Plenty of money

[Mike Sixel]

The Braves made 100 million, with a bad tv deal and a 130MM payroll......there is plenty of money for the actual players to get more.....

 

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-braves-profits-provide-glimpse-into-baseballs-books/

 

[Vanimal46]

Oh good. I was worried that billionaire owners were losing millions of dollars. There's a reason they want to keep their books closed. It's a literal goldmine to own a professional sports team.

[Winston Smith]

 

The Braves made 100 million, with a bad tv deal and a 130MM payroll......there is plenty of money for the actual players to get more.....

 

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-braves-profits-provide-glimpse-into-baseballs-books/

So you're saying the Pohlads don't need food stamps?

[old nurse]

Not many people have not figured out that baseball teams increase in value. Some people have not figured out after 34 years of the Pohlads working to not have an operating loss on a business that it is not going to change.  The happy coincidence of a winning team and an expiring lease led to a new partially public funded stadium for the Pohlads thus leading to more appreciation but that still will not change how the Pohlads operate.

[darin617]

Don't forget the fact they inherited the team from their father. So they never put up anything to buy and and the little thing about a public funded stadium as well.

 

So we could have a way bigger payroll with ease.

[TheLeviathan]

Did I read a different article?  I don't want to be accused of defending the owners, I'm certainly of the belief the players need a bigger piece of the pie (specifically minor league players), but most of this article seems to suggest that the middle and bottom of the pack in baseball are not raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.  In fact, the Braves lost money for several years up to this one.  And half the profits came from the one-time Disney deal.  

 

If anything, this further illustrates the disparities in baseball and how much the media deals for the major markets like drive enormous profit margins for some while other teams float around break even and rely on increases in team value to justify them as a financial asset.

 

I read this and wonder how enormous the profits are for LA, NY, Bos, and the other markets with sweetheart TV deals.

[ToddlerHarmon]

With this much money sloshing around, payroll is less the limiting factor for teams like the Twins.  Not being able to get players the best endorsements and national exposure might start to become a problem, however.  How long before you get a situation like the NBA, where free agents congregate together for championships?

 

[biggentleben]

 

Did I read a different article?  I don't want to be accused of defending the owners, I'm certainly of the belief the players need a bigger piece of the pie (specifically minor league players), but most of this article seems to suggest that the middle and bottom of the pack in baseball are not raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.  In fact, the Braves lost money for several years up to this one.  And half the profits came from the one-time Disney deal.  

 

If anything, this further illustrates the disparities in baseball and how much the media deals for the major markets like drive enormous profit margins for some while other teams float around break even and rely on increases in team value to justify them as a financial asset.

 

I read this and wonder how enormous the profits are for LA, NY, Bos, and the other markets with sweetheart TV deals.

 

 

A big part of what is helping the Braves to be profitable was the development of the land around the stadium that the club is considered owner or part-owner. That makes significantly more money for the team than any revenue generated from baseball. If not for the non-baseball revenue, the Braves would not be making near that much money. There was a chunk of adjustment when Liberty bought the team and was able to negotiate some adjustment to the horrific TV deal in place.

 

Of course, the Atlanta TV market is such that if the Braves could negotiate a new TV deal, they'd end up making big money off that on top of The Battery.

[old nurse]

 

A big part of what is helping the Braves to be profitable was the development of the land around the stadium that the club is considered owner or part-owner. That makes significantly more money for the team than any revenue generated from baseball. If not for the non-baseball revenue, the Braves would not be making near that much money. There was a chunk of adjustment when Liberty bought the team and was able to negotiate some adjustment to the horrific TV deal in place.

 

Of course, the Atlanta TV market is such that if the Braves could negotiate a new TV deal, they'd end up making big money off that on top of The Battery.

2027 is a long ways away. Media could be totally different

[twinsfansd]

You have to put all this money stuff in perspective. Jealousy clouds the vision when it comes to seeing what a rich person is actually getting as a return. Most of us have retirement plans or other investments that we follow.  Whether we have $1000 invested or $100,000 or $1,000,000, we are disappointed if our return is less than 10%. Yet if a baseball team's value increases by 8% a year, that makes the team owner evil. Get over it people. These people are in business just like any other business, to make money, not to give you free entertainment. And by the way, when was the last time you saw a baseball player starve to death?

[bird]

Articles like this remind me of why I deal with a nagging nausea about the game I fell in love with back in 1961 as a small child, this over my stern father's objection and his disdain for us lazy, idle types who created a drain on the nation's GDP by twittering away the hours on frivolous entertainment.

 

The man died unhappy. I continue to rebel. But it gets harder and harder to savor it.

