Thread: Mackey: Blaming Payroll for Twins shortcomings is a lazy excuse

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Dallas Ft. Worth is almost double the size of the Twins Cities and is the fourth-largest metro market in the country behind the big three of NY, LA, and Chicago (all of which support multiple teams while Dallas has only the one).

Which doesn't have much to do with television markets.

I was looking at this.
http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/0...n-dma-payroll/

And again while the Rangers certainly have a larger market, it's not like they have a market that's almost 3 times the size of the Twins' market. Given the deal FSNorth got, that's apparently how the Twins evaluated the situation.

Originally Posted by John Bonnes

More importantly, I think Dallas has multiple regoinal sports channels, so there is essentially a bidding war. FSN essentially has a monopoly here.

Do they? When NBC Sports and Comcast merged, was it out of the question for them to make a play for the Twins? It appeared that FSN had the monopoly, but that wasn't going to last for long. Kudos to FSN for getting the deal locked up before the Twins had the sense to realize they'd have another buyer, I suppose.

Originally Posted by Fire Dan Gladden

Originally Posted by USAFChief

It's certainly true poor decisions by Twins management has wasted payroll. However,

1. Most of what is contained in Mackey's rant is unrelated to the Twins payroll. What the Yankees, or Phillies, pay their players, for example, isn't a factor in how much the Twins could, and should be spending. Drives up the cost of free agents? Sure, but that has nothing to do with the Twins available payroll. Nor, really, does spending poorly--but under budget--explain why they can't spend to budget. Are they so convinced their general manager doesn't know what he's doing that they took budget away to ensure it's not spent at all, rather than spent badly? Because they spent $11m badly, they forego spending entirely, even if money is available?

2. The Twins themselves have said, many times, they'll spend 52% of revenue (not "50%," 52). Unless Kelly Thesier can't be trusted, Jim Pohlad himself said that:

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/...=.jsp&c_id=min

So the issue isn't how much other teams are spending, or what they're spending it on, or the market size, the issue is, "are the Twins living up to the promises they've made to the fan base, and to the taxpayers who are paying for much of a new stadium?"

3. Any impartial look at available data indicates they haven't spend anywhere near 52% in at least 2 of the 3 seasons in TF, and barely exceeded it in one year. And that doesn't even address the legitimate question of whether or not they can afford to devote a higher percentage of revenue to payroll in TF than they could in the dome. Why would they need to devote tens of millions more to costs other than payroll now? Why was roughly $65m enough to fund everything other than payroll in the dome, but now they need $100m+?

1) They don't forego spending entirely, they just don't believe that organizationally they should be throwing big, long term money at pitching or at outside FA. TR has said publicly multiple times that the team would go over budget if they thought the move would benefit the team, so the Twins willingness to pay for people is there.

2) Good luck finding any organization that fullfills all promises made during the run for a new stadium. It's like a presidential election: say enough to get the public on your side, then deliver reality which always falls short.

3) I would love to see the "impartial data" that supports your theory that the Twins aren't spending 52%. The question of whether they can afford a higher % is moot as the Pohlads have decided that is the percentage they are willing to put to payroll. Considering the brainpower and dollars involved coming from a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, it's hard for little old me to say that 52% is too low. Operating costs are more than just running a stadium. I would be willing to bet there have been dollar increases in scouting, advertising, and yes, personal income for the Pohlads.

1. I'm not asking them to. I'm asking them to mostly live up to promises made.

2. This is a joke, right? It's wrong of me to expect them to treat fans honestly?

3. a. How many more times do you need to see it? b. You think? Let's start with doubling the value of their asset, to the tune of a cool 1/4 billion dollars.

Re: TV Revenues

Don't you also have to look at demographics? Without knowing this for sure, my guess would be that the average age in the Twins' market is higher (maybe significantly higher) than those in the Dallas market. And I would bet that if you look at average age of actual viewers, the age is higher on FSN than for the Rangers as well. And OLDER translates into less advertising revenue.

