MLB drop the ball on scheduling?

[amjgt]

 

Gotta say I'm kind of shocked to see all this grousing about cold weather...from Minnesotans, donch'a know! The players have all been living in warmer climates since last October. They're not as maxed out and annoyed as you - they can play a few games in the cold, and they will. Just because you are at the end of your ropes, that doesn't mean ol' Joe Mauer can't play in a 40-degree night game.

 

 

 

I'm not sure I've seen a single grouse about the cold weather in this thread.

[ashbury]

We got snow this morning ... big, wet, heavy stuff ... it could be that more fell north than south and that's why the Sox are able to play, but that is weird on two fronts.

I See What You Did There

 

http://weatherblog.kshb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Blog311.jpg

[RegularJoe62]

 

Gotta say I'm kind of shocked to see all this grousing about cold weather...from Minnesotans, donch'a know! The players have all been living in warmer climates since last October. They're not as maxed out and annoyed as you - they can play a few games in the cold, and they will. Just because you are at the end of your ropes, that doesn't mean ol' Joe Mauer can't play in a 40-degree night game.

Did you happen to look in the stands during last night's game? Nobody there.

[bighat]

Jake O needs to throw strikes to that #9 batter. Gee whiz man.

[ashbury]

Jake O needs to throw strikes to that #9 batter. Gee whiz man.

Would you like me to move this to the Game Thread?

[bighat]

 

Would you like me to move this to the Game Thread?

 

Haha, oh man. My bad.

[drock2190]

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole weekend is postponed because of the weather. 

 

[Squirrel]

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole weekend is postponed because of the weather. 

Chicago's used to it. I don't think there has been a spring since I moved here where both teams didn't have rescheduled games due to April weather.

[Otto von Ballpark]

Was just thinking about this again.

 

Looking at the 2017 schedule (still waiting on an updated magnet schedule ), it looks like Fox Sports North owned the rights, but declined to broadcast, 8 games -- and they were all weekday afternoon games. Even one versus the Yankees. This suggests that weekday afternoon games, from a TV rights standpoint, are significantly less valuable, perhaps barely break-even from a broadcaster profit perspective.

 

The Twins TV deal is worth about $40 mil annually per this article:

https://www.twincities.com/2016/02/12/local-tv-deal-doesnt-hamper-twins-payroll-team-president-says/

 

But that can be adjusted based on schedule, postponements, national broadcasts, etc. If the average game is worth something like $250k to FSN, and a weekday afternoon game is significantly less than that, changing just 4 games from evenings to weekday afternoons could cost the Twins up to $1 mil.

 

Not a huge sum in modern MLB, but also not something you necessarily give away for vague, undefined benefits either. I'd guess that most MLB teams schedule the bare minimum number of weekday afternoon games as required by the league/union.

 

(I don't know the numbers and thus magnitude, but there is likely a similar effect with suites and even season tickets. Those cost far less than TV rights, of course, but they are in larger quantities so they could add up.)