 

Any day I want, I can pop into a coffee shop after hopping out of a vehicle 75% of my fellow citizens can't afford. Shell out for a $5 latte and read an article like this from an expensive device, enjoying subscriptions to a number of media sources. I can afford to do something 95% of Americans can't afford to do, which is to order $65 tickets to a game while munching on a $14 cheeseburger with those fancy fries in the tony restaurant next to the stadium. A place whose revenues and profits are inextricably tied to those of the baseball club and to the tax burdens of all. I can go home later and settle in to watch MLB.com because I can afford $150 per month for cable TV if I want.

 

My point is this: if we could magically pare revenues that flow into your average baseball enterprise by 50%, the whole complex, intertwined shebang would still represent an anguishing, wretched excess, simply because it's become the exclusive domain of those among us who merely flinch at the $9 price of a stadium beer.

 

For me personally, I couldn't give a rat's *ss about the players getting their "fair share" of the pie. I'd like them all to make 10% of what they do to be honest. There's no mystery in the unassailable fact that baseball's appeal has deadened for many. I snuck off to Met Stadium occasionally. My paper route money allowed me to do something some of my other classmates could't do. These days, I've made a painful choice to avoid most of what the supporters of stadium bills describe as a boon to GDP, including trips to Target Field. It's silly, I know.

 

Will the industry rue the day when the remaining fans hit their clearing price? My own millennial kids have cut the cord with both baseball and Comcast and moved on. They never had the kind of connection that I had with Zoilo, Camilo, Cesar, Kitty, and Harmon. I was in the financial services business my entire career, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how cable deals get better and how baseball franchises continue to appreciably increase in value from here on out. Who can afford this mess?

 

The greed is suffocating. Owners, players, businesses, and fans alike.

[darin617]

The Twins are still pretending they are a small market team. Sure they don't have a massive TV deal like some but they have plenty of money to spend.

[gunnarthor]

They're owned by the Pohlads. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters. They should spend more, they won't.

[Mike Sixel]

 

You have to put all this money stuff in perspective. Jealousy clouds the vision when it comes to seeing what a rich person is actually getting as a return. Most of us have retirement plans or other investments that we follow.  Whether we have $1000 invested or $100,000 or $1,000,000, we are disappointed if our return is less than 10%. Yet if a baseball team's value increases by 8% a year, that makes the team owner evil. Get over it people. These people are in business just like any other business, to make money, not to give you free entertainment. And by the way, when was the last time you saw a baseball player starve to death?

 

Team values aren't going up only 8% per year.....and they are going up faster than player salaries......so, sure, if you value owners over players, that makes sense.....

 

Your last line is silly. Where should the money go? It isn't going away, how should it be divided? It's not like you see owners starving, even bad ones.

[caninatl04]

Last year's opening day payrolls had a mean and median right around $140 million. If Minnesota is to be considered a mid-market team, that should be the payroll goal in, say, 2020.

[biggentleben]

 

2027 is a long ways away. Media could be totally different

 

However, at changes of ownership, there are windows of examining and renegotiating existing contracts that have been acquired. Liberty did that to some degree when acquiring the Braves, though they obviously could not completely rip up the old deal. Now, with the forced Disney sell-off, there could be an opportunity to renegotiate again for more favorable terms for the rest of the contract. Certainly not going to get a Dodgers deal, but any little bit is more revenue.

[biggentleben]

 

You have to put all this money stuff in perspective. Jealousy clouds the vision when it comes to seeing what a rich person is actually getting as a return. Most of us have retirement plans or other investments that we follow.  Whether we have $1000 invested or $100,000 or $1,000,000, we are disappointed if our return is less than 10%. Yet if a baseball team's value increases by 8% a year, that makes the team owner evil. Get over it people. These people are in business just like any other business, to make money, not to give you free entertainment. And by the way, when was the last time you saw a baseball player starve to death?

 

To death? Not so much, but enough to leave the game, many times over in the minor leagues, yet the argument for not paying more for minor league players is not that they don't deserve it or anything of the sort...it's consistently been that it would cause a strain on certain organization's financials too heavy to enforce at the level of the entire game, so teams can make their own choices. And, just like teams were "allowed" to make their own choices about race after a public statement from Landis in 1942, no team challenged that line until two years after Landis' 1944 death, and even then, it took an extremely bold person to do that. No one's going to break rank-and-file to pay their minor leaguers more until the league enforces it, and there's absolutely money in the game to do so.

[biggentleben]

On this issue, Jeff Passan's piece at Yahoo today is incredibly good and worth the read...