I would also venture a guess that the Dallas market is an expanding market in terms of size . I doubt that is true of the Twins market.

I think both of those factors -- plus market size, plus other available outlets -- played a part in the size of the Twins TV deal.

Originally Posted by Harrison Greeley III

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Dallas Ft. Worth is almost double the size of the Twins Cities and is the fourth-largest metro market in the country behind the big three of NY, LA, and Chicago (all of which support multiple teams while Dallas has only the one).

Which doesn't have much to do with television markets.

I was looking at this.
http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/0...n-dma-payroll/

And again while the Rangers certainly have a larger market, it's not like they have a market that's almost 3 times the size of the Twins' market. Given the deal FSNorth got, that's apparently how the Twins evaluated the situation.

I'm not arguing that the Twins shouldn't have received more money in their television deal. I'm only arguing your point that Dallas is comparable to the Twin Cities, which it most certainly is not.

In that list you provided, Dallas is just a few thousand households behind Boston, which has the most households once you factor out the multi-team markets of NY, LA, SF, and Chi. My statement still stands.

I'll ask once again, who's saying the Twins are a bad team cause of their payroll?

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Originally Posted by Harrison Greeley III

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Dallas Ft. Worth is almost double the size of the Twins Cities and is the fourth-largest metro market in the country behind the big three of NY, LA, and Chicago (all of which support multiple teams while Dallas has only the one).

Which doesn't have much to do with television markets.

I was looking at this.
http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/0...n-dma-payroll/

And again while the Rangers certainly have a larger market, it's not like they have a market that's almost 3 times the size of the Twins' market. Given the deal FSNorth got, that's apparently how the Twins evaluated the situation.

I'm not arguing that the Twins shouldn't have received more money in their television deal. I'm only arguing your point that Dallas is comparable to the Twin Cities, which it most certainly is not.

Which I already conceded in the last post. I still think their proportions of size are not even close to matching the proportional distances between TV deals.

Originally Posted by JB_Iowa

I was also disappointed in the TV deal. I had hoped that they would end up more in the range of Detroit - about $35-$40 million per year. Given market size, $29 million still looks low given that it was a recently negotiated deal but I suspect that it was depressed by demographics and by the Twins lingering memory of how they screwed up on TV rights in the early 2000's..

Detroit is the #11 TV market in the country. Mpls/St. Paul is #15. $35-40M for the Tigers is probably about right. They also have an additional several hundred thousand people in the Windsor, Ontario area just across the border that are not counted in that figure.

Originally Posted by DPJ

I'll ask once again, who's saying the Twins are a bad team cause of their payroll?

Sports talk radio-Twin Cities style. Knockin' down those strawmen since the 90's.

Originally Posted by Reginald Maudling's Shin

Originally Posted by DPJ

I'll ask once again, who's saying the Twins are a bad team cause of their payroll?

Sports talk radio-Twin Cities style. Knockin' down those strawmen since the 90's.

Sports talk radio guy Mackey is knocking down his own straw man here. Most fans are smart enough to know that the Twins don't need to spend more money, they need to get better players.

Originally Posted by Boom Boom

Sports talk radio guy Mackey is knocking down his own straw man here. Most fans are smart enough to know that the Twins don't need to spend more money, they need to get better players.

WHAT?!?! Lazy reporting from a member of the Twins Cities sports media.

Color me shocked!

We never seem to run out of excuses, trees, schedule, injuries, umpires you name it. In the end the payroll numbers mean little if the decision making of the front office doesn't change. Terry, Billy and all the scouts remain the same, the coaching staff remains and yet we expect a new and better result?

Originally Posted by Seth Stohs

http://www.1500espn.com/sportswire/M...y_excuse081212

Payroll -- or a perceived lack thereof -- has absolutely nothing to do with why the Twins have lost more than 160 games since the beginning of last season.
Payroll -- or a perceived scaling back of -- is a lazy excuse.

100% agree with Mr. Mackey on this one!

