, Jay-Z is expected to end up with a “significant ownership interest” in an as-of-yet unnamed NFL team, which would make him the first Black owner in the league’s lengthy history. The prospective NFL owner is sticking with the idea that he’ll be some kind of agent of change between his partnership with the league that has his Roc Nation business consult on entertainment while contributing to NFL activism* and this ownership of a team. Shaking things up is not how anyone has ever been accepted into the (white) boys’ club that is sports team ownership, but don’t let that dull your enthusiasm!
*What?
Jay-Z was a proponent of Colin Kaepernick and his protests against police brutality, protests that ended up getting Kaepernick ousted from the NFL: if you don’t believe that the former quarterback was blacklisted by the league, look no further than the fact that the NFL paid him and another former player, Eric Reid, a settlement to make the collusion case disappear. Leagues aren’t in the habit of paying settlements for crimes they’re innocent of committing, but sometimes it pays to make things just go away with cash without ever outright saying you’re guilty. The past-tense following Jay-Z’s name in this graf’s first sentence was intentional, by the way, as the mogul joining forces with the NFL pits him against the player they still won’t allow to play in their league. Once he does own a team, do you think Jay-Z will sign Kaepernick to be its quarterback? Or will he already be committed to keeping his seat at the extremely white table that has kept Kaepernick away?
Continue reading “Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL isn’t the answer he thinks it is”
Blue Jays’ fans shouldn’t trust Mark Shapiro to build a winner
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MLB’s attendance is shrinking, and their solutions won’t make games cheaper
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
USA Today recently ran a feature on the declining attendance of Major League Baseball games, and the smaller stadiums teams have been and continue to want to build to contend with it. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but the meat of it for our purposes comes about 1,700 words in:
With the in-game experience so key to building fan loyalty, wouldn’t it behoove teams to fill up empty seats at discount prices?
Perhaps not at the expense of undercutting season-ticket holders.
“Is value important? Certainly. But it’s not a silver bullet in terms of a single solution to ensuring we have the attendance that we want,” says the Indians’ [Alex] King. “Our season ticket holders are investing a significant amount in us and shown a lot of loyalty. We really value that and want to ensure that as the lifeblood of our organization, we protect the investment they’ve made.”
On the other end of the spectrum, smaller, successful stadiums can breed ticket scarcity, tempting teams to increase prices and potentially squeeze out fans of lesser means.
Teams have been de-prioritizing the experience of actually going to the ballpark and watching an MLB game, because the economics of the league are such that they don’t need anyone going to games in order to make money. Attendance helps, of course — ask the Marlins, who pull in less money than anyone else (before revenue-sharing) for a reason despite a new park in a major American city — but with multi-billion dollar regional and national television deals popping up all over the place in addition to the cash raked in by MLBAM’s offerings, no one needs to actually go to a baseball game in order for MLB teams to make a profit. For now, anyway.
Continue reading “MLB’s attendance is shrinking, and their solutions won’t make games cheaper”
25 years later, the 1994 strike is still the MLB owners’ fault
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
Twenty five years ago, on August 12, 1994, the last strike in Major League Baseball occurred. It’s unlikely to be the final strike or work stoppage in the league’s history, but there have been 25 years of what some would refer to as “labor peace” since the last one. You should expect to see takes floating around the internet today suggesting that the strike was a bad idea, or that it was a disaster, and maybe even asking who was to blame for the strike, as if it isn’t management pushing the workers into a strike whenever one happens.
After all, we didn’t get to see Tony Gwynn hit .400, or Matt Williams challenge Roger Maris, or the Expos get a chance to win the World Series because of the strike, which apparently are the things we should really care about. Not that the strike kept MLB’s owners from implementing a salary cap, or that a federal judge stepping in at the tail-end of the strike stopped MLB from putting replacement players — scabs — on the field for games that actually counted, which could have destroyed the power of the MLBPA and had much further-reaching, dire consequences for the game than adding another 25 years onto the wait for someone to hit .400 again.
Continue reading “25 years later, the 1994 strike is still the MLB owners’ fault”