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/donations-cindy-hyde-smith-reveal-mlb-league-can-remedy-grievous-error-035527945.html

 

The incredible thing to me is the amount of money spent on lobbying by MLB. It's been estimated that to bring the salary of every minor league player employed in the game to at least $100K, it would cost an additional $8 million (and that's if NONE of the minor league players are on 40-man rosters, which so many are, so there's likely additional savings, but I digress...). That's total throughout the entire league, not for each team. Yet, there's $3.7 million directly from the league donated to Congress over the last 17 years, let alone what owners privately gave, to ensure minor league players were underpaid in the spending bill provision tacked into this spring's spending bill in Congress.

 

Some of this gets into a blurry off-topic/baseball mixture, but the money is definitely around for MLB and individual teams to do much more for their players.

[twinsfansd]

 

To death? Not so much, but enough to leave the game, many times over in the minor leagues, yet the argument for not paying more for minor league players is not that they don't deserve it or anything of the sort...it's consistently been that it would cause a strain on certain organization's financials too heavy to enforce at the level of the entire game, so teams can make their own choices. And, just like teams were "allowed" to make their own choices about race after a public statement from Landis in 1942, no team challenged that line until two years after Landis' 1944 death, and even then, it took an extremely bold person to do that. No one's going to break rank-and-file to pay their minor leaguers more until the league enforces it, and there's absolutely money in the game to do so.

 

[twinsfansd]

Minor league baseball players are no different than aspiring artists, musical performers, actors/actresses and many other professions. Or for that matter insurance salesmen or real estate agents. You get payed for your performance, pure and simple. The better you perform, the more opportunities you get, and the more earning power you achieve. 

In the long run, it isn't a whole lot different than most jobs. You start out at the bottom and work your way up.

I realize that most minor league ball players don't earn enough to live on. But that is the reason most of them work in the off season. Most can't make it on talent alone. They have to WANT it. 

 

[twinsfansd]

 

Articles like this remind me of why I deal with a nagging nausea about the game I fell in love with back in 1961 as a small child, this over my stern father's objection and his disdain for us lazy, idle types who created a drain on the nation's GDP by twittering away the hours on frivolous entertainment.

 

The man died unhappy. I continue to rebel. But it gets harder and harder to savor it.

 

Any day I want, I can pop into a coffee shop after hopping out of a vehicle 75% of my fellow citizens can't afford. Shell out for a $5 latte and read an article like this from an expensive device, enjoying subscriptions to a number of media sources. I can afford to do something 95% of Americans can't afford to do, which is to order $65 tickets to a game while munching on a $14 cheeseburger with those fancy fries in the tony restaurant next to the stadium. A place whose revenues and profits are inextricably tied to those of the baseball club and to the tax burdens of all. I can go home later and settle in to watch MLB.com because I can afford $150 per month for cable TV if I want.

 

My point is this: if we could magically pare revenues that flow into your average baseball enterprise by 50%, the whole complex, intertwined shebang would still represent an anguishing, wretched excess, simply because it's become the exclusive domain of those among us who merely flinch at the $9 price of a stadium beer.

 

For me personally, I couldn't give a rat's *ss about the players getting their "fair share" of the pie. I'd like them all to make 10% of what they do to be honest. There's no mystery in the unassailable fact that baseball's appeal has deadened for many. I snuck off to Met Stadium occasionally. My paper route money allowed me to do something some of my other classmates could't do. These days, I've made a painful choice to avoid most of what the supporters of stadium bills describe as a boon to GDP, including trips to Target Field. It's silly, I know.

 

Will the industry rue the day when the remaining fans hit their clearing price? My own millennial kids have cut the cord with both baseball and Comcast and moved on. They never had the kind of connection that I had with Zoilo, Camilo, Cesar, Kitty, and Harmon. I was in the financial services business my entire career, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how cable deals get better and how baseball franchises continue to appreciably increase in value from here on out. Who can afford this mess?

 

The greed is suffocating. Owners, players, businesses, and fans alike.

 

[twinsfansd]

I agree with 'birdwatcher'. The greed on both sides is forcing more and more people out of the ability to afford to attend or even watch games. Why are we as fans so stupid that we allowed the owners and the greedy players the opportunity to pick our pockets to the degree they do? I mean really, players making $35million a year. Teams worth $2-3 Billion. WE did that. WE allowed it to happen. I am from the same generation as 'birdwatcher' it seems, and it makes me sick as well.

[TheLeviathan]

This seems related.

[Vanimal46]

This seems related.

This article speaks to my soul as a fan... It's dumbfounding to say this about a competitive sport, but it's true in MLB. There is more competition to lose games than there is to win.

