Tag: John Henry

Notes: Rafael Devers speaks up, White Sox stadium, expansion

The Red Sox aren’t spending enough, the White Sox want to spend more public money than anyone ever, and expansion is in the news, again.

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Rafael Devers watched as Mookie Betts was traded to the Dodgers for salary relief. He saw the Red Sox bungle negotiations with Xander Bogaerts, who then left for the Padres. He can be forgiven for deciding to speak his mind on the current direction of the Red Sox, which, with spring training now open, he did at the first opportunity. Per Jen McCaffrey at The Athletic:

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John Henry lies about ticket prices, is booed

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It’s not exactly new information that there is no correlation between MLB ticket prices and player salaries. Baseball Prospectus ran an article on the subject in April of 2003, nearly 20 years ago now. Early 2003 is so long ago in analysis terms that it was two years before I made my own debut at Baseball Prospectus, and three years since I became a regular there. It’s so long ago that the author of that piece, Nate Silver, was years away from being a divisive figure. It’s been known for some time that ticket prices and salaries don’t align like that, is the point. Here’s Silver on the subject:

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On that Super League nonsense

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I’ll be the first to admit I’m not completely learned in the ways of men’s soccer’s worldwide economics. I know enough to know, however, that the system that is in place — in Europe, not in the United States’ MLS version of the game — does a better job of promoting competition than an American league like Major League Baseball does. There is a reason that, over the years, you’ve seen more than one writer pine for the idea of relegation in American sport leagues, especially in one like MLB where tanking or actively not trying is so rampant: the threat of being demoted to a lesser league and replaced by a team that is actually trying would provide the kind of motivation missing from the day-to-day and long-term operations of quite a few MLB teams.

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Red Sox look to act even more like a business with potential merger

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The Red Sox are owned by multi-billionaire John Henry, but really, they’re owned by Fenway Sports Group: Henry is just the primary money and decision maker behind that venture. Fenway Sports group owns a number of other teams in various sports, most notably Liverpool F.C. in the Premier League, and now they’re planning on getting even bigger by, per a Wall Street Journal report, merging with RedBall Acquisition Corp and then going public. RedBall’s co-chair, by the way, is Oakland A’s executive, Billy Beane.

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