It's a specious argument. It also a rhetorical trick.

The trick is this: instead of debating a point honestly, choose the most extreme possible viewpoint and portray that as the opposing side. That gives lots of room for fire, brimstone and proselytizing. In this case, the extreme point seems to be that payroll is not THE BIGGEST factor in winning and losing. And if it's not the biggest, it must not be important.

The absurdity of the initial argument becomes clear when one carries it through to its natural conclusion: if payroll isn't important, why not cut it further? Why not go back to 2000, when it was under $20M? That is absurd, of course. Which is why a writer sticks to hammering his philosophical point - "it's not that important" - instead of engaging in a discussion of the real-world example.

(BTW, I'm quite sure I've done the same thing. I'm not blasting Mackey for this. I'm just saying that it's easy to take it too far.)

In this case, the real-world examples are this:

1) The Twins payroll went down $13M or so in the same year that MLB payrolls went up a few percent.

To suggest that the Twins couldn't have used that $13M to improve their ball club this year is ridiculous. It doesn't mean they would have spent it wisely. It doesn't mean they would have competed. But it's silly to suggest that would have made the team worse.

2) If the Twins cut payroll again this year it will further limit them.

I don't disagree that free agency shopping can encourage "laziness." But we have a team starved for starting pitching and a free agent market that is loaded for starting pitching. That could not be a better situation provided they don't shy away from spending some money. That doesn't fix all the problems, but it can fix that problem, and it's likely that there are going to be some huge bargains this year the same way Willingham looks like a huge bargain. Again, I can't see anyway one can reasonably argue that now having an extrt $10-15M to spend is unimportant.

~~~

I'll make one more point that gets me a little more riled up.

It is AWFULLY CONVENIENT for the Twins to start with the "payroll isn't that important" three years after they start to live in a publicly subsidized stadium. I don't remember them making that argument back when they were lobbying for a new stadium. At that point, the mantra was that they "have trouble competing" in their stadium. Seemingly, it was important then.

Originally Posted by Reginald Maudling's Shin

Originally Posted by DPJ

I'll ask once again, who's saying the Twins are a bad team cause of their payroll?

Sports talk radio-Twin Cities style. Knockin' down those strawmen since the 90's.

To be fair, I don't think it's limited to the Twin Cities. I can speak for Philadelphia and a little for New York and Boston, all of which are great sport cities. This is a staple of all of them.

Originally Posted by John Bonnes

Originally Posted by Seth Stohs

http://www.1500espn.com/sportswire/M...y_excuse081212

Payroll -- or a perceived lack thereof -- has absolutely nothing to do with why the Twins have lost more than 160 games since the beginning of last season.
Payroll -- or a perceived scaling back of -- is a lazy excuse.

100% agree with Mr. Mackey on this one!

It's a specious argument. It also a rhetorical trick.

The trick is this: instead of debating a point honestly, choose the most extreme possible viewpoint and portray that as the opposing side. That gives lots of room for fire, brimstone and proselytizing. In this case, the extreme point seems to be that payroll is not THE BIGGEST factor in winning and losing. And if it's not the biggest, it must not be important.

The absurdity of the initial argument becomes clear when one carries it through to its natural conclusion: if payroll isn't important, why not cut it further? Why not go back to 2000, when it was under $20M? That is absurd, of course. Which is why a writer sticks to hammering his philosophical point - "it's not that important" - instead of engaging in a discussion of the real-world example.

(BTW, I'm quite sure I've done the same thing. I'm not blasting Mackey for this. I'm just saying that it's easy to take it too far.)

In this case, the real-world examples are this:

1) The Twins payroll went down $13M or so in the same year that MLB payrolls went up a few percent.

To suggest that the Twins couldn't have used that $13M to improve their ball club this year is ridiculous. It doesn't mean they would have spent it wisely. It doesn't mean they would have competed. But it's silly to suggest that would have made the team worse.

2) If the Twins cut payroll again this year it will further limit them.

I don't disagree that free agency shopping can encourage "laziness." But we have a team starved for starting pitching and a free agent market that is loaded for starting pitching. That could not be a better situation provided they don't shy away from spending some money. That doesn't fix all the problems, but it can fix that problem, and it's likely that there are going to be some huge bargains this year the same way Willingham looks like a huge bargain. Again, I can't see anyway one can reasonably argue that now having an extrt $10-15M to spend is unimportant.