 

There isn't a better time to make win now moves than right now for a team stuck in a purgatory of mediocrity.

[biggentleben]

 

Minor league baseball players are no different than aspiring artists, musical performers, actors/actresses and many other professions. Or for that matter insurance salesmen or real estate agents. You get payed for your performance, pure and simple. The better you perform, the more opportunities you get, and the more earning power you achieve. 

In the long run, it isn't a whole lot different than most jobs. You start out at the bottom and work your way up.

I realize that most minor league ball players don't earn enough to live on. But that is the reason most of them work in the off season. Most can't make it on talent alone. They have to WANT it. 

 

It's very, very different. Teams require hours out of their minor leaguers to put in certain amount of time, yet on average, a player at the complex level earns less than your average food service worker - and significantly less.

 

No one is saying that every minor league player should be paid millions. I'm not sure where you get your information, but most minor leaguers aren't able to work in the offseason as they are required by their teams to be at certain workouts, often sent to overseas leagues, and subject to being traded all offseason and having to start a relationship with a new organization.

 

One minor league "lifer" recently made the major league 40-man, and it was the first year that he said he'd be able to show an income over $30K. He'd spent almost a decade in the minor leagues, working all the way up to AAA. If you're okay with that staying the same, that's all well and good, but I'd rather see those players forced to alter their lives for a decade rewarded for it.

[biggentleben]

 

This article speaks to my soul as a fan... It's dumbfounding to say this about a competitive sport, but it's true in MLB. There is more competition to lose games than there is to win.

There isn't a better time to make win now moves than right now for a team stuck in a purgatory of mediocrity.

 

It's also why the Braves signing guys for one-year deals makes a ton of sense right now...add for 2019, don't take away any of the depth in the system that has you primed for years of competitiveness...

[Vanimal46]

It's also why the Braves signing guys for one-year deals makes a ton of sense right now...add for 2019, don't take away any of the depth in the system that has you primed for years of competitiveness...

Definitely. The core is in place, now they can surround Freeman, Acuna, etc. with legitimate talent.

 

If I were in the Braves' shoes I'd also sacrifice a little bit of the farm for the pitching talent available for trade. I don't recall an off-season in recent memory where legitimate top of the rotation talent are on the trade block. Fans can argue where pitchers like Bumgarner & Thor fit into the rotation, but they're a hell of a lot better than the usual back of the rotation arms on the trade block in past years.

[biggentleben]

 

Definitely. The core is in place, now they can surround Freeman, Acuna, etc. with legitimate talent.

If I were in the Braves' shoes I'd also sacrifice a little bit of the farm for the pitching talent available for trade. I don't recall an off-season in recent memory where legitimate top of the rotation talent are on the trade block. Fans can argue where pitchers like Bumgarner & Thor fit into the rotation, but they're a hell of a lot better than the usual back of the rotation arms on the trade block in past years.

 

Bumgarner fits well with their plan to get guys who could get qualifying offers next fall as well. With the loss of IFA money, extra picks are going to be very valuable, which is why I could see them putting in extra players to acquire a CBA pick along with someone like Greinke or a Cleveland starter or even if they make a move for Domingo Santana with Milwaukee.

[jkcarew]

 

No one's going to break rank-and-file to pay their minor leaguers more until the league enforces it, and there's absolutely money in the game to do so.

The minor league player's predicament is at least 50% the fault of the players union.  The rank and file could have made minor league player pay/benefits a negotiating priority in previous collective bargaining sessions...and have repeatedly refused to do that.  The greed has been quite evident on both sides through the years.

[kab21]

 

On this issue, Jeff Passan's piece at Yahoo today is incredibly good and worth the read...

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/donations-cindy-hyde-smith-reveal-mlb-league-can-remedy-grievous-error-035527945.html

 

The incredible thing to me is the amount of money spent on lobbying by MLB. It's been estimated that to bring the salary of every minor league player employed in the game to at least $100K, it would cost an additional $8 million (and that's if NONE of the minor league players are on 40-man rosters, which so many are, so there's likely additional savings, but I digress...). That's total throughout the entire league, not for each team. Yet, there's $3.7 million directly from the league donated to Congress over the last 17 years, let alone what owners privately gave, to ensure minor league players were underpaid in the spending bill provision tacked into this spring's spending bill in Congress.

 

Some of this gets into a blurry off-topic/baseball mixture, but the money is definitely around for MLB and individual teams to do much more for their players.

Those numbers just don't add up at all. Teams have at least 150 MiLB players x 30 teams. And if you were only talking about full season ball then there are close to a 100 players/team.