~~~

I'll make one more point that gets me a little more riled up.

It is AWFULLY CONVENIENT for the Twins to start with the "payroll isn't that important" three years after they start to live in a publicly subsidized stadium. I don't remember them making that argument back when they were lobbying for a new stadium. At that point, the mantra was that they "have trouble competing" in their stadium. Seemingly, it was important then.

Bingo John! Someone has studied logical fallacies. Good on ya!

Should the different cities be looked at as solely the metro markets, or the whole blackout viewing market? Living in Des Moines, I have to deal with being in the Twins' 'market', yet the area defaults to the Cardinals on Mediacom. I feel like it is a relative point, as every area will have its own surrounding viewing area, but at least it should be brought up. The Rangers' only viewing competition off the top of my head is the Astros, whereas the Twins have to fight with the Brewers, Royals, Cardinals, Cubs, and White Sox.

Phil Mackey belittles his readers and listeners on a regular basis

Mackey will not take calls on his show and engage in respectful conversation with those who hold an opposing point of view.

Instead, he chooses to take his shots and move on. (Bomb Thrower)

Back on March 27th, Mackey tweeted, "I do question the intelligence of a lot of readers"

I checked out on his arrogance long ago.

Actually the lazy thing is to blame management for gaffes that are obvious. The correlation between payroll and wins is sacrosand.

Teams don't release their financials, but we can estimate a ballteam's revenues based on previously leaked balance sheets. See deadspin series: http://deadspin.com/5615096

The attached spreadsheet uses bb-ref salary data which excludes bogus amortization player salary expense (a duplicate expense) that is expensed on the balance sheets. Teams accordingly spent an average of 36.46% of same-year revenues on player payroll. The range is large, but clearly in this sample the teams who spent more won more (see spreadsheet below).

Observing this, the Twins projected revenues for Target Field during 2010 and 2011 were 234m and 309m, respectively. Thus, their payroll would have been $117m in 2010 and $154m in 2011 if the purported 50% of estimated revenues spent on payroll, was accurate.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5p...0lLNEJLWDluUk0

"To suggest that the Twins couldn't have used that $13M to improve their ball club this year is ridiculous. It doesn't mean they would have spent it wisely. It doesn't mean they would have competed. But it's silly to suggest that would have made the team worse."

Agree 100%

Darren Rovell CNBC

We all know that it's easier to make the playoffs in a sport without a salary cap if your team spends more money. More money allows you to acquire valuable free agents and make more mistakes in your talent evaluation and still recover.

Getty Images

But how much more of an advantage is a larger payroll in Major League Baseball?
I looked at the final season payrolls from 2001-2010 and came up with these odds. Of the 78 teams who made the playoffs, 48 of them (61.5 percent) were among the top 10 highest spenders. Eighteen of them (23.1 percent) ranked in 11th to 20th in league payroll. And 12 playoff teams (15.4 percent) came out of the bottom third of payroll.
So by going from a team in the bottom third, to a team in the middle third, you increase your chances of being in the playoffs by 50 percent. By going from the middle third to the top third, you increase your chances of making the postseason by 166 percent.
This year, half the playoff teams (based on Opening Day payrolls) came from the top third of payrolls (Yankees and Tigers), while 1/4 of the playoff teams came from the middle (Cardinals and Brewers) and bottom of payrolls (Rays and Diamondbacks).
As for actually winning it all?
Out of the last 10 winners, 60 percent have come from the top third of payroll, while 40 percent came from the middle third. There haven't been any winners from the bottom third over the last decade.